How to Accelerate the Growth of Your eCommerce Business with Ben Fewtrell
Hey. Everybody welcome back to another episode of the bright ideas e-commerce podcasts. As always, I'm your host Trent deer schmitt and I'm here to help you discover. What. Is working in e-commerce today by pulling out them a big flashlight and helping. You to shine a light on the tools the tactics and the strategies, in use, by. Today's most successful, entrepreneurs in. Episode. Number 294. You, heard how, my guest Stefan our Stoll is growing, a number of successful, direct-to-consumer. Brands. In partnership, with the billionaire, Mark Cuban, all thanks. To shark tank and in. Today's episode I am joined by Ben, Futrell. Ben. Is the co-founder, and, managing, partner at a company called max my profit and he's the author of the business, acceleration. Blueprint, he's. A sought after advisor, keynote, speaker, and trainer and he's been featured in secrets. Of top business, builders exposed. Virgins. In flight magazine and sky. Business, and a few more ben is also, the host of the, popular business, brain food podcast, show where he interviews leading experts, on anything and everything you need to know. To. Help you build the, business that you imagined. Ben, welcome to the show thanks for coming hey, thanks for having me traits Howie plays to be here buddy although. Thanks for coming you didn't really even go anywhere I mean you're happy but. You didn't even get an airplane or nothing I wish I did how good would that pave he said come over, next. Time I'll send you down the g5. So. Let's, dive into this Ben what is this whole business, acceleration. Blueprint. Thing all about so. After, working with businesses, for nearly, 20 years what, I discovered, was there's a, bunch, of fundamentals, that are the same no matter what industry you're in you know people always say to me Chad but being my business is different but. There are some aspects that are the same and, always say to people well everybody, wants to make money and money you. Make money in the business by serving, people it doesn't matter how you serve the more you serve them with but, whatever it is you better make sure you're making profit out of it so I created, a blueprint, that helped businesses, structurally. Use a structured. Build a business to a point where it was predictably, profitable. And that's, really what it's all about Oh. Predictably. Profitable, mmm sexy, words right there yeah, got, my attention now so. Break, it down for me I think in the pre-interview told me there's five stages, and five critical areas / steps let's let's dig a little deeper into what this thing is all about yeah. Absolutely. So the five stage is that the. Very, first stage is the one that most people miss and I always, talk to people about how if you're building a house I don't know you've probably heard this a million times and everyone has you got to start with a strong foundation but. It's a good analogy because it's true right so in, business. A lot of people actually skip the foundation, because they get under the sexy stuff first which is the marketing, and getting, clients on board and getting sales and then, trying, to go back and fix the Foundation's is actually hard once you started building walls because, it's it's it's, you know there's already stuff going, on so, the, first step of the five stages is what we call the foundation stage and it's getting plans together so that there's a there's a section in there on planning, there's. A section on setting KPI so, you've got a way to measure your progress and, I probably heard that's saying before what's gets what gets measured gets managed, mm-hmm. There's, a sex thing there on time so how we invest our time as entrepreneurs, a lot of people invest their time in areas that I can I get them fast-track, their results to where they want to be instead. They get sucked into things that are they could be paying other people to do or leveraging their time with and so. We get. That right in the beginning which is really really important, and we, structure, the business for growth so as it does grow what happens there's a lot of people that come to us they, come to us and go we, said what do you want help with nigga I'm just really busy and okay well what are you really busy doing I said well it's just everything, you know and so the, reason that happens is because I haven't structured, their business for growth so as a business gets bigger, they, get busier and we don't want that to happen what we want to do is as it gets bigger we, want to be able to leverage off, of the systems, and technology, we've put in place to be able to have our business grow without it depending on us individually.
And, Then the final area of foundation, is the money side and a lot of people are really scared by this but. It's understanding. How the money works in your business you know there's some some. Great books out there as well for entrepreneurs, to reboots there's no many people reading them on basic, fundamentals, are things like cash flow management and, reading. P&L so you understand, you know where your money's coming from where it's going to and how to maximize that profitability. Um the. Second stage then is then we get into growth where. We growing, the business and that's, more about lead generation conversions. Making sure your customers are coming back because they're happy and having, systems to get them to buy from you again and maximizing. Your average dollar spend which in e-commerce is a big one right people coming out through the the checkout. You want to make sure that you're doing whatever you can to maximize that average dollar spend because you've got so much money in their wallet and they're only going to it's, limited right so they're going to give it to somebody you might as well get as much of it as you can then. We look at optimization. So once this could cash flow in a business how do we systemize, it how do we make sure that it's efficient, that, then leads us on to what I call the transition stage where the owner can. Then remove, themselves, from the daily ops because it built a team that does all the the, the day-to-day you, know what I call the COG work making sure the cogs are working in the business and then, that leaves us to the fifth stage which is diversification. And. Diversification. Is about then going, to other markets, or selling, other products, for maybe manufacturing. Or it could be something, totally different buying, shares or property right so at, that point in time your business is giving you a good profit you can start using that money to make more money. Alright. So that's an overview but we're gonna need to go a little further down in the weeds to make good on my promise as always to have my guests, be able to listen to an episode of mine and and walk, away with actionable. Golden, nuggets so of all of those, five. Steps. We. Need to make an interesting interview and it needs to be actionable, which, one do you think in, the limited, time that we have that, we can go a little deeper on or a lot deeper on and, ideally. I'd like to hear some examples as, well so, you pay absolutely so. Why, don't we dive deep into the foundation, do you think that would be handy to get more clarity around how to structure. A business plan set, KPIs and and get that you, know get the Foundation's right I'm, absolutely, on board with talking about the foundation, when I hear the word business plan though my. Only reservation there. Is I think that, some people the audience might be recoiling. Thinking aw I don't want write a 60 page document, so, it does when. You say business, plan let's first clarify, what. Do you mean by business, plan, did, I say business plan or plan I think I would have just said play it. Because. I don't got a big fan of business, plans per se either big, 60 page documents, that sit in the top drawer of your desk and never get to say it again riester time yes. How more about having an action plan right so the. Way that I think about planning, is and. I like I like using analogies, or stories, right I don't know have you ever climbed Mount Everest rent, I don't know oh, yeah you know every second weekend I just head in a g5 and scoot on over and, just run, yeah. Man. Everest is a pretty tall mountain 2020. By the 20, 8,848. Meters or something like that it's really tall and I. Always say, to people when it comes to planning in business you've got to think about it like climbing, Mount Everest you your you've. Got to think, about where you're going to set your flag and when. You set that flag what does that look like you know so what does the summit look like for you now. The difference, with a business compared. To a mountain, is a, mountain we, know when we've got to the top because if we keep stepping, it's thin air right very thin here in that case of matter is in a business there's, there's never real clarity, as to when you've arrived at the top of the mountain so we have to get clear about that so when I talk about planning I think what, people forget, to do is they forget to set that destination, and so. I like, to get people really clear about what that looks like so if you're in e-commerce for example, or, you need business but let's talk ecommerce because it's a lot of your listeners is, you're going to think about okay well what does my business look like how, many transactions.
Per Month am i doing how, many product lines do I have you. Know what you. Know what what does my business. Look like when I get there how many team members do I have you. Know all these answers you, know you know that all these questions need to answer and this is just trying to describe, what the arrival, point looks like okay what does that someone look like because, if we were going to climb Mount Everest how. Would we do it we will do it one step at a time and, so. We. Know we want to but we want to know where the top is we want to know what it looks like so we can start to plan how many steps we've gotta get but. We don't wanna have to be bogged, down worrying, about how many steps we're gonna take or thinking about how many more - I fell oh you know like have you got kids out of your kids tree I said. The back of the g5 today and say when do we get there dad no, she just says give me my iPad daddy. She. Doesn't care lost, it for these days but, we don't want to be uncertain about when we're going to get there so we're, not talking about planning, it's about setting, a. Destination. Of when you're going to get there and then, making, sure that, you are planning. Your way step-by-step on how to get there because Mount Everest can, be climbed, 12.1. Meters a day if you did that every day for two years then, you would arrive now, just notice my camera start working isn't that well. We'll continue along because sometimes, in the recording, the camera is actually still functioning, in the recording, even though you, and I think it's not working so really, you. Can try turning and on and off if you'd like I look. Like I've got a really good expression on my face you do it's right yeah. Yeah. The like the like definitely went off on my camera so I think you might be careless, okay, well if we're cameras we can make do because as long as we get the audio track at a minimum we'll be fine go, fantastic.
So. I want to play I'm gonna, I'm gonna push back a little bit because. Of the. Some. Of my own experience, and a lot of the interviews that I've done in one recently in particular that, I did with. A fellow who's the founder of this company called sheets and giggles and, so. This bag had goods that yeah. Right they sell they sell eucalyptus, based. Bedding, online, they're one of the John 11. Leading company in the US and. You. Know he he he's. Made a hell of a success of the company in a short period of time and and he didn't do what you're describing at, all instead. He focused on well first I need to validate that there's, demand for my product I need, to figure out what my cost of customer acquisition can, be and all of that because I need to know enough. Money and my Kickstarter, campaign so that I can get on the front page and really give myself that that, launch. That. I need to, be able to convert, into. Momentum and a sustainable, business in the you know in the first year and, I, and, I I listen, to what you're saying and I I agree, that I think that the foundation, is really. Important, but is it really the very first thing that you're gonna tell someone to do like hey I've, this guy I'm, looking. For an idea for a business or. Me. Yeah. Let's not talk about buying a business because that's a different different rabbit hole to go down but, I'm looking, for this idea for a business or I think I've got an idea for business and your, advice to me is I've got to sit down and develop my foundation, am I getting this right or maybe I'm taking it out of context, so, first. Of all I think what you described were there guys he, has put a plan together to get himself to Basecamp so. He has put a plan together so he says and that's when we're going to decide if we. Keep. Going or not yeah. The. The. The. Realities it depends what you know if you've decided you're building a business then you need your foundations, there's no doubt about it if you haven't decided you're building a business and you're just researching, that's a different thing right what I'm what I'm hearing is research right we're researching the, validity of something, but, even that's a plan right a plan is let's, put, the concept out there see what the uptake is let's work out whether or not people want to buy this thing let's work out if there's any competition where their threats our weaknesses, you, know all of those things, I. Still. It still planned out right and yeah that's true actually he and, glad that you pointed that out because he absolutely, had. A plan for product. Validation and by the way you I've, turned your camera off so you can try and turn it back on again and see if it'll work yeah, I can't it's a it's, cannot stop video doesn't like it I don't worry about it then so you're right he absolutely had, a plan, to.
Validate, His product, and he wanted to do it in literally. In two days and, I think and he did and that's why I think his strategy was so clever. So what you're saying is okay. The. Foundation. Comes after. You've, gone through that validation, phase buy whatever why you choose to do it, and. I know or. Not, know because in business you never know anything for sure nobody knows nothing about nothing you, have enough. Data to. Have a reasonably. Strong. Assumption. That your, business is going is, going to be successful. Hmm, so that, being the case and, I'm and I'm gonna go all in on my, effort, to making this thing happen you're. Saying okay well now, before, you start getting, scatterbrained, and chopping down trees all over the place without any type of strategy whatsoever now. It's time to work on the foundation is that right yeah absolutely because, I think I think it's easy and scatterbrains, probably good word for it because as entrepreneurs, we're, very attracted, to the next shiny object and, if we don't stay focused, on where we're heading we can get distracted very quickly and so, you. Know just so. Even, going, out to dinner we plan it right we say we're gonna be there at this time where here's the address who are we inviting what are we wearing so. Just it doesn't doesn't, need to be a complex plan I think that's why, it's good you've asked the question because a lot of people's see, this vision of a business, plan is something that's very complex, as where, when. I started, my business back in 2001. Trend and you know I built a multimillion-dollar coaching, business a lot of people ask me well how did you do it how did you do it well it was just I got, really clear about what I wanted to build and my, plan was. An a3. Art book with. One page dedicated, to each month for the first twelve months and I, wrote, in pencil, the key kpi's that I was going to achieve each month that was it that. Was it that's all I needed, but it gave me enough clarity that, when things came up I could ask this question, the question was is that going to help me achieve my goals this month yes or no yep. If the answer was yes great I'll dive deep into it if the answer's no then I'll push it away because it's I need to say no to it because when you say yes to something you always say no to something else oh yeah. Yeah. So, having a plan allows, you to be able to make those decisions and it doesn't need to be a 60, page document, it just needs to state clearly what. Am I looking, to achieve in this next period of time if it's a 2-day plan for. Validation, then institute a plan because we got a Kickstarter campaign if, it's, a 30-day plan for market research or if it's a one-year plan or if it's a ten-year plan it doesn't really matter but, be clear about what you're trying to achieve because that's what will make sure that you actually get there and. In when you are in your book with your pencil and you're writing down you said KPIs, but are. You really talking about the activities, that you're gonna pursue. To, make progress. Or, are, you actually talking, and if and if it's not that if you're actually talking about KPIs, maybe give us some examples of some. Of the KPIs that you used or that you encourage people to use in, that first, three six month, or 12 month yeah so, so, that's a great question so we're not talking KPI was I'm talking about a way to track your progress so, if, I go back to the Mount Everest, example.
If, You did twelve point one meters a day in two years I've done the maths you would reach the top of Mount Everest so. If you only climb ten meters in the day you know that you're behind 2.1, meters okay. If you did 15 minutes you know your head three meters so, the KPI, is the things that you set to help you understand, whether or not you're on track so let's say for example I set, a target of wanting to do. Fifty. Thousand dollars worth of orders in the first month and I knew my average, value sale was a grand well I know I need fifty sales let's. Say that I in my assumptions, my conversion, rate is 20% well, to get 50 sales I'm going to need two hundred and fifty leads yep. Okay, so there kpi's, that I would then set so if I need 250 leads in the first month to get my fifty sales to reach my target then. I can break that down into a weekly KPI, or a daily KPI so what do I need to do per day if, I get to the end of today and I haven't achieved that, and I, was meant to then at least that's a good indicator for me real early that, I'm off track but I'm not going to achieve the target that I said mm-hmm. Because, it's, it's it's like keeping putt you know I don't know if you watch any sport, where they run elapse, you know or cars or anything like that they, keep like a pace you. Know the, pace. Of the vehicle the pace of the person or just play guitar yeah so you get a feel for the prediction, of when they're going to get to the end and so this is what kpi's. Are for there to help you understand, whether, you need to speed up or can you afford to slow down or what, do you need to do to, achieve the, target by the time. That you wanted to get there, so. I almost changed, the name to KP A's because, I think you. What you're really talking about is a key performance activity. Because, you and, the way you just described, reverse engineering, you, know your conversion, ratios to knowing these, you need to per day. That's, exactly, what this fellow did when, he was, validating. His product he knew that he needed to have a certain sized email list because, he'd have a three percent conversion ratio with his average order value of 70 bucks was, going to allow him to get fifty thousand dollars in sales in his Kickstarter and that's. The amount that he knew that he needed to get onto the front page of Kickstarter, so then he just backed it all the way up to well like well how many leads to I need one I need eleven thousand leads and in. The first two days he ran ads to figure out what his cost per lead was gonna be and then, once he figured out his cost per lead and he was able to figure out how much sales you know what, the gross margin on fifty thousand dollars of sales was going to be was, that going to be enough to pay for eleven thousand leads and if those numbers were close then he had a very viable business. And that's exactly what he did that's. Also exactly what you described so I'm in complete agreement with that but, I really think key, performance activity, is a better descriptor, look at that your camera came back on come back is. Is a better descriptor, because. At the end of the day. Especially. For a lot of folks. That, are running. Ecommerce. Or even service based business, it's those activities you. Know the generation, of leads or the generation of web traffic that you really need to focus on yes. Yes. And, I think so I love, that kpi's, I love that because. They're the activities. That have to happen for us to achieve our target so yeah maybe that's a better way of putting it and less and less, corporate. Speakers well yeah okay be I was very corporate, the way it you know in business especially, small businesses we start to grow we, want to make sure we have got some clarity about what it is we have actually got to get done because action, speaks louder than words there's no doubt about that. All. Right so. We've. Now, would. You say that, for. The purposes, of our relatively, short and simple discussion, that. We've done a reasonably. Good job of defining the foundation, face is there if someone's listening along they're taking notes and they think well I'm gonna I'm gonna follow this formula is there, anything that we've really, you know not talked, about that. Is just important, as the book and the KP A's yeah. I think there, is one other area and that is time. Management or. What I call self management and. When. What, happens is and this is in the foundation, stage and I find this is probably one of the biggest issues that people fight is they, get sucked into things, that they.
End Up doing for, whatever reason, some people are control freaks what I call superhero syndrome, they got to do everything some. People are not good. At trusting other people and, some, people just aren't, sure how to delegate, something or find somebody else or lead people to do some of the other work but, in, in, every, business there are tasks, that we do that. As, entrepreneurs. That are not a good investment of our time okay. Amen brother, so. So. I really, think that's an important, thing for people to get clear on is that, you have to have a methodology, you have to have some way of identifying. What do I do with my time and then making. A decision is do. I keep doing that is it a good use of my time or do I need to systemize, it and delegate, it to, give it to somebody else or some, sort of technology, to do it because if, you try and do everything yourself as you scale your business, your. Time is going to become more and more in demand and you, end up getting sucked into this vortex and, not being able to spend any time working on the business you're not working in it and that doesn't matter with your e-commerce or, it's a traditional, offline business everybody, suffers, the same fight. So. I do have an idea that I want to run by you on how I make that decision or not an idea but a methodology. And that is does. The thing that, I need to do does, it require. A. Lot, of years of experience, and judgment, or is. It. A relatively, binary, process, do this do this to this to this to this if, it's. A binary process. Systematize. Delegate. And don't do if. It's a process that requires the experience, and the judgment that's a little harder to do do you think about it any differently than that so. Exactly, how I do it I add another element in there and that's what I call the fun factor. Okay. Yeah so sometimes there are things that you do so I actually what I get people to do is draw up a chart say, draw a box and you put two. Lines you know vertically, into horizontally, so you end up with nine squares, and on. The left hand side is skill. Required, on the bottom is fun and, in. Each box you know low is down the bottom corner and highs on the top two corners, right so if, something, is high fun but low skill I might still want to do it mm-hmm. Because I enjoy doing it um, but if something is high skill and low fun I'll probably still do it because it. Requires, the skill that I have but, in every task that I can do I can put into one of those nine boxes and the first box that I delegate, is the box that's low skill and low fun I'll just get rid of it yeah. And then and then I work on the outer boxes, from there so that's, sort of what I use very similar though very similar so I like the way you think do. You have a graphic. Or a PDF or something that you could include of those nine boxes that we can put the show notes yes I do it's called my skill fun shot I can include that absolutely, okay. Skill. Fun shirt so if you'll make a note because you're gonna get an email from me afterwards, saying hey if there's anything that we talked about please, reply, with a line and put it the show yeah. So. Let's, move on from the foundation, now, and, and, and before, we do that I want, to make sure that folks understand, the. Importance. Of. When. You're gonna delegate, stuff, making. Sure you've got a documented, process correct. Speaking, from a guy, who's delegates. Virtually, everything delegated. Myself right out of my e-commerce company, within six months if, we. Didn't have all. Of those documented. Procedures. Delegation. Would be virtually. Impossible and. Another, example we just for my software company we just hired a Content Manager and so, she has experience, in content of course, but. We have SOPs, for everything we do and, literally. The the. Afternoon, and she's gonna be remote the afternoon when she says yeah I'm accepting the job I'm creating. A user for her and flows to her I'm creating a user forward my in my blog and I'm assigning or workflows and I'm saying okay make sure all this stuff happens, that's. It because, we've, got all those processes, so thoroughly. Defined. And I think that that actually while. Seemingly, simple. To explain is for. Someone who hasn't done it before is, actually maybe. Not. Obvious, or daunting, or some. Other, adjectives. That you would like and it becomes a real roadblock for them don't you think yeah. A lot of people struggle, with creating, systems, and. I, don't know why because, I'm like you I'm very big on creating, the system and delegating, I I've. Got a very simplistic, view of it Trent, and that is that you think, about each function. As a machine you, know and and, you just write the instruction, manual to drive that machine and. So that's that's how I think about it so if I was going to give if I'm if I've got a machine that does content, creation or content management what. Does that machine have to do and here's the instruction manual to run it that's how I think about everything, in my business and so I think, if you can give someone the instruction, manual then they just need to be able to read don't they and watch videos or listen to audios or however you document.
Your Systems but yeah yeah. In our case it's it's lots of pictures and big, red arrows not such a fan of video video. It puts a burden on the user it's very easy for me to create a video you know do a screen share video here do this that the other thing bla bla bla bla bla but. For, someone, watching, that, video they. What, if there's just the one thing in the middle well, then they gonna zoom, in fast forward rewind trying. To find the one thing and it's really annoying for the user so don't like video for that reason and also. As your, library. Of instructional, content, gets, bigger you. Have that you, have this mountain of video, to, manage and maintain an update which can become really, problematic because the tools that you're using they're, always going to be changing their interfaces and your videos are gonna go out of date pretty. Darn quickly which means you've got to reshoot the whole video, whereas. If you're using text, and pictures, with big red arrows and the interface, changes I am only need to take another screenshot put some more red arrows on it maybe it's just a few of the words and hit, the Update button and, my procedure is updated, now pushed out to all the active workflows, which. Makes keeping, it accurate. Far far far easier yeah. Yeah. I think it's just wait it's case by case isn't everyone's going to need something different, you, know the same video be very effective, but it has got to be the right thing yeah. Okay. So, the. Growth phase. Let's. Talk, some about the growth phase, so. The growth phase there's four aspects, to the growth phase so when we think about growing, a business a lot of people focus on. Lead. Generation. So. You know in e-commerce that would be site visits. Or. Whatever terminology you want to use but you know everyone, focuses, on that but then there's other aspects, to growing a business that are vitally important, one, of those is their their conversion, rate so want to make sure we're focused on maximizing. That, so wherever these people are getting driven to that it's converting, and. Then to. Other things that a lot of people don't always consider as as important, as those two things is my. Average value sale and then my lifetime, value of a customer so, my number of transactions. So how, often do I get that customer coming back. Because. That it's, there's, been studies done trend where they say six times easier, to, get a customer, to return that, is to get a new one mm-hmm, yeah we put all of our money into, getting new customers like, so you know heaps. Of our budget into new marketing, or new legions when. We could be putting some of that money towards, getting existing, customers back and if they've, already got a relationship. With us they already trust us that's a huge opportunity right, there oh yeah. Absolutely. So. Which. Order do, you think, people should focus on, those, four things, so. I I, tend to think no it depends where the business is at right if you don't have any leads that's where you're gonna have to start but, if you've got leads, and your conversion rate is terrible. It's no good spending more money on marketing until. You've got a conversion rate sort of because fixing, conversion, rates relatively. Cheap compared, to lead generation and, lead. Generation is the riskiest the most expensive thing to do in any business right so yeah, and and. Here's the reality of it this is why it's so important let's say your conversion, rate is I don't know 10 percent if. You, were to increase that by. Double. Let's say made at 20 percent that harms your acquisition cost per late let's say it's 3 percent you make it six percent something more realistic for e-commerce. Okay. All of a sudden you, have halved, your acquisition. Per customer yeah. This. Literally gives you double the marketing budget right so if you, if, you, work on that and you, get that right and it's very low cost to fix your conversion rate it could be changing. Something, very, small in the process, of someone. You know going through the sales process and that. Could make a huge difference and, the other thing that's very easy and cheap also, to fix up is average, dollar.
Value, Of sales so the, average dollar spend so. I could maximize, how much someone spends with me before I generate, more leads so. Then the two areas I like to really focus on first is let's make sure that we we're converting as many as we can and, let's make sure that we're getting the, the. Largest, average dollar spend that we can so, we put strategy because those strategies are both cheap. Anything. With external marketing, where we have to generate new leads or get, our existing, database to transact. With us again it's, going to cost us some money and there's, going to be an element of risk so I always leave those two last, now. There's a caveat there I think that. We would want to not skip by if you, when, you're when you're running your split tests, to improve, your CRO your conversion, rate or drive, up your AOV your average order value you. Got to have enough. Traffic to, get enough data to make the experiments. Meaningful, so. You. Know if you're only, generating, you, know five, leads a week. To, pick an arbitrary number your. Experiments, gonna have to run for pretty long time. Before. Or, at least this is my perception of it and I'm bringing this up because maybe you have a different a different take on it but, you're gonna have to run that experiment for a pretty long time to get enough data to make the data meaningful, do. You see it any differently than that now, I agree, that's right say if you don't have any leads, you. Gotta need to start there and you, do need a good amount of data I'm, not sure what, the number is these days but I think you'd. Want to have at least 300. Minimum. In your transactions. To be able to go, through 300. Of whatever it is you're trying to measure before you get anything accurate, is I. Think the last thing I heard from people to do analytics. I'm not very good with maths or any that stuff or you leave that up to people that are good at it but you, definitely need more than that. So that that is good caveat have in there if you don't have enough traffic. Then, you're going to need to create more, traffic. To get accurate numbers, because even even, if you measure it for a long time I don't think it's very accurate because things, change over time as, well, there, can be seasonal, things, that affected the seasonal, there, could be you. Know that could be different, up months could make a difference, of weather could make a difference who knows right so you, really want to get a large that, the volume that you need in a short period of time he could data to better analyze what's going on yep.
Okay. I love. To use examples, wherever. Possible yeah. No I know that we didn't talk about this in the pre-interview so I'm putting, you on spot a little bit but, you've been at this a while so I'm guessing you probably have a couple, of customer stories tucked away up in the gray matter, can. You can, you share any. Any. Stories, that would help to underscore. The. Value, of the things that we've talked about so far yeah. Absolutely. So I had. A business that. Because. One of the things that I think is really important understand is things like conversion, rate can be affected. In. Ways well can be affected with things that you wouldn't expect and. We. Had a client who was an online store and they, were selling, a product it was a fairly nice product, and they. Were sort. Of towards. The cheaper end of the market online. And they thought that was a good strategy and, we. Decided. That what we wanted to do is we wanted to work on their conversion, rate so we did a couple of things number one we we created a guarantee, because, it you know when it comes to. Increasing. And conversion, rate online what. I found was if you're like when when you're face to face somebody and you have a conversation you can overcome a lot of their fears and frustrations when. You when you don't have that luxury. You've got to be able to develop something that happens electronically, so we use guarantees, quite a lot with anybody has online sort, of properties mm-hmm, and that. Works really effectively the, other thing that we did we do is we really understand, a bit about the buyer persona, and and think. About the psychology, behind how. Someone thinks before they purchase and if, you are the cheapest, it. Can actually be detrimental to conversion, rates people wonder, why it's so cheap so, this particular customer, I had a lot of resistance from them and increase their prices and. I said let's just test it let's just test it and see. What, happens and we put their prices, up so this particular product sold for I think was children 18. Something, dollars or there was a quite. A substantial purchase, for an online purchase and then, we. Put it up to like 359, like we made quite a jump and the conversion rate went up now. That put them into around the mid marker pricing. So. We said let's pull it up again and we pull it up again and the, conversion rate jumped up again and what happens, I think the, reason this happens, is people see a higher, perceived, value right oh yeah and. So this. Is a classic. Example so this particular company, you know they're there's, nothing else changed, their board price is the same all. Their other costs are the same they're just selling the same product for more but, the conversion rate is high which means that acquisition cost per sale has gone down so the profitability, is going, up because both ends are moving the cost of getting the sales going down and the profitability of making the sales going up and so. You, know for me that's a really good. Example of how working. On something can, give, you a big result pretty quickly without. Having to spend much money and getting, your head around something like putting your prices up which is one of the strategies I teach people when, it comes to you. Know increasing, your conversion rate because if you are too cheap people, will go why they so cheap you know. If you were gonna get. Root canal you wouldn't go to the dentist that did root canal for fifteen bucks would you know, so, have you ever heard the story of how to ruin the sales of your toaster oven no. This. Is this is kind of a trend story I don't know that I could actually attribute, this to anyone I heard some version of this somewhere but how. Do you ruin the sales of your toaster oven so you're you're selling toaster ovens there on the shelf and you know name your electronics, store wherever, you'd like to go to buy a toaster oven and the. Best way to ruin them is put a Salesman, in front so, let's say you have you have three toaster ovens you got your 1995, you get your, 39.95. And you got your 89 99 a. Salesman. Or business. Owner will. Automatically. And often. Wrongfully. Percy, Eve, objections. To price so. They will steer, the. Customer, to, the lowest priced toaster, so. As to maximize their, conversions. Take. The salesperson, out of the equation, and the customers, standing, there and they're looking at toaster, number one number two and number three, what. Is the customer, automatically. Going to assume about the highest priced toaster. All. Must be much higher quality you, ask to have better features and must have more benefits, and more functions, so. Is the lowest priced toaster, gonna, end up being the top seller, probably. Not, it'll may probably most likely be the middle priced toaster simply.
Because Of the way that. Our minds, associate. Quality. To price so I'm not at all surprised, to. Hear that that experiment, and that's one of the things with our suppliers, and our e-commerce business. We, bring that up all the time have you guys ever run split tests on price although. We haven't so that's one of the first things that we like to do because. You. Know any commerce, whoever. Canna spend the most to acquire a new customer and, do so profitably is, the winner, hmm. Right. Yeah absolutely, because I, think it's still gonna remember people want an experience, as well so. I will, go to an. E-commerce store that's easy to use quicker. And a better experience and pay a little bit more then. Search, around for the cheapest price and that's you know I'm no different than most consumers, right so I think people forget that we, tell, ourselves oh when their conversion rates not what I want that, we think I will no one wants to pay what we're charging here because we want to justify the, reason we're not getting the result we want and so that's a that's a big issue for people right so I think it's. A classic example that's that's you know once again a good, like. I said a good way to, demonstrate. The point you know is if you want less toaster, sales, put somebody in front of it. There's. A great book called the psychology, of influence, by dr. Robert cow Dini yeah and that, I would highly recommend to anybody who, sells anything in any way possible. I was, really important I'll. Give you another example we had a another. I'll, usually accomplish so I know that's a lot of this is a very commerce we had another online store that we were selling. Like. Camping and outdoor key, I think you guys call it you call it camping yeah we're doing a over landing and. Tactical. Gear and. So. Then she had this outdoor gear shop and. Came, to us that's very we don't get a lot of e-commerce people, come to us we have hundreds of closby a lot of bricks and mortar businesses and professional, services and service trade services, and when, they come to the e-commerce, kind of II love it because they're actually one of the easiest to help because you're not geographically, limited right you've got the world is your oyster yeah, and, sometimes, there's little tiny things you can do all this this particular shop one of the things that they weren't doing was doing. Abandoned. Cart sort of targeting and then, retargeting. People that had bought as well in the in the database, when we talk about maximizing a.
Conversion. Rate and also things, like our, average dollar spend and then a number of transactions, this person, was a classic example she came to us losing money was, going to shut the business down and, we, straightaway identified, she was getting plenty of leads to the site lots of people were jumping out of the cart which was like I think maybe a trust. Thing so, so, we've put some things in place to fix that just with, like. Testimonials. Etc, as you went through the checkout process made, people more comfortable guarantees, made that really clear so. Make sure those are clear when people go through that process so. You give them you want to reverse all the risk you can right especially. If you're wasn't, a known brand she was just like, it's. Just unknown brand of people so when you start buying, leads with pay-per-click people, landing your site if they're not a name people recognize you've, got to build trust otherwise, the. Second thing that would happen then was once they did purchase, but she didn't have any mechanism for, selling them more so, we made sure that we had suggestive, selling and brain-switching, happening, right, through that process so, it, was easy for people to be up sold, cross sold or add-on sold and. Really. Really important, and that made a huge difference to a revenue but then when we did the third thing we, introduced. A strategy. Where, people got made an offer, straightaway. To buy another product as you said that's never gonna work well they just paid they've just spent their money with me well she's gonna purchase, of. Course it's gonna work absolutely. So as soon as you made the transaction, depending. On the size of your transaction, we sent you a voucher. To buy, something. Else with it but you had to do it within 12 hours which meant that you had yet you didn't have time to think about it ponder you just had to jump back online and buy something because the reality is most people's shop and you're. Gonna go to bed in that 12 hour period or that wake up the data would expire, but. It worked really really well and so, that, meant that they we straightaway got their second transaction now I don't, know in, my training. With with getting customers we don't call them a customer until they're bought from us at least three times okay we haven't got their custom, all, they are is a shopper, they've come once to try you out if, you can get them to buy a second, time, you're. That one step further that are really cementing, that relationship, and then what you do is you then can target them beginning a week with another offer and get them to buy again and then you've got them as a customer, right and this, this, alone along, gates the, lifetime, value of that customer now, because they're they're, intertwined they're part of your ecosystem, now, so. For. Her it made a huge difference since she's in a business where if you're going camping you don't just want, one knife or you don't just want one you, know Billy, you don't want your you want a whole bunch of stuff right so and, we just get really clever and how we, you. Know got you to buy, more quicker, of, the stuff that you were going to buy anyway but, it's likely, that you might have bought somewhere else if we hadn't made this amazing offer to you straight away so, once, again limiting, belief of a business owner thinking if I offer someone straight away something they gonna think I'm pushy but, it actually works really well we had a very high conversion rate on the second email that went out and it went out straight away so. To summarize, that if you, don't have a one ideally, a one-click upsell in, other words hey you just bought this thing in your check oh it's not even complete, yet would you like to buy three more of exactly the same thing. And. That doesn't work for every product but we'll just assume for the purpose of this consumable product or something you could use that's. Highly effective, then, what you said about having them get a coupon or what have you in the email a day or two or three later with some type of scarcity, offer and attached, to it that'll have be highly effective if. You have an abandoned card strategy, where you are going to add you, could have exit intent pop showing up with a coupon you, could have an email follow-up and you could do retargeting, over Facebook or whatever choose, your social, of your present preference, just those. Couple of things which could all bleep all be implemented. In less than three. Or four days depending upon what story you're using if you're using Shopify there's, apps for all of that stuff, that's. Gonna have a massive. Impact on your a o V L T V and therefore your ability, to spend to acquire a customer right yeah, yeah and these are growth right so that's that's, that stage two now there you've got convictable.
Control, Over, your growth, and. You. Can't undervalue, that, right you cannot undervalue, those. Levers. Or whatever you want to call them they're there they could profit in your business that's, where the profit comes from absolutely, yeah, all. Right then so I am running up against a hard stop but, I do want people to be able to get the rest of the. Business. Acceleration. Blueprint, so I'm assuming you have a website or some place they can go to get that right yeah. Say if they go to max my profit comm, au we've. Got heaps of resources, there heaps, and heaps of resources, including. A business planning template, that is easy to use so when I talk about planning, I have, a template, there that I've used to grow hundreds. And hundreds of you know big businesses, right so if you want to grab that that's probably a good place to start if you don't have an easy-to-follow. Plan, but. This heaps of resources, here all, right well thank you so much Ben for making some time to come and be on the show, my, pleasure mate it was great chatting with you mate I really appreciate it.
2020-01-08 04:53
