[00:00:04] Speaker A: If you want more time, money, freedom, and have a business that's not reliant on you, then you're in the right place. Each week, Mark Creedon, along with some of the very best business minds in the world, will take you through simple, practical steps you can take to create the business you always wanted. From his own practical experience, Mark will show you how to work less, make more, and get the business you always wanted, the one that you deserve.
Now, here's your host, one of Australia's most sought after business coaches, Mark Creedon.
[00:00:52] Speaker B: This is the Mastermind for Business podcast. The podcast designed to help you, the small business owner or a professional, to spend a whole lot more time in your life and less time in your business to build a business which is less reliant on you, where scaling really is about time more than it is about money. And in this episode, we're going to examine three really important components that will help you to scale your business to the point where it becomes less reliant on you. We're going to look at the importance of patience. We're going to examine the value of sequencing, in other words, getting things in the right order. And then speaking of value, we're actually going to talk about how you need to understand and communicate the value that your product or service brings. Let's get that underway.
Okay, in today's episode, we're going to talk about the three things. We're going to talk about patience, sequencing and value. And I was presenting at our mastermind intensive. So part of our mastermind business accelerator program. We run an intensive for our members three times a year, and we spend two days on the Gold coast where we actually get people out of their business. They come from all over and come and spend two days with us. And I was talking about the value of patience. So we know that patience is a virtue, right? Growing up, we were always told that patience is a virtue, and it absolutely is in business. And I think what we've got to do is strike this fine line between being bullish and seeking stretch goals. And we're going to talk more about stretch goals in another episode of the mastermind for Business podcast. But we've got to find this balance between patience and stretch goals, or being bullish, or being entrepreneurial and pushing it out there. And one of the quotes that I read, I quite liked was, it's okay to be patient, like waiting for a bus, as long as you know the bus is actually coming.
And so the exercise that I actually ran is something I sort of challenge you to do now would be to think about when was a time in your business when you weren't patient? When was a time when you were impatient about something and to think about what it cost you. So what was the. What was the outcome of you not exercising patience when you really needed to?
And I love the analogies that exist, I think, between sport and business. Right. I remember when. When Nick, who, by the way, is still not back with us, Nick is off with his brand new baby boy, so Connelly. And so Nick's at home with Dee and Connelly and Little Eloise. So we are hoping that we'll have Nick back in the studio in the next couple of weeks. Once he's. Once pubs is all sorted out. So who was I going with? Our Nick. Right. When Nick was playing sport, he was playing rugby league as a teenager. And. And I remember his coach at the time, who was actually a really good guy and really loved the guys and got on really well. The boys, they respected him. But one of the things he used to say to them is not every play has to be a try scoring play.
Not every play has to be a try scoring play. And I think that's where. That's the epitome of patience, right? So with sport, in a team sport like that, not every. Not every ball that's bowled has to be hit for a six. Not every play has to be a tri scoring or a goal kicking. And it's about getting the ball to the other end. It's going through a process so you can get close enough to the try line or to the goal posts or to the net, whatever it might be, the hoop, whatever it is.
And I think the same is very much true in business. So the challenge that I've got for you is to think about this. If you've got a project that you're working on at the moment, how hard are you pushing to try and make every step in that project?
How hard are you pushing to make every step a winning step, as opposed to just a step that's going to get you closer to the position to be able to make that winning strike? One of the tools we use in our accelerator program is we use this tool called a sprint planner and all a sprint planner is, it's a super simple tool, actually. If you'd really like a copy, just send it through. Send an email through to carolinetropole.com dot au. That's carolinetropole.com dot au. And say sprint planner, please. And Caroline will fix you up with one of those. But the sprint plan is a pretty simple tool that we've designed, and it's really about taking a particular project, working out what is the outcome you want, what's the criteria by which you're going to measure the success, and what are the timeframes, and then who's going to be responsible for each step and then breaking that project into each. Into individual steps.
The idea of breaking it into individual steps, it's a bit like the old how do you climb a mountain one step at a time. But the idea of breaking it into individual steps is it gives you the opportunity to practice patience, to realize that each step isn't necessarily going to lead you to a conclusion. Each step isn't necessarily going to lead you to the ultimate prize. Each step is simply going to get you closer to it. So the challenge for you right now is to. Is to look at this and go, all right, when was the time that I was impatient about something? And what did it cost me? Because by understanding that, that's how we sort of learn the lesson where we go. Well, I don't want to repeat that. So now I want to not practice that impatience and practice patience instead.
And the patience then has to be linked to an ultimate goal. So it's okay to wait for the bus if we know the bus is definitely coming, if we're waiting at a bus stop, which is now disused or a Sunday, and the service isn't running, and it's the same in your business, it's okay to practice patience.
Not every play has to be a try scoring play, but every play should be getting you closer to the lines. Everything you do in your business, in a particular project, ought to be getting you in that direction. So I think there's two really important things here. One is to take that challenge and break your project into bite sized chunks so you can work out whether or not it's going to. Each step is actually going to lead you toward that point and to make sure that you're not trying to leap a tall building in a single bound. Lots of analogies, so. Or metaphors, whatever. You're not trying to leap that tall building in a single bound, but what you are doing is breaking it down into individual bite sized pieces, and then you're taking those bite sized pieces and asking yourself this question. And this is the second challenge.
So the first challenge is to break it into bite sized pieces. The second challenge is to ask yourself this question, which with each of those steps, with each of those pieces, is it actually getting me closer to the try line? Is it actually getting me closer to the point where I can score?
Is it getting me closer to the point where the outcome of the project is likely to eventuate? And if the answer is yes, then you're on track and you are practicing patience appropriately.
All right, I said there's three things we're going to look at. The next thing I really want to look at is sequencing. And sequencing is all about making sure that we're actually doing things in the right order, because I think that's a real challenging business, is sometimes there's so many things to do. I often get the question of Mark, where do I start? But I think it's more than that. I think it's more than just where do I start? It's actually about how do I get things in the right order. Stephen Covey said, begin with the end in mind, and that's where sequencing is vitally important. That's what we're going to look at. Just a second.
Okay. So I think there's a number of different tools that we can use or a number of different sort of thought processes. I've spoken before about Tony Robbins, the concept of state story and strategy. And so I think there's great value in getting that sequencing right. So the concept of that is to say, I've got a project or an idea or a concept or something I want to introduce into my business, and I want to develop a strategy around it. And maybe you already have a strategy, but my question to you is going to be, before you implement that strategy, do you actually have a valid story around it, and do you have the right state of mind?
So you have to look at your strategy and you have to ask yourself this question, what is the necessary state of mind in order to produce a story that's going to help me to achieve the outcome?
Because if we, if we work on strategy alone, we work on strategy alone, but we don't have the right state of mind or the right story, then the strategy isn't going to necessarily be achieved. And let me give you an example. I was having a conversation with one of our mastermind clients the other day about fees, and they wanted to increase their fees in a service that they provide. And so their strategy was simply, well, we've done some market research. We know that the marketplace will stand, withstand this additional fee. We know it's a valid fee. We know morally it's appropriate, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So they knew that it was the right thing to do for their business. So all they needed to do was to create some scripts and dialogues for their team to use to create a process for the implementation and then make it happen.
The problem is that the team didn't have the right state of mind. So when we went and spoke to the team about these increase in fees, there was this massive amount of resistance. Our clients will never pay that. They won't see the value in that. And we're going to talk about value further on in this episode, but they won't see the value or a whole bunch of objections as to why it wouldn't work. Now, if those clients had gone ahead and just implemented the strategy, it would have failed. And what would have happened is they very well could have drawn the wrong conclusion. They could have come back and said, okay, so clearly we got our market research wrong. We got our market research wrong because in fact, the market cant stand or cant withstand that additional cost.
And that would have been drawing a true conclusion from a false premise.
Because what actually went wrong wasn't that the clients weren't prepared to pay more, but the team weren't prepared to charge more because their state of mind was, no, we already charged this. This puts us at the top end of the market. This is why we charge that we can't charge anymore.
And this, that was their state of mind. The story they were telling themselves was that this was going to fail. And so it wouldn't have, it would not have mattered what strategy was put in place to implement it. It would have failed.
So what we had to do was go back and say to the team, all right, how can we add value to the client? How can we give the client something additional which is truly adding value? Something the client's going to go, yes, please, I would like that.
And we know that it's going to add value to them. We know it's going to serve them well, and we know that it's something that we can then actually charge for. So we changed the state of mind by going to the team and saying, let's talk about the fact that out in the marketplace, we may already be at the top end of the pricing, but there are people out there charging more. And the way they do that is because they add this additional value. What can we add in value? So we opened up their state of mind. They now had the thought open, at least that charging more was possible.
Then we had to structure the story. The story around it is, this is not a cash grab. This is not a grab. You know, we're not dipping our hand into our clients pockets just trying to steal money from them. What we're doing is we're genuinely adding value to them. We are furthering our mission to make the life of our clients easier, and that is worth something in monetary terms. And so once they were happy with their new state of mind and they were happy with the story that we were now putting around it. And it's not. Not a made up story. It's a genuine story that fits in with the state of mind. Now, we went back to the team and go, okay, cool. So here's what we're thinking.
We're thinking that if we can have this conversation, there's the script and dialogue, we can have this conversation with the client. And the feedback from the team was, yeah, okay, I feel comfortable. I think I can probably have that conversation. So it's a great example of the value of sequencing. It's. It's, you know, we spoke in the last episode about sometimes people treat symptoms, not causes. And one of the ways they do that is training.
This isn't working. They need training. They don't need training. The they. We need to actually understand why they're not doing something or why there's resistance to it. And it's not about training. Training will come later, and I'll talk about that in a second. So this is now a great example of that sequencing, where the first thing that the client wanted to throw at it was some scripts and dialogues. We'll just get the team to say this, and that's a great sell.
The team aren't going to sell it because they didn't believe in it. They didn't believe in it because their state of mind was that it was not possible. And the story that they were telling themselves around that was that it couldn't be done because there was no basis for it. As soon as we changed the state of mind and changed the story, suddenly they were now ready for the strategy to be implemented. And that's a great example of the power of sequencing.
I was having an unstick call. So one of the things that we do in part of our mastermind business accelerator program is our clients can have access to an unstick call where they get to one on one chat with me about a particular issue in their business. And this was another client, a very similar issue, about wanting to make some changes. And so again, they wanted to throw training at it. This was less about what we spoke about last week, about treating the cause and the symptom. This was more about, again, about sequencing, because in this case, training was absolutely necessary. So they had an issue, again, around sales. This was not around the value or the pricing. This was now around conversion rates. And so what they wanted to do was come and get some sales training.
What we needed to do was look at the sequencing of this. And so we pulled it apart and came to the realization that what was flawed and the reason why the conversion rates weren't as good as they could have been was not so much around the skills of the people, was, to a degree, not so much around the skills of the people, but more around the process that the business adopted. So the business adopted a process that was convoluted, complex, made it difficult for people to actually get to the point of sale. It was a service, service offering. But for somebody to get to the point where they could say, yes, please, was much longer and more complicated than it needed to be. So the first thing we had to look at, before we start looking at getting sales training, we actually had to look at the process.
What is the process? Are we making it super simple? Are we making it non convoluted? Is it easy for people to get to the point where they can say, yes, please, and we always pull it apart and go, right. How easy do we make it? When somebody makes an inquiry, when we first have a conversation with them, when they say, yes, when they start working with us, while they're working with us, when they finally end. And in each of those steps, we need to make sure that we're making it as simple as we possibly can. So what we did there was just pull that particular problem apart and go, let's just hang on a second. Let's have a look at your sales process first, and let's see if there's any holes in the process. And there were. We were able to take a number of steps out of the process. So, in other words, we removed barriers to progress or barriers to entry for the client. So we took some steps out of the process. Now we've got a really nice, clean, smooth, streamlined process. The next thing then was to look at the people. Right now we've got a good process. Let's have a look at the people. Do we actually have the right people having the sales conversations? And in this case, we half did the client half did. Half the people were the right people. Half the people weren't. They were too analytical, and so they got bogged down. And that's the great irony about it, is these really analytical salespeople, they had loved the process because it was an analytical, complex process, so they loved it, but it wasn't getting the results. So number one, review the process. Number two, review the people. And it's not that. It's not that they weren't the right people for the business. They just weren't the right people for that particular role.
They weren't the right people to be selling, and they certainly weren't the right people to be selling simply, in other words, through the new process, which had those much lower barriers to entry or barriers to people getting to the point where they say, yes, please, I want this service offering. So, number one, we looked at the process. Number two, we looked at the people. Once we had the process clear and we shuffled some people around and we had the right people sitting in the seats, we were then in a position where we go, okay, now let's get some training, because now we're training the right people on the right process.
And in fact, what happened is conversion rates doubled.
Conversion rates doubled because they were now training the right people in the right process. Had they not operated under that sequencing concept, they would have been training the wrong people to further a convoluted process, which would have probably meant those particular people might have been happy, but they were getting trained in how to be complicated in a complicated process, which is why the conversion rates were low. It actually had nothing to do with the skill sets, per se. And I think it's a danger that we often fall into. And again, we spoke about it last week about treating the cause, not the symptom, but I think it is a danger we often fall into where we think. Right. Well, let's throw some training at this.
Last week, when we spoke about it, it was more about where training wasn't needed. Yeah, training absolutely was needed, but what was more important was sequencing. We had to get things in the right order. We had to go process, then people, then training. And it's an interesting thing. I was having this conversation with a HR manager the other day about the importance of sequencing when you're hiring people or when you're inducting people into your business. And so it really should be about culture, environment and technical. So we get the sequencing right. What we should be looking for is how do we bring people comfortable into their environment? How do we make sure that they fit in and become a part of the culture of your business? And then we can get them into the technical skills. And when I interview, I follow that simple process. What's their environment like? What's their culture like? What are they looking for in a culture? And then let's see what their technical skills are. Because generally speaking, I work on the basis if they didn't have the technical skills, they probably wouldn't be sitting in front of me. And whatever nuances there are around their technical skills, we can teach.
I can't teach attitude, I can't teach culture, and I can't teach how people view their environment. So again, the power of sequencing, both in how you solve issues within your business, but also how you recruit and induct when you bring people into your business. Sequencing is super important. Get them into their environment, get them used to their environment.
Next, get them inducted into the culture of the business, finally start their technical training. And we often get that just so horribly wrong. People go, all right, I'm going to bring this person in. And so the first three days we're going to be teaching them a whole bunch of technical stuff and we've just missed the opportunity. So again, the power of sequencing. Right. So we've looked at patience, we looked at sequencing. What I really like to look at is value. And I think that the reality is whatever strategy you've got in place is going to struggle if you don't really clarify the value of your business. There's some four simple principles we're going to look at in just a second.
All right, so the thing about values, I think that again, it's a kind of, it's kind of a little bit like sequencing, right? Where we said you've got to get things in the right order, the value of the product or services. So this is not your values, but the value.
Right. The value of the product or service that you're offering. And I think there's four things that you've got to keep in mind when it comes to value. The first one is it has to be readily apparent. So in other words, it's got to be quick to say whatever the value is of the product or service that you're offering, your prospects have to see the value really quickly. And if you have to spend an inordinate period of time and dig really deep to show them the value, I mean, we all know the concept of sales is to find the problem, stretch the gap, close the sale. But if you have to spend an enormous amount of time trying to explain the value, it's like a joke. If you've got to explain the joke, it's a pretty crap joke.
Either it's a crap joke or it's a crap audience.
So if you have to go into great detail to try and show the value, then you need to rethink your value proposition. So number one, value has to be readily apparent. Number two, it has to be easily visible. Now, there's a difference here. Readily apparent means that you can explain it quickly. People can get to understand it. Easily visible means that they can see it. They can actually see it. That you could, you can draw them a diagram, you can draw them a picture, you can show them a flowchart, you can show them an excel spreadsheet, whatever it might be, but you can show them something which makes it super easy for them to see it quickly. The third thing is it has to be easy to explain. Lane, again, we're talking about, you know, that readily apparent. Readily apparent means it's there. It may require some explanation, but you don't want it to have a complex explanation.
And finally, it needs to be easy to quantify. See, it's always remember, worth remembering. I think that clients will avoid the promise of value for the certainty of the present state.
So clients will always mostly avoid the purpose, the promise of value for certainty of the present state. So you're looking to try and change the state of people.
And if you have to, if it's not quick for them to see, if they, if they don't understand it, if you have to spend too much time explaining it or you can't quantify it, oh, you know, it's going to be really good. It's going to bring a lot of value to you. Well, in what way? I just sort of generally, you know, whether it's, whether it's in, in money. I mean, one of the things that we say in our mastermind program, we talk about the value of the mastermind program, you'll get, you'll get your life back.
So if, if you're in, in business now and you're thinking, man, I've just, I've just become enslaved to this business. I don't have the freedom. I started my own business so that I could pick the kids up from school or, you know, go have lunch with my mum once a week or spend time with my, with my significant other, whatever it might be, and that's just not working. That's the value that we have in our mastermind program. We simply say, you know what? We're going to give you your life back. You're going to get that time back and we're going to do it pretty quickly for you. So again, it's easy to explain and easy to quantify. And, and I think that if you want to make sure that, that you get that value message across to your prospects, then you've got to follow that four step process.
They've got to be able to see it really quickly. So in other words, it's got to be a part of your conversation.
It's got to be easy to explain. They've got to quantify it. And it's got to be easily visible in that it's a part of the material that you're producing, whether it's printed material or website material, whatever it might be, podcast material, whatever. It's got to be so simple that they see it. Follow those four simple steps in relation to your value, and I think you'll find that you'll improve your conversion rate for clients to buy your product or service. All right, in today's episode, we had a look at the four steps to make sure that you've got your value proposition in place. We looked at the importance of patience. Remember, not every play is a try scoring play. And then finally, we looked at the importance of sequencing. It's about going through that process. We've got to get it in state of mind first, then the story, then the strategy. Or we've got process people, then training or culture, then environment or environment, then culture, then technical skills when it comes to inducting people. Hey, if you have got value out of today's episode, please find someone in a small business and share this episode with them. Tell me you can just go to listen to the Mastermind for Business podcast. It's going to help you to spend more time in your life and less time in your business. Please subscribe. If you like what we're doing, subscribe. It makes it so much easier for others to find us. And if you'd like to know more about our mastermind program, go to metropolemastermind.com dot au. If you would like a copy of the Sprint Planner sheet.
[email protected] dot au and Caroline will get that to you. And if you'd like to join us at one of our mastermind intensive, they are for clients only, but we always have some guest spots. Again,
[email protected] dot au and she will fill you in with all the details for the next one coming up in July. That's a wrap for today's episode. This is Mark Creedon saying thank you for joining us. And please, whatever you do between now and when we next speak, make sure you spend time with those who know the most.
[00:28:43] Speaker A: Thanks for joining us on the Mastermind for Business podcast. If you're ready to have a business that you're not a slave to, check out metropolemastermind.com dot au or have a chat with Mark and the team at all the w's. See what'spossible dot today.
