Letters from Michael E. Gerber - E-myth Mastery
Highlights (in no particular order)
Customer perception & behavior
Purchasing decision are based on
- 1/3 price (want to pay less)
- 1/3 market (pay at market price)
- 1/3 emotionally gratification (don't mind paying more), needs attention or absolute precision or the best
Choice of words used
- "good" a value buyer - value for money
- "better" a comparative buyer - lots of choices
- "the best" a Experimental buyer - cannot talk about price to them, else to them is hard sell
Common agreement
- if you are the best, you are not the cheapest
- if you are the fastest, you are not the cheapest
Therefore 2/3 of shopper don't mind paying more for more,
so marketeers need to explain, need to differentiate (USP)
Personality type
- Interpersonal : wants more attention
- Introvert buyer : wants straight to the point
- Objective buyer : appreciates "system & technology"
Market reseach
- Customer Service
- Lead conversion
- Lead generation
Product Market Grid
Create table for product grid
Product line vs market segments
Put in Sales revenue & Sales % of each segment/product line
Then companies will be able to identify segments which need more attention, or to be eliminated
True Entreprenuer Starts business by
- carefully research market to know what is needed, and by whom
- even if market is saturated, he will be able to find the 9 psychographic profiles
Marketing is about
- learn something about your customer, name, tel, address, DOB, sex,email,professional, history - demographic
- Social (Extraverted or Interpersonal), Tactile (Hands on or objective), or Creative (Inventive or Introverted)
- knowing your client's professional history will help to target specifically 1/9 of population, to max efficiency
- Customer Questionaire: script prepared to enable any employee to call existing customer,t ell them "we are updating our customer information" and ask for missing pieces of the puzzle, most importantly email addresses and professioal histories.
Success lies in fulfilling each customer precisely as promised in the USP. This fulfilment is magnified by develpoing an intimate relationship with each customer
Success in Lead generation
1) Develpo a customer database, well defined
2) plan out ritual of contact
Basics of a Business Plan - it should contain,
1) who are you, what kind of biz do you want to build
2) What do you want the money for
3) how much do you need
4) how will you pay it back
5 step
a) The company story - 1 page
b) the current opportunity - 2 pages
c) the budget & the payback - 2 page
d) supporting documentation - 3 pages
Imagine if a friend wants to visit your business, what would you show him?
Culture & Identity
- professional & learning environment
- system driven rather than personality driven
- e.g. look, dress, personalities, standards,essense, values are to be perpetuated too
- when is a question is ask e.g what is the image of your personal trainer? - we need one consistent answer from all PTs
- define our purpose, what we do, how we make ppl feel, pride, how we raise the bar etc
High Performance Environment
- Primary work is strategising
- Secondary work is of the business
Spend 20% to 100% purely on strategic work
4 steps to the journey of creating High Performance Environment
1) Integrate the vision
2) Build the Structure
3) train and provide the tools
4) Quantify and evaluate
This HPE makes the game worth playing for all. Engage ppl fully and they are able to use their potentially fully to reach higher levels of personal and professional competence, with each new challenges. This is the best way to keep everyone in the game.
Model monthly meeting - Make it a ritual, corporate culture: result- there will only be implemented actions rather than unresolves issues on your desk. This is a way of Perpetual and institutionalised self improvement.
Time : <1 hr, only 4 agenda, 15 min each
Each employee to stand up 1 min to answer the following question:
1) what is the best improvement you notice this past month?
2) What issue/idea of yours doen not appear in the master plan?
3) What issue/idea on the master plan do you consider our top priority?
4) What action plan will you pledge to write during the next 30 days?
- eventually everyone will appreciate that we need to prioritise
Everyone to write one action plan per month, forever.
- eventually all processes will be well documented
- and the next step would be to improve existing action plans
The Job of business owner are :
- to listen (not to dictate or dominate)
- to support
- to inspire
- to provide employee with whatever they need to get their well docuemnted and well defined task accomplished
USP - Unique Selling Proposition
Study customer to get precise profile to target.
Be courageous and target just that profile.
Communicate your message succinctly and boldly.
Examples
NationsRent - "No Sweat"
Put in USP is everything, from business cards, adverts, fax, email. Every employee mentions the USP, tel calls etc
Precision cost money and takes time.
Everytime we promise more than just one and exactly one primary fulfilment promise, we are contradicting ourselves.
Like how can you be the best and at the same time the lowest in price? Or you will need to be really good at segmenting the market.
Nokia - Connecting people : aim at Extoverted/performance buyer
Hertz rent a car - Exactly : aim at Objective/Experimental buyers
Use adjectives that best describes the folks you satisfy best, all the time, everytime, most profitably.
Cashflow Forecasting
It is the key system in keeping companies out of trouble. It is vital tool to turnaround companies.
It should include projected cash inflow and outflow
Accounting
Separate fix costs such as rental and salary from variable cost such as direct materials and labour.
Positioning statement
Customer make buying decision in the first 6 seconds - after looking at the position statement, USP.
3 sentence format
10 The key anxiety experienced by your customer or industry
2) the anxiety relief your product or service promises to provide
3) The fulfilment system describing the "total experience"
90% of advertisement conform to the above. e.g.
1) look at the dirt on the T-shirt : Frustration
2) Now he has the clean shirt after washing with Tide : relief
3) Because of Tide's amazing new ingredient : the name & the magic potion
Position statement need to be every where just like the USP: email, newsletter etc
Prototyping Franchise System
Deveolop a computer file, outlining the entire operational manual then meet each month on perpetual basis to decide on what document to be created in the following month.
1) Create a basic outline
2) list of action plan to accompany and expand that outline
If a team member has an issue he will bring it to the leader, and meet every week to resolve it.
Each action plan implemented will be a system in place, allowing the manager to have more time to work on the business.
Eceryday's work should be outline in the operational manual.
One system a week, will give 52 system and in 5 years 300 systems in place.
Process flow chart should be added in the action plan. Its good for communicating to team members and to improve the system. Some companies even put the fulfilment system in fax correspondance to their clients. It becomes a marketing tool of sort.
First response Letter
standardise letter you send out to a prospect who contacts your business.
Depends on preference of the prospect, can be snail mail, email or fax
- while acknowledging clients key frustration/anxiety
- then prescribe your anxiety relief
- describe your strenght
Have this letter ready, send out to all enquiries, from emails, seminars, exhibitions etc
Psychologist says, you have first 12 lines to make a sale (telephone is first 6 sec)
Therefore place the positioning statements first.
Standard Letter Format
1) One sentence, acknowledging why you are writing to them: "it was great meeting you at the convention last week" or Thank you for your letter, receive on October 15, requesting information about our product and services
2) positioning system, word for word
3) chance to brag about years on business, accpomplishments, awards and strenght
4) call to action " acctached is the a brochure about our company. I will call you next monday, oct 28 at 10am to foloow up and answer any questions you may have.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
SpaceShip Earth - Summary
Squeezed Version : Operating Manual For Spaceship EarthShare
author : Buckminister Fuller
1 - We can predict human's achievements in the next 25 yrs based on the the past achievements. We need to think comprehensively, as we humans have the weakness of clinging on a solution to a problem devised in times of need in the past, without improving or rethinking about it. Metaphorically, just like clinging onto a piano top to survive after the ship has sunk; and in the future all life boats were based on the design of a piano top, although piano top is not necessarily the best design as a lifesaver in the high seas.
2 - The origin of specialisation of humans (jobs) were closely tied to the human sociological hierachical nature (King & subject, Masters & servant), and colonisation. This is not a land planet with sea. The Earth is actually a planet with one vast ocean and some land masses. Those who first master the great ocean with good ships and navigation, ruled the world. These masters had the advantage of information especially about the distribution of resources. Therefore, they employ other humans to work and find solutions for them. Schools were deviced to train servants for these masters. Bucky called these masters as Great Pirates because they operated beyond the law, they set the new law, they even could influence the local customs. e.g. How the British ruled the empire just by controlling the local 'Kings'.
3 - WWI was the turn of event, when these old pirates was fighting a war they couldn't win without the help of the experts (scientist and other specialists). Thus signally the end of the Great Pirate era. But they had left a legacy of their way of econmic accounting, exchange rates, trade balance etc. And also the world concept then was influenced by Thomas Malthus who said humans multiply geometrically and resources by arithmetically. Darwinian's idea of survival of the fittest. This was where the idea of 'scarcity', 'not enough', 'world going into entropy' came about. Marxists' communism went the other extreme by proposing production workers are the most important. Modern science has found out that, the main reason for extinction is actually due to over specialisation. In other words, inflexible, cannot adapt to change.
4 - Why is the Earth a spaceship? It is spining, and travelling 60k/hr orbting the sun, and the solar system is orbiting the centre of the Milky way. It is a self contain system, with the Sun as the energy giving mother ship. By devine design, there isn't any instruction manual because this will force us to use our intellect, enabling us to find many ways to solve or antipate problems. Human child stays helpless longer than any other animal, and he needs to learn almost everthing around him. The total recources of the earth was big enough for humans to experiment and learn the general principal of nature / God.
5 - the resorces of the earth is liken to the egg yoke, providing humans nutrients to grow, before having a strong body and breaking out of the 'shell'. We have just broken the shell, and we will need to spread our wings of intellect or perish. The brain is physical, the mind is metaphysical. So far we are able to define the physical but has yet to comprehend fully the metaphysical. As both combined forms the total universe. Synergy - on its own the Sun giving energy to earth, and the moon causes tidal effect on the sea etc, but put all these elements together, we have the current life sustaining environment on Earth.
6 - We are essential to the regenerating evolution on earth. Just like all the other factors such as gravity, the sun & the moon. We are destine to help to improve the earth. Wealth is not money. And wealth cannot buy yesterday. Wealth is define the number of days we can survive forward, in simple terms. We have vast amount of income (wealth) receive from the Sun in the form of energy.
Law of conservation of energy, says energy cannot be destroyed, it just change to another form. Einsteins' E=MC^2 shows the relationship between Energy and matter (things). Energy actually can be converted to matter vice versa as proven by the atomic bomb. Therefore energy/matter cannot be increased or decreased. However metaphysical portion of wealth is ever incresing. Such as human experience and knowledge, can only increase and not decrease. To sum up, the physical wealth cannot be decreased, and the metaphysical wealth can only increase, it means that, every time we use our wealth it will only increase. Wealth is the product of progessive mastery of matter by mind. Hence all the current accounting system for wealth are based on anti-synergistic and does not reflect the true nature of wealth.
7 - Integral function - man is able to discover and use the general principles of the universe. Just like the same concept of leverage or cup. A cup instead of hands is better for holding water, and if made of ceramic, it also can hold hot water or caustic chemeicals. Our discoveries are accelerating at an accelerating rate.
8 - Regerative landscape - We as human are designed to take care of our Earth. We are all essentially the same, orignated from the same ancestors. As our ancestors migrated to various parts of the world, in breeding and the environment, cause our features and skin colours to be different. Population explosion is a myth, as we industrialise, people will have lesser babies and live longer.
Bucky urged planners, architects and engineers to take the initiatives, go to work and cooperate. there is muct to gain working in synergy than to working at the expense of the other. These are the synergistic rules that evolution is employing and trying to make clear to us. They are not man made laws. They are the infinitely accommodative laws of the intellectual integrity governing universe.
author : Buckminister Fuller
1 - We can predict human's achievements in the next 25 yrs based on the the past achievements. We need to think comprehensively, as we humans have the weakness of clinging on a solution to a problem devised in times of need in the past, without improving or rethinking about it. Metaphorically, just like clinging onto a piano top to survive after the ship has sunk; and in the future all life boats were based on the design of a piano top, although piano top is not necessarily the best design as a lifesaver in the high seas.
2 - The origin of specialisation of humans (jobs) were closely tied to the human sociological hierachical nature (King & subject, Masters & servant), and colonisation. This is not a land planet with sea. The Earth is actually a planet with one vast ocean and some land masses. Those who first master the great ocean with good ships and navigation, ruled the world. These masters had the advantage of information especially about the distribution of resources. Therefore, they employ other humans to work and find solutions for them. Schools were deviced to train servants for these masters. Bucky called these masters as Great Pirates because they operated beyond the law, they set the new law, they even could influence the local customs. e.g. How the British ruled the empire just by controlling the local 'Kings'.
3 - WWI was the turn of event, when these old pirates was fighting a war they couldn't win without the help of the experts (scientist and other specialists). Thus signally the end of the Great Pirate era. But they had left a legacy of their way of econmic accounting, exchange rates, trade balance etc. And also the world concept then was influenced by Thomas Malthus who said humans multiply geometrically and resources by arithmetically. Darwinian's idea of survival of the fittest. This was where the idea of 'scarcity', 'not enough', 'world going into entropy' came about. Marxists' communism went the other extreme by proposing production workers are the most important. Modern science has found out that, the main reason for extinction is actually due to over specialisation. In other words, inflexible, cannot adapt to change.
4 - Why is the Earth a spaceship? It is spining, and travelling 60k/hr orbting the sun, and the solar system is orbiting the centre of the Milky way. It is a self contain system, with the Sun as the energy giving mother ship. By devine design, there isn't any instruction manual because this will force us to use our intellect, enabling us to find many ways to solve or antipate problems. Human child stays helpless longer than any other animal, and he needs to learn almost everthing around him. The total recources of the earth was big enough for humans to experiment and learn the general principal of nature / God.
5 - the resorces of the earth is liken to the egg yoke, providing humans nutrients to grow, before having a strong body and breaking out of the 'shell'. We have just broken the shell, and we will need to spread our wings of intellect or perish. The brain is physical, the mind is metaphysical. So far we are able to define the physical but has yet to comprehend fully the metaphysical. As both combined forms the total universe. Synergy - on its own the Sun giving energy to earth, and the moon causes tidal effect on the sea etc, but put all these elements together, we have the current life sustaining environment on Earth.
6 - We are essential to the regenerating evolution on earth. Just like all the other factors such as gravity, the sun & the moon. We are destine to help to improve the earth. Wealth is not money. And wealth cannot buy yesterday. Wealth is define the number of days we can survive forward, in simple terms. We have vast amount of income (wealth) receive from the Sun in the form of energy.
Law of conservation of energy, says energy cannot be destroyed, it just change to another form. Einsteins' E=MC^2 shows the relationship between Energy and matter (things). Energy actually can be converted to matter vice versa as proven by the atomic bomb. Therefore energy/matter cannot be increased or decreased. However metaphysical portion of wealth is ever incresing. Such as human experience and knowledge, can only increase and not decrease. To sum up, the physical wealth cannot be decreased, and the metaphysical wealth can only increase, it means that, every time we use our wealth it will only increase. Wealth is the product of progessive mastery of matter by mind. Hence all the current accounting system for wealth are based on anti-synergistic and does not reflect the true nature of wealth.
7 - Integral function - man is able to discover and use the general principles of the universe. Just like the same concept of leverage or cup. A cup instead of hands is better for holding water, and if made of ceramic, it also can hold hot water or caustic chemeicals. Our discoveries are accelerating at an accelerating rate.
8 - Regerative landscape - We as human are designed to take care of our Earth. We are all essentially the same, orignated from the same ancestors. As our ancestors migrated to various parts of the world, in breeding and the environment, cause our features and skin colours to be different. Population explosion is a myth, as we industrialise, people will have lesser babies and live longer.
Bucky urged planners, architects and engineers to take the initiatives, go to work and cooperate. there is muct to gain working in synergy than to working at the expense of the other. These are the synergistic rules that evolution is employing and trying to make clear to us. They are not man made laws. They are the infinitely accommodative laws of the intellectual integrity governing universe.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Friday, May 15, 2009
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