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2019 www.thenewsletterpro.com
THERE ARE ONLY 4 WAYS TO GROW YOUR BUSINESS NOT 100
INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
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Not Growing as much as You Want? Client Success Close More Deals; Make More Money! Book Review: ‘Dialing Strangers’ by Dave Tester Get One on One Lessons From Gordon Ramsay Meet Jordyn Hussey How a Travel Company Is Changing the World
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easier for the customer to continue down the path with you than to find a new provider. So, once you deliver results and show them the path, many customers will ascend to higher levels of service. Most consumers live in a state of fear, so if you can deliver, they will entrust you with more money. Next, you can increase sales by increasing the number of purchases your customer makes in a given period of time. For example, at The Newsletter Pro, our customers buy once per month. What if we could get the average customer to purchase 30% more per month? Sales would shoot through the roof. In dentistry, they want patients to come back twice a year, but what if they had to come in three times per year? (That’s the number of times I personally go to the dentist. I like a clean, fresh, plaque-free mouth.) There would be a 50% bump in sales. Getting customers who are happy to buy from you again and again is a must for long-term profit.
There are only four ways to grow your business. Yup, that’s it: just four. Not 100 ways, not 1,000 ways — just four ways. Once you understand these four ways, you will have clarity about what you need to do to expand. In this article, I’m not going to share any of these four ways with you … just kidding! I’m going to cover all of them. Some people will argue that there are more than four ways to grow a company, but the reality is that all subsets of growth fall into one of these four growth categories. This is by far the most difficult and expensive way to grow. What is the single hardest thing you do in business? Get new customers, of course. I’ve coached a ton of people, and I’ve learned that regardless of what the underlying problem is, entrepreneurs ALWAYS want more leads in order to make more sales. I feel the same way, but unless your goal is to be super small and struggle forever at your business, you can’t focus solely on this one area of growth. After all, there are three other ways to grow your business. 1. ACQUIRE NEW CUSTOMERS.
The most difficult sale to make is the first sale to a new customer. That is the bad news. The good news, though, is that once you’ve made the first sale and delivered value (sometimes even before you deliver value via a one- time offer or order bump), the customer will cheerfully buy other products or services from you. Why is that? The answer is simple: Once you’ve built trust and helped them, it is much “WHAT IS THE SINGLE HARDEST THING YOU DO IN BUSINESS? GET NEW CUSTOMERS, OF COURSE.”
3. ENCOURAGE REPEAT BUYERS.
2. ELEVATE THE CUSTOMERS YOU’VE GOT.
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... COVER CONTINUED
“SMART COMPANIES KNOW THIS ONE METRIC CAN MAKE OR BREAK THEIR WHOLE BUSINESS.”
4. RETAIN CUSTOMERS.
I’m a huge believer that the masses are always wrong. I realized early on in my entrepreneurial life that focusing all my efforts on new customers was a horrible idea because I was struggling to get them at my dry-cleaning company. I dug into all the data one weekend after spending a month knocking on doors and signing up new customers, only to bring in virtually the same amount of revenue at the end of the month as I did at the start of the month. I quickly realized that if 30 more people had used my service that month, we would have seen good growth and more profits. Since I had to go out and knock on doors to get each customer, I made it my mission to figure out how to keep as many of those customers as possible. Ultimately, I figured out how to increase retention, and over the next few years, I stumbled on the other growth levers. Growth doesn’t have to be complicated, but if you want to achieve massive success and make millions in sales, you’re way less likely to get there by doing what everyone else does. –Shaun
If you were to score your effectiveness in each area with a zero-, one-, or two-point score, with zero meaning you do just the basics, little, or even nothing in the area; one meaning you do okay in the area but could use some help; and two meaning you crush that area, how would you rate? That isn’t a rhetorical question. Seriously, for the good of your business, pause for a second, reexamine the four areas, and give yourself a score. It’s okay; I’ll be here when you’re done. Now that you know the four ways to grow a business and have scored yourself in each area in terms of effectiveness, you’ve got the start of a mini road map to growing your business. In terms of putting these systems in place, retention is the easiest problem to solve, followed by elevating customers, encouraging repeat buyers, and, finally, the most difficult: acquiring new customers. How do you feel you did? Did you score zero points in any of the categories?
I talk about this all the time, but if you work hard to get a new customer, spend the time to give them a good customer experience, and elevate them into higher levels of service, why would you then forget to implement campaigns to retain them? Retention is the key to long-term success. Getting new customers is too hard and too expensive for 99% of businesses to not care about retaining a customer once they’re in the doors. In fact, retention is often the difference between single-digit growth and triple-digit growth. Of course, sometimes a company is so hot that they don’t have to focus on retention and customer experience, but that success is always short-lived.
Smart companies know this one metric can make or break their whole business.
Small companies think that business is all about acquiring new customers, and, because of that, they always stay small.
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BUSINESS HOW-TO NOT GROWING AS MUCH AS YOU WANT?
READTHIS! I have good news for you! You can have all the new customers your heart desires. Literally, limitless amounts of new customers. Want to know what the catch is? The number of customers you get is a direct reflection of the amount of money you’re willing to invest in ad spend. Duh, right? It seems simple, but most entrepreneurs still don’t get it. Let me share some examples and wisdom with you. Every business hits a point where it’s gotten all the low-hanging fruit the current marketing can provide in terms of new customers. When that point hits, you either have to increase ad spend or slowly die. Both options suck, but I’d take an increase in ad spend over a slow death any day. “IN MOST BRICK AND MORTAR BUSINESSES WITH GOOD RELATIONSHIP MARKETING IN PLACE, YOU NEED TO INVEST 5% OF TOPLINE REVENUE JUST TO MAINTAIN YOUR CUSTOMER BASE.” Let’s look at a big company like Netflix. In 2014, they were able to get a new customer for just $41. By the end of 2017, that number had ballooned to just over $100. They’re literally spending nine months of the $10.99 per month subscription fee to get a new customer. With a few tweaks to their marketing, they were able to spend $97 per new customer in quarter four of 2017. However, because they add millions of new customers each year, those dollars add up fast, as the cost is still more than double what it was just a few years back, despite having better media options to advertise Let me model this out.
into marketing, you will stall out, or worse, go into decline. This hurts the valuation of your company, effectively costing you far more than whatever risk you have when investing in marketing. But, how do we spend an ever-increasing amount of money? Check out my article on Page 4 for the answer to that question.
on, like Facebook, Snapchat, LinkedIn, low- competition direct mail, etc.
At The Newsletter Pro, on our lowest-priced plan, we also go negative for nine months to acquire that customer. Like Netflix, I know my average customer’s lifetime value, so I’m willing to take the risk, but we didn’t use to go negative. Years ago, we always broke even in the first 2–4 months. Sometimes, we were even profitable in month two, but that is not the norm today as we expand our marketing efforts to continue growing. Basically, we still get all the low-hanging fruit, but now we also get some of that juicy fruit at the top of the tree, and it requires a lot more effort and ad spend to access it. In most brick and mortar businesses with good relationship marketing in place, you need to invest 5% of topline revenue just to maintain your customer base. Typically, you’ll need to move that investment to 8–10% if you want solid growth. If you’re in startup mode, those numbers will all be off a bit, as you’ll need to invest much more in marketing to get off the ground.
–Shaun
P.S. Want our help with your marketing? Want to close more sales and make more money? Make sure you reach out to a Pro, and we will help you develop a road map to making more money, lowering churn, and turning more prospects into customers. Go to NewsletterPro.com/schedule or scan this QR code.
The moral of the story is simple: If you don’t invest significant and ever-increasing amounts of money
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CLIENT SUCCESS
MARKETING HOW-TO
CLOSEMOREDEALS; MAKEMOREMONEY! On Page 3, we talked about why growth stalls out and how to adjust ad spend to ramp growth back up. If you didn’t read that article first, I highly recommend you do so before coming back to this article. As I said earlier in the newsletter, you will have to use an ever-increasing ad spend just to maintain and grow. So, what do you need to do from a sales standpoint to be able to afford an increased ad spend?
“The clients love knowing what’s going on with Dr. Brown, and it’s become obvious that they feel more loyal to him because they’ve gotten to know and care about him. Patients are coming in and talking with us like we are old friends about the things they’ve read about in our newsletter lately. The
coolest thing for me, as the head of marketing, is the massive amount of new clients we receive every month, both from the newsletter and the fantastic new mover campaign!” –Shannon Love, Castlebury Dental
The formula isn’t rocket science, but few will really dig to get this information. You’ll need to know your industry’s version of the following numbers.
1. TOTAL NUMBER OF LEADS 2. COST PER QUALIFIED LEAD 3. COST PER SALES OPPORTUNITY 4. COST PER SALE 5. CHURN RATE
“The Newsletter Pro hasn’t just made the creation process for my monthly newsletter easy; they’ve made it enjoyable. I love that the newsletter gives me a framework to develop my ideas. Every month, I speak with my writer, they turn my concept into a stellar finished article, and I look it over to ensure my message is relayed. The team at The Newsletter Pro keeps me goal-oriented and deadline-focused, which results in my newsletter arriving consistently in the hands of my readers. “The finished product keeps my face in front of my clients, and the quality is nothing short of professional. I get great feedback from the people on my mailing list. Even little details like the recipes that are included have become big hits. Once, I even had a mail carrier find me through delivering a copy of the newsletter. He had seen a television ad I put out but couldn’t remember my name. When he saw the newsletter, he gave me a call and became a client. “As a bankruptcy attorney, it can be difficult to find marketing that works. With The Newsletter Pro, I’ve hit upon a winning formula.” –Eric Kornblum, Law Office of Eric Kornblum
OUR BOOKSHELF
We all know rejection is hard. You put everything on the line to make a sale, it doesn’t happen, and, suddenly, any confidence you had feels misplaced. Add that to the stress of trying to make a sale over the phone, and you have what seems like a recipe for disaster. But it doesn’t have to be. What if you could rise above the fear of rejection and also drastically lessen the likelihood of being rejected as well? ELIMI HAN Hook Your Cus
In his book, “Dialing Strangers: Overcoming Hangups and
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How about fixing the number of qualified leads turning into sales opportunities? If we doubled that number from 15% to 30%, sales would double, and the cost to the company would be the cost of a lead nurture campaign and some small marketing ad spend. The final number is churn, or customer cancellation rate. Without this number, it is difficult to know if you’re winning (growing at a reasonable rate) or losing (treading water or going backward). In my new book coming out soon, I walk you through all the math to calculate your customer cancellation rate. A good rule of thumb to get you started is the idea that if they were supposed to buy again
If you spend $35 to get a lead, it would cost you $1,944 to make one sale. My guess is your average customer doesn’t spend nearly $2,000 per month, let alone make an average of $2,000 in profit per month, so you’ll go negative. But what would happen if we fixed just a few of those numbers above? For example, what if we taught the salesperson some new tricks, and they could close at a higher rate? After all, 20% is a very low close rate in nearly all industries. What if we could help the salesperson by educating leads so that when they’re ready to buy, they are knowledgeable and predisposed to do business with you? Wouldn’t that help?
Once you understand the cost, you need to look at your success rate at each step.
For example, if you get 100 leads and 40 are not qualified, you’ll have a 60% success rate in generating qualified leads. Next, look at how much it costs to have a sales conversion and what percentage of the number of qualified leads turn into a sales opportunity. If 15% of your qualified leads turn into sales opportunities, that means that for every 100 new leads (qualified or not), you have the chance to sell to nine people. Now, look at your salesperson’s close rate. If they close at 20%, you’ll get approximately 1.8 sales for every 100 leads you generate.
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ATINGYOUR UPS
Have You Heard the Good News?
omers at ‘Hello’ Producing Cold Calls That Sell,” Dave Tester gives his readers the tools to master the dreaded cold-call and become a sales superstar! With this book, say goodbye to those nerves before you start dialing and say hello to success. According to Dave, today’s voice channels are alive and continue to grow as one of the predominant sales tools on the market. Through his book, you’ll learn everything you wish you’d learned before your first day on the job in a way that is sometimes fun, sometimes funny, and always concise and informative.
Acts 18:9–10 — “One night the Lord spoke to Paul in a vision: ‘Do not be afraid; keep on speaking, do not be silent. For I am with you, and no one is going to attack and harm you, because I have many people in this city.’”
common problems that lead to rejection, present yourself in a way that will make customers feel like you’re saving them time rather than wasting it, spot and work with different personality types over the phone, and so much more. Whatever the lesson or helpful tip, you can rest assured that Dave’s observations will be powerfully relevant to your workplace and your success. With ”Dialing Strangers,” talking to strangers doesn’t have to be a hassle, and it can even be fun! Using this concise guide as a resource, you’ll eliminate your hangups and have your potential customers at “hello.”
Romans 12:9 — “Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.”
Galatians 5:13 — “You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love.” 2 Corinthians 3:17 — “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”
This book covers a lot of ground in a brief space. In just 124 pages, you’ll learn how to eliminate
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MARKETING HOW-TO CONTINUED ...
at month six and they haven’t bought by month nine, they are a canceled customer. Don’t fool yourself with generous numbers that make you look good. In the end, you only hurt yourself. Once you’ve calculated your customer cancellation numbers, you have all the information you need to know if you are winning or losing. To increase revenue, you can add options like instant upsells or one-time offers. A percentage of people will buy these, and that will help boost the customer’s first-year value, which will help decrease how far the company has to go negative to acquire a new customer. If you can get the point of revenue neutral in 30 days, meaning you spend a dollar on marketing and within 30 days get at least a dollar of profit back, you could run ads forever. Understanding the five numbers previously listed and working them to your benefit is how you can fix ever-increasing marketing costs. There are two final points I need to make here. If you get numbers that are B.S., you are only hurting yourself. If they all look great and you haven’t been tracking them, the numbers are wrong. Second point: It is always less expensive to keep the customers you have than it is to get new ones. Don’t make a rookie move and invest all your time and money on new leads. You need to invest in nurture and retention of leads and existing customers. –Shaun
RESOURCE OF THE MONTH
GET SCHOOLED
LEARN FROM THE BEST WITH MASTERCLASS
comfortably discussing their craft. Rather than presenting dry, impersonal lectures, Masterclass productions give you an intimate, one-on-one experience. Taking a class on storytelling feels less like going back to English 101 and more like Neil Gaiman invited you into his study. THEORY MEETS PRACTICE No class would be complete without homework. Each lesson includes PDF workbooks filled with supplementary information and exercises. Gaiman doesn’t just tell you how to craft a compelling narrative, he gives you prompts to begin writing your own. Each of these workbooks is uniquely crafted to individual lessons — Gordon Ramsay’s courses include full recipes while Serena Williams offers in-depth serve breakdowns. This way, you get to put what you’ve learned to use immediately. Whether you’re looking for personal or professional development, Masterclass gives you all the tools you need to hone your skills. So this August, stop binge-watching, and start binge-learning.
set, this online learning platform is packed with wisdom you won’t find anywhere else.
LEARN FROM THE GREATS Since launching in 2015, Masterclass has assembled an impressive library of lessons taught by true masters of their craft. Are you looking to improve your leadership skills as a business owner? Sit down with former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz and learn how he took a 13-store coffee chain to every street corner in America. Is there a budding photographer in your family? Give them the gift of 15 in-depth lectures from legendary Rolling Stone photographer Annie Leibovitz. Do you just want to take your scrambled eggs to the next level? Seven-star Michelin Chef Gordon Ramsay has you covered. KNOWLEDGE AT YOUR FINGERTIPS One subscription to Masterclass gives you access to 60+ classes covering everything from poker playing to macroeconomics. Each class usually consists of 15–20 individual video lessons, each consisting of an accomplished professional
In the spirit of back-to-school season, we’re highlighting a service that has put the “class” in “classroom.” With a star-studded roster of tutors, Masterclass gives you the chance to learn from some of the greatest virtuosos of our time in the comfort of your own living room. If you’re looking to expand your knowledge on a wide range of subjects or sharpen a specific skill
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IN THE SPOTLIGHT
Jordyn Hussey On the Value of Odd Jobs A PARTICULAR SET OF SKILLS
that, I was a CNA for two years, working at a half-rehabilitation center and half-nursing home. Afterward, I moved to Maryland and began working for the NSA again, this time in security as an access control specialist.” Every job comes with strange stories, and Jordyn’s experiences mean she has plenty of tales to share. Her most entertaining story — that can be printed here, anyway — is her encounter with the NSA “rat.” “One time, I worked a double shift and had to close down my post at night,” Jordyn says. “I was walking back to my car and noticed this rather large, fat animal following me in the bushes along the sidewalk. I would stop and it would stop. It was dark and I’d been reading Stephen King’s “It” at the time, so I was very freaked out. I started to lightly jog back to my car, and I heard this animal’s pitter-patter speed up. When I looked in the bushes, I made eye contact with the biggest rat of my life. It hissed at me, and I screamed. As I ran the opposite direction, I caught sight of a fat body and a huge, worm-like tail scurrying into another bush.”
Our project managers at The Newsletter Pro have to wear a lot of hats. They need to know how to do a little bit of everything, including juggling emails, balancing daily workloads, and navigating interactions with gatekeepers over the phone. Few jobs demand such a versatile set of skills, which is why it’s a good thing Jordyn Hussey came to us with an eclectic resume. Or, as she put it, “a lot of weird jobs.” “I used to be a barista at the coffee shop in an NSA location in Hawaii,” Jordyn says when she explains how she’s able to brew a mean pot of coffee. “Then I was a barista at Starbucks. After
When Jordyn shared her terrifying, near-death encounter with the “rat” with one of the building managers, he would later ask, “Jordyn, have you ever seen a possum before?” Fortunately for Jordyn, identifying a possum is not on our application at TNP. Instead, we value a person’s organizational skills, their ability to handle unexpected problems, their knack with client interactions, and their skill with a Nerf gun. Thanks to her great experience, these are all things Jordyn has in spades.
KEEP UP
With Our BEST POSTS
If you’re looking for more great content — like what you’re reading in this newsletter — to drive your business forward, take a look at these articles on our blog. The Simple Method for Creating a Killer Lead Magnet! NewsletterPro.com/creating-killer-lead- magnets You Don’t Need a Name to Offer the Best: How Brandless Provides Better for Less NewsletterPro.com/brandless-provides-better Elon Musk Holds the Key to Your Next Killer Referral Program NewsletterPro.com/your-killer-referral-program The Biggest Side Effect of a Strong Economy: Business Slop NewsletterPro.com/side-effect-strong- economy
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BUSINESS PROFILE
Vivid Roots Invests in the Global Future With Tourists and Clean Water ONE GLASS AT A TIME
Each year, members of the Vivid Roots team and travelers embark on service projects in communities in Guatemala and, most recently, Ecuador. Together with local workers and experts, Vivid Roots travelers construct health centers, repair roofs, install playgrounds, and supply the community with fresh, clean water resources. Aside from completing service projects, those who join the trip are also immersed in the South American culture via cooking classes, dancing and hiking excursions, volcano treks, beach tours, and house stays with locals. This group of college students also founded Water For Life, a branch of Vivid Roots that devotes its resources to creating sustainable water systems in South America, once again primarily focusing on Guatemala and Ecuador. Where Vivid Roots focuses on creating service opportunities for those bitten by the travel bug, Water For Life’s entire focus is providing safe water resources. To date, Vivid Roots’ founders have completed two water projects, renovated eight schools and two hospitals, and have influenced 1,500 people — all for the sake of others. WHY WATER? As buy-one-give-one corporations grow in popularity, companies like Vivid Roots and its Water For Life foundation are putting their boots on the ground in communities they service. Vivid Roots’ dedication to providing impoverished communities across the globe access to fresh, clean water is an answer to a dire health crisis and economic downturn. Poverty plays a major role in access to clean water and safe sanitation. In more poverty-stricken communities, locals rely on diseased and dangerous sources for water. Those without access to safe drinking water also lack access to proper sanitation,
You shower in it. You cook with it. You spend minutes chugging it after a run, and, on warm summer days, you cool down in it.
And every year, more than 3.5 million people are killed because of it.
That’s the number of lives drinking water claims every year due to contamination, and 2.2 million of these casualties are children. In fact, unclean water is one of the top killers of children under the age of 5, and today, more than 785 million people lack access to safe drinking water. To put that into perspective, that’s more than the populations of the U.S., Brazil, Japan, and Germany combined . As populations continue to swell and scientists warn of increasing climate disasters, the fear over clean drinking water is growing.
which leaves them in danger of diseases carried through dirt and feces. Poor water sources become the primary location for bathrooms, laundry cleaning, drinking, and fishing, and because of this contamination, the water becomes dangerous. But without proper access to drinking water, people in these communities have no choice. That’s what makes missions like Vivid Roots’ and their foundation’s so urgent. According to health experts, this advocacy could save millions of lives every day. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), proper water resources, hygiene, and sanitation could prevent at least 9% of global diseases. In addition, the CDC found that providing sources for safe and clean water can boost the economy of the communities they service. Research suggests that for every $1 invested in these communities, the locals see a boost in their economic security by $5–$46. Through T-shirt sales and trips thousands of miles away, Vivid Roots is providing communities of thousands with a safe, reliable water resource, stimulating the economy, preventing diseases, and empowering communities to thrive — one glass of clean water at a time.
But an Idaho business is hoping to do its part in solving the water crisis.
‘LIVE VIVIDLY’ Vivid Roots is an apparel and travel company focused on providing safe, clean water resources to schools, hospitals, and communities in impoverished countries by inspiring those who join one of their various trips to South America to “live vividly” and give to others. Started by four University of Idaho students in 2014, Vivid Roots donates portions of their proceeds from apparel sales and trip funds to supply clean water and sanitation to these communities.
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