We know your book is the best way to start a conversation. A way to identify invisible prospects from all the people out there who could be customers.
But rather than offering it to everyone, there are ways to improve your results by offering it to those who are already predisposed to want to do business with you.
The great news is, this approach can benefit everyone. Not just you, but the people you’re working with, and their customers.
Today on the Book More Show we’re talking about working with others to add more value to their customers, and at the same time, giving you the opportunity to spread your message, and introduce your solution to people who are already in the market for whatever it is you offer.
Working with complimentary, non-competing businesses is one of the best ways to identify that group of customers, one step removed from your current sphere of influence.
By taking a couple of extra steps to orchestrate that referral process, you can ensure the best chance of a new, relevant, potential customer hearing about you in a way that starts the conversation in a great way.
We also talked about ways to work with others to create your book in the first place.
This is a great show, especially if you operate in a geographical area where you have connections, or have built relationships online already.
Secret Psychology of Referrals Report
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Transcript: Book More Show 061
Stuart: Hey everyone, welcome to another Book More Show, it's Stuart here with Betsey. How's it going, Betsey?
Betsey: It's fantastic. How's your day to you?
Stuart: It is nice and sunny across here, so that always makes it a better day. I just realized I need to get a more consistent opening because I didn't surname either of us this time.
Betsey: Oh yeah, you didn't.
Stuart: The formal first name only start.
Betsey: Maybe they might know by now. Stuart Bell, Betsey Vaughn. There we are.
Stuart: It's the Dean Jackson approach to starting every cast with, "Hey everybody, it's Dean Jackson."
Betsey: Right.
Stuart: Okay, so we are today going to get to the bit that we didn't get to last week. So for everyone following along, we're in a season of looking at the Beyond the Book stages. Your book's completed or approaching completion. What are the best things you can do to make the most of it? And now it's complete.
Kind of getting it out there. Allowing it to really be the thing that starts the conversation and generates business. So we're going to carry on that theme today.
Betsey: Great.
Stuart: That sounds good?
Betsey: Yeah. Look forward to it.
Stuart: I know it's definitely something we get a lot of questions about, as we said last week. So, hopefully this show is going to be another grab bag of ... well, initially, one particular subject, but hopefully going to cover lots of different examples. So, no what type of business you're in, to a certain degree no matter what you're trying to achieve with the book, where it kind of fits into the overall marketing strategy.
Hopefully there's going to be something here on the subject of working with complementary non-competing businesses, that really gives you some great ideas, and some really low cost or no cost ideas that you can grab today and really start priming the pump or sowing the seeds of leads and conversations over the summer that turn into business as you get a little bit further down that track of that.
Betsey: Awesome. Very good.
Stuart: Okay, so complementary non-competing businesses, and working with those guys to, as much as possible for the greater good for the benefit of everyone involved, really help to identify the invisible prospects from the invisible prospects and help educate and motivate people towards making a decision to ultimately do some work with you.
So what do we mean by complementary non-competing? If the words don't speak for themselves. So what we're you thinking about is businesses that you can partner with or you can get leads from. They can refer business to you, they can show some additional value to their customers by talking about you. Who those companies are, and what's think of the mechanism or the framework of making that relationship work as best as possible?
So we're going to go through some examples, but one we really think about here is ways of helping educate everyone and giving a complimentary non-competing business a useful, valid reason to add more value to their customers by giving them your book.
So it's not like we're going to work with ... what's an example so we do a lot of work with realtors and ... I'm getting confused on the US, UK words again. What's the name of the people that do the surveys, like house surveys when you go to buy a house?
Betsey: Something like an appraiser, well there's surveyor so that's an actual position. That's an actual job.
Stuart: Yeah. That was the term, it was either the appraiser or the surveyor, the person would go home and say this house is worth this much and this past is all these checks, and you got to watch out for these things.
Betsey: Inspection, yeah.
Stuart: Inspection. Thank you.
It's like a game of Charades, every time.
Betsey: Right. It really is.
Stuart: So the inspector said we work with of realtors, they work with a lot of inspectors. A lot of those relationships aren't necessarily the most with the end user experience in mind, a lot of them are financial based, so there might be some affiliate fees or referral fees and oftentimes ... not picking on Realtors, but oftentimes it's just transaction based.
Well we're talking about more is thinking about the book we've written that and value, educates people on a particular subject. How can you position that with the other company so that they get value from it?
So one of the examples that we've used before is florists. I'm not sure why that's top of the list. We seem to have picked it up for the theme of the show. So the florists we were using the example of the Main Guide to Fall Wedding Flowers, that book as the entire value proposition is something useful aging gives to people. Giving that copy of a book to various venues or photographers or cake bakers cake wedding cake making companies or wedding dress organizers.
Betsey: Event planners.
Stuart: Event planners, yes. Yeah, exactly.
Giving that to them as a way of adding extra value to their customers, giving them some more education, help ... giving them something useful, basically, is a way of you entering that conversation with a more targeted audience. So rather than on the one hand you could put the book out there a stand outside a train station with a billboard saying free copy of the fall wedding flowers guide, that audience that you're talking to is all and sundry as they walk past.
Tying it in with complimentary non-competing businesses just means fishing from a more relevant pool, and you're doing it in such a way that starts the conversation off by adding value. You're making get more likely or easier for the other company to recommend you, to give you that introduction because you're them the thing that just adds value.
It's not like you're saying to them you should give me all of your customer database and I'll send him an email about flowers, it's you're giving them a thing that adds value, and then that goes into the whole kind of reciprocity and some of the persuasion things that we've talked about before.
If, as the venue, I can give you the book that actually gives you all you need to know about the fall flowers for this particular area of the country. Here's all of the information you need, so no matter where you're going to go, here's some great information for you. That makes me feel good as a venue and value to my customer that people are booking the venue.
All of that means that's your fishing from a better pool. There's a better start to the relationship. It's likely to be a more common not more impassioned, but it might be more of an emotional recommendation, rather than just oh here's a list of other vendors that we work with, which is pretty passive.
There's clearly no financial relationship there, so it doesn't start to feel like icky in any way just referrals, because they get a kick back, and it gives value to the person to give it to the customer. It starts off your potential relationship with that customer in a way that's higher value, starts creating that reciprocity, starts creating a good feeling.
So the key with all of this is that you need the way of them capturing the details, because what you don't want to do is say hey you have a copy in my book if you give me your name and email address, and what you don't want to say is see there to the venue in this situation. OK that's great but if you can give me the name and email address or anyone you give a copy of the book to. Because again, that sours the relationship.
So this is why we've talked about in the past the importance of that middle step, in the back cover copy, where there is the kind of minimum viable commitment step to moving people forwards of head over here and download a copy of the checklist or copy the scorecard or the bonus material that amplifies the messaging and gives you more even more information.
You need a way of collecting names and e-mail addresses of people who have got a copy of the book, but you're not necessarily involved in that transaction. Actually the same way as Amazon if people have requested a copy off Amazon, no way of getting the details so you need a way to point people to somewhere where in a minimum viable commitment way, a small additional step, you can collect the details in return for adding even more value, adding something of benefit.
Betsey: Right. I think that's it. It's funny I was thinking of an example of people that I know of well some of our current clients. But then I have seen people I follow on social media who happens to be a florist. And so I've watched them evolve, they've had their business for two and a half years. And they're people that I knew at my former career. So I knew I know them. So I was watching them just for that.
But I've watched how they've done this and how they've really, without a book, but they've built this community amongst themselves. They've got a photographer that they appear to always be working with, they have a baker that they're always tagging, they have a couple of event planners that they're always putting together. Seems like they've really created this real community amongst themselves, just...
And they're a relatively new business, and they're women who are stay-at-home moms and who created this florist business and it's just kind of just taking off completely. And I think women who are saying on moms you've read this florist business and it's kind of just taken off completely and I think it. It's important. Some of these people are not even ... this is like people that they don't know what can that acts or what area they live in. They're a little further away but they've just sort of reached out and it's evolved, you now into something more, and there's a lot of you can do a lot of referrals and communication between them back and forth.
Stuart: And this is exactly the point, isn't it? It naturally as humans we make those connections and form those networks because of a couple of reasons. I think this is not persuasion, but might be an Influence, Robert Cialdini's earlier book talking about the reciprocity element of making a referral kind of within the tribe.
And I know Dean talks about this in the secret psychology of why people refer before, which if I remember I'll put a link to that in the initial notes, but this, within a tribe within a community. We as individuals like the kudos or the good group feeling of being able to recommend something that will give someone else value. To some degree, almost regardless of what their experience will be. We like the feeling of being able to refer things, of having kind of the secret of being the person that had the good connection.
So all of these networks happen naturally within kind of social groups or business groups, anyway. So to be able to leverage that a little bit more in rather than saying go here's just a blind referral but saying here's something of value the benefit then that extra step gets by having your book been the thing that they recommend. Is it bridges the gap one step further. So not only has the initial person made the recommendation of something so that carries a lot of social weight with it but the beginning of your relationship with that customer is then improved rather than just getting a referral and they should make a phone call.
Check out the websites they've made a referral and know the customers read something that's added to the experience even more, so it's just amplifying something that is naturally happening, anyway.
Betsey: And that is so true. So, we talked about this ... Maybe we're not going to discuss this, I know I'm jumping ahead, but somebody approached me recently. And they're still deciding, just trying to decide when they want to come on board after summer and do the traveling.
But he is a Realtor and he wants to create a sort of ... it's not an advertising, but a hey these are who I use, kind of. So he's a Realtor, so let's say it's a survey of the title company or the inspector, these people mortgage brokers’ people that he has already developed a strong long term relationship ships with, and he wants to put a little something in the book for them, that's why he wants to create the book.
I thought we know that. I mean that's great. And it could lock you into what if there's no 40 other mortgage company potentially work? And you have this relationship. But he and then he was looking at from the standpoint of if he did that then they would just keep the hold books and give the books out to people that they came across.
And again, I think there's a double edged sword. I think it's a great idea, the people that you've really work with you, have his awesome relationships with, and they're going to refer you, they're going to hand your book out.
Stuart: It does to a certain degree, because at the end of the day, if one company is in the book company's idea in the book but only until they're not in the book. I mean the whole thing that we talk about creating with the name in the book process particularly is that compared with traditional publishing the whole purpose of it is to keep it as fast and effective and agile and as changeable as possible.
This is an end to tens of thousands of dollars to get something really an idea and then you need to print tens of thousands of copies and yet they're left sat on the shelf. This is fast cost effective way of creating things super cost effective way of making changes further down the track on its way it really knows how quick and easy that is, and print on demand.
So if it was a situation where either the mortgage company went out of business, or their business model changed so they were doing different things, or worst case scenario, they did something inappropriate so you wanted to sever ties with them. Making changes further down the track is very, very straightforward.
Betsey: Right, right, right.
Stuart: This model largely it's kind of an expansion to the complementary non-competing that we were talking about. So this is just kind of off top, we’ve gone down this particular path.
But you can imagine being, I'm going to use the word thought leader, and even as I say that I'm kind of throwing up in my mouth a little bit at the time, because it's like the term entrepreneur, it's so overused and misused.
You can imagine being the thought leader of a particular thing in your area. So, leading real estate. You're kind of active in the community, even if you haven't been working for very long, that kind of passion that you've got for the area, we kind of see it as in fact you want to be helpful, in all areas you're supportive person. A good person to do business with.
That presence you've got, amplify that by writing the book for Winter Haven Guide to Moving Home and pulling together a chapter for each of those four or five things that we talked about, so how to find a real estate agent, how to find a photographer, how to find the moving company. How to find an inspector that you need to do another section, and know about how you need to Stage your home so that it shows the best.
Not every chapter has to be from another service provider, but the Guide then really adds value to the thing that's very joined together, so a moving home, and then each of the chapters in there, there is another service provider from another service, could he written by the other person.
I think people know now, the way that we capture the content is through audio, so, bundling together those little Elements, by asking the other person the relevant questions. It's more work, typically, then we stress than writing the book. So it's not as easy to create as you just created yourself from your own knowledge, just because there are more moving parts.
But you can imagine writing that guide, and those four, five other providers that are in there, it's going to be something that promotes them, it makes them look good it's, simply for their customers. They can potentially use it in their own funnels. All the way you're the main body in there, the main contact in there.
You created it, there is a guide, is in your direction, rather than theirs, what is leveraging your skills in bringing this together, and their ability to get in front of an audience, a relevant audience, that you don't necessarily have.
So it's kind of like you feel like you're creating something that is then bigger than you, because ... Just like the old saying Archimedes or Galileo, whichever one it was, I can see so far because I stand on the shoulders of giants.
That knowing that you can create something that then has a distribution wider than yourself. Dean and I can't think of where there's anything we've gotten on the book side, or wherever it was more on the profit activators scorecard.
But one of the earliest businesses that he had in college was they would go around and Survey people within their local area and see whether they were planning getting Renovations over the next 12 months. So Windows or yard work or building words, all that type of thing. When they sell those leads to the window companies or the decorating companies in the area, as hot leads, these people are planning it, so the...
The story is going to fall apart now, because I can't remember what the original theory was that they started doing it ... anyway, it doesn't matter. The point being they were paying for their efforts to collectively, to identify the leader that they absolutely want to. They were paying for all of their effort by selling the least to the other companies
So In a similar way, you're kind of leveraging other people’s access to Market by writing something that makes them look good and it's beneficial to them as well, because they can get some business from the asset that you've created.
It's really the best example of the greater good, and the kind of synergy of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. And if individually those organizations have something useful to say, but by collectively bringing them all together that ass that, that book has now got far more leverage for you than it would if you had just popped up by yourself.
Betsey: Absolutely, yeah.
Stuart: We talked to some people about this before, and they talked about kind of selling chapters, and getting people to pay to have a position in the book which is definitely an option. And as long as it is ethically done I mean it's not the end of the world. You can you could very effectively pay for the book to be created by people that pay to play model always leaves a little bit of a bad taste in my mouth.
I mean if its people and that you work with and you agree to split the cost, that's one thing. Just paying for a position in there, that kind of takes the edge off a little bit, and I think if you can...
I mean, again, if that's where you want to go, that's fine, there's nothing wrong with it. But, if you can come from the positive position of everyone working together to bring together this greater thing, then it just positions the relationship.
I think cash is always a little bit of the easy way out. This is such a kind of an off the cuff thing to say so it doesn't really stand up to scrutiny, but to a certain degree cash is always the easy way, if you're trying to work with people and then think about okay what's the bigger benefit what's the greater good? Let's all think together for the best answer, rather than let's just think as far as $500 dollars to get your name in here.
The outcome is I think is just being such a better outcome, because everyone's pulling in the same direction, yeah.
Betsey: Yeah yeah. Definitely.
Stuart: That was a bit of a tangent I can't remember the direction that I was going. What were you talking about? So we were told by the florist example and the venues and the photographers and your book that you read a book given it to other people to share.
So let's tie the two together, then, so we've got two examples. One is a book that you've written by yourself and you want to leverage in two complementary non-competing businesses and the second one is one where you've orchestrated that a little bit more so you've kind of brought those complementary non-competing businesses into the fold beforehand and actually created a book with them.
In both examples, those third parties those are the businesses, aren't the brains behind creating the book. So they're not necessarily going to be thinking about how to best utilize the book, or how a book can sit in a funnel, or what's the best way to position it and get it in front of people.
So one option would be just to buy 20 copies for everyone and then you say hey give these it's great your customers well of value from it. Give me a call when you've got two left and I'll drop off another 20. That's the minimum level of effort to go into it, and to a certain degree if it's on a countertop in a dentist's reception, then they will get taken.
But it's not really orchestrating that referral is really on and kind of passively people picking them up. So if you rely on other people to think about the marketing message or the funnel around it then you're not going to get that much bang out of the project.
A better way of doing it, is thinking an affiliate type model, so assume that these people are your affiliates or your sales team, out there spreading the word for you. So obviously, they're not, they're independent companies but if you think about it in that way you then start thinking is okay if they did work for me if they were salaried employees and I wanted to instruct exactly what they would do, if in my head I've got the perfect model and as close as I can get to them executing on the perfect knowledge of the better than you can see already it's just a way more successful. It's much more likelihood that the project of getting your booking film whether people are going to be successful because you do a lot of that work for them.
So the things that we're talking about there are things like potentially writing a cover letter for them to attach to the book when they give it out. So rather than just giving the book out, oh here's a book that's good for them anyway, there's a lot of useful information there.
There's also a cover letter that goes along with it that highlights as we've talked about before, we like the follow up e-mail sequence the highlights the really important section within the book and make it look as personal as possible, almost as if you'd been passed the referral and you had the chance or the opportunity to write a message in there on a one on one level, it’s just kind of scaling that up a little bit.
You could you go down the route of saying to people, "Okay let's do a broadcast to begin with. So we're just introducing this idea of you giving a book to people. Why don't we also broadcast it to your audience of customers on the one hand, and unconverted leads on the other hand, so allowing them to use their as a cookie to re-engage dead leads.
Betsey, are you still interested in a wedding again in Maine this fall? If so a good friend of mine has just written their book, love to get you a copy of you. Just let me know.
By allowing them to use your book to reactivate their leads. Yes, it's reactivating their lead so you might think why would I want to do that. But the thing that ... the main point is that you're still using it as an opportunity to get your asset out in front of that group.
So if it goes to 100 people and 80 of them turn around and say oh yeah I am interested in a wedding and book the venue and you never hear from them. But 20 of them say yes I'm interested in her wedding and the flowers thing looks interesting. So you read that and reach out to the person the voter, the 80 that didn't contact you doesn't detract from the 20 that did.
Betsey: Yeah.
Stuart: And particularly if you look at it as a digital not, a physical, because then there is no cost of costs. Obviously the actual book costs are is super low anyway so that might still work out
But this concept of if you were designing the perfect funnel, what would you design and how closely can you get someone to adhere and to follow up with that?
Talking about follow up if someone if ... let's jump back to the physical model, if you did give the book to someone and then he reached back and said Oh that was fantastic he was the person that wrote in, “This book made me think, I'll change my life.”
It's about giving the venue people specific words to stay, specific ways to move that referral opportunity through to you is another way of making it easy for them. So they don't have to think about what the answer is. They don't have to think okay well what should the answer be, ` should it be. Yes it was great wasn't it? Thank you, move on, or yes it was great no one needs to collect your name and e-mail address, and make sure that I pass that across.
Giving them an easy way of allowing the customer to take the next step. So in the example that we've had before it's like the score cards the check lists, that minimum viable way of moving people forward. Saying to the third party vendor, "Here are the books, here's the way you should pass out. If someone comes back you and want some more information, then we recommend that you point them to this checklist, because then they can download it for themselves."
And just really go through the full flower check list and that will give them even more utility or more benefit or educate them even more on this subject that we're talking about.
So whatever, yeah whatever you can do to streamline it to make it easy both for the end customer search and for the third party to handle the thing in the first place. Remember that there's an opportunity to get the thing out in the first place and then orchestrate the referral through to the next step. It just streamlines them is that we're streamlining the process all the way through.
Sticking with that idea of making it easy for them as possible, because your objective is to get the book in front of as many eyes as possible, we talked about creating an email campaign for them, allowing them to use the book as the asset in a campaign that promotes them but kind of subtly promotes you as well.
But there's also things like print or images or social media campaigns, all of the things that you can create for them. So say hey venue here's a book. Actually, here's a banner as well for your website, so you feel free to stick this one on your website, and if someone wants a copy of it, here's how they can get a copy of it.
Or on their social media feed, rather than saying, "I want you to promote this book because it is going to be beneficial for your guy." Rather than just saying that say, "Oh here's some copy for the post on the social media post, here's an image that looks great."
If possible or practical I guess if you can combine them together so it fits all in a local area. Take a physical copy of the book give it to the venue owner see if they can hold it in front of the venue, and not sort of cheesily pointing the book with a big smile face and a thumbs up, but can we subtly have it on the table in front of the venue so the main the picture shows off the venue. So there is benefit to them, still.
Not just
Betsey: Yeah.
Stuart: So this whole model of making it a win-win for everyone all the way down the chain. It's a win for you because you got in front of more eyeballs. It's a win for them because, if you're thinking about writing a book to promote your business you already think about it from a marketer's perspective. You're already thinking about the benefits and how it can be used in multiple different circumstances.
Likelihood is that other business owner isn't thinking the same so you can be their go-to person for this particular campaign. Not only is it benefiting them, because it's getting them exposure in two channels that they might not be comfortable with
Stuart: Business you already think about it from a marketer's perspective you're already thinking about the benefits and how it can be used in multiple different circumstances. Likelihood is the other business owner isn't thinking the same so you can be there. They go to person for this particular campaign no is it benefit in them because it's gained them exposure in channels that they might not be comfortable with or familiar with.
And once you've done the work for them but because you're doing it in multiple different ways and because you're think this is a skill you've now got anyway it's easier for you to create and leverage it to multiple different people than it is for them to think about. Okay now I've got to do something with this, and I don't really have the contacts, I don't have the skills or the experience.
Betsey: But you said that they're not thinking about it at the end. It has to be simple for them, it has to be versatile because people, if they're not thinking about it, they're not going to want to do any work on it.
And I think we have to really truly benefit you'd have to be approached in the sense that it's more beneficial to that person other than yourself, more than yourself., people are they're very territorial either they are their own list or their clients or that they don't ... People don't always want to share.
So I think you really have to position that as hey, Baker this is really going to be great for, or venue or whatever whoever it is, if you're the florist. Really position it, not just go at it.
Stuart: And just coming back to the earlier Book Blueprint mindset of the book. So as you go through those eight mindsets they are ordered in a particular way for a reason. It's not just random which what don't you think is and the content of the book comes after the title and the call to action.
It's how you can add value. It's not that you start with the mindset when I'm angry I want to tell people how great I am saying in a way book can and everything else comes after it.
Starting with the end in mind of what's the problem that people are looking to solve. People want the call to action at the end. How can they improve their understanding or education or the likelihood of success? And only then, in the middle of it becomes the words that take some from the front to the back cover, and those words are the things that answer the question that was posed by the problem statement on the first on the front cover of the title and the subheading.
So if you write a book it talks about how fantastic you are, and all of the things you've done and why you're the best person to work with, and then you try and take that to compliment you non-competing businesses even if it's people they're going to look at it and read it and say why am I send them this press release of how fantastic you are, that's not adding any value to my people.
Even the middle layer, which we've sometimes talked about before in kind of financial advisor type sense, where ... and again, not wanting to pick on financial advisers, but sometimes there's a there's a position of ... well I can tell you so much but don't want to give away all the secrets. I don't know that too deeply. Because I have want to keep something for myself, because otherwise why would you come here? Or it's too complicated there's always come out so and why can't give the exact answer.
And this absolutely compliance reasons why that might be problematic and realistic reasons that things are complicated. But writing the book that absolutely gives value, that as a stand alone thing if people never ever spoke to you they would get something from the book.
Is this the introduction the one on one level of okay before you do anything else you need to do? These are straightforward things then giving that to the complementary non-competing business. This third party Pi business that you want to have them shame on your behalf.
It is all coming position of give give give, make this most valuable thing. Then there is no reason why they ... Well, there's is far less reason why they would be resistant to shaming it, because it is coming from a position of here's an absolutely valuable answer to this question that we all know is important. It's not. Let me tell you how fantastic I am answering this question everyone thinks is important.
Betsey: Right that's it.
Stuart: Sorry, that's a little bit of a rant.
Betsey: No, That's not. I got it.
Stuart: But it's so important, and again it all ties back into what's the purpose. The purpose is to identify visible leads people who are interested in the thing that you're offering.
He may not be customers today but he'll on the journey towards being the best customers, and best and buy best customers I mean best for you because they are the targeted group of people who are dialed into your mindset, the way of doing business and the best customers because they get the most out of it as well.
You can absolutely genuinely deliver value and help them in whatever it is are trying to achieve and why. In the book that starts that journey in the most helpful way just means all of these subsequent things are more likely to happen as well because you can leverage other people a lot more because you’re adding value to them. It's not just that you're trying to leverage a relationship and saying Hey Bob we've known each other for 10 years, promote this.
Betsey: Yeah.
Stuart: A couple of other things that spring to mind, then, is just the context in which their customers would have reason to see the book. So all the way through this we're talking by having the mindset of how to make it as easy and successful for them.
So some of the things that come into play then are things like context. So if it's much more likely that.
So let's think of the example. So with the venue wedding venue that's physically around one particular place. So the likelihood is that at some point the customers are going to be the venue, start a physical copy your book makes sense because they're physically going to be there. It's not new expecting this person to carry your books around with them. They can have them under the desk at the reception because the majority of the customers are passing for the opportunity.
The flip side of that context is potentially someone like the photographer. So again sticking with the wedding analogy the photographer is very unlikely or far less likely to ask the customers are going to come to them. You might have a storefront where the studio is but certainly in the UK at least it's far more common that the photographer will just be working from home and go to you is the client for the introduction and then go to your wedding or whatever the venue is.
So in those scenarios is far less likely the physical book would be useful but potentially the electronic book would be more useful. And as part of their follow up package as part of their proposal package you could suggest including a copy of the book, and it got me the book.
Now that's not necessarily always the case so like we've seen last week with the examples that it depends so think about the overall strategy and what you're trying to achieve rather than latch on to this one particular thing as a tactic.
So, it might be the case that physically they do take some sort of frame so maybe they've gone up and do stuff that they leave with them as part of a package of things with some photos of previous weddings so that if tangibly got something so physical while might make sense in that scenario you really want to sit down with the photographer and what is the words How can you position the book as part of something that should take up space in this package that gets left with the client.
So that might be something like Do you in a kind of white label version of the book where the book is primarily yours but allowed the photographer to lie forward to the book and that foreword could be something like I would write as much value as I can and make sure that you've got the most perfect day. I've worked with these guys at the florist for years. I wanted to extract from them some of their knowledge about how to get the best fall wedding in Maine, and we worked together to create this book.
So something rather than just trying to convince the photographers to put an extra quarter pound of weight in his bag and take up that space in a folder that could be taken with something else.
Make a compelling case as to why they should be in and how it can add value to all of you because it goes your name out there as a solution and increases the value of the package that they're delivering because they're not just saying to me I'll take the nice pictures. They're saying hey listen I'm interested in making sure that's your overall experience is the best it can be, to the extent that I can make a difference. And I know that having fantastic flyers on your wedding day can make a huge difference to the quality the photos you've got because it's surprising how much people's eyes are drawn to that.
So if you have the wrong type of flowers, or the one colors of flowers, or they don't look ... they're half dead. Then that's why your photos look far, far worse...
So it's just orchestrating this and thinking about the overall position from each of the stakeholder’s position. From the position of you? From the position of the complementary non-competing business, from the position of the end customer who eventually gets it.
Taking little bit of time to think about how that plays together today means that the kind of amplification of the all that you're trying to set up the kind of effectiveness of it amplifies over time, and it's kind of like a compounding effect where the outcome a year down the track is far far greater than the effort that was put in on day one.
Betsey: Yeah I think this is a really great, because I think it's thinking a little bit outside the box and not what people think on a regular basis. I bet they are glad that when they are thinking about marketing and sales are they have you,
Stuart: Yeah. And the thing isn't it? No one ever thinks about this, because everyone's so busy they just think, "Okay." I mean, we can see it with people writing they’re glad it's done now. Thank God, I never have to think about it again, and then just disappear and nothing happens with it.
It is so easy just to put it on the back burner because it's a little bit too difficult to think about and I'll come back to it later. And then two years passed by, and that's exactly the same with the third parties that we're talking. Even if you have the best conversation with them, unless you kind of spoon-feed them in the nicest possible way and set it all up for them as much as possible which with the smallest amount of effort you can do, particularly if you're going to leverage your own effort, so you're going to do ... because it's repeatable this funnel that you point in place for the photographer.
You put the same film in place fill the venue and the same for the baker, and the right of the car company and the same for the efficient person comes and you can leverage your activity in a way that they're not going to do for themselves and even for yourself and kind of the business that wants the exposure. Very few people think about these two circles.
Everyone thinks right the first themselves and then the first circle is very rare that people think that further down the track. So right a lot of opportunity that's left hanging. Yeah there's a lot of opportunities left hanging. I think so, yeah.
I want you to do something through that's kind of it on the construction side as you I mean if you really wanted to dive deep into this then grab a copy of the book blueprint score card from BookBlueprintstore.com and there's the checklist you run through, and then for each of the mindsets that you would think about for yourself on the first year, and then just take those same mindsets and tweak the words slightly to be the third party.
So okay the florist, I'm thinking of photographer let me just quickly go through the mindsets and think about how the photographer would see it and what's important to them and what they're thinking about as terms of the next step, and how can I bridge what I've got into what they do. So, that's just one suggestion.
The other thing I wanted to quickly do is ... if I think about it, maybe we'll do it next time. Yes I'll tell you what, let's do that because we're coming up on 45 minutes now already.
Betsey: Oh, okay.
Stuart: The beginning of next the next show will quickly run through the gallery that we've got on the website just under 250 or so of the 500 books that we've created. And I want to just randomly pick out a couple and think about what those complimentary non-competing businesses might be. Because sometimes people struggle to think about what that is. Sometimes it's difficult to think about whom might those people be. We'd obviously stuck on the florist example today and hopefully as you're listening to this that's enough to get you thinking about who these people might be in your business, but you may be interesting exercise just to go to the gallery, and then we can start next time with a quick fire round of various different types of businesses, and how that might set up.
Betsey: There you go.
Stuart: If for no other reason than I've really got a little bit engaged in this object or my voice is going super croaky, I'm not sure how much longer it will last. The transfer might start tailing off as we get past three minutes, Speaker's harder and harder to hear me, and I type faster and faster.
Betsey: Great. All right, very good.
Stuart: Can you think of anything we've touched on that so we've kind of skipped over a little bit today?
Betsey: No I don't think so. I think you'd said you said that was key, is sometimes it's that that first circle, that Inner Circle, is as far as people think, and I think I hope that that statement will make you think a little bit further out and just really think about who they can reach out to and who know how to create their tribe or their community, and make this all work for them, instead of just thinking small.
Just thinking about the Baker, let's think about the photographer, and the vendor, and their self and again, there's the florist there's a florist but whatever that that industry is that you're in, think a little bit bigger. Just another step. I think even one layer out, I think we'll open up the possibilities for so many more people to reach you, or you to reach them.
So I think that was a great thing that you said, so good information and yeah ...good stuff.
Stuart: Fantastic. Well, answer just when quick last one as well. We've talked a lot about people in the physical location. This works just as well in a kind of a virtual world. Geographically is just then the group that you interacting is just doesn't have geographic constraints. You then go in based on community interests or communities of people. So, yeah it works just as well, I think, in our online environment as an offline environment. It's just that the constraints are very different.
Betsey: Right, very good.
Stuart: Okay so ... we're in the middle of May now.
So I think that if anyone's ready to get started, leading into the summer is a great time to pull the trigger on this and get going, because we typically look in a couple of six to 10 weeks to get a book turned around for someone, depending on how fast they move and how we find the thoughts are, so that puts us into the beginning of the summer.
So as you're listening to this now this really is a great time to Get started, because you can get a lot of this movement done before the summer starts, then do not worry about being away or people travelling over the summer or at night break there and be in a position to hit the ground running. As we come into September and fall and everyone is kind of back to work and thinking about the new school term and psyching out for the kind of push towards the end of the year.
Of course that's the main aim and we're talking about the end of the year already at the extreme we can definitely turn things around far quicker than that and there'll be some people listening now who have definitely got something ready to go in the summer and really then take advantage of the fact that a lot of people a lot of other people are thinking about it so I'll leave it until September and get started and kind of steal all of that summer traffic while everyone else is thinking about being in the beach.
I remember there was a Gary Vaynerchuk Instagram thing last. Last summer took me exactly the same saying that things may be Memorial Day or Labor Day and holidays are great. That's when all the suckers had to the beach and there's money to be made for people who are just doing the work.
I have as much fun on the beach as anyone else, but anyway they need to wait for just the calendar. So we mentioned the book blueprint scorecards a number of times so if you haven't listening to this and you haven't filled in for yourself, then head across to bookblueprintscore.com and you can gauge yourself across the book mindsets to see how far down the path your eye will help you find your own thinking if he wants to do this yourself or will identify where the gaps are and we can work together to close those gaps.
And of course he'd want to be a guest on the show than just head over 90minutebooks.com and follow and podcast, and follow the guest link in the podcast area and get some schedules and we can skim some books schemes for you so that you can hit the ground running on your project.
This is going to be episode 61 and there'll be links to things that I said that we'd include. I just thought that there was one thing I said I do include ... but I can't remember what it was like though as I'm producing it back. Yeah, I listened to that so hopefully whatever I promised 45 minutes ago will also be in the show notes. So how have to check.
Betsey: That was funny. Okay there it goes.
Stuart: Thank you. Pleasure as always. Thanks everyone for listening, and we'll catch you in the next one.
Betsey: Great. Take care.
Stuart: Thanks Betsey. Bye.