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Book Review: Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got by Jay Abraham

Jay Abraham is the Founder and CEO of Abraham Group, Inc, a marketing consulting firm that provides strategies to businesses. He has helped many businesses including IBM, Microsoft, and Citibank and is a well-respected voice in the marketing field. Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got details the strategies one can use to grow its business and provides advice on how to reach your personal goal.

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Fall in love with your customers

A common theme that reoccurs is to value your customers. There are numerous marketing resources that talk about the value of being customer-oriented. However, Jay Abraham takes it to another level.

One of the biggest mistakes, probably the biggest mistake, people make in any business is they fall in love with the wrong thing. They fall in love with their product, service or company. You should believe passionately in your product, service, or company. But you should fall in love with your clients. By client, I mean several groups. Not only the people and businesses who pay you for your goods or services. But also your employees, bosses, team members, and vendors. … Fall in love with your clients means taking responsibility for their well being.

Being customer-oriented is not enough. You have to fall in love with your customers and treat them as your valued friend. Having this change in mindset is crucial and will change the way you market and interact with your customers.

A successful business starts with the desire to provide a solution to another’s problem. Put your clients’ need ahead of your own. And rather than asking “What do I have to say to get people to buy?”, ask “What do I have to give?”. See your product as a way to improve your customers’ lives. Once you treat your customers as your valued friend, you will think about ways to improve their lives, which as a result will give you ideas on how to increase your business’ value to your customers.

Growth Strategies

Identify the businesses that are selling to your target market that aren’t competing with you. These businesses tend to be selling something that will complement your product or service. Contact these companies and discuss ways where you can leverage each others’ customer base.

Breakthroughs are unconventionally fresh, superior, more exciting ways of doing something.

Keep an eye on the possible breakthroughs that can be applied to your business. Breakthrough ideas can often be taken from other industries so keep continual access to successful, creative breakthrough developments and achievements. This can come from online resources such as Inc. and Forbes or from networking and brainstorming sessions with success-driven people outside your industry.

USP: The factor or consideration presented by a seller as the reason that one product or service is different from and better than that of the competition.
Determine and communicate your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) through all your marketing channels. Consider the obstacles, which can be financial, emotional, or measurability, that might prevent your prospects from dealing with your business. Some obstacles to consider are listed below:

 

  • Financial: what is the potential financial loss if the transaction doesn’t work out?
  • Emotional: how bad would the customer feel or look if his/her purchase fails to perform?
  • Measurability: can the impact your product or service has on the customer’s life, business, or career be measured and evaluated?

The examples above are only meant to get you thinking. The point is to have a holistic view of the different aspects that can prevent a prospect from dealing with your business. Once you have identified these obstacles you can make risk reversal become an important part of your USP (ex. providing guarantees).

You don’t have the right to determine what the market wants, but you have the duty to find out.

There are always ways you can improve your marketing strategy, so make sure you are constantly A/B testing every marketing component, including price.

Jay Abraham said that the single most important strategy you can use to maximize the value of all your strategies is to communicate on a regular basis with everyone who contributes or ever will contribute, in any way to your business success. This goes hand in hand with his belief that you should treat your customers as your valued friend. You should keep in touch and look after your friends and you should do the same for your customers as well. Don’t be bashful, ask for referrals and provide your customers info on how to locate the referrals for you. Customers from referrals usually end up being your best and most loyal customers.

Besides focusing on your active customers also look into your inactive customers and identify the reasons they stop doing business with you. Often times inactive customers just forgot about your business and can be brought back when reached out.

Summary

Jay Abraham talked about goal setting and how a clear destination and precise road map for getting where you want to be is needed to maximize your potential income or success. However, as mentioned, this book is not a personal development book and the emphasis is on the growth strategies one can adopt to improve one’s business. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has a business. It can provide you value no matter how successful your business is and will be a book I’ll revisit when I start my own company.

I’m currently reading Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss and I look forward to sharing with you the insights I learned from this book as well. For more frequent updates on my learnings, you can follow me on Twitter.

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Book Review: The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau

The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau is a compilation of insights from studying and interviewing people who have built successful microbusinesses. Chris is an author and a traveler who has visited every country in the world. He identified 1,500 people who have built businesses with modest investments, on average less than $600, that have made at least $50,000 per year to identify the common factors of their business success. These business cases show that people with no special skills can build up successful businesses when they merge their passion with a skill that other people value.

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Basics of starting a business

Convergence is the overlapping space between what you care about and what other people are willing to spend money on

Having a viable business idea is about finding that convergence. Chris broke down the basics of starting a business into these 3 points:

  1. You need a product or service
  2. People who are willing to pay for it
  3. A way to get paid

When I think about the basics of starting a business, I think about needing to write a business plan, registering a business, having to understand the rules and regulations of the industry, hiring necessary help, and managing the financials just to name a few. These 3 points that Chris boiled down to forces you to think about the minimum that you need to start your business.

Don’t create invisible barriers for yourself and don’t get bogged down in writing the perfect business plan. Focus on what is required to get your first sale and start doing.

Here is Chris’ one-page business plan that shows what you need to plan out to start your business.

Focus on your customers

Offer is a combination of product or service plus the messaging that makes a case to potential buyers

Having a product or service that people are willing to pay for is simply the first step. You’ll also need to have an offer that will garner the attention of your potential customers. Survey and understand what your customers need and your marketing should emphasize the benefits customers receive rather than the features your product or service have.

Think clearly about the people you plan to serve not only in terms of demographics like age, location, gender, race, income but on interests, passions, skills, beliefs, and values as well. You must learn to think about values the way your customers do and not necessarily the way you would like them to.

Ideas and Opportunities

The hard way to start a business is to fumble along, uncertain whether your big idea will resonate with customers. The easy way is to find out what people want and then find a way to give it to them

Focus on what people want. A product or service that removes pain points is often more powerful than one that fulfills a desire.

An industry with lots of lovers and haters present a good business opportunity. Another sign of good business opportunity is when lots of people are interested in something but have a hard time implementing it in their daily lives.

Get feedback on any ideas you have from your potential target market early on and make sure there is enough demand for your product or service before you invest all your time into it.

Marketing

Hustling is how to get the word out about a project

Developing a product or service is the easy part. The hard part is informing your target market your business value. Leverage any resource you have and ask everyone you know to help spread the word.

Give strategically. You can target influential people who are in need of your product or service and offer it to them for free. It may or may not generate good word of mouth for you but you’ll have helped improve someone’s life. Always think about what your customers need. An additional service like free delivery or an extra coupon can make your customers feel valued and make your business stand out among your competitors.

Having a good product or service is just half the battle, so make sure you are always connecting and looking for ways to attract more customers.

Summary

This book contains numerous small business cases which you can draw ideas from. It shows you how different people are able to transform part of their skills to bring value to their customers.

The emphasis of this book is on starting microbusinesses, so if you are planning to start a resource intensive/high investment business this book might not be for you. However, if you have a passion you will like to monetize, I’ll definitely recommend this book to you.