The Bacon Podcast with Brian Basilico | CURE Your Sales & Marketing with Ideas That Make It SIZZLE!

Mark S. A. Smith designs and implements customer acquisition systems that find and recruit customers for disruptive products. He speaks at entrepreneurial events delivering pragmatic ideas to grow and succeed.

He is an electrical engineer, media technologist, computer programmer, hardware salesman, a software marketer, and business owner who works with leaders who must develop the best way to bring in the right customers, fast!

Mark wrote 13 books and sales guides targeting government, educational, healthcare and the private sector, including three with Guerrilla Marketing author, Jay Conrad Levinson. He has authored more than 400 magazine articles.

With his engineering, sales, and business background, he can teach information in a way that customers, sales people, and management understand so that they can clearly communicate with their customers.

Creates powerful and innovative sales channel tools, combining product knowledge with proven sales skills. Creates custom white papers and books to sell technology to top management. Delivered thousands of speeches on selling.

Mark dropped additional nuggets of sales and marketing goodness in the EXTENDED Interview. Be sure to click here to access all of our great extended interviews, transcripts and more within our Insider's Club.

You can try it for the entire month for only $1.00!

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Training our new dog Layla (who is 11 months) is a challenge. Luckily, she responds to food, or better yet - Treats!

We have multiple treats for different training activities. We have one for when she goes on her walks, one for when she goes potty outside, and one type when she gets to get in her crate to go to sleep at night.

The one thing I hate is certain kinds of packaging. Some of the treats have the zip lock style closure, which often takes precision to close and open. One of her bags has a velcro style that makes it so much easier.

In this episode, we are going to talk about the parallels of training your audience to react to your marketing treats. There are three things that you can do to ensure that your treats are fresh and lead to a close (as in sales):

* Frequency - Making sure you have enough to train them

* Consistency - Getting them to expect your messages at certain times

* Connectivity - Amplify your reach by making sure that your sales staff is involved

In this episode, we will explain why your marketing messages matter and how they can lead to building a bridge to better sales. It all has to do with training your audience to behave in a predictable way that helps your investments in relationships pay off with more sales!

Matt dropped additional nuggets of sales and marketing goodness in the EXTENDED Interview. Be sure to click here to access all of our great extended interviews, transcripts and more within our Insider's Club.

You can try it for the entire month for only $1.00!

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My Name is Matt Bacak. Snagged this from World Internet Summit bio page: As you may already know... one of Matt Bacak's last products holds the all-time gravity record on Clickbank ... 2,086.87 Gravity (and no one has come close to beating it yet), plus he's been creating some of the best converting & biggest game changing offers since 2001. He's been marketing online since 1999 He put up his first optin page in 2001 He has mailed up to 4.1 million emails a day for over a year He split-tests everyday & he buys solo ads every day too. He co-runs the List-building club with over 13,000 members. His lists are growing by up-to 10,978 subscribers a DAY! ... And just recently had the most affiliates ever signed up for a JV Giveaway launch... 2,656.

If we took a way-back machine to December 2019, you probably never would have guessed that you would be networking almost 100% online? Zoom has been a savior and a bain for many, but here we are living in a virtual networking world.

One-on-ones are one of the best ways to grow your business, but they are often misunderstood and often end with no real plan or outcome. The best way to conduct one-on-one meetings is to sell nothing. You want to help create a relationship that can help your network gain referrals.

Malcolm explains his theory about three types of influencers who become the creators and spreaders of virility - a Salesperson, a Connector, or a Maven.

In Part one I will discuss my system to optimize your time and have more efficient and effective meetings through planing and well-defined outcomes. In Part 2, I will discuss some of the tools I use to make one-on-ones easier and convenient.

* Zoom

* Acuity

* LinkedIn

* Nimble

* Crystal

* Evernote

In this episode, we will explore my simple one-on-one plan, and then all these tools that you can have for under $85 a month. If you follow these steps, you should be able to make at least 10 times that while you grow your business!

Gina dropped additional nuggets of sales and marketing goodness in the EXTENDED Interview. Be sure to click here to access all of our great extended interviews, transcripts and more within our Insider's Club.

You can try it for the entire month for only $1.00!

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Gina Gaudio-Graves is the founder and CEO of The Abundance Group, LLC, the parent company of Directions University. She is the Dean & Founder of Directions University.

Online, most people know her as “The JV Queen“, a title she earned by organizing some of the most successful product launches on the internet, for some of the internet’s biggest names such as Shawn Casey, Willie Crawford, Russel Brunson, David Garfinkel, Henry Gold, Holly Cotter, and many others.

Gina’s JV’s would bring in millions in a short period of time (often in less than a week!), but a year later, profits from the promotion would be long gone, and Gina’s client would be left wondering where the next dollars were coming from. This usually meant creating yet another new product, and a new product launch.

In his book, "The Tipping Point", Malcolm Gladwell discusses how viruses spread. We are not only talking about the medical kind, but the ones that influence people and culture.

Viruses usually start small and grow slowly, but there becomes a tipping point where it srats to gain momentum to the point where it's hard to contain and control. It's often through some sort of influencer who amplifies the effects.

Malcolm explains his theory about three types of influencers who become the creators and spreaders of virility - a Salesperson, a Connector, or a Maven.

Each of these help messages to become sticky and expand their reach like a tinder fire in a dry forest.

* Salespeople influence through persuasion

* Connectors influence through people

* Mavens influence through information and ideas

In this episode, we will explore how to find and leverage influencers from within your own network who can help you spread the good word about your business!

MICHAEL HAUGE works with people who want to change more lives and make more money, by telling compelling stories. He has been one of Hollywood’s top consultants and story experts since 1985, and has worked with countless writers and filmmakers, as well as every major studio, on projects starring (among many others) Will Smith, Morgan Freeman, Julia Roberts, Tom Cruise and Reese Witherspoon.

Applying those same powerful story principles, Michael now coaches independent consultants, speakers, marketers, entrepreneurs and business leaders, and has presented seminars, lectures, and keynotes in person and online to more than 80,000 participants worldwide.

Michael is the bestselling author of Selling Your Story in 60 Seconds: The Guaranteed Way to Get Your Screenplay or Novel Read, as well as the 20th Anniversary Edition of his classic book Writing Screenplays That Sell. His latest book, Storytelling Made Easy: Persuade and Transform Your Audiences, Buyers and Clients – Simply, Quickly and Profitably, has just been released in digital, audio and print formats.

According to Will Smith, “No one is better than Michael Hauge at finding what is most authentic in every moment of a story.”

[button link="http://www.storymastery.com/6steps" window="yes"]Get Michael's Free Offer - Chart Of Six Step Success Stories - Click Here[/button]

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Networking has changed and so have our businesses. If you are like me, we spend a lot of time on Zoom. I am here to tell you Zoom Fatigue is REAL!

Meeting online increases our cognitive load because several of its features take up a lot of conscious capacity... and add caring for a puppy or a child into that?

Some of the new people I am meeting are wanting me to introduce people to them that are in my network or LinkedIn contact, so they can try to sell them.  That can be a bad idea and burn bridges and trust fast!

We all need new business, but I am suggesting that you start with your own contacts first. There are four key groups that you should be marketing to right now.

* Customers - What new offerings may serve them better?

* Past Customers - What's different in their jobs where you may help?

* Prospects - Do they understand what you do and the value of it for them?

* Vendors - How can you help them sell you by selling more of their services?

In this episode, we will explore how to effectively network and market to your own network first and how that can help you and others you network with!

Kelly dropped additional nuggets of sales and marketing goodness in the EXTENDED Interview. Be sure to click here to access all of our great extended interviews, transcripts and more within our Insider's Club.

You can try it for the entire month for only $1.00!

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How Do I Decide What To Focus On Next?

Tied for second place are questions like…

* Where should I spend my time and money?

* What activities actually make money?

* How soon after one project gets under way, can I add another?

* How do I know if a project is really working?

* What’s my Target Market?

* What’s my Unique Selling Proposition?

* How do I overcome Shiny Object Syndrome?

* What is Entrepreneurial ADD and why do people keep saying I have it?

There are the questions asked by solopreneurs who sense they lack focus.  They ask them because deep down they crave a better sense of direction!

Podcast Transcription

Brian Basilico: I don't know about you, guys, but I have a problem, and my problem is that I get distracted really easy. I call it, “Squirrel!” Our guest today is really, really good at helping you with that. Her name is Kelly McCausey. Kelly is going to help us learn about Bright Shiny Object Syndrome. Kelly, how are you doing today?

Kelly McCausey: I'm great. How are you?

Brian: I'm awesome. So, tell us who you are and how did you get to going from being a high school drop out to a solopreneur coach? There's got to be something in the middle there.

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Kelly: There's a lot in the middle and it's all exciting to me. Being a high school drop out meant I had trouble with money pretty much from the get-go. Being hard to employ hard to promote, hard to credit, I felt like I always startled with money, never had enough and that pretty much describes the first 25 years of my life. But there was a point where someone suggested that I could make some extra money providing a service, doing some desktop publishing. I created a website to offer those services and no one hired me to desktop publish, but lots have wanted me to build them a website. Just like that.

That brought me into the world of working home moms. My web host was Working Home Moms, my clients were work-at-home moms and as I would work on their websites, I would see all the different ways that they were making money and it made me very curious. [inaudible] but I had a community at the time, internet-based moms and it was a busy forum where I would sign lots of clients and outside became friends and ended up actually creating a membership site together that was launched in 2004. It completely changed my life because I went from being broke, under-employed to making a really exciting income just by shepherding a community and helping them find the information they needed to be successful.

Brian: Awesome. Now that you're doing this stuff, let's talk about “bright shiny objects.” What are bright shiny objects in business and believe me, I understand. But explain to my audience, what do you mean by bright shiny objects?

Kelly: In the internet marketing world and business in general, I'm sure Bright Shiny Object Syndrome is an issue, but in the internet marketing world, it's an epidemic of massive proportions.

How many mailing lists are you on, Brian? How many people are you subscribed to?

Brian: Too many to mention. I'm going to guess there's probably about 25 or 30.

Kelly: Then how many Facebook pages have you liked? How many podcasts have you subscribed to?

Brian: Too many?

Our last dog (Buddy Guy) never really would destroy his toys. Our new dog Layla is a completely different animal. She believes her purpose in live to find and spit the stuffing out of every toy you give her.

She works the toy to find the string she can pull that will unlock the treasure that she considers success... find and pull out all the stuffing, and then move onto the next toy.

Customers can be the same. We need to understand that they have a past that affects their current decisions (a common thread), and they may work with us to achieve their goals. Once they obtain that success, what's next?.

Your goal is to provide the right service or products at the right time. Their goal is to solve a problem or create a result. How can you find a common thread that holds that relationship together?

* What is the string? - Can you empathize?

* What is the stuffing? - What's the prize or success?

* What is the next toy? - If there a time to move on?

In this episode, we will discuss how to pull that common thread that holds together the business relationship, and what happens when you (and more importantly your clients) reach the end goal!