How to be the number one business in your niche

FOUNDATION TRAINING ON POWERFUL BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

REPORT 3

HOW TO BE THE NUMBER ONE B U S IN E SS IN Y OUR NICH E

CCS HELPS YOU GROW YOUR PRACTICE At Click.Convert.Sell we use lean startup, theory of constraints, direct response marketing, market leadership, inbound marketing & marketing automation to help our clients succeed.

Delivering you: More Customers More Sales. More Profits.

The Click.Convert.Sell model is designed to position your business as the market leader in your chosen area. In this foundational training we go through the different elements of the powerful business intelligence worksheet. To ensure you have the understanding that we can then build on the more powerful elements of your business growth engine.

We know there are only 3 ways to grow a business.

1. Get more customers 2. Increase the transaction size.

3. Increase the frequency of purchase.

So everything we do is designed to increase one or several of these metrics.

We only work with one type of business per geographic area so that we can ensure they dominate their niche.

If you’ve got a business and you want to grow it to be the market leader in your area then get in touch.

Dr Aalok Y Shukla Founder of Click.Convert.Sell

@Sales_Automator Facebook.com/clickconvertsell clickconvertsell@gmail.com clickconvertsell.com

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Aalok Y Shukla:

Alfred, so we talked about positioning. We know why it’s important, but now I want to talk about how do you actually use this information? How do you be number one in your area?

Alfred Egesi:

All right, all right. Well number one... Number two’s good, but number one’s fantastic.

Aalok Y Shukla:

Absolutely. There’s like a logarithmic actual change. Like I think number one on Google gets a multiple of what number two does.

I think like with ice cream. Like I think the most popular ice cream is vanilla, and I think that’s maybe like 70% of people want that.

Then chocolate is like number two and that’s maybe 20%. It’s never stepped.

Alfred Egesi:

Look at horse racing. The horse who wins, who might be like a nose in front, gets ten times the prize money.

Aalok Y Shukla:

Yeah. Winner takes all. It’s important to make sure, if you’re going to be in business, if you’re going to be trusting your livelihood and your life to making sure that your business provides you what you want and you want to provide the very best service you can for your customers. It’s your duty to make it the best you possibly can do.

Alfred Egesi:

Right. And to take position, create a position, defend it from competitors, and from other distractions in the mind of the customer.

Aalok Y Shukla:

Yes.

Alfred Egesi:

So when they have that problem, they might even be clear about the problem, but when they have it, you’re the gleaming neon sign that flashes in their mind.

Aalok Y Shukla:

So like Peter Drucker says, “The only purpose of a business is to create and retain a customer. The customer is the only profit center in a business.” So it all starts with the customer. It’s not about you, it’s about them.

Alfred Egesi:

What’s the reason you’re in business?

Aalok Y Shukla:

Absolutely. What’s the problem they’re walking around with? Where are they walking around? Where are they looking? That’s where it starts - understanding in detail, the needs, wants, hopes, desires of that customer. You got to know their psychographics and also their demographics. So what do they think? What do they hope for?

How do they decision make? What do they associate with? Plus it depends on where are they? How can you get to them? What other things would they potentially like and how could I reach them?

Alfred Egesi:

Right, right. So essentially getting that message, your important message, I am... Well not so much aggrandizement, okay, but you are number one. And getting that message to them. Breaking through all the clutter and getting through to them.

Aalok Y Shukla:

In multiple ways. So imagine you’re looking down at Liverpool Station and you see all these people, a sea of people, just walking around. You couldn’t know out of the thousand people there which 70 have the problem that you are able to solve, but with the right positioning and with the right messaging, and knowing some things

HOW TO BE NUMBER ONE?

about maybe what they read, where they go, what they see or what kind of network they’re on... Anything like this is almost like being able to press an invisible button and then arrows just fly and then reach them with the postcard or with the message that is right for them. And then they call you. So we’re not talking about chasing.

We’re talking about attracting.

Alfred Egesi:

Attraction. That’s powerful right there. So how do we attract what we call our target market?

Aalok Y Shukla:

Okay, so we need to know first of all who they are, but what is the problem in their head? What’s the question going on in their head?

And then you need to know the message to reach them. You need to go into a bit more detail with that, but let’s just start with that for now. And then, how to reach that target market. So you want to break through the clutter because you are part of that clutter, but if you got a really personalized, tailored message for that person, and then you’re able to deliver it-

Alfred Egesi:

And the message is solving a problem so-

Aalok Y Shukla:

That they have.

Alfred Egesi:

So how do we know the problem that’s floating around in our-

Aalok Y Shukla:

Let’s say they’re looking to move, okay? The question could be like, “Do you know how much your house is worth?”

Alfred Egesi:

Okay.

Aalok Y Shukla:

An even better one would be, “Do you know how much your house in Rickmansworth is worth? Or an even better one is, “Do you know how much your house in this street in Rickmansworth is worth?

Because, for example, if you sent a postcard to all the people in Rickmansworth on a certain street, which is personalized to that street, and say like, “Your neighbor just sold his house. Do you know how much yours is worth?” If somebody there was thinking of moving, that’s targeted.

Alfred Egesi:

Because it’s relevant to them.

Aalok Y Shukla:

Absolutely. And if they aren’t thinking of moving now, they’ll be like, “Okay, who are these people?”

Alfred Egesi:

And they might get their greed glands working.

Aalok Y Shukla:

It gets their interest and their attention because it targets and relates to them improving their life. So that’s the main thing. So, as I’ve said, you’ve got to craft the message, the message, and generally, it’s good to kind of use words which relate to the problem or solution. Like Google, or like, for example, Dyson or Kleenex, these are like-

Alfred Egesi:

Interestingly, you said Google, you said Dyson, you said Kleenex, right?

Aalok Y Shukla:

Yep.

Alfred Egesi:

There are other companies in their category.

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Aalok Y Shukla:

Yes.

Alfred Egesi:

But guess what? They’re number one in their niche.

Aalok Y Shukla:

They turned their brand name into a verb for that thing, or noun, for that thing.

Alfred Egesi:

Because instantly, if I say I’m going to Google it, I don’t even have to mention it’s a search engine.

Aalok Y Shukla:

But the thing is... But you actually are, you could be Googling it on a different search engine.

Alfred Egesi:

Yeah, but I can’t say to you, I’ll AltaVista it.

Aalok Y Shukla:

No, correct. Correct.

Alfred Egesi:

You’ll say, “Oh, what you talking about?”

Aalok Y Shukla:

Correct. I agree with you. It’s important to make sure that you can...

If you don’t have the resource that Google have, you want to just make it very clear, like Fast Dry Clean or whatever it is, that people know what you offer. And then as I said, if you were like say Fast Dry Clean, then everything you talk about is fast. Your position is fast.

Alfred Egesi:

Well that goes back to the problem. The easiest way to do that, the most effective way, I won’t say it’s easy... The most effective way to do that is to get to the heart of the problem.

Aalok Y Shukla:

Yes. So the problem would then be their time.They don’t have the ability to do things that-

Alfred Egesi:

Because I only care about me.

Aalok Y Shukla:

Absolutely. And so you want to then... If you know that, okay, so I’m dealing with time starved professionals, so where are they going to be? Are they going to be coming back from work late? Are they going to be reading the paper in the evening? Are they going to be coming back when things are dark? And you want to make sure you can then target them at the specific times and specific locations...

They’ll read certain things, they’ll go to a certain place for their haircut, all these sorts of things. So you can then target them in multiple ways. You need a multichannel approach. You need to basically-

attack them with secret agents. So how are you reaching that point in your customer’s mind?

Aalok Y Shukla:

It has to be simultaneous and it has to be like in different places.

There’s like a way that people come to awareness. They call it moment of truth, where basically they’ve seen you multiple times.

So if you ask the customer, “How did you hear about us?” they’ll tell you the last thing they saw. But if you actually question them about it, they’ll be like, “Actually, it was here I heard about you. I saw you on Facebook and then I read about you in your guide and then I Googled you.” It’s a process.

Alfred Egesi:

And that’s where the consistency comes in.

Aalok Y Shukla:

Yes, and that’s also knowing all the places they will be. Because imagine, okay, so the people that were trying to target Innocent Smoothies... Innocent Smoothies were trying to break into the supermarkets, and they were thinking how can they get into asda, waitrose, sanisburys, all this kind of stuff. Actually, it’s like five people you need to target because they’re the product buyers for the chains of stores. So what they did was they found out where those buyers lived, they bought the billboards within their local areas, and then they therefore surrounded themselves so that they look like a national brand even though they bought five billboards.

Alfred Egesi:

Fantastic. Fantastic.

Aalok Y Shukla:

So then when they call them, they’re like, “Yeah, yeah, we’ve seen your advertising campaign. That will fit well with our national growth strategy.

Alfred Egesi:

See, because most people, they get intimidated by marketing or getting their message out there. They think that they’ve got to do it either big or not do it at all. But you can be on a, just like you said, in a tiny area-

Aalok Y Shukla:

Targeting.

Alfred Egesi:

Right, targeting.

Aalok Y Shukla:

It’s not about activity for activity’s sake. Just open your window and just throwing things out the window... What’s the chance of hitting something? So it’s, again, knowing who you want to target, knowing what your message is, and as I said, by just positioning in all the ways we’ve been talking about, so that your message will then deliver to them in the way that they can understand it and receive it and be attracted to it. Through multiple channels and multiple ways. So online, video, articles, audio, postcard...

Alfred Egesi:

Why do you need a multichannel?

Aalok Y Shukla:

Because our attention’s so fragmented. We are not looking at one thing.

Alfred Egesi:

Cluttered.

Aalok Y Shukla:

Yeah, look at TV now. You look at Youtube adverts. It used to be four seconds, you could skip it. Now they’re making some 30 second ones compulsory because people know that they’re not watching television.

Alfred Egesi:

The reason for the targeting, as well, is because unlike a large company, we got limited resources as small businesses, so it’s important that... We’ve only got so many bullets in our six-shooter.

So if we’ve got six bullets, we better make sure those bullets count.

Alfred Egesi:

You know, sometimes I’ll think about it like with war, okay? Let’s say we’ve got a common enemy, okay? Now there’s many ways to actually win the war. And we attack them by sea, we attack them by air, we attack them on the land. We get behind enemy lines and

Aalok Y Shukla:

Yeah, you need a clear message and you need to then, very directly, target, as you said. So getting your maximal impact using multiple tools, and building your trusted, consistent message across multiple

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channels.

Alfred Egesi:

But people want an expert. That’s the thing.

Alfred Egesi:

Okay. So we know what we’ve got to do, we know we’ve got limited resources... What now?

Aalok Y Shukla:

Yes.

Aalok Y Shukla:

You need a strategy, okay? So you need to deliver the right message to the right market across multiple media, multiple channels over time.

Alfred Egesi:

They want an expert.

Aalok Y Shukla:

Alfred Egesi:

Right. So we’re going to take our resources and we’re going to put them in places, so that the overall goal, which is those target markets start flooding through our door, is achieved.

Aalok Y Shukla:

So you need to build a reservoir of trust. You need to build-

Alfred Egesi:

A reservoir of trust? Okay.

Life’s too busy. You want to know who to trust and how to get there.

So what you want to do is communicate clearly over all these different channels. You want to be making sure that the people that are then looking for the problem... You got to look at like what else are they looking at for solutions, possible distractions, and make sure you’ve got messages in those places. You want to see what they’re tweeting about, you want to see where they’re searching, you want to have all these things to make sure you got a little nugget or a little-

Aalok Y Shukla:

Yeah. I’m talking about using leverageable assets. I’m not talking about disposable. So I’m talking about, for example, if you sent out a load of flyers just called, with the offer, “Buy now,” you’ve spent money.

Alfred Egesi:

It’s kind of like detective work.

Aalok Y Shukla:

It is detective work.

Alfred Egesi:

But at the same time, it’s protecting your investment. Because if you already have clients, customers, you’ve got to fence them in in some way. They’re going to other places, other places are telling them “We’ve got better advice. Trust us.” So you kind of have to keep your antenna out and find out where else they’re searching, what else they’re doing. And their habits change as well.

Aalok Y Shukla:

Yeah, and the key thing is understanding why do they want the solution? What is the job this item’s hired to do? It’s like Clayton Christensen wrote a great book called The Innovator’s Dilemma, and like, he was hired by a fast food company, they asked him, “How can we make a better milkshake?” And the first question he says is, “Well, what’s about a milkshake? What’s the job the milkshake was hired to do? In order to make a better milkshake, we need to see what purpose it’s solving and make it solve it better.” So they watched it an afternoon and then basically there was some people, some single fathers taking their kid along and sitting with them and they saw that the child was then sipping on the milkshake for an hour, while the dad was talking. So it’s a way to spend time without spending too much money. Because it’s thick and it was able to spend time. So they’re looking, “Okay, so we can make it thicker, that’s better, or make a narrower straw. That’s a strategic innovation that improved the outcome.

Alfred Egesi:

That’s interesting you say that. Like, innovation. Because sometimes you might already have a position, but to strengthen that position might require just a small tweak in innovation.

Aalok Y Shukla:

And that will make a massive difference because then if you’re saying, “Well, actually, I took my kid there and it lasted for an hour and a half, versus at this place it was only like 20 minutes.” You may think, “Okay, I put more chocolate in so it’s more milky,” but actually

Alfred Egesi:

Too generic.

Aalok Y Shukla:

Some people will buy, but out of the percentage of people that will buy, that have done the surveys, that maybe like 6% or something like that are open to buying within the next thirty days. Maybe even less than that. And then maybe like 10% are probably open to buying within at some point. You lose a lot of the kind of thoughts that-

Alfred Egesi:

So you’re talking more in terms of, you’ve got to kind of set a relationship?

Aalok Y Shukla:

Absolutely. And you don’t create a relationship with a one-off. A one night stand doesn’t work. You need to have somewhere for them to go to learn more about you. And that’s your reservoir of trust.

Alfred Egesi:

You’re almost saying like building a community.

Aalok Y Shukla:

It doesn’t have to be a community. You’re talking one-on-one with people, basically. But you have to build a base from which you can actually broadcast your message and encourage them to come back to. So, rather than community, I’d use it like a walled garden. You want to have a place whereby they feel safe, they feel it’s good, and they want to kind of come and visit. So within there you’ve got to then have enough materials and enough trust and enough proof to allow them to then understand and interpret you as the solution for that problem. Because then you have a position.

Alfred Egesi:

Right. So, problem, solution, and trusted expert.

Aalok Y Shukla:

Yes. And the trust expert is trusted by multiple people. They be trusted the media, they be trusted-

Alfred Egesi:

It spills out.

Aalok Y Shukla:

It spills out, it spills out. And that’s why by consistently... The heart of all of this is you have to authentically be what you say you are.

But unfortunately, in this day and age, being that is not enough.

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they drink in five minutes, so that’s not a good milkshake as far as the parent’s concerned. And there’s other things like commuters.

Some commuters were buying it because they would sip it on the hour drive to work and they wanted something that was thick and interesting so they could have it. And they said, “Well, it’s interesting when a bit of fruit or a bit of chocolate goes in, so if you make it more lumpy, I like that.” So they liked that and the fact that it was cold and it couldn’t spill over and burn them like a coffee would.

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Alfred Egesi:

Okay. So if you were a milkshake manufacturer you would have to choose between those two markets.

Aalok Y Shukla:

Well I’ve got two different distribution points, because obviously they’re going to buy through a drive-through, generally, if they’re going to be for the driving, and then have like a, maybe drive special.

You could have the commute milkshake special or something like this-

Alfred Egesi:

Now you’re innovating on a distribution channel. So how would you take care of the other market then?

Aalok Y Shukla:

So for the other one you would have like, for example, you could have another thing which also lasted for an hour, so you could call it the hour treats or something like this or something like this around the time factor. So again, if you’re truly testing different positions, these are guesses about what someone would buy. Do not-

Alfred Egesi:

But the market would dictate that.

Aalok Y Shukla:

Exactly.

Alfred Egesi:

How profitable it is, how easy it is for you to deliver, and sustain/ maintain...

Aalok Y Shukla:

Yeah. So in the absence of improving customer base, which is buying a specific problem, you need to innovate and see what position would be stronger.

Alfred Egesi:

Right. And it’s often a better investment to innovate what you’re already doing. Because a lot of people, they try and invent new things but very often the solutions are underneath your nose.

Aalok Y Shukla:

Yeah, and people just want the fastest, easiest, lowest friction route to their outcome. That’s what they want. They don’t even actually want to deal with you. They just want the solution done. So how can you eliminate all friction from the activity or time and hassle?

They want that done and that’s where you can actually get this done. So you’ve got to basically put together a system so that you can communicate succinctly, concisely, and targeted with all of your target market, simultaneously every day.

Alfred Egesi:

Right. Consistency. Calls back to that.

Aalok Y Shukla:

Consistency and targeting. That’s how to be number one in your area.

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