Are You Confusing Your Customers? 😵

Thoughts on creating confusion with your messaging to your customers.

Transcription

Are you confusing your customers?

Hi I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J Pombo Live.

Let’s talk about customer confusion, shall we? 4

And sometimes it’s not your current customers, sometimes it’s customers, you don’t have yet your prospective customers prospective clients. It’s really easy to confuse people nowadays because people are inundated from every angle, every direction, they’ve got stuff coming at them.

Life is confusing.

It’s not easy to know what the right thing to do is at any given time. And so people can be misled, people can be bamboozled and what have you. And it’s easy to be just plain confused about the process.

It’s good when you find this out, though, and you want to find out whether your customers are confused. And the one main reason is if you see a large percentage, not taking the next step in your process, where you get movement, movement, in every funnel, every marketing funnel, you start with a lot.

Then every step that you have them taking, you’re going to have a huge drop-off, right just across the board, it just comes with the territory.

One of the things they always talk about when it comes to websites is every time you have them click to another page, you should expect at least half of them to drop away, if not more, right, which is why you want to limit how many times you have a person clicking to get to the next step, the more initiative that is required from your customer, the less likely they’re going to make it to the end of the yellow brick road and get in and purchase something from you.

So one thing you need to do is watch every step. And how many people are making it through every step of the process?

And this, this goes for online or offline, wherever it is from the point at which someone finds out about you to the point at which they purchase and where are the drop-offs?

Where are their huge drop-offs when there shouldn’t necessarily be and there are points in which you can orchestrate the drop-off?

Early on, I like to do it as early on as possible. I like to put off people who will not be good customers, or cannot afford what it is, whatever it is that I’m selling, I try to get that out of the way as early as possible.

So that the rest of the time, they’re more and more likely to be the ideal customer as we go along. But that’s up to you. I mean that these are all things that you have to strategize in the process.

But you have to know at which point you want people to be able to fall off to be able to exit. And at which point you want to be able to capture them so you can remarket to them, bring them back in re-explain the proposal, or offer them something that you haven’t offered them before.

Because Oh, you don’t like this?

Well, how about this, okay, these are things you have to keep in mind. And oftentimes, if you’re reaching a situation where you where people are not responding the way you want, quite often they’re confused.

They’re confused about how to buy, they’re confused about what it is you’re selling. They’re confused somewhere along the line, they don’t understand what’s going on. And it’s much easier to move on.

Or to get distracted by something intentionally or not, if it’s easy to pull them away if they’re confused. So sit down with your team and find out if there’s confusion, and where there’s confusion.

In most cases, if you have enough systems going, there’s going to be confusion somewhere. But it’s good to have a confusion audit every once in a while. If you ever need help with something like that. It’s the type of thing that I can come in and help uncover for you.

You can but you do a whole lot of this on your own. Or you may already have people on your team who can do it. I recommend you read this book and have your team read it. It’s a great gift for people on your team, especially in their marketing department.

9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business.

You can buy a bunch of hard copies. They’re relatively inexpensive. I don’t know what they’re going for right now on Amazon.

Amazon controls the prices there. So I don’t know it.

At one time they were 20 something bucks, but now they may be a whole lot more or a whole lot less I should say. You go get a hard copy, or you can just download a free copy over at AmazonProofBook.com That’s my website.

So give me your email address and I’ll send you a free copy. That’s all I got for tonight you have a good one in the meantime get out there and let the magic happen.

Secret Customer Retention Strategy 🗺️

Thoughts on charting out information about your ideal customer and how you can better serve and communicate with them.

Transcription

Secret customer retention strategy.

Hi I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

We’re going to be talking about customer retention.

So as you can probably guess, the reason why you’re watching or listening to this is that you’re a business owner or executive and you’re looking to hold on to customers.

There’s a whole lot I can assume about that but it’s something that I talk about a lot without talking about, always directly.

In fact, a whole huge portion of my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. In fact, I was just looking at a copy right here. Hard bound, if you want to go get a copy, but it’s short, it’s a quick read. chapters five and six have a whole lot to do with customer retention and I’m not even going to cover it here.

What I am going to cover here is one word, that opens up an entire different way of looking at retention that I would guess you wouldn’t have thought of directly. But go check out my book.

To get those other ways, you can if you don’t want to buy one, you don’t want to commit to that, go get a free copy. If you want a digital copy, you can go to AmazoProofBook.com.

And so, AmazonProofBook.com for, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business.

Now, let’s talk about the secret to customer retention that most people don’t ever cover. And it’s a simple concept but it can go in a million directions and it’s a complete and it doesn’t matter what industry you’re in either.

This is true across the board. In most industries, I would say in most businesses there is no type of strategy whatsoever that covers this one point, the secret the real secret to customer attention. Excuse me, I just ruined it.

The real secret to customer retention is attention.

It’s keeping the attention of your customer.

Now don’t just throw that away, as if, Oh yeah, whatever.

No, honestly, you got to think about this.

If you can hold their attention you can retain them as a customer or you can drive them away quicker, depending on how you how you look at it.

But overall, you’re going to retain more than you drive away. And the ones you retain are going to be with you longer and more valuable, then any that you end up losing.

Initially you do need a strategy, that you’re making money off of a customer on a regular basis for any of this to really work.

So that is something you got to build into your business. And like I said, I discussed that in my book. That’s one of the points I discuss in my book but you do need to have that initially, because you got to, you’re going to have to spend some money to do this, you’re going to have to spend some time and or money to keep attention.

Here’s how I like doing it.

Initially, if you have zero ideas on how to handle this now I know a whole bunch of tactics and you can go back through the years of all of my videos and audios over at BrianJPombo.com.

You can go back through all this for free and pick up little pieces here and there of how you would go about doing it in a tactic way. But if you want to start from scratch, and you want to build your own way, and just really mark down the road, sit down and think about who your ideal customer is and then go through their typical week, draw it out.

What are they doing from the moment they wake up to the moment they go back to bed every day?

Now, if you’re looking at five days a week, in most cases, depending on who your customer is unless you’re dealing with retirees and deal with very particular types of people.

Most people have a five day week, especially in the if you’re watching this in the United States Monday through Friday. And so we know that they’re going to go to work for a period of time but in between all that what is their morning ritual?

What are they doing for lunch?

What are they doing at work?

Do they partake in anything or is there any interaction with the outside world whatsoever that you could insert yourself in?

What are they doing on the way home?

Do they have a long commute?

Are they listening to the radio?

Are they seeing the billboards are they I mean you’ve got to look at every option to be in front of that person.

Now there’s a whole lot of direct ways I’ll give you one just off the top of my head newsletters, physical newsletters still function, I don’t care if it’s just a one pager, a physical newsletter or a postcard that goes to their house on a monthly basis.

I mean, just monthly, just initially, at least on a monthly basis, having something like that is a way to stay in front of them, whether they read it or not, whether they’re interested or not the fact that you are there and reminding them that you exist, and giving them more options.

Possibly even to purchase from you, or to purchase through you if you if you direct people to other services or products.

That’s a concept unto itself but if you could look at the whole picture of everything they’re doing.

And then the weekend, right, the weekend, what are they doing on the weekend?

Are they traveling?

Are they staying at home?

Are they watching TV?

Do they go on vacation?

Where do they go on vacation, you map this whole thing out as best you can.

Obviously it’s a guessing game, right, and no two people are identical. But on the same end, you’ll see similarities. And you’ll be able to expand your horizon in terms of how many times can I be in front of a person?

And you’re saying, Well, if I actually succeeded in that, that would be annoying.

Do you know of anybody that has succeeded in annoying you with business commercials and so forth that has never gotten a penny from you?

I would bet that anyone out there that has annoyed that has gotten that has because they’ve been around so much, has annoyed you just because they’re everywhere.

They’ve probably gotten money from you in some way, too. That’s an interesting dichotomy. I’m not saying you should focus on trying to annoy people.

What you have to be is like Dan Kennedy puts it, the welcome guest versus the uninvited pest, I should say.

That’s what you need to be you need to be the person that’s entertaining, you need to be the company that’s entertaining, you need to be providing it, you need to go beyond just looking at your service, or your product as the thing that you’re discussing.

What if you started providing entertainment value of any sort out there, that just happens to be brought to you by their come by your company.

Just ideas, start thinking about your customers attention. Because attention properly handled, creates retention means they’re going to stick with you, they’re going to come back to you.

They’ll be there over and over and over again. If you’re not if you’re not in front of them all the time. If you don’t make that a driving force, we’ll get all the distractions we have all day long, all the things pulling our attention away.

And most of the time they work most time they pull us away from one thing or another. Look at those things in your life. That can’t pull your attention away.

The shows that you’ll watch no matter what the the activities you take part in that nothing can pull your attention away from those things. And then put that in reverse and think about your ideal customer, your ideal client.

Just a quick idea on customer retention.

Hopefully it’s helpful to you. Like I said, you can check out my book for more ideas. And you can subscribe, like follow, go to my website and get on the email list. And we’ll be back in your box on a daily basis. So let me know if you have any questions leave a comment over at BrianJPombo.com.

You have a great one. We’ll be back tomorrow.

In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.

Customer Research Methods 📚 (10 Smart Market Diagnosis & Profiling Questions)

Brian chats about Dan Kennedy’s checklist, The 10 Smart Market Diagnosis and Profiling Questions from his classic book The Ultimate Sales Letter.

Transcription

Customer research methods.

Hi I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

I wanted to talk a little bit of a piece out of this book and it’s really good for research.

Sometimes it gets tough in the very beginning, especially when you’re getting into advertising, and you’re wanting to learn more about your customers. And that’s really the beginning of the good direct response advertising is really knowing about but who, really know about who you’re trying to reach, and making that kind of your primary start.

If you’ve at least got that in your mind, you’re on a good track and sometimes if you start there, it’s like, Okay, well, what do I need to know about him?

I mean, there’s a million things, you got your demographics, and psychographics, and all these different things.

Well, this is a great checklist from Dan Kennedy’s book, the Ultimate Sales Letter, I think this checklist is in a couple of other formats floating around out there also but this is a good book to begin with.

I mean, this isn’t a complete review of this book but it’s an awesome book. It’s not just about sales letters, it’s about communicating a thorough message when you’re trying to sell something to anyone in any way, especially online, where you have actually sales letters printed on pages. On websites, you’ve got video sales letters, in a sense, you have audio coming through and podcasts and other formats.

There are a million ways to be able to sell people now more so than ever before. And it all really originated with mailers, and direct mail, and, and advertising that way and through magazines and newspapers.

It’s moved to today, but at the same time, the same things are true. And so when we’re looking to find out more about potential customers, we’re wanting to do research and really find out what they’re all about so that we can communicate properly to them, and be able to speak their language, then this is a great way of going about doing that this is from chapter one.

It’s the first step in his process of creating a good sales letter, and specifically a good sales message.

He says step one, get into the customer.

And he has this list. It’s called the 10 Smart Market Diagnosis and Profiling Questions.

Okay, so there’s 10 of these, let’s go through them real quick, shall we?

Number one, what keeps them awake at night, indigestion boiling up their esophagus, eyes open, staring at the ceiling?

And what keeps them awake at night is all bolded. It’s what really has your customer on edge, you got to at least know that whether it has anything to do with your product or not, you got to know where they’re coming from.

In general, once again, a whole lot of this is guessing unless you already have a customer, or unless you are already familiar enough with the market unless you know them personally. And you could base this off of one person to begin with if you needed to.

Number two, What are they afraid of?

There’s a very common thread throughout all of this. We’ll hit on that at the very end.

Number three, and then once again, that could be number one. Number two could be the same thing, right? It all depends.

Number three, What are they angry about? Who are they angry at?

That’s number three.

Number four, What are their top three daily frustrations?

Real similar trend throughout this whole thing, but you might be able to pick something up. And you may not have an answer all these questions, but you may be able to pick something up off of one or two or three of these questions.

Number five, What trends are occurring and will occur in their businesses or lives?

Number six, What do they secretly ardently desire most?

Number seven, Is their built-in bias to the way they make decisions? Is there a built-in bias to the way they make decisions?

Okay, for example, engineers are exceptionally analytical. So that’s kind of their bias is in a very heavy analytical side. So is that true of your market also?

Number eight, Do they have their own language?

More than likely they do depending on how defined you have your market down to if it’s a specific career choice if it’s a specific religious sect if it’s, you know, whatever it is that makes your people unique.

What is that language and they’re not just talking English versus German versus whatever, that’s not the type of language that Dan Kennedy is talking about is do they have certain terminology and everything else that other people may not even understand if you brought it up, it’s very important to know.

Number nine, Who else is selling something similar to their product and how?

So to your product, you know, is something is someone selling something similar and how are they doing it?

It’s a tough question, but it’s something you really need to know.

And number 10, Who else has tried selling them something similar and how has that effort failed?

Not that easy to find out. But if you really know the market, well, you may already have that answer. Or it may have been you maybe you’ve already failed at trying to sell something similar up until now. But those are very, very, very important questions.

Those are the 10 Smart market diagnosis and profiling questions when it comes to your market when it comes to your potential customer or client. Very important stuff.

That what’s the common trend. The common trend throughout almost every single one of those answers is emotion.

Okay, we’re focusing very, very deeply on the emotion that runs through your marketplace.

What are they feeling?

What are they angry about?

Where what gets them going?

What are they excited about?

These are all emotional ideas and emotions. You know, we are not our emotions as people but quite often we let our emotions drive us.

And especially when it comes to purchasing when it comes to separating from our money. A whole lot of that is an emotional process. In most cases, it was one of the things I fought a lot.

When I first started getting into the marketing arena, they kept saying that I’m like, Yeah, but it shouldn’t be that way. You know, people should be more logical about this type of thing.

I’m more logical, why can’t everyone be more logical, and you can’t get caught up with the way things should be. You have to focus when you’re coming out from a scientific perspective.

The whole Claude Hopkins, you know, Scientific Advertising, you come out from a scientific perspective, you have to look at the way things are, and not the way you want them to be.

And the plain fact of the matter is, you go out there and try enough times you’re going to find, you’re going to get a motion back over and over and over again, as the main reason why people do things.

And if you ignore that, you do it at your own peril. You’re gonna have a really tough time getting anyone anywhere, and getting anyone excited about what you’re doing.

If you don’t, at least acknowledge that that’s where they’re coming from. Now you can help redirect them and help help people to think better if you want, but you have to meet them where they’re at. And where most people are at is in an emotional state.

Especially if they’re going to be purchasing anything from yourself.

Hopefully that’s helpful. Like I said, great book.

I’ve got my own book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. Just one book so far, but this is a good one. Go check it out small lots more than this one.

It’s a quick read, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business you can get a free copy at AmazonProofBook.com. Go there right now for a free copy. AmazonProofBook.com.

We’ll be back here tomorrow. In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.

You’ve Got To Catch Them Before You Clean Them 🎣

Brian shares an idea he heard from a friend on his recent business trip about working with ideal prospective clients.

Transcription

You’ve got to catch them before you clean them.

Hi, I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

I heard a great talk from a friend of mine named Gary. And he was discussing the process of bringing on partners onto his business. And the temptation that happens a lot. And this isn’t just with partners, you could use the same analogy when you’re dealing with customers that you’re looking to bring in.

Whether you’re looking to bring in patients to your doctor’s office, it doesn’t matter what it is, is the same thing applies.

So often we’re looking for an ideal. And a lot of times, you know, as a person that’s a strategist, I tried to get my clients and partners and people I’m doing business with to focus on the ideal.

There’s a big importance of focusing on the ideal, the ideal customer, the ideal client, the ideal patient, what have you. By focusing on the ideal, you’re going for the top, you’re going for the person that’s going to work best, it’s a best-case scenario situation.

When you start making that switch, it’s really great.

But at the same time, you may get caught in this little trick in your brain, which is that you start thinking that the ideal is real, and the ideal isn’t real, the ideal is ideal for a reason, it’s ideal is in a perfect world. This is what I would go after that and you don’t necessarily need to settle for just the plain, perfect ideal, what you do is you have a point at which there’s a minimum on which they have to meet.

But you include allowing a whole lot of differences in that you have to because if you don’t, you’ll go crazy in trying to look for the perfect customer, the perfect partner, and so forth.

And I just love this line that Gary said. He said, and I’m sure it’s an old saying I’m sure you can find it in a million different places. But it came to him and he was using it. As he applied this, I thought it was really it was really great, because it’s a fishing term.

You know, if you’re talking about fishing, you’ve got to catch them before you can clean them, you’re not going to be able to clean the fish up and get it ready to eat until you’ve caught it.

Don’t try to change everybody to be your ideal right out of the gate. Don’t you want them to be a certain way in the long run. But a whole lot of that is going to require training or education, or information or motivation or what have you to be able to get them to go from point A to point B.

Don’t try and look for point B right off the bat your problem, you should look for it. But you’re probably going to find someone more than less than perfect. If that makes sense.

You have to catch them before you clean them.

Simple idea. Not so simple to incorporate into your life because we were always looking for a perfect situation. We’re always looking to fix people before we’ve started a relationship with them.

You got to start that relationship first, then you can fix them in every way possible over time. If you’re patient, and you give it time, and you let them come to you in a sense.

So hopefully that’s helpful to you. I’ve got strategies that can help you expand your business and overcome competition. It’s my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. You can get a free copy at AmazonProofBook. com. It’s all I got for tonight.

We’ll be back here tomorrow. I’m back in Grants Pass Oregon. It’s good to be home. We’ll see you tomorrow. Have a good one and don’t forget to get out there and let the magic happen.

Part 4: Bob Regnerus of Feedstories & The Ultimate Guide To Facebook Advertising

Part 4, of our seven-part interview with Bob Regnerus of Feedstories.

Topics covered in this episode

  • Who are Feedstories Ideal Clients?
  • What is a “Big Why” video?
  • 10,000 dollar an hour work: Outsourcing & Marketing Outreach

Transcription

Intro Brian: Bob Regnerus of Feedstories, part 4.

I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

Today is part four of our conversation with Bob Regnerus.

If you would like to be on this podcast or if you would like to have me on yours or speak at your event, go to BrianJPombo.com.

And now here’s part 4 with Bob Regnerus.

Brian: Who’s the ideal person that would benefit the most from Feedstories?

It’s a great question.

We like to work with people that have some sort of mission or purpose behind what they do. We think every every business starts with a story.

I think if you don’t start with a story, or you don’t start with a reason why, it’s not really interesting to us, and probably you’re not going to have lasting value. We love pulling the backstory out of somebody it really gets to the heart of why they do what they do.

We do these videos called Big Why videos, it’s really amazing to kind of just hear from people like, why do they do what they do?

We interviewed this guy, he was down in Texas, and he started a whole chain of yoga studios, and he wanted to start this academy for training more yoga teachers.

That’s a great business, right? Like you think Yoga is hot, he’s in Texas, he’s growing fantastic.

Well, in our interview process, and what we got a video was the reason why he started the yoga studios.

Which was his mom had back issues when she was alive and she went in for surgery. And, you know, he was kind of nervous about that ended up that the surgeons kind of botched the surgery, and she lost most of the ability in her legs and she suffered for a number of years.

And he really felt that if yoga was an option for his mom, she went and had the surgery, and she had long quality life.

You could see like the passion and this is all on video.

Now, if you’re a yoga teacher, and you see the passion from this yoga owner, and he’s like, I want yoga to be an alternative for people to have surgery, freedom from pain and things like that’s really powerful.

That’s why video is so powerful.

Now, we love working with kind of owner operators, okay. Typically we’re working with companies that are like somewhere underneath $10 million.

So from startup to 10 million we have, and we’ll work with companies that are bigger.

But when we can get the owner on camera and get his or her story about why they do what they do talk with the clients and the customers of these businesses, that’s really an ideal client for us, when there’s a substantial story there.

And we can pick up on it in about a 15 minute phone call, then they’re really good candidate for us.

They’re in a growing stage and they’re using paid advertising. They’re out there marketing themselves, and they know they need a better story. It’s pretty common.

When I talk to somebody, one of the first things they’ll tell me is we’re not doing a good job telling our story.

That’s gonna be an ideal client for us, because they know they have a story. They just need somebody like us to help unlock it.

Brian: Wow, that’s great.

It sounds like you wear a bunch of different hats in your business. So out of everything that you do, what would you say that you enjoy the most or get the most out of?

Bob: I think part of this is Feedstories became the startup in 2016 and you kind of do everything. Then as you grow a little bit you bring people in. So now you’ve got a dedicated product manager, we’ve got editors, we’ve got videographers we work with, we have producers, so I don’t get involved necessarily day to day anymore.

My role with the company now is managing the team.

It’s doing business development, and like what we’re doing here, I’m on marketing right now, alright. We’re having a conversation.

But in reality, I’m marketing, I’m sharing my story, sharing as much wisdom as I can. But I’m also telling people about the company.

A lot of my calendar is doing these types of things. I like to have conversations with people, I’ll be the first one in my company that talks to people who are thinking about doing video, or, you know, working Facebook consoles and things like that.

My business partner, Brandon is working on the creative side of things, working on the story with clients.

As you grow, you kind of get to a point where you like, oh, here’s a bottleneck. You put a person in place that’s better to do it than you.

So I mean, my days. My calendars full. I have a lot of conversations with people who are thinking about working with us. I do interviews like this.

I talk a lot with partners, talking about potential joint venture relationship, and then working with colleagues and you know, attending mastermind, so that’s what I’m spending my time on is really thinking about higher level stuff.

Perry calls that $10,000 an hour work.

That’s the best use of my time these days.

You get to a point where like I said, you’re kind of scrambling, you’re doing a grassroots type of thing. You get enough revenue in to get people in place that can do things better than you, more efficiently and better. It’s just the natural life of a startup.

And I’ve never been one, I don’t know if you’ve done this, but like, I’ve never like went out and raised capital and had like a big chunk of money to start. I always start by the skin of my teeth. And grow a business from revenue, I’ve never had the opportunity to, like, get a whole bunch of money and then build it big from the start.

I don’t know if I ever want to do it at this point. It’s just, I do what I know. And it’s just kind of the way that I’ve grown companies over the years.

Brian: Makes a lot of sense. That’s awesome.

For full conversations, go to BJP chats.com.

Who Else Is Selling Your Customer?

Do you know who your idea customer is?

Thoughts on knowing your customers interests to help with communication and connection in sales.

Transcription

Who else is selling your customer?

Hi I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

This is an interesting question, because there’s so much that leads up to getting somebody in your world, to having a chance to touch them via advertising or marketing, being able to just get that initial connection.

And then beyond that, having the ability to bring them in as a customer, as a client, as a patient, as a whatever, whatever you’re trying to do. If you’re looking to bring in new customers, then you got to know the entire thought process that goes into them becoming a customer, and one of the biggest pieces is for them to wrap their mind around what you’re offering.

How simple is it for them to understand?

Where do they have to go from the absolute dumbest you can be about the subject that you’re trying to get them to learn more about. I don’t care if you’re selling dog food or whatever, how ignorant do they have to be?

You take them from that spot, all the way to where they need to be in order to purchase and all the things that they need to know throughout that process. And you got to think, who is helping you in that process?

Are there other people, are there other brands, are there other influencers out there?

That just them educating the public helps them to get closer to purchasing from you, you got to consider this because there’s a whole lot of helpers out there, that you’re not paying that your current customers might be able to tell you, you know, I saw you months ago, but it’s because I heard the dog whisperer say this, about having this in dog food that I realized I needed to purchase from you something to that extent, there are influencers out there, online, offline, everywhere.

There are people, somewhere, there are companies somewhere that are promoting an idea that could lead a person and maybe accident. I mean, of course it’s accidental in most cases, but they by be promoting an idea that is encouraging people to lead, they’re leading them to you in some cases, they may be doing they may be trying to encourage the opposite.

But because they do such a bad job at it, they’re pushing customers your way, you’ve got to know who these people are. And you got to start encouraging people to listen to them, or to pay attention to them or to watch them or to notice them to notice what they’re saying, to notice what there might be an influencer or a person promoting another product or another service out there. That’s the complete opposite of you, focus on them.

Show them, put them out there, say hey, if you’re for that, you’re not my customer. You don’t show the difference show the absolute difference between you and them. If you could do that, you’re doing a lot.

So one of the things I’ll give you an example. I’m a I’m a business strategist, so what I do is I work with business owners and executives that are looking to really obtain great goals in their business, they’re looking to double and triple their business in a certain period of time.

They’re wondering what is the shortest shortest distance to get there and how do they plan for that? And how do they try to overcome all the issues that keep them from getting there?

What I’ll do in that case is, a lot of times I will tell people to go download my book, if I’ve already talked to the person, and they seem like a good fit, I will send them a book I will overnight a book to them a physical book, if they if they tell me they’ll they’ll read it and have them go through that. See that’s my own ability to try and get people on the same page of where I am.

In a lot of cases, if you watch us on a daily basis, you’ll see I’m recommending book after book after movie, after TV show constantly. I’m recommending other sources.

Are any of those sources saying anything that is discouraging to me?

No, they aren’t.

They’re all encouraging all of those ideas are encouraging customers prospective customers to become get closer and closer and closer to becoming a customer in mind. Is that selfish?

Yes, absolutely. It’s selfish, but that’s the process that we’re going through here. And I’m not trying to, I’m not encouraging anything that I think is untrue.

I want people to become begin to know more and more and more about this subject so that when they’re working with me, I don’t have the resistance that comes along with trying to get people within business to grow and become more become better.

That’s my whole process, but you’ve got a process too, you’ve got something that you’re looking to take people to, you’re looking to take them to a place. And if it were super easy to take them to the place, you wouldn’t have to think about this stuff.

If you just had to offer if you’ve just had to get your product in their hands and they’re guaranteed to purchase from you, then you got to focus on getting products in their hands.

But if you’ve got to get them to know something, if you got to get them to think something if you’ve got to get them to buy into a belief before they purchase from you, then you should be focusing on that and you should use every tool in your Bolero, every bullet available to be able to get them to that point. And that’s what I’m talking about here. encourage other sources, don’t be scared, don’t see competition.

A huge part of the problem of competition is the fact that you see too many people as being competition. And you got to quit doing that you got to see all the people even if they look like competition initially. They’re actually helpers.

They’re actually there to help, and you’ve got to use them to your benefit as much as possible. I talked about that.

To a certain extent in my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business if you want to get your own free copy, you can do it. Just go to AmazonProofBook.com, AmazonProofBook.com and you can go download your own free copy.

I’ve also gotten a couple other deals on the other side of that if you go through that process, so go check it out. I’ll be back here tomorrow night. It’s all about being relationship reliant, which is one of the third pillars it’s pulling the three pillars at BrianJPombo.com, if you want to learn what the other two pillars are, stay tuned or go check out our older videos at BrianJPombo.om.

We finally got the entire archive back up at BrianJPombo.com. It was it was falling behind because of a nasty, vicious attack last year on the website hate these are the things that happen when you’ve got online business.

Just one of those things you gotta roll with. You have a great night we’ll be back here tomorrow. In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.

The Main Thing to Remember When Choosing An Ideal Customer

Food for thought when selecting the ideal person to target for your business.

Amazon-Proof Your Business➡️ https://brianjpombo.com/amazonbook/

Transcription

The main thing to remember when choosing an ideal customer.

Hi, I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

I was thinking about what to talk about today and as I was kind of sifting through some of books that I have. I was reminded of a conversation I had a couple days ago with a friend and a pot and you know, somebody who really needed help with some strategy.

Both him and his wife, I had sat down with them on their family business and we’re looking at it. The idea was to find out who their ideal client was, who their ideal customer was. And there’s a whole bunch of different ways you can go about looking at this, but there’s one main thing that you got to keep in mind.

I’ll get into that in a second.

First, I want to recommend, these are two great books that I just happen to they run different parts of my shelf, but they’re both screaming my name is I was I was looking around for something to talk about.

One of them is Customer Centricity. by Peter Fader, this is a really quick little read, and very well written. Very nice quick ideas in here, they kind of get to the point it’s one I’ve gone back to over and over again, just because he words things so well.

It talks about customer centricity and how this plays into it. He says customer centricity is a strategy is a strategy to fundamentally align a customer’s products and services with the wants and needs of its most valuable customers.

That strategy has a name more profits for the long term.

In most cases, if you’re dealing with business, that is a main thing that you’re looking into is more profits for the long term.

Now, if you step back away from that, how do you achieve those, you achieve those by finding your most valuable customers?

That is very key to finding the ideal customer is finding the most valuable ones. That’s a big part of it. But this also plays back into the entire the entire direction of your company, which is why i a lot of times, early on, I started working a lot with marketing, and I’d come in as a marketing consultant.

But most of these marketing conversations came back to a bigger question, which is, where’s your company going?

What’s the point of it all?

What do you try to achieve?

Because you could market anything?

But the real question is, who are you marketing too?

When, why and how is that going to affect you, as the owner of the company or as the CEO or what have you.

So here’s another book. This is, The Ultimate Marketing Plan by Dan Kennedy. Really good book a little bit thicker.

This one is, it’s almost like a textbook, it’s one I’ve gone back to over and over again. Because the way he organizes his books aren’t exactly like a textbook, it’s not easy to find everything you need.

But once I’ve gone through, and I’ve highlighted the thing a few times, it becomes a lot more easier to find what I want. here’s here’s something that Well, I’ll tell you a joke that he has about, about targeting, because it really is what you’re looking for as a target market and your business.

Your products may have multiple target markets, and may not just be one. But if you’re just looking for that initial one way, especially if you’re working with a new business, and you’re trying to find out, okay, who’s the most ideal, who is the most valuable, who is the target.

I love the joke that he had in this book where he talks about how this wife has been bugging her husband to go hunting with him. So he finally gives in and he he takes around, he puts her down at the bottom of the hill.

He says, okay, if you see a deer, I want you to just just point point the rifle in the air and shoot, and don’t do anything else. Just Just do that I’ll come running for you. And I’ll show you what the next step is. Because he figured she wasn’t going to be able to see any deer down there. Right.

So he just put her in a spot where she probably wouldn’t see any deer just so she’d be out of his hair and he wouldn’t have to worry about shooting her. So he goes to his spot and pretty soon he starts here and shooting so he runs down there. gets down to the spot. She’s arguing with this guy and there’s a dead horse laying on the ground and eat and and the husband goes up and the guy says listen, lady, shut up.

It’s your deer, all right, just let me get the whole this my saddle off of it. And so and so what the main point is, is that it doesn’t matter. You can have the best gun, the best situation you can have all the knowledge and everything else but if you’re shooting at the wrong target, nothing else matters.

What matters most initially is that you’re after the right target, he had a good quote in here. Here it is, every product, every service, every business either appeals or has the potential to appeal much more strongly to a certain definable group of people that did appeal, then it appeals to all people.

Okay, so no matter what, and this is a kind of a trick that people get into, they fall so much in love with their own product or service, that they think that it appeals to everybody, there’s always going to be someone that it appeals to a whole lot more than everybody else.

And those are the people you want to focus on first, it doesn’t mean it can’t go widespread. You very, very well might have a product that can go widespread and be in everybody’s home or do do, you know, be something to everybody, you might have an iPhone, you might have something of that sort.

But you got to go after the most valuable, targeted customer first, that will help boost everything for you to be able to move forward to reach everybody else. So huge, huge part about marketing. But it’s also a huge part about where you want to take your business. So let’s take it back.

The main thing is you got to know what you want to achieve in the long run. Are you looking to move ahead and really grow this business?

Are you looking to just have a handful of customers and keep as small as possible?

Are you looking to just kind of get the word out there about your stuff and just see where it ends up. All these things matter, your, the way that you view your business really, really does matter in terms of who your ideal customer is.

So for example, I was talking with my friend and his wife, and they had an issue to where they have products that they could sell. And they also had the ability to bring on people that can help that can help move products themselves. So it’s a it’s an issue of multiplication versus addition at how big do you want it, you know, if you want a big multiplication, we’ll get you there faster. And so a little bit of a tweak here and there can make a huge difference.

But it all comes from your perspective. What do I want from my business? What am I expecting, and it’s not you whoever’s in charge, it’s got to be the decision maker that kind of determines where they’re going, just don’t it’s a it’s a little idea that makes a big difference in the long run.

I found it’s one of the main things that slows people down or gets them picking the wrong target market. It’s just wrong in terms of what they’re looking to achieve with their business. Nothing more than that.

Hopefully that’s helpful to you, if you’d like some more tips on strategies to be able to help you out with your business.

Go check out my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. It’s a quick read, and it’s free. You can get it at Amazon proof book.com. That’s AmazonProofBook.com. We’ll be back here tomorrow. In the meantime, you get out there and let the magic happen.

Worst Part of Being A Business Strategist

Who are your customers and how to do you find them.

Amazon-Proof Your Business➡️ https://brianjpombo.com/amazonbook/

Transcription

What’s the worst part of being a business strategist?

Hi, I’m Brian Pombo. Welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

Today I wanted to answer that question, because it’s a question that I put out there a lot is, when I’m doing interviews, oftentimes I’ll ask is, if you could change one thing…I’m trying to say it in a nice way, I say if there you could change one thing about your business or your industry, what would it be?

Because that’s always the stuff that people want to know.

Anyway, it’s, you know, it’s interesting thing, and oftentimes, I don’t sit with people long enough for them to ask me that question.

But when I’m in a deep conversation, we’re talking about each other’s careers. That question will pop up is, you know, what’s the worst part about it?

The best part is the worst part is the worst part of any career, or really any business I should say. Because any business you sit down and take a look at purchasing or getting involved in or starting from scratch, dollars to donuts, the worst part of that business is going to be the marketing end.

It’s going to be, where do I get my initial customers?

If nothing else, but where am I getting my customers? Where am I getting them from?

If that’s built into the business, that’s a good business. That’s a good business, you’ve got customers built in, or you already have a system for producing customers on demand. That’s ideal.

That’s really a good business. I mean, as long as all the math is right on the other end, and you know, putting in the appropriate amount of time and everything if you have that one piece, marketing if you have marketing worked out, everything else takes care of itself.

Most of the things that I spend time on isn’t the stuff that is required when I’m sitting down and talking with somebody. I could sit down and talk with somebody as long as they’ve gone through the steps and they’re ready to talk to me and they’re prepared to do what they need to do to get things done. I never have a bad conversation.

As long as the person is qualified, I never have a bad conversation.

I never get into an area where as I say, oh boy, how are we going to get around this one?

How are we going to fix this problem?

Now, it’s, it’s almost always clear cut. It’s always straightforward. I always have a great time with people when they’re qualified. But the qualification process is built into my marketing and the whole rest of the time.

Most of the time that I spend doing things I don’t necessarily like doing but they have to get done in my business is marketing based. And I like marketing. I’m good at marketing I’ve been in in this general area, flower.

Boy, it’s been probably 14 years now that I’ve been doing something having to do with marketing and getting better and better and better at it through the years, but even then, it’s the worst part of my business. It is the toughest part of my business. If nothing else, it’s really is the toughest part. I enjoy it still.

But it is if I just pick any one thing, this toughest part, that’s the toughest part. And I would guarantee, in most cases, if you’re talking about your business marketing is going to be your toughest one. Now, you may not say that it’s marketing, you may say, well, the toughest thing is finding the right people.

Or the toughest thing is getting my word out there my toughest that you say in a bunch different ways it really comes back to marketing. That is it’s the communication that you’re having. with potential customers, with previous customers with current customers, that’s all marketing.

It’s the magic thing. It’s the magic thing that you got to bring other people on board because it never hurts. It never hurts to have another pair of eyeballs and another brain thinking about how do I get out there and meet the people I want to meet and tell them what I need to tell them. Simple concept, simple idea.

But I’ve looked at other businesses, I’ve helped people look at other businesses, and in most cases, the things that stop them, if they’re really thinking about it carefully, and a lot of people get into business without thinking about it carefully. They’re not looking at the marketing end.

And if you’ve got a business that has the marketing and tied in, or it has a very clear cut way that the marketing works, and it’s predictable. You got a good business on your hands, I suggest moving forward with it, and do everything you can to be able to not just get marketing consistent, but have marketing be consistent and be able to improve upon it over time.

So you get better and better and better results as you move ahead. Hopefully that’s helpful to you. It’s just it’s just one of those random questions that you get asked and it’s a common fault of all businesses that they lack proper marketing, or they lack a really a marketing system. So, something to look into for yourself.

If you’d like to find out more about how you can take marketing and make it. At least make it predictable. Go check out my book at AmazonProofBook.com. AmazonProofBook.com.

The name of the book is 9 Ways to Amazon Proof Your Business.

Go check out you get a free copy from AmazonProofBook.com. We’ll be back here tomorrow night. In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.