CEO Group Call - Business Talk
Unlock your business potential with actionable insights on cashflow, crafting offers, pricing strategies, customer engagement, and marketing. Dive into expert tips for building loyalty, expanding your audience, and mastering sales tools. Transform challenges into growth opportunities with focused strategies.
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Unlocking Business Growth: Insights from “Business Talk”
In today’s fast-paced business landscape, staying ahead means continuously refining your approach to cashflow, offers, customer engagement, and marketing. The latest session of “Business Talk” offered a treasure trove of insights to help entrepreneurs and business leaders thrive. Below, we highlight the key takeaways:
1. Understanding Cashflow
Effective cashflow management is the cornerstone of any successful business. It ensures financial stability and provides the flexibility to seize growth opportunities. Regularly reviewing and optimizing cashflow can help prevent bottlenecks and sustain operations during fluctuations.
2. Crafting the Perfect Offer
A compelling offer speaks directly to your audience’s needs. This session emphasized aligning offers with your target audience’s preferences and pain points. Incorporating value and uniqueness into your offer is key to standing out in competitive markets.
3. Identifying Your Target Audience
Understanding who your audience is and what they need lays the foundation for all business strategies. Conduct market research, analyze customer behavior, and create detailed personas to ensure your efforts resonate with the right people.
4. Building a Compelling Offer Stack
Offering a range of complementary products or services enhances perceived value. An offer stack not only boosts customer satisfaction but also increases revenue opportunities by catering to varied needs.
5. Pricing Strategies and Customer Engagement
Striking the right balance between affordability and profitability is essential. Pricing should reflect the value provided while fostering trust and engagement with customers.
6. Active Listening and Customer Needs
Understanding customer pain points begins with active listening. Engage in conversations to uncover their challenges and desires, then use these insights to refine your offerings.
7. Strategies to Increase Your Customer Base
Expanding your audience requires strategic marketing and lead-generation efforts. Leveraging digital platforms and optimizing campaigns ensures you connect with potential customers effectively.
8. Marketing, Sales, and Tools
Streamlining your marketing and sales processes with the right tools can dramatically improve efficiency and conversion rates. From lead generation to closing deals, integrating technology can save time and enhance results.
9. Upselling, Cross-Selling, and Building Loyalty
Upselling and cross-selling provide additional revenue streams while strengthening customer relationships. Coupled with loyalty programs and strategies to increase purchase frequency, these techniques foster long-term success.
10. Prototyping and Feedback
Regularly testing ideas and gathering customer feedback ensures your business stays aligned with market demands. Prototyping minimizes risks while paving the way for innovation.
11. Focus and Diversification
Striking a balance between specialization and diversification is critical. While focus drives expertise and efficiency, diversification reduces risk and opens new opportunities.
The session concluded with reflections on the importance of staying adaptable and planning for the future. Entrepreneurs were encouraged to apply these strategies to not only meet but exceed their business goals.
Whether you’re just starting out or scaling your venture, these insights from “Business Talk” provide the tools and inspiration needed to unlock your business’s full potential.
Highlights:
00:00 Introduction to Business Talk
01:12 Understanding Cashflow
02:35 Crafting the Perfect Offer
03:33 Identifying Your Target Audience
09:18 Building a Compelling Offer Stack
13:03 Pricing Strategies and Customer Engagement
23:32 Active Listening and Customer Needs
27:02 Understanding Cashflow and Key Offers
27:38 Strategies to Increase Customer Base
29:08 Marketing Efforts and Lead Generation
30:43 Sales Processes and Tools
34:01 Upselling and Cross-Selling Techniques
40:22 Building Customer Loyalty and Frequency of Purchase
45:13 Prototyping and Customer Feedback
47:36 Focus and Diversification in Business
52:01 Final Thoughts and Upcoming Plans
Transcript:
[00:00:00] So business talk today. What I wanted to talk about is to obviously as every time system, but then we go into cashflow and the offer is this is a red threat that I have seen that a lot of people are struggling with the same topics, especially with the startups that I've mentored over the last years.
And as well, some of you, so I thought I will bring this things up as a starting point. Personal branding system. Today we talk mainly about the business part. So again, we have the, the brand, we have the hub, we have the content, we have the distribution. And then we are looking into how do we bring all of this into our businesses.
And when we look at the, the, the double funnel, if we call it like this, So we go from, we are producing things go into the internet. And into social medias and then we, we drag them from social media [00:01:00] back into our world so that we are generating leads for keynote speaking or the business. And today we are focusing on the business, not on keynote speaking.
I will start with cashflow. One of the number one things that I have seen over the last, I don't know, five, six years is cashflow is oxygen. So if we have a business, especially in the starting years that has money inside of the business so that you can cover all of your expenses and you have, let's say three to five month runway, then you're not under pressure as less oxygen.
In this case, money you have as harder it gets to do things. And that's just something, especially when we are starting out. That's something that I see every, every time that. Uh, a lot of founders are just hoping for investments [00:02:00] and don't look into cashflow from the beginning. And there's nothing wrong with that.
It's just slows things down. And one of the things is really looking into how to build cashflow. And with that, before we go deeper into cashflow and how to grow the other things, the, the number one thing I have seen is before we get oxygen, we need to, we need to have lungs like we need to be able to breathe.
Because if we don't have anything coming in, there are reasons for that. So that's why I go first into the offer. And I explain that based, based on what I've seen, um, from the startups I've worked with and as well for myself, mainly for myself, because I have done everything wrong that you can do wrong.
So it's all, that's the, that's the good learnings. So number one thing I start when I work with startups and with individuals looking into their offer and looking into [00:03:00] their business, number one thing is I start with is the vehicle, which is whom do you want to serve or can serve? Like, what are the companies and what are the people inside of that company?
And what I see a lot is that you can help a lot of people with what you're doing. Every one of you, because I know all of you, um, you have different possibilities to work with different companies or individuals in what you're doing. And there's always a way. the possibility to help a lot of people or to help a few people.
What I want to get into is, we always need to look into what, from a vehicle perspective, what are the people that are able to pay us proper money? Let's say you're, let's, let's take an easy example. You're a consultant and you, you sell consulting hours. You can sell consulting hours to, let's say, startups that are barely able to pay you, or you can.
sell consulting hours to very large corporations where you know [00:04:00] they can pay you a proper, proper money. So with, with that, if you, if you focus on those that you can serve and you want to serve, plus they have the proper money to pay you, then you can dig deeper into how you can help them. So it's understanding deeply who they are and where do they hang out.
I give this example up. on, on my new business, which is the, the agency. So it's personal branding as a service. What we have looked into is what are the different people we want to work with? And what are the different people we can help? And there are a lot of people we can help. So we looked into executive levels of organizations because they have proper money and they have the need of what we're doing.
But then we zoomed into CEOs only because what I have seen is If we add 5%, [00:05:00] 10 percent to a business with working to the CEO, the price tag of what we can charge is way higher than if we go for an executive or if we go for a coach or someone that is building their own business in small scale. So that's an example.
It's always starts with the vehicles, the people that you want to serve. And that also starts with the companies you want to serve. So it's a combination of that. And then, of course, you can find out where they hang out, where you can find them, and then go more into details when it comes to that. Second part is understanding deeply for those people.
So those people will be in a specific industry. That's like the niche that you work with. In my case, what we focus on is tech companies. And we focus on high tech companies. So the high tech companies are the companies like building semiconductors and so on. Because what I've seen, the CEOs of all of [00:06:00] those companies, they don't, they're not there when it comes to personal branding.
So what we dove into is what are the challenges? So what are the challenges of CEOs working in high tech or CEOs working in manufacturing, for example, and then we go into the individual challenges and the company challenges. So you have, in my case, it's like a B2B2C offer. So I focus on what is the problem as an individual and what is the problem of the company.
And then the same when it comes to desires. Example, when I talked to, to the CEOs. I talked to them about building a legacy. Building a legacy is more a personal perspective, so it's a personal desire of where they want to get to. When it comes to business, what is their desire? They're the CEO of the company, they want to grow the business, they want to increase the revenue, they want to increase the market share and all of these parts, all logical things when it comes to the business.
On a personal level, [00:07:00] then it's sometimes Okay, I'm the CEO of this company. I'm not the owner of this company. I'm a hired CEO and I want to prepare myself for the next CEO gig and the next CEO gig should be one level up. So the personal desire in my case is always then going, going to be the driver for these individuals to buy from me.
So when you understand the company problems and the challenges of the CEO, in my case, Then you can tailor your messages towards that same with the desires and it has nothing to do what I'm selling. It's just understanding that deeply and then looking into how do I build the offer so it's resonating with them.
Going from here, then it's building the bridge. So you understand the challenges, you understand the desire, all of that. I guess you have heard thousands of times what I just see every, every time again, people are not doing this. Especially in startups, like [00:08:00] you have, you all have had this. If you have been in an accelerator, like build the customer profiles and then do business model canvas and whatever it is in the end.
It's the same thing is they have a challenge and they have a desire and how can you build the bridge? So how can you help them to reduce the challenges and get closer to the desire? And then B2C on an individual level and B2B on a company level plus the individual. It's very important because sometimes we forget that businesses are peoples.
So even if you want to work B2B, you have to talk to the individuals in the company because they have all individual desires. It's easier when you talk to the B2C that is just the individual that has the problems. And, and desire. So B2B always both. And then this is super simplified. It's, it's really understanding of [00:09:00] whom do you help solve the problems.
So going into the, what you help them with and then get quantifiable outcome without the negative, without the negative can then be time delay and so on. This is just a super easy way of saying that. Then from, from this, going then to build an offer stack. So what are the different things that you help them with to get rid of and to get towards?
I, I give you now the example of what I'm presenting to the CEOs. I took out the, the numbers. So this is my, my offer stack in the moment. So this is CEO thought leadership as a service. That's the total thing they are getting. So I have divided it into four phases and I made this so simple that it fits on an A4 page.
So phase, phase one is we built the leadership brand. We go into personal branding. We'll build the [00:10:00] story library and we built the. Keynote signature, signature keynote. Phase two is we align all the different strategies. The personal strategy was the business strategies and all it takes. Remember, we work with companies that are plus 50 million businesses.
So it's not a tiny company anymore. Then thought leadership launch is really building the thought leadership, photo shooting, the leadership, video shooting. Then we go into building the websites, the social media profiles, distribution, everything we have talked about in the last couple of months. And then the operation of all of this, like we take over and manage everything for them.
So that's an offer stack. And what I do is I'm bringing all of this. to one price. And this one price, very important to understand, is a bargain for them. For the value that you get here. So there are agencies, if you take PR agencies, that take you, that, that ask you for [00:11:00] specifics of this, that cost already 25, 000 euros.
What I have understood over the last building something like this. And it doesn't matter if you have a tech company, if you have a physical business, or if you have like, in my case, an agency business, building this offer is the starting point of everything. That's why I'm starting with that. And I've done this over the, the first three years of my entrepreneurship careers wrong, because I didn't understand that in that details and didn't get to the level that I have people coming to me automatically because the offer is so good.
So I give you an example on this. So when I do the sales pitch to the CEO, I, of course, I have talked to them now three, four times, and we know each other. They know what we talk about. Then I ask them, what is your average sales pitch? Customer value, an average customer value of the people that I want to work with is roughly 1.
[00:12:00] 5 million, 1 million, 2 million, 5 million, depending on the company. So I'm targeting CEOs that are zero visible in my case. So imagine a CEO that it has a LinkedIn profile, but even though proper photo, no proper CV, nothing, definitely nothing in the internet. So you Google them, they're not existing, but they're CEO of a 52.
400, 500 million business. So I'm targeting them. I'm asking them then, and they, until that day, then when I'm asking them this question, then I'm asking them, do you believe that if you have the same exposure like I have, and I'm not the rock star when it comes to this, do you, do you believe that you can convince one or can, can gain one new customer?
And they, most of them will tell you yes, in my case. So, okay, you get 1. 2 to 5 million business and you pay me, let's say 50, 000 euros. [00:13:00] It's a bargain. So that's, that's, that's what I, what I'm creating. I'm creating an irresistible non brainer offer. So that's something every one of you, and doesn't matter which business you have, you can do.
And that's just the starting point where I have seen this over and over and over again with a lot of startups over the last year. They don't have an offer that is easy, understandable to the other person that is then generalized to a company level and not on an individual level. So that's always an opportunity for every one of us.
And I'm fine tuning this and fine tuning this. Um, every day on how do I fine tune this so that I get the biggest money for the service that I'm delivering and a no brainer offer so that people are saying yes, yes to it. I'm even testing this just, just between us here. I mean, we are [00:14:00] recording it, but I'm even testing it in a way that I say, okay, you pay me nothing and I give you the customer first and then you pay me.
Like I worked for a year for free for you. And when you get the customer, I get X percent of the customer. And now they're no brainer opportunity. So offer any questions on that?
Yeah. How much is the percentage that you get paid from us? What do you mean? Yeah. I mean, you said like you invest one year in us and then.
Yeah, from you guys, not you are, you're my referral business. How can I identify the customer? So it's in, in my case, for example, like, uh, we're doing like interior consulting and we having [00:15:00] like people, they have like an IT company with like a couple of million revenue and they have 25 employees and they are like having big margins and they can pay like 25K for a consultant.
So, uh, how do we find like the pricing for a product? when it's not existing on the market yet. You define it yourself. Like with, if you take my price, this exact offer is not existing. So you can define it as you, as the value that you bring to the customer. So in your case, understanding that it is, let's say an IT consulting company, if we take that example, they have X amount of employees.
What is the value of them having, let's say, better furniture, better home furnishing, Uh, not home furnishing, better office furnishing, sorry, that was the IKEA world. What is the value [00:16:00] to them? And then you need to understand what the value to them is, for example, employee retention. What are all the different factors that play into for them being, being better situated and solving their problems.
And then for you, key to understand is who is the decision maker on the other side? Is it the CFO? Then you need to talk CFO language. Is it the CEO? Then you need to talk CEO language. Is it someone else, like property director or whatever it is, depending on the company, then it's that language. And as more you, you can zoom in as easier it gets, let's say if you talk CFO, you know how they take their numbers, their processes, they're clear when it is property, then they have other topics that they care about.
It's not broken that often, like the stupid things. All of, that's the language you talk. If you talk to the [00:17:00] CEO, then you talk, example, you talk about how do you gain customer credibility to having furnishers in your, or interior design in your office so that you bring customers into the office and can show up.
And then of course, dependent on how the person is ticking, then you can touch this point. Does it make sense? Yeah. So it means like when the company makes like a hundred million revenue every year and it's like 1 percent the consulting could be like 1 million when we offer them like 5 percent or 10 percent more productivity from their employees.
If you can calculate that and make the logic, yes. Because then they make like 110 and they invest 1 million. So they say, Oh, we only invest in 10 percent of the outcome. Exactly. Okay. So it's, it's really, you need to be able to break it down to them that they understand it logically. But the [00:18:00] sales is, is, is part logic and part emotional.
And that's what you always need to understand. The emotional pieces, then the individual, what does it mean for, let's say, go back to the CEO. If the CEO is a person that wants to show up in front of clients, like see how successful I am, just, just stereotyping here, then you can play that from an emotional perspective.
You can feed that engine to say, Hey, you imagine you are bringing this important customer into your office and you have an amazing interior design. So you can play that stories in his mind. Frank, you have a question. Yeah. Thank you so much. So regarding the offer. Now we are struggling with a guy from Spain because my offer is to give them the material for free.
And he can process this information. He told me, [00:19:00] Frank, you need to, to, to try me some, some stuff because I need to charge to the, uh, the accountability, the lady of the numbers. to pay to the people who is doing the stuff. And I told him, Hey man, no problem. I give you the material provide only one product to test the quality of the material.
And after that, when you get pre sales, we can speak about the price, but now it's a test for you to know if the material is matching your requirements because he is, he's using, uh, April based leather. And the quality of the final product is, is a high net height end product in price, but not in quality.
And now he's trying to update the quality and with the material we have, we can provide that quality, but he needs a price. And I told him no men, no, no price now presales 100 pairs of, of shoes and after that we can go commission based. No, I know I can, and this emotional part. [00:20:00] They can't understand. They need to fix this, uh, um, excuse to pay to feel a great feeling about buying something that the people is not prepared to get nothing for free, gents.
That is now my struggle. I know for sure. And here in Germany and in Spain, they are really close to get something for free. Let's say put, put a price tag to it that is ridiculous high to see how they're reacting. No answer. No answer. Because let's say we are selling like one ton of leather for a hundred thousand euros.
Example, that's just shooting up from the hip. So it's more what you can do is and we can do this next weekend if you're interested. What you can do is what is the benefit for them? So he's selling shoes example, what is he earning per shoe? How can you use [00:21:00] that and build a price that is still valuable to him?
At the end of the day, they have a high end price for the final product. The product in aesthetics is really nice. It's a nice shoe, but after two, three months, the stuff is really bad. Is it seems really cheap. Yeah. And he's getting a lot of, uh, reclamations about the final product because the people is paying a lot for that.
And we have the colors, we have the size, we have all the stuff he needs to, to update the product, but he is not prepared to do this jump for free.
Yeah. It's an interesting problem because maybe you should just charge and don't give for free. The problem with free sometimes is people don't know what it's going to cost. Because think of it from his perspective, right? He's going to be, um, [00:22:00] if it works, he either knows how much this costs, or he doesn't know how much it costs.
If it works, and he doesn't know how much it costs, then it might blow his margins up. Yeah, true. So, um, so if you know, okay, if you can go, okay, we'll give you samples for free, but the final price is going to be this. Um, then, then you could probably make a deal, but it's going to be tricky to, um, give them something before you can give, um, any, if you, if they've got no idea what the price is going to be.
No, we have the price. We have the price. And even I was saying the price is that, and she told me, no, Frank, it's too, too much, too expensive. Okay. What can I do? You don't get, and you don't want to pay for that. And then I got, I got this, uh, conclusion. This guy is not my customer, my ideal customer. Easy. And now I choose two staff, the people who can pay for that and the people who, who don't want to pay and [00:23:00] they are my two kinds of clients right now.
The people that get for free, and now we got an amazing collaboration with another designer here in Berlin, and like in the cotton candy, but in the other stuff with other people is really complex because they don't understand to get something. For free. Yeah. That is the strategy I put right now. I get that.
That's an interesting one we can take on the weekend as well. Yes, please. And Andrzej, you have a question. Yeah, no, it's not a question. It's maybe a reflection based on our experience. Um, what I do believe that it's important by working in a big organization, It's important to have an active listening towards your customers And what we've been experiencing for example when we've been working as a corporate We've been trying to to fix the problem, but we are not the business owners And then how we design the process with the [00:24:00] startups or with the some of the companies we've been trying to identify what?
The what is the paid version or product that will be accepted by the organization? What does it mean because instead of pitching up for 10 million? Uh, uh euro we kind of define. Okay, what if we'll sign up the contract with the company? But it will be based on subscription It means for us it will be easier to convince the ce4 to give us some money If we will be able to prove the result based on the short term assignment from one side, we are moving towards the right direction because we are testing the company.
We're testing, uh, or we are checking the assumptions. How, what is the result that we are going to deliver? But at the same time, from the, uh, C for perspective, we are not investing huge amount of money and we are not signing up the huge contract that should go through the big procurement process. And kind of to [00:25:00] summarize it.
Active listening to your customers. Well, this is what Jens had been referring to. What is the real need? What is the problem and how you can fix the problem that the customers is experiencing now in a way of not only designing the product itself, what is the processes? What is the procedures? What is the engagement from the lawyers?
Do they have enough lawyers within the organization? Or if you will come up with the big offering complex or for the procurement will kill everything. This is the reflection may be from the big organization. Active. listening of your customers and identify not only the product needs, but also the kind of try to come up with the overall solution in terms of the other departments that will be engaged into the decision making process.
Yeah. Specifically big companies. Good example is Seraphine. He does that when he's ringing the doorbells of, of the people, like the video you did where, where you were starting to interview the person or [00:26:00] like door to door. That's what you do. Thank you. Right. I love it. And just today I was at a customer and yeah, he's happy about it.
Yeah. It's worth it. I know when I do it half a day, I get one to three customers for free. So that's exactly what it is. Understanding and talking to the customers in as more as better. And of course, B2B bigger companies is always harder to do that. It's not that like they don't open the door when you're Serafina and stand in front of the door, you have to open, there's no other chance.
Yes. Yes. So let me, let me go to the next one. So when you have found out the, ah, shit, it's not here, right? You need to show the offer. So the, the, when you have found out the offer. Yeah. And do you sharing anything or not? Because now it's coming. I don't see anything. Okay. I'm trying.[00:27:00]
So going back to first thing, that is the cashflow, the oxygen. If you have the offer that you can sell in, in the case of seraphine, he's pruning the trees. So that's his, his key offer though, that that's the task he's doing. What he's doing is he's saving their lives. Because the S are not falling down or the, the, the tree is not falling on, on the house.
So that's there, he's saving opportunity costs and so on for the company or for the individuals. So if we, if we think about cashflow, it's like, how do you get money in? When you have an offer, it's three main things. Increase the number of customers that are buying, like getting more customers in. The second thing is increase the average transaction.
So how do you get people buying more of what you're doing? The third thing is increase the frequency of the [00:28:00] purchase, buying more often. These are the three things, how you grow your business and I give you examples. So obviously increase the number of customers is the easy one is not easy. Nothing is easy.
If you run a business, getting more people into your funnel, in my case, as, as some of you have seen over the last, let's say a couple of months, I've created last August, the rising stars community. This is a lead generation engine for me. I do a lot of things for free in the community. And 5 percent of the total are buying something of what I'm doing.
Then another thing is we have an outreach mechanism where, where we. Outreach to the CEOs that we are targeting very specific and we contact them in very specific ways and in a very [00:29:00] specific sequence so that they get into our funnel. And then we are doing specific calls to get them in, into, into our engine.
So that's kind of marketing efforts. Everything that we are doing to be exposed to the world is creating attention, is creating awareness. From that awareness, nobody's buying, so you need to get them towards, into your funnel so that you're contacting them, you're having conversations with them, and then slowly get them step by step into, into, into your funnel.
Example of what Maria did in our last conversation, when was it, Friday. So Friday we talked about, uh, Maria personal branding and, and I was, we, we were talking about, um, what she, she were doing and without, without being a structured sales call, we talked about like what type of I am in Ayurveda and so on.
And then I, I, in the evening I [00:30:00] tried, I did the test that she sent me about Ayurveda and then she slipped the link, I book a call. Which was amazing, which we still need to do. But this, this kind of, so she brought me from awareness by talking about her personal branding and understanding what she's doing and me realizing this is really cool.
That would help me as an individual to, to then, Hey, I will, I will not you along my sales process. And there is a test that you can do to understand which type of person you are. And that has then consequences later. And you will then, so she dragged me into this to invite me then into a call. And every one of you have different sales process to get people into this.
Important. You need to have an in depth funnel to, to go deeper into that. I'll, I'll just show you an example. Can you see my whole screen? Can you see this? Yes, we see it. [00:31:00] Okay. So example, what I'm tracking is in depth. Um, from to contact this paid. And this is, this is now 2025. That's why, why I'm showing this.
So what, what is, what is important that you have every single step of everything, single thing that you're doing, you need to know how many people are in contact, how many people did you offer this first call? How do me do many people of those? Did you qualify? And then from qualified in my case, strategy call, I presented the offer, they accepted the offer, I sent the contract, they signed the contract, I sent the invoice, they pre paid the first bid and then they final pay it.
So this is just an example how I'm tracking that with a specific tool. Every one of you needs to have a clear process of how do you nudge [00:32:00] people. forward, because then, you know, exactly over time, how many people are in which stage of your funnel. So, you know, I need to start all over again to share. Which tool would you recommend to do this?
Like if a pipeline and I don't know how, how you call it. It, it's really dependent on, um, that's like a CRM tool. Um, I have this agency tool. I mean, I can, I can, um, like I said last time, I have this agency tool where I can give you cheaper access to, and it's all included if, if that's an interest. So I have, I use it for social media management, pipeline management, emails.
Email, newsletter, everything in one tool. So that's what I have found for myself, working easiest because I have everything in one because it's just annoying if I have 20 other tools and they all want to have a lot of money. But you need to implement every optimization yourself, right? [00:33:00] So you need to build it completely from the scratch then.
Yeah, exactly. I mean the, the, the CRM, the, it has all the functionalities, but the automations, like which emails you want to send when all of that you need, but it's in every tool you need to do that to establish. Yeah. Well that's what I'm like, mean, that's why it's like SAP or Salesforce, they charge you like 5,000 a month, 20,000 implementation fee.
Then they do everything for you. Then there's like mid-range, uh, ni it between like thousand and 2000 euro. But they still do everything for you without a charging fee. And then there's the simple ones for like 30, 40, 50 bucks, but you need to do everything yourself. So that's basically the options you have in short form.
But Zerafine, if you're into, I can show you more details. Like, I would love to, because I think there I can optimize a lot. Yeah. The good thing was that is that it's not just dependent on your brain or on somewhere on a paper or an Excel table. It's just helping you to [00:34:00] calculate all the terms. Time. So next one is increasing the average value of your customers or average ticket value So one thing is upselling.
So let's use the the example from seraphine Seraphine goes knocking at the door and sees hey, the the tree is almost falling. It's very old It's rotten and and there's a storm coming up And then they're, they're, they're getting this and then you have the possibility while you do that work to see more trees that need, need support and kind of, let's say, sell them a subscription.
Hey, would you be interested to be part of our partnership program, which is a special program that we only do with very important clients. It's a, we come, we come by every month, we check your trees. And with this amount of subscription per month, everything is covered and you don't need to worry. So one time they pay you, then you [00:35:00] sign them up for a subscription and automatically you have this going.
Then again, Seraphine example, because we talked about things and I know about what he's doing. You have the firewood thing. So the firewood thing is a cross sell. So Seraphine is delivering the trees like the cut down trees into one of his friends and he's making firewood of this. So, Seraphine can then, as well, while he's seeing, Hey, they have a fireplace in their living room.
How can I use, like, how can I trigger them? Hey, by the way, when you guys need firewood, this is, I can organize that for you. It's even one step further because firewood is much more common. I first sell the firewood and then, Hey, you have trees in the yard. Yeah. That's the other way around. I love that. So with Serafine's topic, it's very, very easy to understand.
For me, it's the same thing. So example, I'm, I'm selling the big package. So [00:36:00] what I'm doing is I'm including all the other things already inside. So what I do is they have a professional photo shooting with a professional photographer and a professional video person and Through that I'm bringing all of these things already in and I still have the possibility to cross sell and upsell things So I can have the platinum version of the offer or I can have like a gold version or a silver version.
So Talking about Frank Frank is selling leather, which is the leather product, but you can as well sell, let's say a cap out of that leather. That could be an upsell or a logo out of whatever that can be another upsell or cross sell. Hey D, are you interested in a designer outfit from, um, from, from this designer?
I can organize that. And you automatically cross sell designer goods. And through that, get a kickback from the designer because it's anyhow your leather. So yes, double. So [00:37:00] same with what, uh, Felix, what you're doing with the Airbnb topics. You always have the possibility of upselling things inside of one conversation or cross selling to other parts, like bringing the lamp in, as an example, bringing the furniture in and so on.
Same, same with Maria. Maria has the possibility, let's say one can be massage, one can be, um, nutrition. There are different possibilities that someone comes to you with, I'm interested in Ayurveda and I want to learn more about what I need to eat. And then you could say, Hey, you're very stressed. Maybe you need massage and you need other things as well.
And doing that, of course, in a nicer way, but there's always the possibility of upselling someone or cross selling to something else that might be interesting to them. Like, what Maria could do is like, hey, there's a very interesting oil that you could use because you're this type of person and you have skin problems and [00:38:00] maybe that's another opportunity for you to get rid of the skin problems and that's a super duper oil that I recommend to you.
And there will be people buying that. And automatically you have a cross sell. And these are things every one of you can do in, in, in all of your products, Seraphine. Um, what's about a book or something? Because like then you can really position yourself as an expert in your field. You get the, give a free giveaway.
You give all your knowledge, but they pay for the implementation. Yeah. That's, that's more in, in this one, in lead generation. Like you give something for free and then this, this is more so, so the, the first one is getting more customers in the second one is you have customers and they're buying already or have bought already.
How do you get more out of them? Example, Andre works in Ikea and we have worked together in the past. So an Ikea, it's very simple. Like you go all the different ways in an Ikea [00:39:00] store and automatically Ikea is positioning different items everywhere. Like you can, you can take the bread pan in the top floor, but you can as well take it downstairs.
So through that, they're automatically organizing the, the upsells. And in the end, you're at the cash register, like you are in a supermarket. Then you pick a chewing gum or a chocolate, and this is all upsell opportunities that you have. And what I see a lot specifically in startup land, you don't do that.
Or startups don't do that because they're focused on, this is the subscription model we have, and we only sell this. But if we talk about cash flow, that's what we're talking about is how do you build cash flow to finance the startup because a lot of startups that's more so us because it's easier to get fundings are focused on how do I get money from external so that I can build my startup.
I always, like I said, said earlier on in, in November, I have never taken investment from [00:40:00] anyone to build my company. I always look into how do I build as fast as possible cashflow that the cashflow is then ticking over and builds more momentum into the business. And then doing things for free helped me to build leverage so that I can, I can take the next steps in this and get higher prices.
And then the last part, um, on cashflow generation is frequency of purchase. So how can you, how, how can you increase the frequency of purchase? Example, what I just said with, with Seraphine, instead of them figuring out that one tree is like, uh, rotten once per year, because Seraphine is standing in front of the door and ringing the doorbell, sell them a subscription, which is the, the tree pruning in Switzerland or whatever subscription.
So that you come there every month, you just check and this just check cost them whatever it costs. And through that, you still have a higher [00:41:00] customer service that you deliver. And. You automatically built loyalty because you just increased the frequency of purchase. But I also really made good experiences with like having a Christmas card or something.
And I would say till now, every time I sent them a Christmas card or all my customers, I get more revenue than the action cost me. Yeah, of course. I'm upset. I had, you will all meet her, at least the ones that are in, in, you know, In, in the event next, next weekend, um, Sabine from Finland will join us. And she had a very bad experience this week with an online purchase.
And, and she needed to run after them like 10 days to get the money back. It was not a lot of money. It was just like, but still the, the way they sell is like, you get your money back tomorrow, no questions asked. And 10 days later, she did not have her money back. So these are, these are things. [00:42:00] Um, easy things like getting in touch with customers.
Um, like for example, I was sending to a couple of people like video messages in between, um, bringing them something, doing things they would not expect, like sending a, I mean, sending a Christmas card really depends, but like doing, doing, doing things that, that is super good service, doing, doing things over the top then.
What other people do that's always where you can stand out
questions This is just the just the things that I have seen over the last years and as well myself doing things wrong all the time So I was thinking because seraphine asked last time. Let's do some business stuff to share a A bit so key part is every one of you needs cash flow [00:43:00] Every one of you needs to have money coming in because if you have let's let's say You If we say you have business account now, four to six months runway, it takes all pressure out.
You can pay yourself and your staff and all covering costs for the next six months. If you have that somewhere, it creates peace of mind. Not that you always need that, but it helps a lot. And with that, it's just, it helps you to innovate. It helps you to do things different on an individual level as well.
Like I can tell you out of experience, if you're down for two months. You're, you're, you're getting itchy if you know, like, I have money for the next two months left. And some of you most probably have that in the past. Two months? Weak is better sometimes. Yeah, exactly. So that's why I'm just saying, if [00:44:00] you, if you focus on the customer and, and look into how do you, how do you, how can you help them to decrease the pain and increase the desire?
And build that bridge. Sometimes you're selling things that you're normally not selling, but you're still providing value to them. So then, then it's more, as more you grow, it's different than you focus only on the one thing. But I think it's, it's just important to listen always to the customers because sometimes you get an idea and then say, Hey, I can, I can do this.
Like Maria example. You can sell yoga mats, you can sell oil, you can do massage creams, you can sell drinks, juices, what that it's huge what you can do with what you do. It's always a question if you should, but the possibility is always good. If you know that, let's say they're the, the, the people that always have stomach stomach problems, maybe you have found out there's a thing that [00:45:00] really helps them.
And you just mention it while you talk to them, boom, 10 euros, 15 euros, 20 years, whatever it is. Andrei, sorry, Serafin, Andrei first. No, it's maybe just to show you a little bit of an example, because we've been, we've been prototyping the kitchen installation service. Uh, and the kitchen is always complex and the average ticket for the kitchen is like, uh, might cost you as a car.
What we've been identifying actually, why the people, why the people are not purchasing the kitchen installation service from us and why they're not purchasing the kitchens. And we all the time trying to identify what is the problem that, uh, customers trying to, to fix. Um, uh, before we went, we installed the kitchen and then we ended up in a situation, okay, they do need some support with, uh, electrician.
And then we've been trying to understand, okay, to be able to sell more kitchen, how we will [00:46:00] fix the problem with electrician by, by fixing the problem with electrician, and then by having the supplier for the creation of been identifying, okay, why they, even before the electrician, why they're not still purchasing the kitchen.
And then we've been identifying them during the construction work. The most of the construction for companies, they've been not focusing on the keeping the right angles Uh on the walls and this is why we've been defined that okay It's not possible to to install the kitchen cabinet because the walls are not properly defined And then we kind of jump further and we Uh, encourage, okay, what if we will be in connection with the customers already during the construction project?
It means that the little bit, as I mentioned, uh, in my kind of previous example, then actively listening and identifying the blocks or some issues that you need to fix to be able to be successful. And it might sit in your area of influence, but [00:47:00] might be not. Uh, but it doesn't mean that you should leave the customer alone, but this is what helped actually us to design the product in a way that we are willing to, to sell.
Maybe to add to that one thing, that's something we need to discuss during beers this weekend as well. How can we do cross sell and upsell with each other? Like there, I see huge opportunities between all of us, just the. Like we will be 13, 15 people. There will be possibilities between all of us easily.
If we think about it, Serafine. What I learned on kind of the hard way, or I'm still learning it, I think it's like to focus is, uh, especially in the beginning, much more important than diversification because like you can do everything, you can be any, anything, but not everything. And like, it's good to, or like when I started, I was moving.
I was. [00:48:00] I was pruning hedges. I don't know what I just to get some money, some cash flows of oxygen, but like, what is my key where I'm pretty, pretty well, where's my biggest margin? It's climbing trees because no one can do it. And like, everything else will distract me from what I'm good at. Why should I have a big, huge portfolio?
Like I was also selling like bird houses. I was, but it was like, no, I still have some from Canada. I know the, the, the, the builder, how much money per house? Um, yeah, it's, I bought them for like 56 Canadian dollars and like to have like a proper margin is like you need to free eggs and then it's like too expensive.
I sold a couple of them, but it's like not my focus. [00:49:00] What is your experience Jens? Well, yeah, the same, but for me, I, like last year I focused in the first half year a lot on building the startup up and when you focus, it happens. So now I said this year is all about the agency. So I'm focusing 99 percent on the agency.
I still need to do the other things. Um, yes, I'm still required for certain things, but it's like, it's like marginal in what I'm doing right now. It's 100 percent of. Getting, getting this things moving. So I'm re and that's also saying no to other things, to your point. So I'm really zooming into everything that helps me to build that business and grow that business because goal is really to driving that to through the roof this year.
Um, [00:50:00] that's what I'm doing. Everything else that will go into it, like the other businesses I'm not doing. Please for my sake. Yeah, sorry that I'm jumping in. I know that it's only five minutes left, but maybe what, what is, uh, again, coming out of the big, big organization, the corporate, sometimes that's a business are growing.
We assume that it's not our focus any longer and we stop providing the service. And this is the biggest failure that I've seen in the big organization. If you're not able to dedicate enough time to sell this service, It doesn't mean that you should stop doing this stuff. And this is what the answer actually referenced then find the person that will be able to cover this need for the customers, otherwise you will ruin the customer experience because this is what we've been experiencing a lot.
We, we kind of define, okay, we are not doing the plumbing, we are not doing the electrician, let the customers do this [00:51:00] stuff by themselves. And then you kind of left the customers with the problem by themselves, because it's not your business. It's not this kind of the task for you, you're focusing on selling kitchen, and then you fail because the niche is actually remains empty.
And this is what the answer is actually referring to how to build up the proper relationship within the community. That someone else is now growing the plumping business. And most probably it's not enough customers for this plumbers reach out to this plumber and kind of define, listen, guy, I'm not able to, to, to, to deal with this stuff.
I do believe that you're a professional in this niche. Let's partner. Let's you do your job on the best possible way. And I will focus on mine. Otherwise, uh, we will, we might create the gap. Like I have, I have organized that the other stuff moves forward, but I'm not needed. [00:52:00] Last one, Frank. Yes. Yes. We have four minutes and I have the other comment really quick.
So we, we are all business developers. We are entrepreneurs. We are founders. Um, uh, I agree with Andre and with James, when Andre says we need to focus. And I agree with James when we start, uh, to speaking about personal branding and after one year, the last year, no, we, we, we start to speak about, uh, personal branding for myself, sustainability, fashion, and automotive.
December 23, after one year now, are coming the first fruits of this kind of seeds. Focus. And now I'm still go, I'm still letting go the people that they don't provide nothing in value for the company or for the project itself. Itself. No, I mean, people outside designing bags. And it starts with letter. [00:53:00] I'm trying to, to, to let it out because they consume a lot of time and the row is zero.
And for this reason, I, in my, in my goal for this year is to simplify the way I take the decisions. Uh, we need to, to filter all the stuff and go ahead and putting all the focus on that. That is more or less my, my experience now, we are business developers. If we get a nice idea, we try to develop it till the end.
If not, we need to be voting until we get the right one. More or less, this is what I wanted to say. Amen. Good. Thanks. Thanks a lot. I mean, we accept Andre. We will all see each other on Friday, Saturday, looking forward. It's going to be fun. Yeah. Yeah. Middle seat. Yeah, [00:54:00] we. I will organize, um, that we're doing the, um, Felix will pick us up from the airport front.
Well, I will text you. Oh, great. Great. Because I was asking you, you will get the middle seat. Serafine, just a question for the firing wood, what kind of bag do you use to show the product? It's only standard wood? Because I can't do for you leather, leather bags for the first one. Let's discuss on the weekend.
I need to stop. Sorry. I need to go out. Can you not just go on your Jens and we can continue here? So this would be nice. We can. I'm not sure if that. No, it doesn't work because we have a main link for everybody. Exactly. Frank will join there as well. Sorry. No problem. We'll see each other in person. Ciao.
Ciao Andrea. Ciao.
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Transcript:
Personal development masterclass. One of the topics that's dear to my heart, because of what I have seen over the last 15 years is that personal development is quite seldom in organizations. It's not really taken, uh, in a proper way, at least in my eyes. So that's why I'm really keen on sharing this today.
So we have two. main perspectives. One or two topics for today. One is personal development talk versus performance evaluation. And then we do a deep dive into how I'm doing personal development talks. And then we do questions in the end. Personal development. So we have one part, which is the personal development talk, and then we have the performance evaluation.
And a lot of organizations, focus on performance evaluation. And the difference between those two is that the performance evaluation, the main part they are focusing on, or the main source of that is the company. So the company is on the top. And from there, it goes into, the individuals and the different tasks that need to be done to accomplish what's happening in the company, what is required to do to be done in the company.
And the individual that is doing the task is the last point. And then inside of the performance evaluation, you're looking backward. So you look, how did this person perform in the past? The development talk is the opposite. So the most important part of the. Development talk is the future. Where does the person want to be in the future?
And it has nothing to do with the outcome of the company or where the company wants to be. The goal of this is, and why, why do this personal development talk? I believe that if we are developing people in organizations beyond what the organization needs, they will contribute more to the company. They will contribute better.
So the goal of what I'm doing with development talks is finding out what the people desire and going deeper into that. And we will have a look at that in the next couple of slides. And then look, what are the different tasks of the organizations that fit the person and what the person wants to be. And then you marry these two things.
And then it works as well from a performance evaluation perspective. So that's my perspective on development talk and performance evaluation. Let's go into personal development talk a couple of, I think it's almost two years ago or something. I've developed this in as, as a worksheet. So if anyone is interested in getting this worksheet as a PDF.
Happy to share that. So, the starting point of a development talk is really a setup of the atmosphere and the place. So you are going to do a development talk with another person. So you are the manager and the, the other person is like reporting to you and then you're meeting up. So what you need to make sure of is that you have, an appropriate place.
The best case is always doing this outside of the office environment in a. In a place where people feel well, the atmosphere is super important. The time of the day is important, not doing it on Friday afternoon, for example, when people want to go on the weekend, of course, you need to be aware of your relationship with the other person, depending on how deep your relationship is.
You of course have then a perspective on how deep you can go. And how much that is. And then what is important as well is that you put the note-taking responsibility to the person that is inside the room or is working with you. So me as a leader, I always give the note taking responsibility for the other person because then you see what they understand and what they get out of that.
And then I always do as well. A version in front of us so that people understand this. So printing out this worksheet as an example, if you do that in a physical space, then you print it out and then you go into the development talk. And the starting point of the development talk goes really wide.
Looking into what's the personal vision like. I always ask these as open questions without showing them the worksheet in the beginning. Who do you want to be? And that's very, very, very wide. Like, who do you want to be? What does it mean? Some people who have never had a conversation like this, struggle with this.
So they start with, yeah, I want to be a manager. I want to be something specific. So they go very, very, very specific and they don't really look into the future. So the first round of this, I just, Help them to find out who they want to be and they write down, they write down a manager. I want to be a good father.
I want to be whatever they come up with. And then I go to the next question and I show them the next question, not before. So why do you want to be that person? So then they're reflecting on the answers they have given and then they go back and refine who they want to go to be. And that's an interesting process because what.
You as the manager that is holding this development talk are doing, you're literally shutting up and just asking open questions to tell me more. How, how does that feel? What does that look like? What would that look like in the future? So you only ask open ended question when that gets the person talking and reflecting.
So if you're saying this, what does it mean? So, and then they're explaining, explaining, and they go in a loop between who am I going to be? And why do I want to be that person? So until they have clarity, and the first loop is always. The starting point where they don't know what's going to come, then who am I going to be?
They come up with high-level topics and then they go, Why do I want to be that person? Then they go back to Who am I going to be? And then they go deeper. And I always then give them a perspective. Okay, think about five years, 10 years from now, who do you want to be? And then they go more particular in all of these things.
And then we go, we don't close this, we keep it, we put it aside. And then we go to the next sheet, which is a personal development map. So I want them again to reflect on certain questions. And it doesn't matter in the order, I just take them clockwise right now. But it's really going and answering the specific questions.
What do I want to learn? So you're asking this, the person that is in front of you. So what do you want to learn to be that person? So linking it back to that person of the future. And then you're asking, what do you want to improve? And then they come up with things. So it's, it's like writing down the, all the different topics and then what do I want to leave behind?
And then they come back with topics that they want to leave behind. Another question is what excites you? Yeah. And then going deeper into this, who is important to them? And then what is important to them? And when you have done this circle, you go around it and they were deeper in this topic.
What quite often happens then if you ask them, so how, if we go back to the other one, is that still the same thing you want to be? Because they have now clarified what they want to be. and answer the question, they go back to this one and then clarify, no, no, no, I want to be this, I want to be this. What I always ask them, in this part is to paint a picture.
So when, when we have finished with this one, I go back to this one. And say, from a personal vision perspective, imagine a picture and describe the picture that you see on the wall. And then they describe to me who they want to be and who they are going to strive to be inside of a picture and explain everything that is around them.
I've had, for example, a person that told me where they are going to live, what, how it feels, um, in this picture, where the kids in this picture, where the wife or husband and, and going really into details and then linking this to. A job perspective as well, because in the end, we are at least this part is in a job environment.
So they are linking that to the job environment of who they're going to be working with as well. So these two are super powerful. And then you go into the next step, which is a goal perspective. So it starts with the staircase. So in the top right corner, we have what is the goal. And the starting point is really, um, defining that goal.
So if you want to be this person in five years, what is the goal for the next year for you to be very specific? And of course, you can do smart goal setting and all of that, but it's in the end, What does feel right for that person? What is the development goal they want to reach in one year from now?
And then they formulate that goal. And then you go to the bottom of this page where you look into where do you stand today on a scale from one to 10. So they're rating themselves on how close are they to that goal. If they're close, then they're at 10 or 9. If they're far away, then they're at 1. And what always happens is they're somewhere in between, obviously.
So when they have rated that, then you look into what are the things that get you closer to that goal, meaning moving your scale from 5 to 10. And that's what they are writing down above the stairs. So, above the stairs are the things that are getting them closer to their goal. And then they're defining this in bullet points and formulating that out.
And [you do that obviously all in a conversation. You ask the person who is doing the development talk, you are asking them questions to get them moving. You're asking them clarifying questions about the topics that are put, into the sheet. And then the next part is, what are the things that getting you further away from that goal?
So downstairs, if you think at it from a staircase perspective, and then they're writing these things down and then they have a clear picture of a goal staircase where they, they know they want, where they want to be linking that to the vision that's five years from now and the goal picture, and then they rate themselves.
And have then clear understanding of that are the things I need to do to get to my goal and that are the things I should not be doing. And then the last step of the development talk is getting specific. So now we zoom into one year and actionable goals that help them or tasks that get them towards the one-year perspective.
So what are the things they're going to do? When are they going to do this? What do they need to make happen to be able to do this? What are the things they need help with and how I'm, how they going to measure them? So it's a very, very simple setup where they write down literally the different steps that help them to get there.
And they're putting measurable goals towards the goal. And this is roughly. I would say one and a half hours, even if we go through this right now in a theoretical setting in, let's say 15 minutes in a real conversation, in a coaching style, where you ask the manager or coach the other person to find out what they are desiring and where they want to be.
It takes roughly one and a half hours if you do that well, sometimes it's faster depending on the relationship as well. The fascinating thing with this is it has zero to do with the company you work in and one hundred percent to do with who they want to be. And as well as zero to do with you as their manager, if you're their manager, like your perspective, your opinion on anything of that.
Um, just to give you a couple of examples, I've had people that told me that they want to be. building their own company in the next five years and they worked in the company and I was their manager they told me because they trusted me that they wanted to build their own company and we built a plan for how they were going to build their own company and I've had situations where people told me that they want to get married in the next five years and then we built a plan to get them towards marriage getting married and looked into how that does that work with the career perspective same with kids and all the other things so this is a development tool you That I use with everyone that is working with me over time because I believe that as further we as managers and organizations help people to develop as better it is.