Marketing & Sales Launches – Orren Prunckun

Orren Prunckun’s Marketing & Sales Q&A – Episode 4: How to get a product out to partners & consumers

Orren Prunckun — Mon, 20 May 2019 05:16:26 +0000

In this episode you’ll hear me answer a question about creative ways to get a product out to partners and consumers.

So, listen here as I discuss this!

To be featured, first go to http://speakpipe.com/orren and record your number #1 marketing or sales question as an audio file.

Then click send and I will answer it for you for FREE!

Transcript:

Hey Orren it’s Dragos, best of luck with a podcast it sounds really exciting and I’ve got a marketing question that I’m hoping you can help with we’ve recently started signature board games and we’ve pretty much finished that first game called flip and fish well we’ve decided to do is do a small print run instead of doing a Kickstarter or something like that because we’ve got really good feedback from people who are basically saying we want to buy this right now we want to take advantage of that and sell a few a few copies and then reinvest that that back in the business and possibly later on Kickstarter etc later on so the question is once we print out press batch which will be about 500 what’s the most creative or what are some ideas for us to marketers either to shops or to clients in a creative way to try and get them out there considering it’s a very crowded market and new designers with one game usually have a hard time getting noticed yeah any thoughts comments feedback would be much appreciated it was thought about things like partnering up that side of the industry but yeah any anything else yeah?

Answer

Hello that is a great question and I just want to congratulate you and applaud you have been following your journey I think what you’ve done and how to take an action on this is phenomenal and also in that you go in a small print run especially for a physical product is an amazing strategy without you know going out and spending thousands of dollars and tons of your time and betting the farm in case this thing does or does not work so doing a really small one rania is a really fantastic strategy so big Pats on back for that so I’m gonna tell you a question with two different ways I’m going to talk about what you’re selling and then how you are selling it so I really want you to think about what it is that you are selling now you’re going to a market where there are plenty of players and plenty of competing products now that’s not a bad thing because consumers love what you’re doing and you know the industry has been around for a really long time but which also which means that people are interested in purchasing what you have to offer but because there’s so much noise out there I really want you to think about how you’re going to position yourself amongst all of the competitors what is it that you do or what is it that your product does that stands out from everyone else now in the PR and the publicity game this is called a news anchor or certainly another news anchor a publicity angle or a PR angle so what is that that’s going to jump out and hook people’s attention because you are unique or different or better or faster than all of the other things that are on the market now yeah the product will solve that but you have to break through all of the noise that’s out there so what is it that you’re yes it is a board game but what is that that people are going to get out of it but also what is the thing that is going to grab their attention now in terms of how you’re selling I want you to go back to the cause I recorded about the fair value line and also how McDonald’s acquires customers and makes a profit and I want you to apply those two different ideas to what you’re currently doing now cards against humanity’ does this in an interesting way and that’s the only thing that’s coming to my mind on the spot is that they do expansion packs for all of their cards so you come in and buy the game and you have a fantastic time and you know usually board games are just a once-off purchase whereas cards against humanity’ they go out and do an expansion pack and I think and I understand this multiple expansion packs so they’re making a little bit more money from the beyond the initial product they’re also providing value for that now I look at all the board games that you know I’ve played as kids and played as kids and currently play we’ve got quite a few board games at the big check that I go to and these things have been you know made back in the 70s so it was a once-off purchase and we’re just getting a ton of value out of that however you know you can go along and create more value than just the once off purchase by creating the equivalent of what might be an expansion pack the cards for cards gates I’m Jana humanity so I really want to think about that in terms of what you’re selling now in terms sorry in terms of how you’re selling it so you’ve had a look at like the fair value line and how McDonald’s acquires their customers we’ve got that kind of framework of strategy of different products of different price points at different times through that customer journey I also want you to think about what the sales message of communication or the language that you’re using for each of those stages now they should come or be distilled or cascaded down from what you are talking about in terms of how differentiating yourself and how you positioning yourself in the market so all that communication of each of those different stages within that product during come from how you are different and then finally once you’ve got the stages and then you’ve got what the messaging is think about how you can go about acquiring customers now I did speak to that briefly in one of the other calls around paid earned in own media so on the paid and earn side I want you to think about all of the different ways you can pay for attention and also have all of the different ways that you can go and earn attention but not just spend all of your time doing that seeing how you convert can convert that into owned media waste you capture all of that payout all of that money you spend them all that time you spent you’ve capture that into an asset that you can communicate that sales message to all of those prospects and customers as they go through that customer journey and thereby something you know a small price point that they get a small amount of value and then you know the equivalent of the expansion packs as they go on so now in terms of partners and how you can go about creating partnerships the first stage is actually going out and finding as many partners as you can that I related to you but not direct competitors now these are going to be distributors for you so this shouldn’t be a really difficult task that was going out and finding that out about who all those distributors are both online and offline and then once you’ve done that once you’ve found those distributors what is it that they want or what is it that they are motivated by and really finding out that and doing some exploration to what they want and then being able to go out and then provide that for them so going on helping them get whatever they want just before you go out and ask them to promote your game so those four stages are really, really important to go out and find partners that are going to be behind your course and be able to go out and promote what you’re doing so I really hope that helps try it out let me know what happens and thanks your question.

Case Study: Nike Brand Alignment

Orren Prunckun — Thu, 06 Sep 2018 01:30:07 +0000

In 2016, Colin Kaepernic the quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers sat down during the playing of the American nation anthem.

People were pissed.

Kaepernic, later explained his reason why: “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of colour. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”

Fair argument!

And just now, Nike has used Kaepernick in their ad campaign that says “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything” and is also donating to Kaepernick’s “Know Your Rights” campaign as well.

Obviously the slogan is congruent with Kaepernic’s 2016 statement and actions.

Yet, this ad campaign got a lot of people butt hurt.

People (angry, white, racists) are burning their Nike shoes in protest.

Was this a risky move for Nike to align with something so controversial?

Nope.

Nike has made a smart brand decision, despite their stocks dropping 3.2% to US$79.62 from US$82.18 as a result.

Nike understands fashion and culture.

They understand how both of these influence marketing…

All people need shoes.

Yet, only some can afford shoes.

And an even smaller amount can afford high end shoes like Nike.

Nike knows this and bet it all on black (pun and no offence intended).

Who helps sell high end products?

Tastemakers do.

Just look at who the tastemakers currently are…

Putting aside brands, tastemakers who are people of colour make up more than 70% of the top followed people on Instagram.

Artists who are people of colour makes up 90% of the current Top 10 music Billboards.

People who buy high end shoes look up to these people.

People who buy high end shoes don’t look up to angry, white, racists.

And angry, white, racists burning Nike shoes don’t influence culture, period.

And if Nike can win over those tastemakers by showing their support to a cause that is deep to their heart, then those tastemakers, wear Nike products and do the taste making for Nike.

Perfectly executed social proof.

And what better way to win over tastemakers who are people of colour, than back a person of colour who is congruent with your brand.

Yes, Nike will lose customers (angry, white, racists), but they’ll gain a whole lot more with this campaign.

It has been estimated the ad has created $43 million in free PR within 24 hour of launch and that figure will continue to climb as people like me comment on it.

And I’m betting their stock price will rise above that pre-campaign price of US$82.18 soon enough.

Marketing And Sales Is Complex And Complicated

Orren Prunckun — Sat, 11 Aug 2018 08:24:06 +0000

Marketing and sales are complex and complicated!

And successful marketing and sales are certainly not easy.

If it was simple and easy, every business would be successful with the marketing and sales.

According to the Small Business Administration – close to 66% of small businesses will survive their first 2 years.

That is not great odds.

Most people don’t think that it could be them.

Who could blame them…

Most people think marketing and sales is an advertisement.

Why, because that is generally all they see when they go about their day, therefore they make an erroneous conclusion that advertisement equals marketing and sales or worse still that advertisement equals success marketing and sales.

Wrong, wrong, wrong!

I was talking to someone who had just “launched” a product by purchasing an advertisement.

But the thing was no one had purchased.

Don’t get me wrong – it’s a good product, but an advertisement alone just won’t do it!

Trust me when I say this: sending an “ad” for an offer is only a small part of the marketing and sales processes there is so much more you need to consider.

Do you know:

How market & sell your product, service or solution;
How to navigate hardwired decision psychology to inform your marketing & sales;
How to discover exactly what your market wants & needs and how to use those findings in your marketing and sales;
How to evaluate, elect & embody an unforgettable brand;
How to use a marketing and sale pipeline to market and sell more;
How to communicate with prospects and customers at the various steps of a marketing and sales pipeline;
How to easily and quickly create powerful original lead generating and converting marketing and marketing and sales content;
How to leverage more internet traffic than your server could possibly handle;
How to generate qualified B2B leads from cold emails so you can predictably grow your business;
How to get joint ventures & affiliates who can generate leads for your brand;
How to generate cheaper yet more targeted and qualified leads;
How to generate qualified B2C leads from digital ads so you can predictably grow your business;
How to get free website traffic from the search engine firehose;
How to generate positive publicity for free;
How to generate leads through engaging social media content;
How to get high-value referrals from prospects and customers for your product, service or solution;
How to write irresistible sales communication to sell your products, services and solutions;
How to handle purchasing concerns;
How to effectively, predictably and consistently communicate with customers to increase the value, number and frequency of purchases to grow your business;
How to request, publish and capture testimonials from prospects and customers;
How to successfully launch a new product, service or solution with no resources; and
How to launch a product, service or solution with partners the right way.

All of this is needed to be successful in your marketing and sales.

And all of this is needed in the right order to be successful with your marketing and sales.

Does it look overwhelming?

Sure does!

That is what marketing and sales Complex and complicated.

That’s’ why I have set up my services.

The Promotional Partner Launch Process: How To Launch A Product, Service Or Solution With Partners The Right Way

Orren Prunckun — Sat, 21 May 2016 23:52:05 +0000

Approximate read time: 3 minutes

In order to launch a product, service or solution with partners the right way, there are two promotional partner launch pipelines you should use:

PIPELINE 1: Opt-in; and
PIPELINE 2: No Opt-in.

Neither is better than the other.

Pipeline 1 has more control but is less appealing to prospects.

Pipeline 2 has less control but is more appealing to prospects.

You need to decide and balance control and appeal to prospects.

Each pipeline starts with sending a promotional email with a call to action to consume content or a sales page.

Let’s start with Pipeline 1…

1) Opt-in

…Pipeline 1 starts with both you and your external partners promoting your Launch opt-in page to your contact databases for the upcoming launch.

If prospects do not opt-in to the Launch List, they continue to stay on your or your external partners’ original lists.

If prospects do opt-in to the Launch List, they are then automatically directed to the page where content #1 is hosted.

Content #1 also has another opt-in to a Launch Early Access List.

NOTE: The Early Access List will get notified first when the product, service or solution is open for sale.

A few days later these prospects will also get an email directing them to the page where content #1 is hosted, in case they missed it the first time.

A few days’ later, prospects will get an email directing them to the page where content #2 is hosted.

Content #2 also has the same opt-in to the Launch Early Access List.

A few days’ later, prospects will get an email directing them to the page where content #3 is hosted.

Content #3 also has the same opt-in to the Launch Early Access List.

On launch day, you will send the first launch email to The Early Access List notifying them that the product, service or solution is open for sale.

A few hours later you will send another email to the Launch List notifying them the product, service or solution is open for sale.

During and at the end of the launch you will send your Launch email to the Launch List.

Let’s move on to Pipeline 2…

2) No Opt-in

…The only difference here is that instead of you and your external partners promoting a separate Launch opt-in page for the upcoming launch, you both send emails directing prospects to the pages where content #1, #2 and #3 are hosted, a few days apart.

Content #1, #2 and #3 still have an opt-in to the Launch Early Access List.

On launch day, you will send the first launch emails to The Early Access List notifying them that the product, service or solution is open for sale.

A few hours later you will send another email to the Launch List notifying them that the product, service or solution is open for sale.

During and at the end of the launch you will send your Launch email to the Launch List.

Partners will use links that have affiliate codes so that all sales are tracked.

Take Action

You made it…

You now have a solid plan for the launch of a product, service or solution with partners.

That’s the full Promotional Partner Launch Process, and it will be more than enough for you to get started on your own.

You can get the printed illustrated Process Map of this and 20 others for free, here

And if you’re serious about marketing and selling more, the logical next step is to contact me to help you do it yourself, have me do it with you, or have it all done for you.

This maybe the momentum you need to get great marketing and sales results.

Or do you simply want more like this?

Join below to be notified immediately about new content and more. No annoying daily emails and no spam – just good content when it’s posted.

The Marketing & Sales Launch Process: How To Successful Launch A New Product, Service Or Solution With No Resources

Orren Prunckun — Sat, 21 May 2016 23:51:04 +0000

Approximate read time: 9 minutes

I’ve directly helped 400+ startups (of those which have raised capital, their current combined company valuations are $5.5M) get their products, services or solutions out to market through various award winning training programs.

Not only that, over the last four years I have successfully released over a dozen new products, services or solutions for myself and on behalf of others; including franchises of international brands (which have become dominant players in their industry).

Many of these have been done with $0 marketing spend, no prospect or customer list AND in some cases, no product, service or solution at the time of launch.

I can see how this sounds preposterous.

But it can be done with the right process…

This guide is here to help you master the marketing launch sales process.

Here are the elements:

STEP 1: Groundwork;
STEP 2: Preparation;
STEP 3: Partnerships;
STEP 4: Excitement;
STEP 5: Launch;
STEP 6: Product, Service or Solution Creation; and
STEP 7: Product, Service or Solution Delivery.

Let’s begin with…

1) Groundwork

In Step 1 we come across our decision tree…

Do you have a contact list?

Specifically, do you have a list of contact details gained by permission of prospects or customers?

Now, in the odd chance that you do have a prospect and customer list, you can skip this step and move on to Step 2.

It’s most likely that you don’t as it’s a new marketing launch.

If you do not have a prospect and customer list, then it’s time to get your hands dirty!

Don’t skip this step.

Let me repeat.

DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP.

Your goal here is to create a seed list of prospects and customers by collating email addresses from where you can:

Your email address book; and
Your contacts on LinkedIn, Facebook and other social network where you have a presence.

LinkedIn is handy in that it allows you to export your contacts including emails.

And if you setup a new Yahoo! Mail account you can download all your Facebook friends’ email addresses.

You should easily be able to get 200+ contacts who may be interested in your new product, service or solution.

From here, you need to plan some free opt-in content – a process map works really well in my experience.

See what is happening here?!

More free opt-in content is generally better than less, and when you start saying to yourself “I feel like I am giving away too much” then you are on the right track to creating suitable free content.

Then, go out and create this free opt-in content!

Don’t skimp. Make it good.

After it is created, deliver the free opt-in content to the list you created asking them to opt-in to receive it, thus qualifying and re-segmenting that list to people who are stuck and interested in becoming un-stuck.

Sending content to ALL your contacts is spam.

Don’t SPAM people.

Spam is not good, okay?

You need people to request it. AKA opt-in, raise-their-hand, qualify themselves, etc., etc., ad nausea.

This of course, is a big topic that will take too much ink to write.

Alright, onward to Step 2…

2) Preparation

Step 2 is about planning…

In this step, you will ask your re-segmented contact list about what niche they are stuck in.

At the same time, you want to give them a hint that you are creating a product, service or solution that will help them get un-stuck.

This does a couple things:

It allows you to plan or refine and create your product, service or solution offer – in other words it gives you valuable insight into what product, service or solution people ACTUALLY want; and
It gives you an opportunity to ask for testimonials and case studies for the launch.

Based on that feedback, plan and create multiple free Excitement contents that you will deliver in the Excitement Step – case studies are particularly useful here.

You also need to plan and create purchase bonuses that can also help your prospects get un-stuck to help increase sales conversion when you launch.

The next step is to plan and create your Excitement and Launch sales communication sequence and related promotion swipe copy.

As we are still in a preparation step, you should be setting up you payment processor and cart ready for launch.

A smart thing to do here is to plan, create and sell an easy-to-create, low priced product, service or solution to further re-segment your contacts into customers as well as prospects.

This helps you dry test real sales demand for the core product, service or solution before launch.

Most of this process takes precise wording and sequencing.

Let’s now look at Step 3…

3) Partnerships

In Step 3, we come across our second decision tree.

Do you want to accelerate your sales?

Most people say “yes.”

It’s human nature.

But, saying “yes” also creates a ton more work for you…and it’s complicated, fiddly work.

If you are willing to do that, then start creating partnerships.

If you want to keep things really simple (and if this is your first launch) then I suggest you resist the temptation, say “no” and skip this and move onto Step 4 … you have far too much other important things to concentrate on in your launch.

So back to accelerating your sales…

The first step is to identify potential partners.

In simple terms you want to be approaching partners with a contact list who are:

Familiar with you; and
Who you have built good will with.

Without this, recruiting partners is going to be hard.

And you should drop everything right now and start establishing these two things.

Next, it’s time to plan and create incentives for these partners. This is a huge topic, so for now determine what they may be interested in.

Cash is king, but so are money-can’t-buy things and experiences.

You also want to plan and create your Partner Hub – the place where you partners can get all the vital information and updates about your launch.

With this done, it’s time to contact your partners with your offer, incentives and EPC (Earnings Per Click).

EPC is important and if you have never done a launch, you won’t know you EPC and partners are less likely to help you accelerate sales without it.

So add EPC to the two above.

Particulars and word-for-word scripts of course are outside the scope of this guide.

Like I said before, if this is your first launch then I suggest you resist the temptation and say “no” and move onto Step 4, skipping this step.

Once partners start to agree, it’s time to sign them up with contracts and start distributing vital partner information, sales communication sequence and promotion swipe copy.

Done? So, what’s next?

Excitement…

4) Excitement

Step 4 is getting prospects eager for your product, service or solution…

Basically you and your partners (if you are using them) send to your contact list a series of Excitement content and ask for feedback on it.

If partners are sending people this content, you want to leverage this activity to build you contact list by capturing their email addresses in the process.

There are two different launch pipelines I use depending on how you are using your partners to do this and to explain them in-depth would be too much for this guide.

On the later days of sending content, you will announce your product, service or solution, the product, service or solution details and date of sale.

Every communication point will allow you to again test interest in the product, service or solution before it goes on sale, including how many people click on your offer even before it is open for sale.

For the really keen, you want to give your prospects the opportunity to join an Early Access List so they get can purchase in advance of everyone else.

Throughout this time you want to reiterate the free content based on feedback and check-in with and update partners.

This process primes the pump for the Launch Step…

5) Launch

This is the exciting part of the process!

The part where you make sales.

But first let me give you an example…

I was talking to someone who had “launched” a product several weeks earlier.

But the thing was, no one had purchased.

Don’t get me wrong – it’s a good product, but an advertisement alone just won’t do it!

Trust me when I say this: sending an “ad” for an offer is only a small part of the process and this is where it comes in, not at the beginning.

Without going into all the specifics, each day of your launch you should be communicating with your prospects and customers: price, updates, bonuses, case studies, refunds, warnings, frequently asked questions and so on.

Again, throughout this time you want to reiterate the communication based on feedback and check-in with and update partners.

At the end of your launch you want to calculate your EPC (remember that?) to use for your next launch and for contacting partners you can give them the EPC to convince them to promote for you.

EPC is an important metric because once a partner’s database subscriber makes a click, the partner loses all their influence.

That click is now in your sales pipeline and you have control over the sales message, not the partner.

Therefore, EPC gives partners predictability over how much they could earn by partnering with you without influence on the sales cycle.

Forward…

6) Product, Service Or Solution Creation

Step 6 starts with the final decision tree…

It is about your product, service or solution.

Do you have a product, service or solution or bonuses?

You most likely do and if that is the case, then plan and create your advertised and unadvertised purchase bonuses.

But if you don’t have a product, service or solution or a product, service or solution idea, it’s time to create your product, service or solution and your advertised and unadvertised purchase bonuses.

Product creation is a massive topic and hard to cover here because there are so many types:

Physical;
Digital;
Products;
Services;
Solutions and
So on…

Yep, it’s a big topic and I’ll assume you as the entrepreneur know how to solve your prospects problems…

7) Product, Service Or Solution Delivery

Finally, we distribute product, service or solution and purchase bonuses…

And get you prospects un-stuck from the problem they were facing when you started interacting with them.

From here you repeat the process back at the first decision tree.

If you were using partners and were capturing their contact detail lists, you will have already started to build your contact list.

If you were not were using partners, you should now be building your contact list using even more lead generation tools.

Take Action

You made it…

You now have a solid plan for selling your product, service or solution or product, service or solution idea.

That’s the full Marketing & Sales Launch Process and will be more than enough for you to get started on your own.

You can get the printed illustrated Process Map of this and 20 others for free, here

And if you’re serious about marketing and selling more, the logical next step is to contact me to help you do it yourself, have me do it with you, or have it all done for you.

This maybe the momentum you need to get great marketing and sales results.

Now let’s learn about The Promotional Partner Launch Process.

Or do you simply want more like this?

Join below to be notified immediately about new content and more. No annoying daily emails and no spam – just good content when it’s posted.

The Marketing & Sales Processes: How Market And Sell Your Product, Service Or Solution

Orren Prunckun — Sat, 21 May 2016 23:31:49 +0000

Click here to embed this infographic.

Approximate read time: 14 minutes

The fundamental parts of marketing and sales are quite simple.

In order to effectively, consistently and predictably market and sell products, services, or solutions, particular marketing and sales processes should be followed step-by-step.

I have outlined several critical marketing and sales processes to help you market and sell products, services, and solutions.

Here they are…

STEP 1: The Human Purchasing Process;
STEP 2: The Market Research Process;
STEP 3: The Brand Creation Process;
STEP 4: The Marketing & Sales Pipeline Process;
STEP 5: The Marketing & Sales Communication Process;
STEP 6: The Content Creation Process;
STEP 7: The Lead Generation Processes;
STEP 8: The B2B Lead Generation Process;
STEP 9: The Partner Recruitment Process;
STEP 10: The Partner Co-Enrolment Process;
STEP 11: The B2C Lead Generation Process;
STEP 12: The Search Engine Optimization Process;
STEP 13: The Positive Publicity Process;
STEP 14: The Social Media Marketing Process;
STEP 15: The Sales Script Process;
STEP 16: The Sales Negotiation Process;
STEP 17: The Marketing & Sales Engagement Process;
STEP 18: The Marketing & Sales Launch Process; and
STEP 19: The Promotional Partner Launch Process.

Let’s begin with…

1) The Human Purchasing Process

…This is about how to navigate hardwired buying psychology to inform your marketing and sales.

This process lays the foundation for all processes that follow and helps you understand your prospects and customers.

This leads us to The Market Research Process…

2) The Market Research Process

…Once you have a foundation for all processes that follow and understand your prospects and customers, you need to understand The Market Research Process.

This part is about how to discover what your market wants and needs and how to use those findings in your marketing and sales.

Understanding their personas helps you enter the conversation your prospects and customers are having in their own mind.

This leads us to The Brand Creation Process…

3) The Brand Creation Process

..Once you have an understanding of processes for marketing and sales communication, you need to understand the Brand Creation Process.

This part is about how to evaluate and create or recreate an unforgettable brand.

It lays out the specific process for brand creation.

This leads us to The Marketing & Sales Pipeline Process…

4) The Marketing & Sales Pipeline Process

…Once you have an understanding of the conversation your prospects and customers are having in their own mind, you need to understand The Marketing & Sales Pipeline.

This part is about how to use a marketing & sales pipeline to market and sell more products, services and solutions to prospects and customers.

It also lays the structure and sequence to the rest of the processes.

This leads us to The Marketing & Sales Communication Process…

5) The Marketing & Sales Communication Process

…Once you have an understanding of the structure and sequence to the rest of the processes, you need to understand The Marketing & Sales Communication Process.

This part is about how to communicate with your prospects and customers at the various steps in a marketing and sales pipeline.

It also lays out the processes for this method of communication.

This leads us to The Content Creation Process…

6) The Content Creation Process

…Once you have an understanding of the brand creation process, you need to understand The Content Creation Process.

This part is about how to create powerful lead generating and lead converting marketing and sales content and increase the number of prospects, AKA marketing and increase the number of customers, AKA sales, AKA prospect conversion.

It lays out the specific process of content creation.

This leads us to The Lead Generation Processes…

7-14) The Lead Generation Processes

…Once you have an understanding of the process of content creation, you need to understand The Lead Generation Processes.

This part is about how to generate leads and increase the number of prospects, AKA marketing.

It includes:

The Digital Traffic Firehose Process;
The B2B Lead Generation Process, AKA Cold Email;
The Partner Recruitment Process, AKA Affiliates;
The Partner Co-Enrolment Process;
The B2C Lead Generation Process, AKA Advertising;
The Search Engine Optimization Process;
The Positive Publicity Process, AKA PR; and
The Social Media Marketing Process.

It lays out the specific process for each of these methods for generating leads.

This leads us to The Sales Script Process…

15) The Sales Script Process

…Once you have an understanding of the process for generating leads, you need to understand The Sales Script Process.

This part is about how to write irresistible sales communication to sell your process, services and solutions and increase the number of customers, AKA sales, AKA prospect conversion, increase the value of customer transactions, AKA upselling, and increase the number of customer transactions, AKA retention.

It lays out the specific process for creating sales scripts and how to handle sales objections and why prospects don’t take action on offers.

This leads us to The Sales Negotiation Process…

16) The Sales Negotiation Process

…Once you have an understanding of sales, you need to understand The Sales Negotiation Process.

This part is about how to overcome common sales objections.

It lays out the specific process for addressing these concerns.

This leads us to The Marketing & Sales Engagement Process…

17) The Marketing & Sales Engagement Process

…Once you have an understanding of the process for creating sales scripts, you need to understand The Marketing & Sales Engagement Process.

This part is about how to engage your prospects and customers to be loyal and encourage others to buy.

It lays out the specific process for engaging your prospects and customers.

This leads us to The Marketing & Sales Launch Process…

18) The Marketing & Sales Launch Process

…Once you have an understanding of the process for engaging your prospects and customers, you need to understand Marketing & Sales Launch Process.

This part is about how to launch a new product, service or solution successfully with no resources as well as how to launch with partners the right way by tying together Parts 1 to 8.

It lays out the specific process for launching a new product, service or solution.

This leads us to The Promotional Partner Launch Process…

19) The Promotional Partner Launch Process

…Once you have an understanding of the Marketing & Sales launch process, you need to understand how to leverage partners in the process.

This part is about how to launch a product service or solution with partners.

It lays out the specific process for launching with partners.

That sums up all The Marketing & Sales Processes.

Take Action

You made it…

You now have a solid overview of several critical Marketing & Sales Processes to help you market and sell you product, service or solution.

That’s the full Marketing & Sales Processes, and it will be more than enough for you to get started on your own.

This guide is designed as a choose-your-own-adventure, where you pick-and-choose what you want to understand and improve on in your marketing and sales.

You don’t need to consume it all from start to finish, but I encourage you to do, as you’ll be in a better position to market and sell more products, services and solutions.

So let’s start with some questions to help you decided where to start…

Then explore the guides for each process.

These will be more than enough for you to get started on your own.

Do you have too many customers?

If you do not have too many customers, this guide will help you get into a position where you can say yes!

How?

Answer the rest of the questions to find out…

If you do have too many customers, then this guide will help you get more revenue from them more often.

How?

Again answer the rest of the questions to find out…

Do you understand your prospects and customers, AKA market research?

If your answer is no, then you need to learn about Market Research and Human Purchasing Psychology.

If your answer is yes, then continue with the rest of the questions.

Do you want to increase your number of prospects, AKA lead generation, AKA marketing?

If your answer is no, then you need to learn about Marketing & Sales Pipelines, Marketing & Sales Communication, Brand Creation, Marketing Content Creation, Internet Traffic Firehoses and Marketing Lead Generation through Cold Email, Advertising, Partner Recruitment, Partner Co-Enrolment, Publicity and Social Media and Sales Conversion.

If your answer is yes, then continue with the rest of the questions.

Do you want to increase your number of customers, AKA prospect conversion, AKA sales?

If your answer is no, then you need to learn about Marketing & Sales Pipelines, Marketing & Sales Communication, Brand Creation, Marketing Content Creation and Sales Conversion.

If your answer is yes, then continue with the rest of the questions.

Do you want to increase the value and number of customer transactions, AKA up selling, next selling, down selling and cross selling?

If your answer is no, then you need to learn about Marketing & Sales Pipelines, Marketing & Sales Communication, Brand Creation, Marketing Content Creation and Sales Conversion.

If your answer is yes, then continue with the rest of the questions.

Do you want to increase your engagement with prospects and customers, AKA retention and loyalty?

If your answer is no, then you need to learn about Marketing & Sales Pipelines, Marketing & Sales Communication, Brand Creation, Marketing Content Creation and Sales Conversion, Sales Objections and Promotional Partner Launches.

If your answer is yes, then continue with the rest of the questions.

Do you want to increase prospect and customer satisfaction, AKA customer service, recommendations and referrals?

If your answer is no, then you need to learn about Marketing & Sales Pipelines, Marketing & Sales Communication, Brand Creation, Marketing Content Creation and Sales Conversion.

If your answer is yes, then continue with the rest of the questions.

Do you want to increase the success of new product, service or solution launch, AKA combining it all?

If your answer is no, then you need to learn about Marketing & Sales Pipelines, Marketing & Sales Communication, Brand Creation, Marketing Content Creation and Sales Conversion.

If your answer is yes, then these guides may not be for you…

You can get the printed illustrated Process Map of this and 20 others for free, here

And if you’re serious about marketing and selling more, the logical next step is to contact me to help you do it yourself, have me do it with you, or have it all done for you.

This maybe the momentum you need to get great marketing and sales results.

Now let’s learn about The Human Purchasing Process.

Or do you simply want more like this?

Join below to be notified immediately about new content and more. No annoying daily emails and no spam – just good content when it’s posted.

The Definitive Digital Marketing & Sales Manual: How To Market And Sell Online

Orren Prunckun — Sat, 21 May 2016 23:30:18 +0000

This is the definitive training on everything you need to know about digital marketing and sales.

Some of the things you will learn in this guide include:

How market & sell your product, service or solution;
How to navigate hardwired decision psychology to inform your marketing & sales;
How to discover exactly what your market wants & needs and how to use those findings in your marketing and sales;
How to evaluate, elect & embody an unforgettable brand;
How to use a marketing and sales pipeline to market and sell more;
How to communicate with prospects and customers at the various steps of a marketing and sales pipeline;
How to easily and quickly create powerful and original lead generating and converting marketing and marketing and sales content;
How to leverage more internet traffic than your server could possibly handle;
How to generate qualified B2B leads from cold emails so you can predictably grow your business;
How to get joint ventures & affiliates who can generate leads for your brand;
How to generate cheaper yet more targeted and qualified leads;
How to generate qualified B2C leads from digital ads so you can predictably grow your business;
How to get free website traffic from the search engine firehose;
How to generate positive publicity for free;
How to generate leads through engaging social media content;
How to write irresistible sales communication to sell your products, services and solutions;
How to handle purchasing concerns;
How to effectively, predictably and consistently communicate with customers to increase the value, number and frequency of purchases to grow your business;
How to successful launch a new product, service or solution with no resources;
How to launch a product, service or solution with partners the right way;
Why these topics are is important for understanding your prospects and customers, increasing the number of prospects, increasing the number of customers, increasing the value of customer transactions, increasing the number of customer transactions, increasing the engagement of prospects and customers to buy more and increasing the success of new product, service or solution launches;
How to take immediate action on these topics;
What results are possible after taking action;
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg…

This is waiting for you.

Join Orren Prunckun as he teaches you all of this and much, much more!

My Story & Why You Should Listen To Me

You’ve finally found it…

This guide is designed for many types of people:

The beginners who have no idea where to start with marketing and sales content;
The intermediates who are familiar with marketing and sales but want a refresher on the foundational principles of marketing and sales; and
The advanced who what to take the marketing and sales to the next level.

Think of this like a playbook.

Many brands which are looking to create more customers are stuck.

They are stuck somewhere in the process of getting their product, service or solution into customers hands.

It’s true that they all want to get an edge over their competitors.

This guide is here to help you master that edge.

There is so much to learn and so much to do, it can feel overwhelming.

And who can blame them…there are many steps needed.

It’s a situation seen over-and-over…

So why should you believe me?

I am a sought after marketing and sales expert who can help you with improving Lead Generation, Sales Conversion & Customer Engagement.

I have spoken, facilitated, emceed, chaired and panelled at universities, corporates, conferences and events.

My specialist skill set is the ability to launch new products, services or solutions and make them successful with minimal cost.

…$1 million+ of free publicity in 18 months.

That reads like a scammy late night infomercial.

But the secret to any marketing campaign that I build is getting people into a massive buying frenzy by talking to emotional drivers and delivering a remarkable product, service or solution that adds 10x value to their lives.

Many years ago, I was getting nowhere fast in marketing and sales.

I reached a point where I needed to be able to effectively market and sell any product, service or solution.

I did not have access to a big marketing budget, but I understood its fundamental role in producing success.

I decided to learn everything I could about marketing.

I read a lot of books and I tried a lot of things, but most of it was useless.

When I first started, one of the most important things I did was model myself and learn from people who had “been there, done that” and were already having the kinds of success I wanted.

It saved me what I estimate to be years of time and effort.

I learned marketing inductively, from the ground up.

After a while, and a lot of trial and error, things started to turn around and it started to all make sense and I started to be able to get incredible outcomes on a regular basis.

I know what works and what does not and ignore all the irrelevant “shoulds” and “ought tos” and get to the heart of what has effect and impact in getting results.

It means I think laterally and critically and use only what works.

After discovering this I started to distil the things I learned into a repeatable process and I was then able to do this on a regular basis for others.

All of this has attracted additional customers and most of all additional profit.

The good news is it is all achievable and I can help you do the same.

It’s based on the following philosophy:

Everything in business is about marketing and sales and you don’t need to spend a lot of money to get ahead of 99% of your competition.

But you need to be smart and base what you do on timeless, scientific marketing principles.

This guide is here to help you master all the marketing and sales processes.

And by processes I really mean…

A blueprint.

It’s a blueprint that reflects how many brands have successful marketed and sold products, services and solutions.

And it’s the blueprint I use each-and-every-time.

The good thing is that this blueprint works for anyone looking to market and sell.

It’s for:

Small or corporate businesses;
Personal brands and causes;
Products, services or solutions;
B2B or B2C;
Digital or physical businesses;
Physical and digital variations; and
Anything in between.

It’s for any brand which wants to make more money, more often.

If it is sold via direct sales and distribution channels you can bet it will work.

Best of all, it’s for you!

This blueprint is effective because it leverages buying psychology.

There are only a few ways to market and sell:

Understanding your prospects and customers;
Increasing the number of prospects, AKA marketing;
Increasing the number of customers, AKA sales, AKA prospect conversion;
Increasing the value of customer transactions, AKA upselling;
Increasing the number of customer transactions, AKA retention;
Increasing the engagement of prospects and customers to buy more, AKA referrals ; and
Increasing the success of new product, service or solution launches.

If you can effectively market and sell your product, service or solution, then you will be able to take advantage of all of these benefits.

However, if you cannot effectively market and sell your product, service or solution, then you will continue to battle against your competitors who are likely doing the same thing.

I call it The Definitive Digital Marketing & Sales Manual.

The blueprint puts a field tested and proven framework around this.

Read this guide slowly.

Read this many times and memorize it.

This is the digital marketing & sales blueprint very few know about…

If you plan to execute this manual, you’ll need to reference it often.

When you’re learning new tactics, you’ll need to constantly remind yourself of this guide.

Otherwise, you’re wasting time.

THIS IS A WARNING: there is little value in understanding each process in-and-of itself.

There is enormous value in understanding how to apply an individual process with all the other processes.

Pay close attention – I am about to reveal the exact process used to successful market and sell, products, services and solutions in multiple niches markets and mainstream verticals including…

Web and mobile apps;
Videos;
Books;
Venues;
Gadgets;
Events;
Communities;
E-commerce sites;
Startups;
Information products, services or solutions;
Training, coaching and consulting;
Digital products, services or solutions; and
Physical products, services or solutions.
To name a select few.

Now let’s learn about The Marketing & Sales Processes.

Top Tips For Successful Product Launches

Orren Prunckun — Thu, 01 Oct 2015 02:30:20 +0000

Approximate read time: 21 minutes

Okay, so I know what you are thinking…

You want to know how to plan a successful product launch.

So I asked 5 people who have been involved in successful product launches…

“What immediate next actions should someone take to gain momentum with their product launch?”

Their answers may surprise you!

Without further ado, let’s meet the product launch panel:

Miriam Castilla

International Best Selling Book in 4 Months

Miriam Castilla is the Adelaide based International Best Selling author of Today’s Woman.

“I think the answer is a little bit what my book teaches people which is number 1 start with ‘why’. Why I’m a huge fan of Simon Sinek so you’re probably familiar with his TED talk on Start With Why but I’ve sort of used to hybrid version of the in what I teach though. If you don’t know why you’re doing it in the first place don’t even bother. SO you need to get really clear on why do you want to write a book what’s it going to do for you? Is it going to help your business? Is it going to allow you to grow your existing business, tap into new markets, get really, really clear on why you want to write that book.

Number 2 – Get your head space right because it does take you by surprise as to how many self- limiting beliefs you’re going to bump into on the journey so make sure you really believe in what you do and you’re passionate about it and you know your stuff and you’ve got that complete and utter self-belief and then really decide at what level you want to do it. So do you want to do just a small cheap print run and just use it as a bit of a value add you know maybe as a free giveaway to your customers or something like that? Do you want to go larger scale? Do you want to go global with it? And I think the bigger scale you want to go to the more important it’s gonna be to go down a more traditional, having a publishing control it making sure it is s top quality product. So the level that you want to get to will determine the route of the book publishing that you’ll chose.”

Joseph Chehade & Bartosz Kowalski

$300,000 In Capital On Kickstarter In 45 Days

Joseph Chehade & Bartosz Kowalski are the Adelaide based Founders of Uamp. Uamp, or you amplify, is a link between your music player and your headphones.

“The 1st step is to create something that people want and one of the easiest ways to do that is that something that you want? I guess that is the 1st starting point it is easier to create a product that you yourself want and that’s the mistake that we made with our 1st product Umidi is we said “people who want this, people will want that” but we never built a controlled for ourselves to DJ with, so that should have been the first red flag for us. Once you have got that do something as quickly as you can that addresses that problem and then creating a video and getting it out on Kickstarter because there I no real cost to you and make if you succeed you can deliver and I guess that’s all there is just deal with the product and prototype because you can adjust the problem and then create a video and have a Kickstarter page.”

David Truong

1,000,000+ App Downloads And 10,000,000+ Plays In 2.5 Years

Bio David Truong is the Founder and CEO of educational games company Redu.us (Previously Broccol-e-games and Bitzerland.)

“The first thing would be to write down a few problems that they are already passionate about. And that could be on producing a game it might be. I have five minutes every morning when I’m at the bus stop and I have nothing to do. And all the games suck and I want something to do or a certain problem with that and that they are passionate about. So, writing that down and may be a few of those. And then once they’ve got some of those problems and thinking about does an app or mobile device suit this sort of thing. But those are probably the first few steps. Once I’ve got that, then they can start sketching out how it looks and how it feels and that is when you go to a developer or trying to mock it up yourself or create it yourself.”

David Bartholomeusz

$3,000,000 A Year User Community Driven Business In 12 Months

David Bartholomeusz has grown 3 bricks & mortar businesses in the hospitality industry with zero bank or investor finance.

So the first action to take I think is just flipping the script on what you are doing and going “who is doing this really, really well, and how can we be a little bit different? Not the opposite, but how can we be a little bit different?” So, I’m thinking in acne space, it could be something as simple as a different type of applicator. That to me, if someone came to me and said “I have this new acne solution that is better,” I’d be well like “that is interesting go away from me.” But if they say, “hey Dave, I’ve got this new bottle, for the same acne cream” that would probably actually interest me more because a revolutionary new acne formulation is first of all something a bit controversial to bring into the market, it is going to be something that has investment on the front end as a pharmaceutical. But a new applicator or just a new container, to me that is something that we can very quickly deliver to market and go “hey we are in phase one.” Let’s just see who naturally pulls this off the shelf? Let’s just put up a landing page and go “hey check it out.” This is the same stuff that you have been using for the last 20 years, now come in a brush instead of a tube. Let’s just pop a landing page up and see if people tap on that and give us their details. That is something we can do for $600. We don’t need to get a new patient.

Ella Macintyre

100,000 Viral Video Views In 72 hours

Ella Macintyre is the Producer of Marketing and Distribution at Epic Films and the Marketing and Head of Marketing at Mighty Kingdom, a mobile app development agency in Adelaide, Australia.

“They really need to test their idea, they need to think about it and go, does it have the qualities of a viral video? Does it have something that I think can capture an audience, my audience? From there definitely find out where your audience is, that’s the biggest thing, if you don’t already know and spend time really learning your audience learning what they like, what they dislike, when they are online, when they are not online, who the influencers are in that audience as well like that’s a really big one as well obviously blogs and things and influencers for Wastelander Panda that maybe not necessarily the case for the other ones. Actually just going back I think people sort of forget what an influencer is like they’ll just blindly tweet beyond getting to ask every tweeter like that’s not just going to happen think about it in a much more sort of realistic terms you know, somebody with 500 Twitter followers might not be you know the best, you know the most ideal candidate but they might 500 followers at least have 500 followers themselves, so sort of think much more I guess don’t shoot for the stars right away you can do it from there and create some social group again with some smaller outlets that’s something that can be taken to a wider audience and I’d say also just know that audience and have that audience view the plan before you even get the video cut and edit, like shot and cut, know what you’re going to do with it so when its done you can go right, these are people we contact, this is our story, this is the story that we’re telling and these are the people we’re telling it to.”

P.S. If you like this article, you’re going to love the free Product Launch report I’m offering here.

How To Launch A Successful New Product Using Effective Market Research

Orren Prunckun — Mon, 01 Jun 2015 23:30:19 +0000

Unley Business Breakfast Networking Event 24

Approximate read time: 5 minutes

[fancy_box id=4][content_upgrade id=1297]BONUS CONTENT: Download the audio, video and transcript of this presentation[/content_upgrade][/fancy_box]

You can get 21 printed lead generating Process Maps for free, here.

And if you’re serious about marketing and selling more, the logical next step is to contact me to help you do it yourself, have me do it with you, or have it all done for you.

This may be the momentum you need to get great marketing and sales results.

Or do you simply want more like this?

Join below to be notified immediately about new content and more. No annoying daily emails and no spam – just good content when it’s posted.

The 7 Step Startup System: How To Start A Business Using Occam’s Razor

Orren Prunckun — Thu, 30 Apr 2015 23:30:59 +0000

Approximate read time: 48 minutes

This guide will show you how to start a business using Occam’s Razor.

That is:

“The simple and quick method is usually the best.”

If you are looking to start a business and:

Don’t know where to begin;
Have started and failed already; or
Want to maximize your success.

…then this guide is for you.

I have been able to start businesses for myself and others in less than 1 hour, in some instances in under 15 minutes.

This sounds like bullshit, but I’ll explain exactly how to do this shortly.

Let’s start with some theory…

A market could be defined as a group of buyers and sellers.

In fact, a market only needs 1 buyer and 1 seller.

So, I had markets – mainly, university student groups—who I used to demonstrate this method.

Here is how it goes down:

I asked the group to list all the problems they had and documented them in real time.

(You get about 40 ideas total on average).

Then, I asked the same group who could solve any of the problems.

You get about half-a-dozen who raise their hand (they obviously can’t solve their own, because if they could, they wouldn’t have called it out in the first place).

You now have segments of buyers and sellers.

40 buyers and 12 sellers to make it simple.

(This increases your chances of finding a match between a buyer and a seller significantly more than 1 buyer and 1 seller and why it can be done in 15 minutes.)

Next, I tried to get buyers to agree to seller’s terms (which are usually based on price and a little on delivery times).

Here is how the conversation goes:

Me: “So, out of the buyers, what price will you pay for the solution to your problem that the Buyer is offering?”
Seller: “$20”
Me: “Buyer, will you deliver your solution to the Sellers problem for $20?”
Buyer: “No, but I’ll do it for $30”

This continues until the sellers and buyers can agree on terms (moderated by me).

Then once they agree, the seller is in business!

It is as simple as that, but of course people make it so much more complicated and spend a year of their life and $100,000 of their own money to fail and not even get to that point.

I’ve seen it multiple times.

It’s certainly a REAL situation!

This guide will help you de-risk your business and save time, money, and labour in the process, so that you don’t turn into one of these people.

Sure, you could be doing many other things beyond this, I get that, but this guide is designed as the shortest path to starting a business based on all my experience – the Occam’s Razor.

Why You Should Listen To Me

Before we begin, here are some of my other credentials related to creating startups:

I brought Startup Weekend to Adelaide in 2012 (which now has completed 6 sold out events with 600+ local alumni);
I am a Startup Weekend global facilitator (I’ve been involved in 10+ hackathon events, globally);
I am a co-founder and current director of not-for-profit Startup Adelaide Inc. – a not-for-profit organisation that exists to foster and support the Adelaide tech startup sector;
I am a co-founder and administration of the Startup Adelaide forum which has 700 members;
I am the co-founder of Business Higher Education Round Table award winning program Venture Dorm (100+ alumni with total company valuations of $5.5M) which merged with Mobile Enterprise Growth Alliance to be Australia’s largest community pre-accelerator program;
I am the former Director of Marketing for Mobile Enterprise Growth Alliance;
I am the former Marketing Manager of New Venture Institute at Finders University;
I am the Australia Day Citizen of the Year for Unley (2015) for my contribution to building the Adelaide startup ecosystem;
I was recognised in Startup Daily’s “Top 50 Australian Startup Influencers” in Australia and “Mentors you should know in the startup space, Adelaide Edition”;
I won an honorable mention in Australian Anthills 30 Under 30 award for my contribution to building the Adelaide startup ecosystem;
I am an independent member of the Business and Economic Development Committee for Unley Council;
I was on the judging panel for The Australian Centre for Social Innovation’s Aging Challenge in 2015; and
I am a workshop facilitator for Flinders Universities Business School in Enterprise and innovation.

I’ve directly helped 400+ startups (of those which have raised capital, their current combined company valuations are $5.5M) get their products, services, or solutions out to market through various award-winning training programs.

Not only that, over the last four years I have successfully released over a dozen new products, services, or solutions for myself and on behalf of others; including franchises of international brands (which have become dominant players in their industry).

Many of these have been done with $0 marketing spent, no prospect or customer list, AND in some cases, no product, service, or solution at the time of launch.

I can see how this sounds preposterous.

But it can be done with the right process…

Startups usually go through 3 stages when they begin:

Problem/solution fit – this is defined by finding if a market exists and if you can create a solution;
Product/market fit – this is defined by finding if your solution is desirable to the market proven by making a sale; and
Scaling – this is defined by creating a business around stage 1 and 2 above.

This guide will focus on the first 2 stages.

My Promise To You

My promise to you is that this guide will help you start a new business in 4 weeks or less guaranteed.

Here I am deifying “start” as making 1 sale.

Why is this?

Here is the harsh reality:

You are not in business until you make a sale.

Let me repeat:

YOU ARE NOT IN BUSINESS UNTIL YOU MAKE A SALE.

Everything else is “playing business.”

A business only works when the cash registers are ringing.

If you thing I am wrong, just stop here – save us both time.

Business cards, a “nice logo,” bank accounts, registering a company, and building a website ad nausea counts for nothing until you have a sale.

In fact, don’t get business cards, a “nice logo,” bank accounts, registration of a company, or a website when you start.

That is a distraction from your core purpose – to make 1 sale.

Remember this is starting a business using Occam’s Razor.

After you have made 1 sale, you can get business cards, a “nice logo,” bank accounts, registration of a company, a website and everything else a business needs.

But not before.

You are probably saying – “But I need a cool logo to be taken serious. Branding is important.”

Yes, branding is important, but you are nowhere near that point as I’ll discuss soon.

No one significant will know that you don’t have a cool logo at this stage.

In addition, when someone has a headache, they don’t care if it’s brand name or generic aspirin; they only care if the product works, and fast.

When dealing with first customers, this is the same.

Wait until you make a sale to work on the brand.

The Scientific Method

Unless you have a sale, your assumptions and opinions about whether your “business idea” will work or not are moot.

The scientific method related to startups begins with making assumptions and observations about customers and markets and their pains and wanted gains.

I’m sure you have done this to come up with a “business idea.”

Next, you do some research with customers and markets and about their pains and wanted gains.

Next, you make a prediction about the outcome of your assumptions and observations.

This is your hypothesis.

Next, you develop an experiment to test your prediction of the outcome.

Next, you test your experiment and gather evidence for or against your hypothesis.

If needed, based on evidence, you change and repeat the experiment.

Finally, you have a conclusive theory about your original assumptions and observations.

You want to validate or de-validate your assumptions.

This guide is based on loosely on the scientific method.

This has also been called the Lean Startup method by Eric Ries where entrepreneurs:

Build (making assumptions and observations, research, hypotheses and experiments);
Measure (testing experiments and gathering evidence); and
Learn (declaring a conclusive theory.)

Do Things That Don’t Scale

Venture Capitalist and co-founder of Y Combinator, Paul Graham once said:

“Do things that don’t scale.”

Meaning do things manually until you don’t have enough time in the day then automate them.

Don’t get business cards, a “nice logo,” bank accounts, register a company, or build a website until you need them!

You don’t need them at this stage.

Pursuing them is unfocused and an excuse for taking real action on things that move the needle.

That being making a sale.

Everything else has no purpose other than to make you feel good about something that doesn’t progress your business.

It also protects you from the harsh reality that your “business idea” probably won’t work.

“No one likes to hear their baby is ugly.”

They do everything they can to prevent hearing this even if it means they never start up.

Ask yourself, “Does this apply to me?”

If it does, again, stop here – save us both time.

Most people have a “business idea.”

A “business idea” is just a different name for a product, service or solution.

In 99.9% of cases, a “business idea” is based on what the founder wants to create, rather than what the market needs.

It’s putting the cart before the horse.

The late Steve Jobs once said, “Customers don’t know what they want until we’ve shown them.”

Unless you are Steve Jobs (you are not, sorry to burst you bubble) this doesn’t apply to you, and you can’t create products like the iPhone that the market doesn’t even know they need yet.

A more realistic take away is as follows:

Customers don’t know what they want, but they certainly know what problems they have!

The first formal thing I learned in sales at age 14 was, “The customer is king, and they are always right.”

Neither the founder, the CEO or the company is king, nor are they right.

This is a better mantra for you the newbie startup founder.

This guide is here to help you master the startup process.

Here are the elements…

Step 1: Take Stock
Step 2: Market Alignment
Step 3: Contact List
Step 4: Market Research
Step 5: Sales Script
Step 6: Start Selling
Step 7: Product Creation

Let’s begin with…

1) Take Stock

…Step 1 is about Taking Stock of your skills, knowledge, interests and experiences.

This is important because it will set you up for streamlining startup success.

There is no point trying to acquire new skills, knowledge, interests and experiences if you want to start a business quickly, it simply would take too much time.

That being making a sale.

As I bet you have a “business idea” already, this step helps you strike a balance between your “business idea” and what the market wants.

So, I encourage you to abandon your “business idea” and pick an industry or customer segment that aligns to your skills, knowledge, interests and experience.

Remember what I said previously?

Customers don’t know what they want, but they certainly know what problems they have.

Start with listing all your skills, knowledge, interests and experiences.

Don’t filter them, get as many as possible.

Of course, the exact details of how to do this are beyond the scope of this guide.

This leads to the Market Alignment step…

2) Market Alignment

…Step 2 is about aligning your skills, knowledge, interests and experiences with market problems and needs, away from pain or towards pleasure.

This is important because customers purchase products, services or solutions when they want to move away from their current situation and towards a new one – that being away from pain or towards pleasure, ideally in the fastest way possible.

Your product, service or solution is actually a barrier to moving customers away from pain or towards pleasure.

Let me explain…

Think about it this way; the most direct path for a customer would be a short two-step path:

Current situation (pain); then
New situation (pleasure).

With your product, service or solution, the path for a customer is actually a longer three-step path:

Current situation;
Your product, service or solution; then
New situation.

This is the reason humans want magic pills or silver-bullet products, services or solutions, and want results yesterday!

Magic-pills or silver-bullets rarely exist, so you need to sell people what they want (two-step path), but you also have to give them what they need (three-step path).

The more you can speed up or automate your product, service or solution, the better.

You want to reduce the time and effort it takes to move from Step 1 to Step 3 to a minimum.

The fastest or simplest way you can move a customer away from pain or towards pleasure, the more value you add to them and the more you can charge for doing so via your product, service or solution.

The mechanism for this is your product, service or solution offer.

Start by listing customer segments or industries or categories that are related to your skills, knowledge, interests and experiences you listed in Step 1.

A customer segment could be defined as niche of a market that share similar characteristics, that other niches do not.

This may be based on demographic (age, gender and so on) or psychographic (interests, likes and so on) criteria.

Of course, the exact details of how to do this are beyond the scope of this guide.

This leads to the Contact List step…

3) Contact List

…Step 3 is about building a customer segments or industries contact list.

This is important because being in direct contact with people allows you to consistently communicate with them about market research and selling.

Here we come across the first decision tree.

Do you have a contact list of relevant and related customer segments?

If you do not have a contact list of relevant and related customer segments, you need to create one.

Here we are going to target friends and family.

The reason being, they know, like, and trust you already.

And we know marketing and sales only happen when prospects and customers know, like and trust your business.

We want to make your startup journey as easy as possible because in Step 6 you will be selling to your friends and family.

Understand that if you can’t sell your product, service or solution (which we will cover in Step 6) to friends and family, you have no chance in selling to strangers who don’t know, don’t like, and don’t trust you.

This is especially true when they need to factor in opportunity costs as well.

Your friends and family will forgive you, whereas strangers will not.

Opportunity Costs

This is an evaluation of opportunity costs.

An opportunity cost is the cost of an alternative course of action that must be forgone in order to pursue a certain action.

The resources they may call upon could be:

Capital;
Time;
Effort;
Attention; and
Networks and connections;
To name a select few…

The basic strategy here is to:

Reduce their perceived risk in losing those resources in choosing your brand; and
Increase the perceived urgency.

This could be done through the following:

Asking questions to show you understand their situation;
Giving away freebies;
Showing your credibility through success stories, testimonials and case studies;
Highlighting your credentials and expertise;
Comparing price and other currencies;
Offering product service or solution guarantees; and
So on…

But, the easiest path is to contact (and then sell to) friends and family – the Occam’s Razor.

Your goal here is to create a seed list of prospects and customers by collating email addresses from where you can:

Your email address book; and
Your contacts on LinkedIn, Facebook and other social network where you have a presence.

LinkedIn is handy in that it allows you to export your contacts including emails.

And if you setup a new Yahoo! Mail account you can download all your Facebook friends’ email addresses.

You should easily be able to get 20+ contacts who may have a pain you can turn into a gain.

Okay, if you do have a contact list of relevant and related customer segments, you need to then find and list all pains and wanted gain the segment has.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you know what these are (i.e. assumptions).

You won’t know what they are until you have direct contact with potential customers.

So, how do you do this?

Through market research.

Of course, the exact details of how to do this are beyond the scope of this guide.

This leads to the Market Research step…

4) Market Research

…Step 4 is about Market Research.

This is the first part of problem/solution fit I mentioned previously.

This is important because you need to know your prospects and customers’ dreams, fears, problems, needs, mistakes and so on – the things that your products, services or solutions address.

Here we come across the second decision tree.

If your prospects and customers do not want to talk to you about their pains and gains that your product, service or solution can solve, then no further action is needed with that segment.

If your prospects and customers do want to talk to you about this, then you need to ask them specific market research questions.

Research Markets

You need to understand these and several other insights on a very deep level.

External insights are about pains and gains.

Internal insights are about your products, services and solutions.

Most people do not know their prospects and customers’ hot buttons and what makes them really tick.

Market research is success insurance!

What is market research?

Market research “is any organized effort to gather information about customers.”

Amazon.com uses a process called “working backward” for new product, service or solution creation.

Amazon’s CTO, Werner Vogel, said, “Start with your customer and work your way backward until you get to the minimum set of technology requirements to satisfy what you try to achieve.”

They write the press release, the Frequently Asked Questions, and user manual all before the product, service or solution is created.

One of the best quotes I have read on this is by serial entrepreneur, Steve Blank:

“Marketing’s primary role at a startup is to drive sales. Marketing’s job is to make the VP of Sales the richest person in the company. How does marketing do that? Well, marketing’s job number one was to understand customers’ needs, desires, etc. and make sure engineering understood those as well.”

Marketing and sales require some fundamental elements such as:

Qualifying;
Credentials;
Benefits;
An offer;
Call to action; and
So on…

All of your market research must be related to your sales script, but it also should be related to the rest of your marketing and sales communication and offers.

Anything additional is superfluous.

You want to do as copywriter Robert Collier once said: “Enter into the conversation that your prospect is already having in their own mind.”

What?

Humans love homeostasis.

Homeostasis is a condition that remains stable and relatively constant.

Humans are twice as motivated to move away from pain then they are to move towards pleasure.

This makes sense when you consider Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs…

The upper needs, which not all humans can or want to achieve, are about seeking pleasure – things like gaining prestige – and the lower needs are about avoiding pain – things like having shelter from the harsh weather.

This is the logic behind purchases:

Someone has a pain or problem, which means they are not in homeostasis and they are outside their comfort zone.

As humans love homeostasis, they will do anything to return FAST to that stable and relatively constant condition.

Because of this, they are highly motivated to find a solution that will do this.

Any product, service or solution that communicates (through marketing and sales) that will provide the sought outcome or benefit (through the offer) will be purchased.

This lack of homeostasis also means they are highly willing to talk about it and will give you great insight into their worldview.

Your marketing and sales communication should mirror the exact phrases they use.

They should be saying, “This is exactly what I need!” when you communicate.

Human’s also love instant gratification and want to get back to their comfort zone FAST.

They see the value and not the opportunity cost (which I will discuss in-depth later), as they are solely focused on getting back to their comfort zone.

Most people think that we have a conscious thought and then act on it.

MRI scans actually show the reverse: we have an unconscious thought, we take action on it and seven seconds later we become conscious of that original unconscious thought.

This is called confabulation.

Confabulation is where we create a story and rationalize with logic after the fact.

Humans love to buy (biology, emotion, the past, stories) and hate being sold to (logic).

Loving to buy, actually means we are in homeostasis and back in our comfort zone and in “control.”

We get a boost of self-esteem.

Hating being sold to actually means we have no pain or urgency, as we are being convinced to do something and we feel resentment.

Gather a prospect list and ask the following six questions:

“What are their biggest challenges, or what results are they trying to achieve?”;
- This will give you benefits;
“What is the magic pill they think will achieve this?”;
- This will give you features and product, service or solution type;
“If they could solve this immediately, how much would it be worth?”;
- This will give you price range;
“Where and how are they looking to solve this?”;
- This will give you marketing and sales channels;
“What are they considering buying?”;
- This will give you competition and value proposition;
“What will happen if they don’t get this solved?”;
- This will give you motivation and concerns.

Of course, there are so many more questions to ask in market research. The, the exact details of how to do this are beyond the scope of this guide.

Other questions to ask include, external factors, such as demographics and, pains and gains, and internal factors such as product, service, or solution promotional partners.

The questions revolve around a few main areas, both external and internal:

Demographics;
Pains;
Gain; and
Solutions.

It is worth noting that you should not use surveys (quantitative results have a place, such as validating data, but it’s not here).

The process of asking or interviewing them, in the first instance, is qualitative research, which is investigative research to understand their answers deeply by asking further questions, if necessary.

This means it is best to talk to people face-to-face or over the phone, instead of using email or surveys.

There is a place for surveys, which comes later.

Offering a survey at this stage means that you run the risk of asking leading questions.

In law, there is an evidential question called a leading question.

A leading question is a question you ask to hear the information you want to hear.

Put another way, it is a question that prompts or encourages the answer sought.

In other words, it’s information that will confirm any bias you already have.

A survey only has limited information that has no scope for organic follow-up questions like an interview does.

It misses a lot of vital information you don’t know or don’t know that you don’t know.

You need to be asking the “5 Why’s” behind each answer to get to core of the answer:

Why, why, why, why, why!

Your bias and assumptions may not actually align with what your prospects and customers truly want.

These biases are not helpful in the context of marketing and sales, as it will mean you are not addressing exactly what your prospects and customers need.

After you have done this with one prospect or customer, you need to repeat it at least 20 times with 20 plus other prospects or customers, or until you see answers with common denominators starting to emerge.

Don’t count the outlines.

The reason for this is statistical significance.

Once you have completed your market research, then you can confirm and validate this research via a survey.

Here is where surveys are relevant.

This is quantitative research.

You need to add the common denominators to the survey and ask if they are true.

Again, you need to repeat this at least 20 times with 20 plus prospects or customers, or until you see answers with common denominators starting to emerge.

Don’t count the outlines.

The reason for this is statistical significance.

Of course, the exact details of how to do this are beyond the scope of this guide.

This leads to the Sales Script step…

5) Sales Script

…Step 5 is about creating a sales script.

This is the second part of problem/solution fit I mentioned previously.

This is important because nothing matters until you have a sale.

Ask To Buy

You will be asking friends and family TO BUY, not IF THEY WOULD BUY.

This is a very subtle yet, crucial distinction, so it’s worth repeating:

Ask to buy, not if they would buy.

Everyone will say they will buy, because they don’t want to hurt your feelings.

When you ask them to buy, like actually take money out of their wallet and give it to you for your product, service or solution, it becomes real.

You can test this: ask people if they would buy, and when they say “yes” ask them to buy and they will come up will all kinds of objections as why they can’t.

That is “not wanting to hurt your feelings” in action.

Help them save face and just ask them to buy in the first place.

At this point, prospects will have now become customers.

This is a very powerful psychological buying decision.

Objections

Let’s get a little side tracked with sales objections…

Here is a list of some common buying concerns:

Have no need or willingness to pay;
Have the wrong timing and it’s not urgent;
Have no buying authority or ability to pay;
Have no budget or ability to pay;
Do not know what they get with the product, service or solution;
Do not like or trust your brand;
Do not believe (i.e. trust) the product, service or solution will work;
Do not believe (i.e. trust) the product, service or solution will work for them;
Do not think the product, service or solution is valuable; and
Many, many more…

These main objections could be expressed by prospects and customers in the following ways:

“I’m not interested”;
“I can’t afford it”;
“I can’t make the decision”;
“Not right now”;
“How do I know it works?”;
“This is risky for me”;
“I don’t know you”;
“What do I get?”; and
“I’ll think about it.”

Of course, these are just illustrations as the objections could be expressed in infinite other ways.

After you have determined their buying objections, it’s time to address them so they become customers.

Here are some tried-and-true ways to address the same sales concerns listed previously:

Ask them demographic and psychographic questions to re-qualify and segment them and explain what type of customer the product, service or solution is intended to benefit and those it cannot help;
Re-contact them at a later date, inject scarcity, and provide incentives or bonuses along with the purchase;
Same as 1;
Ask them demographic and psychographic questions to re-qualify and segment them and ask who the decision maker is;
Explain the product, service or solution features;
Give them your product, service or solution expertise, credibility, or credentials in the form of informational and educational marketing and sales content to teach them about your brand and give them the brand story behind the product, service or solution;
Provide them with social proof in the form of testimonials and success stories, give them the story behind the product, service or solution, give them your product, service or solution expertise, credibility or credentials in the form of informational and educational marketing and sales content to teach about your brand and explain what type of person the product, service or solution is intended to benefit and those it cannot help;
Provide social proof via case studies, provide a risk reversal in the form of a money back guarantee, give them the story behind the product, service or solution, give them your product, service or solution expertise, credibility or credentials in the form of informational and educational marketing and sales content to teach about your brand, show them the benefits, advantages, results or outcomes that your product, service or solution provides and show your product, service or solution is different or unique; and
Give them the product, service and solution price and translate the value of that price for them into different currencies, such as time and effort.

And based on these, here are some potentially related principles of influence based on Robert Cialdini’s book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion:

Nothing of note;
Nothing of note;
Nothing of note;
Scarcity;
Proof, Authority and Reciprocity;
Proof, Authority and Reciprocity;
Liking (as well as knowing & trusting your brand), Reciprocity and Authority;
Nothing of note; and
Nothing of note.

All of these ways of addressing concerns are tied together with the “Commitment and Consistency” principle of influence in the same book.

Okay, back to the process.

The Sales Script

You need to create a product offer and outline the sales script.

Use the formula also known as the acronym, AIDA:

(A)ttention;
(I)nterest;
(D)esire; and
(A)ction.

The term and format is attributed to Elias St. Elmo Lewis.

When discussing advertising, Lewis said “The mission of an advertisement is to attract a reader, so that he will look at the advertisement and start to read it; then to interest him, so that he will continue to read it; then to convince him, so that when he has read it he will believe it. If an advertisement contains these three qualities of success, it is a successful advertisement.”

This is what they mean:

You first need to attract prospects’ or customers’ attention, cut through and stand out among all the other communication they are receiving;
You then need to engage prospects or customers so they listen to your message;
You then need to help them convince themselves that they desire your offer; and
You finally need them to act on that desire.

These should take into account sales script best practice, that is, stating the:

Brand creation story;
Brand credibility;
Value proposition;
Features;
Benefits;
Advantage;
Who it is for and not for;
The offer;
The price;
That value translated into other currencies;
Guarantees;
Bonuses and incentives;
Testimonials and case studies;
Call to action;
And so on…

This formula is consistent across modality.

The sales script needs to be comprehensive, but in dot-point form.

There should be enough to remind you of the information you want to communicate if you were to speak to them.

It cannot be vague.

This will give you the layout and format of the content.

Start this step with the end in mind – the call to action and what you want the prospect or customer to do once they have consumed it.

Then write the headline to act as a hook to start consuming the sales script.

Next, write out the specifics of the information, then the introduction, and finally the transitions.

Once you have outlined the content in detail, it is time to fill out the content so it makes sense.

This can take a lot of time and is probably the most time-consuming part of the process.

Margins

Most startup founders never build all costs in at the start, such as their wages – they just write that off as volunteering.

Tim Ferriss explains how to do this in The Margin Manifesto: 11 Tenets for Reaching (or Doubling) Profitability in 3 Months:

“Is your pricing scalable? Many companies will sell direct-to-consumer by necessity in early stages, only to realize that their margins can’t accommodate resellers and distributors when they come knocking. If you have a 40% profit margin and a distributor needs a 70% discount to sell into wholesale accounts, you’re forever limited to direct-to-consumer… unless you increase your pricing and margins. It’s best to do this beforehand if possible – otherwise, you’ll need to launch new or “premium” products — so plan distribution before setting pricing.”

Translation

Once you have created your sales script in one format, you then need to “translate” that version into many other versions, formats or designs.

The reason behind this is that you can get far more versions for an incremental bit of extra work.

These could include:

Written;
Audible;
Visual;
Live;
Canned; and
For both digital or physical use.

These other versions of sales scripts are based on the foundation of text you created already.

The most obvious is that a text sales script can be used as an in-person sales script.

Of course, the exact details of how to do this are beyond the scope of this guide.

This leads to the Start Selling step…

6) Start Selling

…Step 6 is about selling your offer, not your product (remember, startup entrepreneurs won’t have created one yet).

This is product/market fit I mentioned previously.

This is important because nothing matters until you have a sale.

Here you will distribute your sales script through any of the “translated” versions to your contact list who you interviewed previously about pains and wanted gains.

You will be doing this in person – face-to-face or over the phone and not using email or surveys as discussed previously.

You will also repeat this process as many times as needed until you make your first sale.

Selling is “scary” as you open yourself up to rejection – again, “no one likes to hear their baby is ugly.”

But, I have given you some tools to overcome objections and because you are selling to friends and family the “scary” factor is significantly reduced.

This is equivalent to a “soft launch” or taking pre-sales as you don’t yet have a product (Step 7).

You can always issue a refund if you cannot deliver and friends and family will be more accepting of this, than anyone else, especially strangers.

It’s worth re-mentioning brand implications, previously discussed.

As it is a “soft launch” to friends and family, no one significant will know that you don’t have a cool logo at this stage.

Of course, the exact details of how to do this are beyond the scope of this guide.

This leads to the Product Creation step…

7) Product Creation

Step 7 is about Product Creation.

This is important because customers purchase products, services or solutions when they want to move away from their current and towards a new situation.

This is part of Scaling mentioned above.

As scaling is not a focus of this guide, I will only briefly mention it.

Do you have a product, service or solution?

If you have been following this guide, you should have abandoned your initial “business idea,” meaning you don’t have a product, service or solution yet.

Once you have made a sale, you need to drop everything else and work as quickly as you can to deliver a product, service or solution on your sales promise.

Now you need to create a product, service or solution based on real customer feedback and pre-sales to actual customers.

Here is where you create your “business idea.”

Product creation is a massive topic and hard to cover here because there are so many types:

Physical;
Digital;
Products;
Services;
Solutions and
So on…

Yep, it’s a big topic and I’ll assume you as the entrepreneur know how to solve your prospects problems based on Step 1.

Of course, the exact details of how to do this are beyond the scope of this guide.

Take Action

You made it.

You now have a solid plan for starting a business quickly and easily.

That’s the full 7 Step Startup System, and it will be more than enough for you to get started on your own.

And if you’re serious about starting a business quickly and easily, the logical next step is to contact me to help you do it yourself, have me do it with you, or have it all done for you.

This maybe the momentum you need to start a business.

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