Episode 272 transcript
If you’ve got a business of any size, small or big, and whether you’ve been going for a month or ten years, then I’ve got a lovely book recommendation for you today which I know is going to make a big impact. Welcome to this week’s episode of Mi TV. My name is Emma Mills and I help business owners leverage their time, focus on the fun stuff and start enjoying and winning the week again because that is just what we want to enjoy each week and hit our big goals. And this week I’ve got a book recommendation which I’ve not done for a while. It’s definitely a book that is going to help you hit your goals. And I think just before I get into the book, it’s about if you’ve got a business with a couple of customers or hundreds of customers, this book is all about making the most of the resource that we already have. It’s like finding the tweaks and the kinks that we can leverage, make bigger, do more with. It’s not about like new marketing techniques, spending more money on new things, trying to acquire new customers.
It’s about the staff that you’ve got and the customers that you’ve got. This pool, what on earth can we do to maximize it and maximize, spend customer satisfaction and just get more out of what we’ve got, which I love. Why do we want to keep spending more money on new things? So this is what today’s book’s about. And I’m just very aware that I and the people in my business speak to hundreds of business owners every year for sure. And one of our biggest curses can be shiny new object thing. And oh my God, I am like one of the biggest serial offenders for that because I love to try a new bit of software. Like the amount of free trials I’ve got going on at any one time is criminal. Must set those reminders to cancel the free trials.
But you like shiny new marketing techniques, software to use, you get me? We just like, we see something new, we think that’s a silver bullet and we love it. And most often what we not, we don’t. What we need is not a silver bullet. It is to take a step back, assess what we have and make the most of it. You know, even like today, you know, with AI, with bots, with all of the sexy stuff that is out there that we’re all being told we need to grab onto now before we get left behind. And that is totally true. And I know there’s so much new stuff to learn and focus on this episode today is just about okay, I’ve already got some good stuff. Can I get more profit out of it? Can I get happier customers? Can I get more customers out of my pot? I’ve already have.
So let’s dive in. So today my book that I’m going to chat to you about is recommended by a friend. And since I posted it on my instagram that I’ve started reading, I’ve had loads of messages of people saying, love this book. This is like one of the best. And it’s an oldie but a goodie. It’s by J. Abraham, who’s a bit of a marketing guru from way back and worked with Tony Robbins, worked with like all the big players in info marketing, and it’s called getting everything you can out of all you’ve got. What to do when times are tough.
In fact, when I put this on my instagram, I did think, are people going to think, is there something wrong? What does that mean? What to do when times are tough? But times are tougher this year. And, but I’m all for, like, even if times are not tough, why would we not make the most of what we’ve got? And it’s definitely one of the things at MiPA that happened to me over the past few years as we grew quickly. You know, you just keep adding bums on seats and new customers, and you keep adding, adding, adding, and you forget to look at are we maximizing? Are we efficient? You kind of gloss over the, I guess, the more boring stuff in lieu of just keep adding new, adding new, because adding new is fun. And to most entrepreneurs, we just want to move forward and have new ideas and do new things. And this is about making the most of what we got. So let’s dive in. So I think there’s like five key ideas. I’m just going to summarize them for you.
I mean, if you. I also like the way this book is done. It’s like a nice paperback. If you’re going away this summer, I highly recommend you put it on the list. But if you’re not, let me just give you the five key ideas from it. So number one is about rewarding your customers and your salespeople. So if you don’t have sales people, don’t worry, this still works. Idea one is about you’ve actually got customers who are a source of referral.
And one thing that most businesses don’t have is a, is a referral, is a referral scheme. So something that easily makes referrals coming into your business like part of a system. Most often referrals come in and you’re like, oh, I’ve had a referral. How great. But what really smart businesses do is they have schemes to make sure that referrals come in on the daily or come in rhythmically, or that they can, they can rely on referrals as a lead source rather than just popping up now and then. And also as part of this concept of rewarding your customers, salespeople, it’s about upselling to your existing customer base as well. So if you’ve got a customer of like, whether you’ve got one or whether you’ve got 500 or a thousand, there is always the opportunity to sell a little bit more to them. Some really obvious examples are things like McDonald’s.
So do you know, do you want fries with that? Do you want large? You will have lots of experiences every day where people say to you, and do you want this as well? Or if you’re going to an event and there’s a vip option, like if I’m going to a marketing event or something and that’s an option, I’m buying it. Like I’m spending that extra 100 pounds, 200 pounds to sit front row to get the goodie bag. But an organization could choose just to have everybody paying the same proceed. Or they could choose to have some additional options that cost a little bit more. And it’s about doing the deep thinking in your business to understand what is the upsell that you’ve got. What could be the faster option, the VIP option, the add on to those people that will always buy the gold version, the vip option that having that, because most of us will just have a thing that we sell. And we don’t think that actually some people will want the really basic version that’s below it. And some people want the version with bells and whistles on.
And so it’s thinking about what can you reward your customers with if they send referrals and also upselling them into slightly bigger transactions with you idea number three. And you will have probably exercised this option so many times. And the idea is about cutting back on your customers risk when they buy something from you. And ultimately that is about giving a money back guarantee. Giving like a seven day option or seven day cooling off or cooling off is not a good word, but like a 30 day period to get money back if they’re not happy with something like giving a money back guarantee is especially also if you sell something that is maybe quite commoditized or you actually, if I was to ask you what’s the difference between you and your competitors? And you don’t have a really clear answer to that. Having a money back guarantee, having something where your customers can feel totally at ease on purchasing it can totally make the difference between you and your competitors. Because if you’ve both got the same number of clients doing a very similar thing, but if to go to you, you’ve got a money back guarantee after 30 days, if you’re not happy with it, then that is the big difference. And like, these are really easy changes to make in your business.
Hence why it’s called getting everything you can out of all you’ve got. And so I really like number three and we’re going to be implementing that much more at MiPA. Number four is a great one and all about relationships, which I love. It’s one of our values because relationships are definitely everything that has happened, everything good that has happened in Mi PA have all been about relationships that me or my team have created. And idea number four in this book, book is about that mutually beneficial relationships can help you have massive quantum leaps forward. So this might be companies that have very similar customers to you that they sell to the same kind of person or business or, and then promoting each other and sharing those client lists, selling to existing client databases. So for example, one of my friends came, Gary Das. He’s a coach and he’s a coach to lots of different businesses, but one of his niches has been mortgage brokers.
We answer lots of calls from mortgage brokers. So Gary has promoted me to his list and we have made lots of sales from it. And doing that with people that you know and trust. And so for example, we work with some telecoms companies who put in phone to businesses and they know that ultimately customers lose calls. So they, so we have an agreement where they promote our services and vice versa. And so finding those kind of partnerships, those options whereby you can serve each other’s customers and sell to each other’s list, because we all know how difficult it is to add a new client. But if you’re able to put your message and value out to an existing base of clients, like that is kind of maximizing your efforts by a million, isn’t it? So like finding those really good partnerships. So that’s, so again, that’s not about having to spend time on new marketing.
It’s about strengthening relationships and making them work for you. Final idea, idea number five, which is a really great one, is about trading what you’ve got and that it’s not just all about exchanging money for things. So this is specifically one for if you’re in difficult times. And to be fair, I’ve done it at Mi PA, where other companies that we’ve worked with, we’ve used their service and they’ve used our service, and we. And it’s been. It’s been bartered. Like we have traded each other’s service or goods for things that we need. So a really great example of this that’s in the book is that there was a radio station who didn’t have enough money to pay their employees.
And what they did, they reached out to the biggest hardware store in town, and they said, I will advertise you on the radio. And so the hardware for free, but in return for some goods that they had in the shop. So the hardware store said, okay, great, we’ll do that. And they paid for the advertisement with 1400 tin openers. The radio station advertised the hardware store and also did a campaign to sell the tin openers on the radio. They sold all the tin openers, made the money they needed to pay the employees, and it was so successful that they expanded into television, and it then became called the Home shopping network, which is obviously like the precursor to QVC, rather. And obviously, like, this story is very specific and special and really amazing of things that can happen. But absolutely trading and bartering the service that you have with other people for things that you need is 100% a really worthwhile conversation.
And again, a relationship building thing to have. And inside of this book, also, like, those are the key five ideas. But also in it, there is all also so much good stuff about understanding the lifetime value of a client, the cost of acquisition, using direct mail to home. Like, it’s a real gem of a marketing book, and I would highly recommend that you put it on your list and give it some bedtime reading. Tony Robbins says about J. Abraham that he can look at any company and either get it to make $1,000 more or $100,000 more. Like, he’s really good at seeing what somebody’s already got and squeezing the juice out of it. And if you are potentially strapped on resource, this is a really good book to squeeze more juice out of what you’ve got.
So I hope this week’s episode has been helpful for you. I do love a good book recommendation. I reloads them. We should do more of them. And I’ll see you next week. See you then. Bye.
