A summary of things you should know about The Automatic Customer according to John Warrillow: Introduction In this episode John Warrillow takes a deep dive into his book, The AutomaticRead More
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]]>In this episode John Warrillow takes a deep dive into his book, The Automatic Customer, where he discusses how to create a subscription business in any industry.
In his book Warrillow provides 9 unique business models based on a simple step-by-step guide for building an online subscription based business that are designed to fit nearly any kind of industry. The goal of the book is to teach you the fundamentals of recurring revenue, how to attract automatic customers, ways to market subscription products, and the statistics you need to measure results.
This books is perfect for entrepreneurs who are technology savvy and want to own a business that allows them to work from home while building a large, sustainable income.
I think the nine subscription models are really easy for businesses to comprehend and apply to their business. We try to explain that no matter what business or industry you’re in you can apply one of these nine models to create some form of recurring revenue.
This book has three major sections. The first section is dedicated to really making the case as to why you want recurring revenue. So if you already know that you absolutely want recurring revenue than you can skip section one and go straight to section two which is the nine subscription models.
What these nine subscription models are going to do is help you think through all the different forms of recurring revenue that you might use in your business. And you can cherry-pick through those as you see one that is more relevant and less relevant. The final section is scaling up your subscription business which is all about the metrics you want.
The LTV (Lifetime Value) to CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) ratio is the most important metric any subscription company operator focuses on and we give you a formula on how to calculate it.
The key is to find some way to create some form of recurring revenue because that is going to both improve the value of your company as well as make your business a whole lot easier and more enjoyable to run. I believe that the essence of what we are trying to do can be encapsulated in a story I tell in the book. This story is about a guy named Sonu Panda who took a different approach to selling flowers. If you think about it a flower shop doesn’t have much hope unless it’s Mother’s Day or Valentine’s Day. In this business you constantly have to throw out rotten un-bought inventory because it simply wasn’t purchased which is a big waste of profit. Sonu Panda is trying to get you to think differently about what business you are in, even the low-tech business of selling flowers. So he tried to figure out who out there buys flowers on a recurring basis and realized that spas, restaurants, and hotels actually buy flowers relatively frequently. And so Sonu went to the individual establishments and negotiated with them on scheduling a time to bring fresh flowers every two weeks so that they could get back to the business or spa treatment etc. and not have to worry about whether their flowers are fresh. With that value proposition he started H. Bloom and today there are thousands and thousands of H. Bloom customers and subscribers around the world. So really the book is trying to convey that no matter what you do and no matter what business you are in you can rethink your business to create recurring revenue.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 07:04
“Happiness bombs.” – Bark Box
I am the founder of something called The Value Builder System where we help business owners improve the value of their company. I found that business after I wrote the book Built To Sell a couple years ago.
Most of the inspiration came from me screwing up writing Built To Sell. In Built to Sell I talked about the importance of making the business thrive without you personally doing all the work. The one thing that I didn’t spend enough time on was recurring revenue and it turns out that recurring revenue has the biggest impact on whether or not someone wants to buy your business. With The Automatic Customer I wanted to kind of write that wrong and really dedicate an entire book to how a business creates passive income and recurring revenue streams that are not necessarily reliant on the owner themselves.
Small Giants by Bo Burlingham
Buy The Automatic Customer by John Warrillow on Amazon today
Visit AutomaticCustomer.com to learn more about the book and get your free e-book
Visit ValueBuilderSystem.com to learn more about John’s company and services
Follow John Warrillow on Facebook and Twitter
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
The Membership Economy by Robbie Kellman Baxter
High Paying Clients by Trevor Crane
Unselling by Scott Stratten
Relevant advice and tips:
7 Recommended Books on Starting An Online Business
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Connect – The Secret LinkedIn Playbook according to Josh Turner: Introduction In this episode Josh Turner takes a deep dive into hisRead More
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]]>In this episode Josh Turner takes a deep dive into his book, Connect, where he shares some unique LinkedIn strategies to generate leads, build relationships, and increase sales.
In his book Turner provides a step-by-step guide that outlines simple LinkedIn activities that are designed to advance your business when it comes to building influence, finding partnerships, and business growth. The goal of the book is to show you the most effective ways to use LinkedIn, how to use LinkedIn for marketing purposes, and how to build a profile that attracts paying clients.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who run or plan to run a business that involves building a network of relationships and need help developing a social networking strategy on LinkedIn.
I wanted to make sure that this was not just another LinkedIn tips and tricks type of book. This book is going to stand the test of time because it’s not based on how you use a certain tool it’s based on a philosophy and a way of marketing that just so happens to leverage LinkedIn. It’s a time tested way to generate lots of leads online by building relationships.
This book can be read straight through or you can cherry-pick your way around.
If you take the time to build the relationship first then when you ask for a phone call or a meeting your response rate is going to go way up.
The book starts out with comparison to what my business looked like before and what it looks like now that I’ve designed and applied this system. This is the jumping off point for explaining the system and why it works.
One of my favorite chapters in the book is Caveman Psychology where I walk you through an evolutionary psychology and why it works. I set the stage with the things that you need to do from a psychological standpoint to position yourself properly to earn the right for someone to even agree to take a meeting with you. I walk you through a new marketing blueprint for how to put these things in place online and specifically we dive really deep into LinkedIn and into webinars. I explain how to set up the LinkedIn campaign that will achieve all of this all the way from the basics to some of the more advanced strategies. We go all the way from identifying your target prospects, to then bringing them into your funnel, to working them through processes that will generate leads.
I also dive really deep into webinars and the reason behind that is because when I look at my business, the growth that we’ve achieved, and the successes we’ve had is fueled in big part by webinars. It’s a combination of utilizing LinkedIn in this very systematic type of way but also webinars. My business generates somewhere between eight to ten thousand webinar registrations every month. I walk you through what has been successful for us so that you can determine how you can incorporate webinars not only into your business but then how to integrate them with LinkedIn campaign. This will get you in front of the right prospects and allow you to use it as a great lead generating tool. These are the two broad components of the book and within them we talk about positioning yourself as a leader and the tactical things you can do within LinkedIn to achieve that.
We talk about how to really develop relationships the right way by sharing content and the right way to put it all together so that it positions you above the fray. We talk a lot about LinkedIn group strategies and how you can leverage a group to generate a ton of leads. We talk about how to track all of this activity because when you have thousands of prospects that you’re working through these processes within LinkedIn you have to have a very organized structure for keeping tabs on it.
Finally, the chapter that you might get equal value from is a chapter on what to do once you are face to face or on the phone. I break down six types of sales calls that you will encounter as a result of utilizing the process. I give you scripts as well as the general framework for how to conduct those calls to position yourself in the best light and stay classy but at the same time have a productive sale call.
The end stage is getting people all the way through the funnel of this system and getting them to the point where they agree to a phone call or meeting so that you can really talk business.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 08:11
“When a copier sales person cold calls a purchasing manager whom he has never met is it any surprise that the purchasing manager will most likely never return that call?” – Josh Turner
I started using LinkedIn for business development way back in 2006 and at the time I was a CFO of a construction and manufacturing company in St. Louis. Unfortunately that company was hit hard by the down turn in the economy and it was forced to shut its door’s which was when I decided to go work for myself. I first started working as a freelance CFO and one of the ways I was able to grow the business was leveraging LinkedIn, not only the network I had built for myself prior but doing more things proactively. Fast forward to 2011 I had a couple of clients that I was helping in finance ask me about the different strategies I was using with LinkedIn. After trying to explain these strategies we realized it would just be easier if I did the work for them and that was when I built Linked Selling . Now we have a team of 14 with clients all over the world in all sorts of industries and we’ve had a lot of fun along the way.
This book is the playbook that my company has used to triple our revenue every year for the last three years and the book that we’ve used to generate millions of additional revenue for our private clients. I figured there were a lot of other businesses out there that would want to get their hands on this. The inspiration was that when I first started working for myself in 2010 I was frustrated and getting very little out of networking because most of the people weren’t my prospects. This book and the systems that I walk you through are the systems that I designed in response to that. I figured out how to use LinkedIn to keep my name in front of thousands of targeted prospects and then leverage a relationship building a process that works the reader through a set of messages that culminates in a request for a meeting or phone call. It’s taken us a few years to perfect the system but now we are there and I am super excited to get this message out to those who it will make a big difference for.
Ask by Ryan Levesque
Buy Connect by Josh Turner on Amazon today
Visit TheConnectBook.com to learn more about the book and get the special offer
Visit LinkedSelling.com to learn more about Josh’s services
Visit LinkedUniversity.com for more exclusive content from Josh and his team
Follow Josh Turner on Facebook and Twitter
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
A World Gone Social by Ted Coine and Mark Babbitt
Escape The Expected by Tom Trush
Unselling by Scott Stratten
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about The Membership Economy according to Robbie Kellman Baxter: Introduction In this episode online business expert Robbie Baxter gives an in-depth look insideRead More
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]]>In this episode online business expert Robbie Baxter gives an in-depth look inside her book, The Membership Economy, where she discusses how subscription-based businesses succeed.
In her book Baxter provides an online business roadmap that is packed with step-by-step digital strategies, useful resources, and case studies of super successful dot-com companies. The goal of the book is to show you how to get the most revenue from your online product, create an engaged community of customers, place your revenue on autopilot, and create sustainable loyalty programs.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who already or plan to sell an online, subscription-based product or service and are not sure where to begin when it comes to building revenue.
There are a lot of books about specific types of models, there are books that talk about different kinds of trends or behavioral economics but my book really takes a broad and strategic look at what is driving this major transformational trend. My book talks about specific examples across a wide spectrum of organizational structure and I look at how those trends apply across everything in between.
I wrote this book to be read in whatever order you decide.
I want the readers to remember that the goal is no longer about the transaction being the finish line. The transaction is the starting line and the ongoing formal relationship with the customer is going to make the difference between the winners and the losers in the next 20 years.
The book is divided into four sections.
The first section talks about what the membership economy is, why it’s happening right now, what the drivers are, and gives the reader a sense of what the implications are across the social and professional landscape.
The second section is what I think of as the deep meat of the book, the most tactical section and that goes into the seven steps to the membership economy which I outline in detail. This is where you can get tidbits that you apply to your own business right away. I talk about what the implications are of the membership economy for the way you organize your company. I discuss in detail everything you need to know about onboarding. I believe that most organizations under invest in onboarding new customers which needs to happen in the first 30 days. The fourth and fifth chapters, pricing and the use of free, talk about how your members should pay and how to think about your pricing structure. We talk about the use of subscription model s but we also talk about other sources of revenue that membership organizations can layer on top of one another in order to build a robust model. And I talk about the use of free as a really useful tool for extending the reach of your organization. I talk about technology and what kinds of technologies are available for managing ongoing relationships, building loyalty, and mastering retention. I talk about the importance of a focus on the customer over the product. I believe it’s all about the customer and I go over how an organization can build out a customer success team and a culture that promotes a focus on the customer as more important than the product.
Section three goes into the six different types of organizations that are currently benefiting from the membership economy. That’s the digital natives which are subscription businesses and online communities. Then I talk about small businesses and professional services firms and then I talk about nonprofits and professional societies and trade. And finally I talk about what I call the gateway to the membership economy which is loyalty programs.
In the fourth section I talk about the specific points of opportunity in the membership economy which are the hardest spots for entrepreneurs to be successful. This is things like going from idea to startup. I talk about going from being a hot startup that’s really edgy to being a mainstream mature organization. I talk about going from offline business to online business and I also talk about going from a fixed product base pricing ownership model to an access model.
At the very end of the book I take you through very specific steps to get started at looking at your own business and get the reader thinking about where there might be opportunities to leverage the principles of the membership economy. And then I invite you to give me feedback on your own journey and ask me any questions you might have. Ultimately I want there to be a community around the book as well as the book that talks about community.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 06:15
I have been a strategy consultant for the last 25 years and for the last 15 years I’ve been an independent consultant. I have always been interested in how the psychology of the customer ties in with business models and currently run a successful consulting firm called Peninsula Strategies.
The inspiration behind writing this book was from a consulting project that I did about 12 years ago. I was asked to do a project at Netflix and I fell in love with their business model because of the recurring revenue and the quantity of data they were collecting about their customers. From that point on I really only wanted to work with companies that were thinking about those kind of issues and I felt like I needed to document my experience.
Getting to 50/50 by Sharon Meers and Joanna Strober
Buy The Membership Economy by Robbie Kellman Baxter on Amazon today
Visit MembershipEconomy.com to learn more about the book
Visit PeninsulaStrategies.com to learn more about Robbie and her services
Follow Robbie Kellman Baxter on LinkedIn and Twitter
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Escape The Expected by Tom Trush
Unselling by Scott Stratten
High Paying Clients by Trevor Crane
Relevant advice and tips:
7 Recommended Books on Starting An Online Business
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
The post A Preview of The Membership Economy with Robbie Kellman Baxter appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
]]>A summary of things you should know about Unselling according to Scott Stratten: Introduction In this episode Scott Statten takes a deep dive into his book, Unselling, where he revealsRead More
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]]>In this episode Scott Statten takes a deep dive into his book, Unselling, where he reveals the secrets of what really influences purchasers’ decisions.
In his book Stratten provides the keys to unlocking the mysteries of successful customer service and debunks a lot of nonsense that other marketers and marketing books talk about. The goal of the book is to teach you the most effective form of selling, how to create loyal, recurring customers, how to overcome customer service failures, and where to focus your marketing efforts.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who have an understanding of sales and marketing, but are looking for a better, longer lasting solution to keep customers buying from you.
It has no cover and that alone should make it stand out. The brand is not about what we think it is, it’s about the customer and our book reflects that.
You can read it straight through but it’s written in a way that you can also jump around whenever you want.
Everybody in the chain matters.
The main pillar of Unselling is the customer pulse. People think we have two types of customers in this world, we have customers and we have noncustomers. The key thing with the customer pulse is that we really have three types of customers ecstatic, static, and vulnerable.
Ecstatic types of clients are the ones that refer others, the ones that renew and sing our praises in social media. Static customers are the ones who are there, they’ll probably renew, but they are only our customer because they haven’t seen or heard of a better solution to their need.
The vulnerable customers are the ones that are looking for an out and this process could be a day, a year, or even five years. The problem is we usually don’t find out we have lost a customer until we have lost them and then we do everything possible to try and get them back.
We have to understand that customers can be customers for life if we just value them. The book takes you through examples of our own personal experience, to examples that are out there in the world, and then to practical ways to keeping and maintaining your customers.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 05:23
“You treat your customers, and your employees, and your vendors all the same with the utmost respect and the utmost care and that will pay you back in spades.” –Keri Smith
I am the un everything, unmarketing, unselling, co-host of the unpodcast, and unsatisfied with the way things are being done in business.
I realized after being an old-school sales and training manager back in the day, that sales were focused on the transaction. You put all your eggs in the sales basket and once you had the transaction we handed it off to some other department and that’s where we kind of dropped the basket and all the eggs broke. The point I am trying to make is that everybody is in sales because the way to lead to future sales is to make sure that we make the customer ecstatic to be part of our organization and that starts at the transaction all the way through to the delivery.
Permission Marketing by Seth Godin
Buy Unselling by Scott Stratten on Amazon today
Visit Unmarketing.com to learn more about Scott and his book
Visit Unmarketing.com to learn more about the Unpodcast
Follow Scott Stratten on Facebook and Twitter
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Escape The Expected by Tom Trush
High Paying Clients by Trevor Crane
The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Sleaze-Free Selling by Julia Kline
Relevant advice and tips:
7 Reasons Why Your Sales Skills Suck
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
The post A Preview of Unselling with Scott Stratten appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
]]>A Quick Look at 5 of the Latest Books for Entrepreneurs The Entrepreneurs Library presents some of the latest books for entrepreneurs in May 2015. These books are brand newRead More
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]]>The Entrepreneurs Library presents some of the latest books for entrepreneurs in May 2015. These books are brand new to the market and the authors are in line to give a thorough deep dive of their books. Stay tuned this month for the release of the interviews with these great books and their authors. Below is an overview of what Amazon has to say about these books:
You don’t need social media, but you can be connecting with your clients socially. Your video doesn’t have to be viral in front of a million people, just contagious in front of your specific market. Content, connection, engagement. It’s time to separate from the pack of noise.
UnSelling is about everything but the sell. We put all of our focus on the individual purchase transaction, while putting the rest of our business actions second. We’ve become blind to customer service, support, branding, experiences and even product quality.
In this book Scott Stratten teaches sales companies how to see the big picture in order to:
After reading UnSelling, there will be no doubt in your mind that it’s true. Up to 60 percent of all purchases are made before the sales pitch even begins, yet we still focus on the sales funnel above all else. UnSelling is about removing this “funnel vision,” reaching out to clients in a meaningful way, and becoming the go-to brand. The sales figures will follow.
Learn more about Scott Stratten | Buy Unselling on Amazon
Now newly updated to celebrate 10 years since its first publication and including up-to-date case studies and examples, as well brand new exercises to test yourself, S.U.M.O: 10th Anniversary Edition will help SUMO fans, as well as SUMO amateurs, get more out of this bestselling, self-help classic.
Weighing in with humor, insight, practical tips, and personal anecdotes, it’s a thought provoking and possibly life-changing read. In this special 10th anniversary edition, including fresh stories and updates throughout, Paul McGee’s bestselling book will show you how to:
Learn more about Paul McGee | Buy S.U.M.O. on Amazon
In one evening you can know more about how much money you need to retire than your financial adviser. This book is a practical, no-nonsense guide complete with a step-by-step plan that tells you how much money you need to retire with confidence.
The conventional approach used by experts to determine how much money you need to retire is fundamentally flawed. The worst part is you won’t even know it until it’s too late. This book takes you behind the scientific facade of modern retirement planning to reveal:
Learn more about Todd Tresidder | Buy How Much Money Do I Need to Retire? on Amazon
With Cultural Intelligence, or CQ, you can lead effectively in any context. Now fully updated, the second edition of Leading with Cultural Intelligence features brand new research, case studies, and statistics on the ROI of improving your CQ, as well as fresh examples from Google, IBM, Facebook, and other organizations. Practical and insightful, the book presents a powerful, four-part model for becoming more adept at managing across cultures:
With Leading with Cultural Intelligence as your guide, you’ll be able to thrive in any business environment – whether it’s across the world or in your own backyard.
“As more companies go global, we need a better understanding of how to function as leaders across cultural boundaries. Now more than ever, our shrinking world needs what’s in David Livermore’s new book!” — Ken Blanchard, Coauthor, The One Minute Manager
“For those leaders who want to succeed in today’s increasingly global and interdependent environment, Leading with Cultural Intelligence is for you. Now, more than ever, applying this simple four-step cycle will prepare you for tomorrow’s world.” — Paul Polman, Chief Executive Officer, Unilever
Learn more about David Livermore | Buy Leading with Cultural Intelligence on Amazon
Life is too short to settle for less than the best—especially if we are called to lead other people. Leading from the heart is working and leading from your passion zone. Why does leading from the heart really matter?
In this short new passion-packed book by Dr. Hans Finzel, you will learn what it means to work in your “passion zone.” Hans explains from his own journey, how to find your passion zone and what action steps to take if you are far from that place of fulfillment.
People love following leaders whose hearts are fueled by passion. This book will help you uncover what passion in your work really is, and how to find it, no matter what stage you are at in your career. The advice in this book is especially powerful for anyone in a role of leadership that is experiencing boredom or burn out.
“If you’ve lost your passion, or never quite found it, read this book! It will teach you how to lead with a heart that is fully alive.” – Kathrine Lee – Life & Business Strategist
“Hans Finzel’s warning to leaders is convicting: ‘You have two choices to make. Whatever you do, make one of the two. The worst mistake is to do nothing.’ Whether now, or in some lonely leadership days ahead, trust me–you must read this book. – John Pearson – Author, Mastering the Management Buckets
Learn more about Hans Finzel | Buy The Power of Passion in Leadership on Amazon
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