How To Build A Better Business Part 4: Back Ends And Lifetime Value

Everything we’ve gone over up to this point mattered.  This matters more.

If you get the other pieces right, you’ll do OK.  If you get this piece right, you’d have to try to lose.

You’re running a business and in business there is one thing that matters more than any other detail:  Profit.

Increasing profit doesn’t usually happen with lower end products.  If you’re selling a $39 program or product, that’s got to be the beginning.  It can’t be the end.

The EPC That Matters Most

We’re about to get into some math, so I’ll apologize in advance if that’s not something you find fun.

As stated in the first article of this sequence:

The EPC formula is Sales/visitors = EPC

That formula can be used for any frame of time as long as the data you’re using is the same time frame.  If you want to figure out a monthly EPC for a sales funnel, you would gather the sales and the amount of visitors for that month.  Then, divide the sales by the visitors to get your EPC.

Yet, that formula also applies to your entire business.  

You can do the EPC formula for each month or go as far as to do it for an entire year.  You would want to include every sale that brought in money to your business.

Affiliate sales count.

Back end sales count.

If you made a profit by selling it, add it to your sales volume.

However, you could also use a more advanced formula to find your profit.

All you have to do is subtract your expenses from your sales number before dividing by your visitors.

The more advanced formulas give you a better look at how your business is really doing.

The best possible EPC formula for your business is:  (All Sales – Expenses)/Visitors.  Use it, it will give you a very clear vision of your business and it’s performance.

Are you making a profit?  If not, you’ve got a problem that you need to fix as soon as possible.  

The following processes are designed to help you boost your sales and profits.

Focus On Life-Time Value

We’re about to start talking about profits here, but there is one major facet of this that you can’t forget or ignore.  You have to make sure you’re creating happy customers.

An old friend of mine once told me that if I have a solution to a problem my customers are dealing with, I should sell it as hard as humanly possible because they need what I provide.

While I believe that to be true, there’s a line and you have to figure out where that line is for your customers and your values.

If you don’t sell hard enough, nobody buys.

If you sell too hard, people don’t feel good about buying.

You have to figure out where you can straddle the line between those two.

When you find that line, you’ll create customers that love you and want to buy what you sell.  By making people feel good about buying from you, they will buy more often.

Outside of rare exceptions, the days of hiding behind an autoresponder and building a huge following are gone.

By delivering superior service, you can create a better group of customers that want to buy from you.

Follow these rules and you’ll outperform your competition every time:

1. When possible, help the customer where they are.  If they contact you on social media, try to help them without forwarding them to another location.  Not only will they be happy, it’s also public and other potential customers will see you help and want to work with you, too.
2. Respond to support requests as fast as possible.  If it’s you, use apps on your phone or notifications to let you know someone is having a problem and solve it.  Immediately.  If it’s someone you pay, make sure they understand that their priority is to handle support first.  Think about the last time you waited 3 days to hear back from a company.  It makes you feel bad, right?  It makes your customers feel bad, too.
3. When possible, concede (this is the biggest mistake I made during my first 10 years in business).  If you get a refund request, always provide it.  If they tell you you’re a terrible person, apologize.  Admit you were wrong even if you weren’t.  It will make them feel better and create the possibility of them buying again in the future.  It’s OK to love what you sell, but show love to your customers and they’ll come back again and a again.
4. Create loyalty by creating stories that show your values (not a service thing, but important).  When customers see your values match theirs, they will throw money at you.  Tell your stories and tell them in a way that creates a bond with your customers.

Be willing to go above and beyond for your customers and they will love you.  They’ll show you how much with their credit cards

Freedom Via Sequences

What do you do after someone buys?  If you don’t have an email sequence in place to support the sale and help the new customer, you’re missing out on money.

Anytime someone buys something from you, the next step in your journey with that customer is ensuring they consume what you sold them.

Why?

If they use what you sold them, they’ll come back and buy the next product.

Always send a consumption sequence “selling” a new customer on how awesome the product they bought is and how much it will help them.

I’ll generally send 3 emails.  One to highlight the overall goal of the product and how it will help the customer:  “It’s fair to expect to get ________ in half the time if you apply everything I show you.

The next email is the curiosity focus:  “On page 38 you’ll find my dark and dirty secret to achieve ______ twice as fast”.

Finally, the last email is an interaction focus.  “Assuming you’ve gone through at least a few of the modules, drop me a reply and let me know what you’ve enjoyed most”.

Not everyone replies, but it’s a nice personal added touch.  If I can have a conversation (either on the phone or via email) with a customer, they usually go on to buy whatever I suggest (whether it’s my product or someone else’s).

Once you complete a consumption sequence, push them onto your next sequence.  Promote the next product.

If you don’t have any other products of your own, feel free to add in products that belong to someone else.

In any market, there are dozens of affiliate programs, so look around for others with products parallel to yours (something different, but closely related).

The Right Way To Be An Affiliate

You can’t be everything to everyone.  In business that can relate to money and it should.

Your customers have many needs and the ones you can’t fill are pretty easily monetized.

In case you don’t already know, affiliate marketing is a process where you use a special link coded to you to refer business to someone else.  If someone clicks that link, then buys, you get paid a percentage of the sale.

The challenge with affiliate marketing is finding products that will help your audience AND are different from what you do.

You have to decide where your values lie in your business.  Are you going to slam your list with an offer every single day?  Would you prefer to balance content with offers?  Maybe include content inside of your pitches?

You can do whatever you want.

Whatever standard you choose, try to stick to it unless you have special circumstances.  It will upset your audience if you go too far out of what they normally see from you.  The other option is to surprise your customers every now and then because it may increase response.  Again, choose.

The first step is to choose your affiliate networks.

For digital products, your best bets are JVZoo and Clickbank.

For physical products, you’ll want to take a look at Shareasale, Commission Junction and Amazon

For each promotion, you’re going to want to create a sequence of 2 – 5 emails that go over what the product is going to do for them and why they need it.

Include things like guides on how to get the most out of the product you’re recommending, bonuses, and emotional reasons to buy.

Then, move onto the next one.

String a few of these products together with the goal of providing an end result to your customer when all of the recommendations are combined.

In the end, remind them of why they need each piece and provide a final link to get each one.

Building a Better Back End

No matter what you sell, you can create a deeper level of service and experience for your customers.  The best part is that you’ll get paid for it.

Developing a back end for physical products is harder than it is for digital ones, yet it is possible.

Focus on what your products do for people and what they’re looking for when they buy from you.

If you can improve some facet of their lives, a percentage of your customers will be willing to pay for your guidance.

Step 1:  What kind of result can you provide to someone you work with?  You have to define that first.  Then, take a look around and see what others are charging for that sort of thing.  I’ll give you general guidelines below, but the market you’re targeting will already have people offering what you want to offer.  It will be worth a few minutes of your time to see what they’re charging.

Step 2:  Break down the process you’re going to help people with into steps you can teach.  You’re looking for somewhere between 6 and 12 that you can transform into modules of a training program.

Step 3:  Decide how you want to work with your customers.  Do you prefer less 1-to-1 interaction or more?  The more you’ll be interacting with your customers, the more you can charge:

1. Group Coaching – You’re going to sell this for between $200 and $1,000 depending on the result you’ll be giving to your customers.  Smaller impact = lower selling price.  Next, decide on how you want to interact with your people.  A facebook group works, but I personally prefer a Slack group due to being able to control things better (plus, Slack doesn’t shut accounts down).  You can provide the training either in the group or in a private member’s area.
2. 1-to-1 Work – This is generally referred to as coaching or mentoring and sells for between $500 and $10,000 per month (or more) depending on what you do with your clients.  You’ll be giving your cell number or working with someone via some digital software.  Skype or Zoom are the ones I see used most often.  Start at the beginning and take them through your process.  You can either provide training modules or go through the process with them.  The key with this kind of thing working is getting your customer to focus on one piece at a time.
3. Workshops and Events – What kind of transformation could you give to someone if they spent a few days with you?  If you can come up with a clear answer to that question, you should do a Workshop for a small group of people.  You can sell this sort of thing for $1,000 to $10,000 (or more).  If you can do this part well, you should offer an upgrade into a 1-to-1 offer.

Do them all or just do one, but if you can add something like this into your product selection, a certain percentage of your customers will buy them.  It’s just that simple.

Without These Things You Have No Business

Maximizing profit should be the primary focus for any business.  If you’re comfortable selling a $25 T-shirt with no back end or upsell process, you’re not building a business.  You’re selling stuff as a hobby.

Even if you’re selling a few thousand of a single product, you need to expand and add to your revenue sources to really build a business.

Build an email list and create automated sales systems that take your customers from where they are when you find them to where they want to be.

Create experiences that not only help people, but make them feel good.

Find things that add value to the lives of your customers and profit by recommending it to them in a way that shows them why it will help them.

Maximize sales, reduce expenses, and above all, value your customers.  They ARE your business.

Here Is How You’re Going To Start

If you go back to the first post in this series, you’ll see that all of this relies on having a reliable traffic source.  Thankfully, you’re in the right place to get it.

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