Jay Abraham’s reputation is beyond question. He hosts seminars that cost thousands of dollars to attend. People attend those seminars because he has successfully consulted countless businesses in every conceivable market. This is why he can afford to put an incredible amount of pdf and mp3 material out for free.

One of his free resources is “Getting Everything You Can Out Of All You’ve Got”.  Abraham has experience with businesses from all kinds of industries, which allows him to explain his ideas by use of many examples he’s collected over the years. It also means that no matter what your situation is, you will find plenty of valuable ideas for your business and/ or career.

The root of his strategy is outlined right at the beginning and it is based on the realization that every business has only up to three different ways to increase its revenue:

1. inceasing the number of clients
2. increasing the size of a sale per client
3. increasing the number of times a client buys from you

If you improve each of these factors by a little, you will actually multiply your results because:

number of clients x size of sale x number of sales = total revenue

The rest of the book deals with ways to increase these factors. Abraham’s philosophy is based on looking at everything through your customer’s eyes. They want a tangible benefit, a real solution to a problem they have and they want it quick, and well done. They want to be impresessed by you.

He begins the book by encouraging the reader to become open for opportunities and then provides 50 questions to make the reader think about areas in one’s business that have a potential to be improved. In around 380 pages, you will learn about the strategy of preeminence, creating a powerful USP, risk reversal, up-selling and cross-selling, testing, referal programs, attrition, direct mail and many more things. At the end of the book, he has inserted a chapter by Chris Cardell that deals specifically with marketing your internet business. Several of Abraham’s strategies may be applied in an employment context. Specifically a focus on your USP can help to distinguish yourself from your competition. The rest of this post gives a short overview of some key concepts. The book goes into great detail on any of these points.

A few key points

One of the most important ideas is the development of a USP – unique selling proposition. This forces you to think about what makes you different from your competition. Why should people buy from you instead of someone else? Once you understand exactly what customers are looking for and how your business gives it to them in an extraordinary way, then you can begin to use your USP in every marketing step. It is important to shove it down everyone’s throat that gets in touch with your business. Everyone must know that you are about X and that if they make busines with you, they will absolutely without question do so because they get X. Possible USPs could be:

• over-night delivery
• 24/7 service
• most detailed information
• broadest selection
• easiest to use
• always cheaper than the competition without compromising quality
• guaranteed result or money back

Apart from the services rendered, another way to develop a USP is through preemptive marketing. Preemptive marketing means, that you develop a unique background story in which you explain a key process of development or your company’s history in order to establish yourself as the preeminent business in your field. Everyone knows Coca Cola because it’s been around for so long. Every bottle contains the same tasting liquid. Everyone knows exactly what they will get when they buy a can because it’s established itself over a long period of time. Or as another example Abraham refers to Schlitz beer which used to be the most popular beer in the US. What was their USP? They emphasised purity and consistency of their beer. But they didn’t just use those words. They described the process of how they made the beer. That process was no different than how other beers were made, but they were the ones explaining it:

Since the USP is what makes you different and what appeals to your customers, you should incorporate it in every marketing endeavour to make sure everyone always understands the benefit they will get from you. It should be easy to understand and obvious for everyone who looks at your product. Abraham gives a lot of advice on formulating your USP together with examples for different kinds of businesses.

Another big emphasis in the book is the concept of risk reversal. When people buy from you, they are expected to give you money, hoping that their need will be fulfilled. Are they guaranteed that it will be fulfilled? By giving out money back guarantees, you remove the risk for the buyer. He will be more ready to pay for your product, knowing that if he doesn’t like it he can get his money back and won’t look dumb. Together with a USP, a prospect will be forced to buy because he’s running out of excuses not to buy. He wants a result. You promise it to him. He doesn’t want to lose money. You make him pay for his desired result, not for your product. If his expectation is not met, he will not lose anything. This can be played on a higher level by offering a better-than-risk-free guarantee. This means, that not only will the customer get his money back if he isn’t satisfied, but you will go even further and maybe leave him with your product for free or buy him the competitor’s product instead. With a better-than-risk-free guarantee, accepting the offer becomes a no-brainer. People who might be afraid to give you money, will throw it at you because they are guaranteed to end up with what they want (which is always a tangible result) and not run the risk of looking dumb by having invested in you.

Testing is the corner stone of all marketing. What kind of guarantee should I give? What kind of price should I ask for? What kind of headline should my ad have? All of these questions are best answered by testing one sample against another. Whatever produces the best result becomes the new benchmark against which the next idea can be tested. You can test specific elements of the design of your website or flyer. You can test the effectiveness of different advertising media. You can test sales sentences you or your team use in talking to customers. This ensures that every element of your business produces the maximum result. Abraham describes how to make sure that different testing models lead to results that let you track the cause of the response. For example, if you give out coupons with your flyer, you will know exactly what customers have bought from you because of that campaign. Abraham’s recommendation is to test two things at the same time (so called A/B split testing). That way you make sure that the losing variable won’t cost you too much. The key is to test everything. Phone, letters, headlines – nothing should be left without optimization through testing. A differently worded headline can get a 10x increase in response. A differently placed image on a website can also lead to more responses. A price of $27 may attract 30% more people to buy than $29. It cannot be predicted, therefore it must be tested. Underlying this philosophy is an understanding of the 80/20 principle – the principle that small things have disproportionately big effects. Knowing that a single sentence, word or color can outperform alternatives by a huge margin, makes testing an imperative.

Conclusion

This book is packed with almost 400 pages of practical advice on how to build up your business. Abraham provides you with plenty of action steps to apply to your own situation after every one of his 20 chapters. After reading this, I came away with an increased awareness towards how businesses are trying to get me to buy from them. I can now see why they do certain things in a certain way and am able to learn from that. This is what Abraham urges his readers to do towards the end:

Don’t limit yourself to the examples and applications I have given you of how to apply the strategies to your specific business situation. A standard size book can contain only so many examples. But the number of applications that you can adopt or adapt is unlimited. And you can discover new variations everywhere you look. All you have to do is refocus your mind to start looking at how other businesses sell, market, build and keep their clients. And how people and businesses do things to achieve any of the results you want. Then ask yourself, how you can adapt that method or process to what you do.

Any short quotations fall short of the depth that Abraham provides in his explanations of every strategy he presents.

Quotes

The Strategy of Preeminence is quite simply the ability to always put your clients’ needs ahead of your own. When you master that your success will naturally follow.

You should use the Strategy of Preeminence as a basis for dealing with everyone. Be a problem solver, not a problem bringer. Add value to every task you undertake on your employer’s behalf. Anyone, in any situation, who can look at you as a trusted friend who is providing service that will benefit them in some way, will be more than willing to sing your praises to those who have the ability to advance your career. Not just because you helped them. But also because they will want to continue to take advantage of the valuable service you provide
them.

You want to look smart and feel like you’ve done the best you can. But sometimes you’re just not sure what the right decision is. So your first instinct is to take less action because you’re afraid to take the wrong action, and you don’t want to look dumb. What you look for in those situations is a trusted friend. A confidant. Someone
you can feel comfortable asking advice from because you know he or she has your best interests at heart and will give you advice that will benefit you, not them. Now, consider that everyone you sell to, individuals or corporations, reacts in exactly the same way. Because they are all, first and foremost, human beings. And, as such, they will always exhibit human behavior. Just like you.

You need to reach out for ideas and answers. Examine ideas, people, procedures and philosophies from as far outside your normal sphere of business and life as you can possibly reach. Develop a genuine interest, fascination and curiosity for how other things outside your limited business world work and the principles they’re based upon. If you’re worried that switching to aggressive risk reversal will cost you lot of business, stop worrying. Unless your product or service is flawed – or just plain does not perform for the client – the number of people taking you up on a refund guarantee is negligible. But the increase in people taking you up on the initial sales offer is anything but negligible. I’ve seen strong risk reversal double and triple sales while only adding 1⁄2%-3% in additional refunds to a company’s numbers. (By using the testing strategy you can quickly, safely and definitively determine the difference risk reversal can and will make. And that’s what you should do first.)

Risk reversal and guarantees should be used in all your marketing efforts. Every salesman or saleswoman who works for you should be using risk reversal to alleviate fears or apprehension and to compel clients to action now. All your ads and mailings should use it. Risk reversal can become an important part of your Unique Selling Proposition (USP).