Brief Summary
This video discusses nine steps to building a million-dollar business, based on Simon Squibb's personal experience. The key takeaways are:
- Focus on action: Don't get caught up in trying to be a certain type of person, instead focus on the behaviors that lead to desired traits.
- Identify your target market: Understand who you're selling to and what their needs are.
- Develop a strong sales framework: Use a structured approach to guide your sales conversations and overcome objections.
- Continuously improve: Track your progress, identify what works, and refine your approach to maximize your results.
- Stick with it: Success comes from consistent effort and perseverance, even when it's challenging.
Intro
Simon Squibb and Alex discuss nine steps to building a million-dollar business. These steps include figuring out who you are, identifying your target market, determining what to sell, getting customers to buy, increasing purchase frequency, building a team, maintaining your advantage, sticking with it, and continuously improving.
Who Are You
Simon emphasizes the importance of focusing on behaviors rather than traits. He argues that traits like charisma or patience are bundled terms that represent a series of specific behaviors. To develop these traits, one should identify the associated behaviors and practice them consistently. He uses the example of charisma, breaking it down into behaviors like nodding, repeating back what someone says, smiling, and speaking with volume and variation. He believes that by practicing these behaviors, one will be perceived as charismatic.
Who To Sell To & What To Sell Them
Simon discusses the importance of understanding your target market and how it influences what you sell. He suggests three key factors to consider: pain, profession, and passion. Pain refers to solving problems that people are experiencing, profession involves leveraging existing skills, and passion focuses on building a business around something you're genuinely interested in. He emphasizes that selling to people like yourself, who understand your own problems, can be a highly effective strategy. He also highlights the importance of pricing, market size, and the ease of finding your target audience.
Get Them To Buy
Simon introduces his "CLOSER" sales framework, which he has used successfully for years. The framework consists of six steps: Clarify, Label, Overview, Deprive, Sell, and Explain/Reinforce. Clarify involves understanding why a potential customer is interested in your product or service. Label involves identifying the customer's problem and summarizing it for them. Overview involves exploring the customer's past experiences with similar solutions. Deprive involves reminding the customer of the pain they've experienced and the deprivation they're currently facing. Sell involves presenting the solution in a compelling way, focusing on the benefits rather than the features. Explain/Reinforce involves addressing any concerns the customer may have and reinforcing their decision to buy.
How Many Times
Simon discusses strategies for increasing the number of times a customer buys from you. He outlines eight key methods: price increase, cost reduction, repeat purchase, continuity (subscriptions), quality upgrade, downsell, cross-sell, and problem-solution cycles. He emphasizes that solving a customer's problem often creates new problems, providing opportunities for further sales. He also highlights the importance of understanding customer buying cycles and being present with relevant offers when customers are most receptive.
Who Helps You
Simon discusses the importance of building a team to support your business. He outlines four key methods for attracting and retaining talent: warm outreach (reaching out to people you know), content marketing (posting about your business), cold outreach (reaching out to strangers), and paid advertising. He emphasizes that the same principles used to attract customers can be applied to attracting employees. He also introduces a framework for managing the employee lifecycle, including lead generation, nurture, sales (interviewing), onboarding, retention, and ascension (career development).
Keep Your Advantage
Simon emphasizes the importance of building a strong brand and continuously innovating to maintain your advantage. He explains that a brand makes a promise to customers, and the way that promise is delivered must evolve over time to stay relevant. He highlights the importance of R&D (research and development) and prioritizing resources based on the impact, expense, reach, and confidence of potential solutions. He defines strategy as the prioritization of resources and introduces a value equation that considers dream outcome, perceived likelihood of achievement, time delay, and sacrifice/effort.
Stick With It
Simon emphasizes the importance of perseverance and highlights that the most significant gains often come at the end of a long journey. He explains that motivation is often driven by deprivation, and that it's crucial to surround yourself with people who are closer to your goals. He encourages viewers to identify their heroes and mentors, and to focus on the behaviors that align with their desired outcomes. He also emphasizes the importance of being willing to make trade-offs and to cut out things that don't contribute to your goals.
Getting Better
Simon discusses the importance of continuous improvement and defines work as volume multiplied by leverage. He emphasizes that output is more important than effort, and that leverage can be increased through skill development. He encourages viewers to track their progress, identify common factors in their successes, and focus on replicating those factors. He also highlights the importance of starting from zero and embracing the competitive advantage that comes with having nothing to lose. He concludes by emphasizing the importance of a mental framework for continuous improvement, suggesting that identifying and replicating the common factors in your best experiences can lead to significant progress over time.
