To learn more about improving conversions, Paul highly recommends Always Be Testing by Bryan and Eisenberg
  • Bryan is also the co-author (with his brother, Jeffrey) of Be Like Amazon (which Roland recommends) and Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?
Roland thought Henry Ford’s autobiography, My Life and Work, was a great read
Paul Lemberg (@Paul_Lemberg) is a business coach who, simply put, helps entrepreneurs make more money 
  • Paul has consulted with Fortune-100 companies like Cisco, Adobe, IBM, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan/Chase, Mass Mutual, and Accenture, but his real and true passion is helping small business owners and CEOs double and triple their profits, and sometimes grow their companies more than 10-fold
  • Check out his website
This old product of Paul’s is a 5-step recipe for business success:
  • 1) Improve lead generation
  • 2) Improve conversion
  • 3) Improve margin 
  • 4) Monetize the customer
    • Most businesses sell 1 product to 1 group 1 time. That’s it! They’re missing out on a lot of money!
  • 5) Master systematization, prioritization, and use of time
    • The main premise: gain more leverage so you can execute the first 4 steps
Let’s dig deeper:
  • Before worrying about leads, just like Reid Reid Hoffman (co-founder of LinkedIn) has famously said – “In the beginning, you have to do things that DON’T scale”
    • AKA you have to do things that don’t systematize
  • Step 1: Get leads any way you can
  • Step 2: Figure out your closing process (which then allows you to go and get more leads)
  • Step 3: Once the money starts coming in, begin to think about raising prices 
  • Step 4: Figure out the overall monetization strategy
  • Step 5: When all of the above is working, implement a system
He’d first examine prices (and very often think about raising them)
Then he’d examine monetization
  • Every business needs to constantly be asking – “Are we doing the most to create value for the customer”
    • Creating that value often involves upselling, which many salespeople don’t like to do because they view it as sleazy 
      • Paul recalls this line from Jay Abraham – “What you’re doing when you’re upselling is helping your customer get the full value of the thing they were trying to get that they’re typically too cheap to buy”
        • Paul adds – Most people don’t get the full value (utility, fun joy, satisfaction, etc.) of what they’re looking for and they don’t get it simply because there’s a part of every human being that tries to conserve resources (AKA $)
        • As an example – If you’re buying a new suit, the salesperson’s job is to help you figure out what it is you’re trying to achieve by buying a new suit in the first place and help you get there
          • If a new suit costs $5,000, your survival instincts will lead you to believe spending that much money on a suit is utterly ridiculous – the salesperson’s job is to help you overcome that through an upsell
“People talk about LTV… lifetime total value or lifetime customer value. Lifetime is a really stupid measure. How long does that lifetime take?”
  • “If lifetime is 6 months and then the customer’s out, that’s fine. I can count to 6 months.”
  • But on the off chance a customer will be a 30-year buyer (or even a 5-year buyer), there’s just no way to forecast that 
  • So… Paul thinks of the “L” in LTV as “long-term” – NOT lifetime
    • “Long-term is how long you can afford to have the money out”
    • For example – If you have 6-months of runway capital, then your long-term perspective should be 6 months (so you’d ask – “What’s the value of my customer in 6 months?”)
The question is always the same – “What’s the customer trying to accomplish and how can I help them accomplish that?”
If the customer’s dreams are already satisfied, the corollary question is – “What else does a person who’s thinking about X need that I can also help them with?”
  • Here are some possibilities:
    • Package some sort of car service with the car purchase (i.e. free oil changes)
    • If it’s a luxury car, upselling a set of designer bags
    • If people who buy a certain brand of car enjoy going tailgating, why not upsell a complete tailgating package?
    • Packaging a year of Uber/Lyft rides with the car purchase
    • Securing a discount on your next car purchase (or a car purchase for a family member) with the current car purchase
      • Why are car dealerships not asking if you want another car for someone else in your family when you buy a car for yourself???!!!
In general, ask – “Where’s the utility the customer is trying to get to and how can I help them get there?”
  • OR – “What value is a customer trying to satisfy when they purchase our product? Is there anything else I can provide that would help them obtain that value?”
Always be testing a different conversion path (AKA how you turn someone who indicates interest in the thing you have to offer into a customer)
  • If you have a 5% conversation and you discover a different conversion path that results in a 6% conversion… that’s 20% more money!
  • Where do you start?
    • Look at the space where you’re losing the most customers in your process
    • Expanded: Attack the step in your sales process where you’re losing the most leads by volume – start by testing this area
  • What do you test?
    • Test anything you can think of. A few examples:
      • Changing the background color of a sales page
      • Changing the font
      • Altering the headline
    • Related to the above, Paul highly recommends Always Be Testing by Bryan and Eisenberg
      • Bryan is also the co-author (with his brother, Jeffrey) of Be Like Amazon (which Roland recommends) and Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?
      • (Certain people, like Bryan, prefer not to test anything they don’t believe has the potential to result in at least a doubling of sales)
  • One thing to realize:
    • You DON’T have to test just one thing at a time (many prefer to do this as it’s easier to see what specifically made a difference)
      • Instead, create a whole new sales page – if it works better, who cares what made the difference?
      • Go for impact, not the excitement of knowing what made the difference
The real questions:
  • “Are you using your time as best as you can?”
  • “Across the board, are things being done in a way that allows you to produce a consistent result with the least amount of time?”
The two requirements for scaling a business:
  • 1) You want consistent and predictable results so that no matter who’s running the process/system in your business it works out roughly the same way 
    • (Make it so the business can run without you)
    • But what if you’re an artist?
      • Perhaps you can have other people paint certain parts of your paintings?
      • Ask yourself – “What can be outsourced or delegated?” (there’s always something)
        • Then systematize those things
      • Lastly – only do what you’re great at/what you enjoy doing the most 
  • 2) You want your expense for operating a certain process/system to go down with higher levels of revenue (or at least stay flat) 
    • (As you grow your business, the costs should go down)
    • Anything that’s not based on individual people or rare/scarce raw materials should drop in cost as the business scales
    • “Anywhere you have a process you can repeat, test, and make better… all of this automatically makes things more efficient, reduces costs, and allows you to do more without applying more input”
    • Whenever Paul helps someone scale a business, he’ll ask – “What is the capacity of this business to deliver more of what it’s got without investing more in?”
      • The fact is: most things CAN be scaled
Some people don’t want to scale or grow their businesses – that’s okay!
Most people aren’t your customer – that’s okay!
Not everyone wants to be an entrepreneur – that’s okay!
  • People who work a 9-5 get to FORGET about work when they walk out of the office – the benefits of this can’t be overstated
Check out Paul’s Formula 5 update – Formula 5 Hyperdrive
Someone recently sent Roland a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle aged hot sauce
Pau’s favorite hot sauce: Tapatío – “It’s not fancy, but it works”
Paul has started to work on a book which he plans to title, How to Sell at Higher Prices Than Your Competitors
Roland thought Henry Ford’s autobiography, My Life and Work, was a great read