“Top-10 Insights From the World’s Richest Man”

Bezos’ $1,000,000 Letters

Once a year, the world’s richest man takes time away from running the most successful business in the world to share the insights into what has made them both successful.

These insights are encapsulated in the annual shareholders letter that Jeff Bezos crafts for Amazon.com’s owners, and I’ve been taking this last week to read all twenty-one of them.

I’m deviating from the usual article this week to share what I consider to be the “Top 10” insights that struck me as particularly interesting and consequential.

I think you’ll agree.

Top-10 Insights

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Implement These Three Tactics to Improve Your Conversion Rate

This article is the second in a series covering the foundational principles in sales and marketing: traffic – conversions – scaling/economics.

Part 1 of the series is about the first foundational principle in sales:  getting high quality prospects into your sales funnel.  You can read it here.

Part 2 of the series is on the second foundational principle in sales: the ability to influence a prospect to the point that they convert into a paying client.

If your business has stagnated, you may think you have a traffic problem.  You think that if you could only get more high-quality leads into your funnel then you would see your bottom line significantly improve.

The reality is that you have a conversion problem.

Your traffic is perfectly adequate.

You’re getting lots of opportunities at the plate but are only converting a handful into hits.  To rectify the situation, you need to critically and unemotionally look at your funnel and apply the following principles:

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How to Find High-Quality Traffic for Your Sales Funnel

Traffic – Conversions – Scaling/Economics

This week’s message is the first in a new series covering the foundational principles in sales and marketing: traffic – conversions – scaling/economics.

Part 1 – Traffic:  The sales process begins by getting high quality prospects into your sales funnel.  If you’re struggling with a lack of high quality leads you should pay careful attention to these “fundamental principles” for finding high quality traffic.

Remember:  Be deliberate.  Be disciplined.  Test everything.

Step 1:  Ideal prospect profiling. 

Who is the exact ideal candidate for your product or service?

Do you know?

Describe them in as much detail as you can to include:

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The Prospect, the Seller, and the Invisible Wall – Risk Reversal in Action.

Last week I introduced a powerful psychological tool that will significantly increase your customer conversion rate called risk reversal.

(If you haven’t read it yet you should check it out here).

Risk reversal works no matter what kind of product or service you’re offering and is free to use, simple to implement, and extremely powerful when applied properly.

In this follow-up article I want to dive into more detail and show you the exact steps to make risk reversal work for you.

I guarantee that by the end of this article you’ll have everything you need to implement this technique in your own business and see immediate results.

In the beginning

Any time two people come together to conduct business one party always bears more risk than the other.  Most times the risk is financial, but it can also be psychological or emotional as well. (eg, The fear of making a mistake or the fear of looking bad in front of others.)  You can and should think of these risks as an “invisible wall” that exists between you and your prospect.  The wall is also called “sales resistance” and exists

Continue reading “The Prospect, the Seller, and the Invisible Wall – Risk Reversal in Action.”

“How to Reverse Risk and Increase Conversions” (Part 1)

 You may be asking yourself one or more of the following questions:
“How do I increase website conversions?”
“How do I make my sales offer more appealing?”
“Why aren’t my prospects converting to customers?”
If so, read on because there is a powerful psychological tool available to you to increase the number of prospects who convert to purchase your product.
It is inexpensive (but not free) and simple (but not easy) to implement.  The tool is applicable for any product or service you could possibly offer and is effective on any human being across the planet.
Do you know what it is?

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“How to Uncover Qualified Prospects”

 Last week’s article was in regards to the types of sales and marketing tasks that are exponentially more valuable than others.  If you haven’t read it yet I’d encourage you to catch up here first.

Today I will dive in and show you more detail on one of those $10,000/ hour tasks:  the ability to “identify and sell to high-value customers and groups.”  It is one of the most valuable uses of your time and can easily produce between 100 and 1,000 times a return on your time invested.

There’s a mystery you need to solve first before you can unlock 100x returns though.

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Sales and Marketing “Pareto Power Tasks”

 Do you ever wonder where you should be prioritizing your time and energy when it comes to your sales and marketing efforts?
What activities are the “highest and best use” of a founder and CEOs time?

I’m sure you’ve heard the term “80/20 rule” or “Pareto Principle” thrown around before. If so, you probably know that is was coined by the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto in 1896 as an expression of his observation that roughly 20% of land owners held 80% of the land. His observation has since been tested and found evident in many, many different aspects of life and business. And indeed, it applies to you too as a founder and CEO.

Your mission (should you choose to accept it) is to identify the 20% of activities in your day that will produce 80% of of your sales and marketing results.

You probably already have an instinctive feel for what these activities are. Why don’t you take a brief moment to think about what they are. Then we can compare lists and see how well you did.

You back with me? I didn’t lose you did I? Ok, great.

Here’s the list courtesy of master marketer Perry Marshall from his book “80/20 Sales and Marketing.”

These are the tasks that are worth approximately $10,000/hour to your business:

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