The Business Growth Blog by Rob Cuesta

UBC10: What makes a product into a Five-Star Experience?

Well, it's after the end of January and I only managed to make 9 posts, but I'm going to keep going with the Ultimate Blogging Challenge, and get to 31 by the end of February instead :)

About 13 years ago I bought a coffee maker. It was an espresso machine - you know the ones, just like you see in Starbucks, lots of steam coming out, lots of noise (mostly from you banging the old coffee grounds out of the holder).

Most importantly for me, though, it was a machine from a "real" coffee maker brand: the people who make the coffee machines in Italian restaurants.

Well, my espresso machine has finally been retired, and last week I bought a Nespresso machine. It's made by Magimix, the blender people. Not a name I'd associate with fine coffee.

And yet...

And yet...

And yet... I feel so much better about the Nespresso purchase than when I bought the old machine.

And it's not just about the fact it makes excellent coffee (and anyone who spends much time around me knows I *LOVE* my coffee).

It's about the whole experience of opening up the box.

When I bought my old espresso maker, it was about £140 ($210), and that was 13 years ago, so maybe it would be a £200/$300 coffee machine by today's standards.

The Nespresso was £110/$175.

It's a cheaper machine. So I had lower expectations...

UBC9: are you delivering five-star service?

I've often told clients in my workshops about the way that Ritz Carlton hotels make you feel special by using your name as you check in. I know how it's done, and while it's amazing at the time, once you know the trick that's how you view it. Today however I got very pleasantly surprised. I'm in Lisbon, at the five star Onyria Resort in Quinta da Marinha. It's on the outskirts of Estoril, a fishing village that became a target destination for Europe's royalty around 1900. And this hotel knows how to make you feel like royalty. As the cab dropped me back at the hotel this evening after a day working with one of my VIP clients, the doorman opened then cab door and smiled. "Good evening Mister Cuesta. how was your day? Will you be using the pool again today? Remember the spa is open until 8 tonight." I was flabbergasted. In fact, never has my flabbier been so gasted! There was no reason why he should have remembered my name (and there was no luggage with tags to allow some sneaky detective work. There was even less reason fornhim to remember that I had used the pool the night before. Coming after a truly 5-star checkin experience (seated at a desk, rather than standing awkwardly at a counter) it has cemented the Onyria as one of my favourite destinations. And here's the best bit. NONE OF THIS COST THE HOTEL A PENNY. All of this service was free. Here's a question for you: how can you make your clients feel like royalty without spending a fortune?

UBC8: One mindset shift that will TRANSFORM your relationship with your tribe

You know already you need to build a tribe, right? I mean you may call it your list (I tell my clients not to, for a variety of reasons), your community (better), your army of raving fans, or whatever, but you know you need to gather a bunch of people around you who care about what you have to say to them. You'll have heard that over and over again.

You also probably know that having built your tribe you need to engage with them, and the bare minimum for that is an email sequence or "autoresponder series".

The problem a lot of business owners have is that it's easy to write 20 emails, but that doesn't make an autoresponder sequence.

There’s a key thing they’re missing.

So I want to tell you what that is.

I’m sitting in my room at the beautiful Radisson Blu St Helens in Dublin, a former stately home turned 5-star hotel that is quickly becoming my second home in Ireland’s capital. I have to run to get a cab back to the airport in a moment, but I had a blinding flash of the obvious that I feel I need to share with you before I set off.

You see, I just said that most business owners are missing a vital point when they write their autoresponder sequences.

It’s taken me a few years to get it, but it finally came to me this morning.

The mistake most entrepreneurs make is to write a bunch of emails in isolation and expect them to make sense as a whole.

What happens when you write like that, though, is that each email stands alone. So it’s easy for a reader to drop out at any point.

For some time I’ve been teaching my clients the secrets to creating successful products. And this morning I finally made the connection.

YOUR AUTORESPONDER SEQUENCE IS A PRODUCT JUST LIKE ANY OTHER.

 

When you think of it that way, everything becomes easy.

If you prefer think of it like this: when you write a 20-email follow up sequence, write it as though you were writing a 20-chapter ebook.

You see, the thing about an autoresponder sequence (just like your products) is that it’s useless if the reader doesn’t get ALL THE WAY THROUGH.

If they bail out (i.e. unsubscribe) they won’t get your full message, so they won’t get all the benefits, so they won’t take anything else from you, and they won’t tell other people about you.

And if you’re going to put calls to action in your autoresponder sequence (and you should!), then they won’t be there to see them.

So you need to write your autoresponder the same way as you would a product:

1. Top and tail it with an intro that tells the reader what you’re going to tell them, and a closing summary that reminds them what they’ve learned. And add summaries along the way.
2. Structure it. Follow your system step by step, and have a narrative thread that runs through it
3. Throw in case studies and examples. And exercises for people to do.
4. Tell people what’s coming up in future instalments (the next day AND two weeks from now) so they’ll want to stay—you can only do that if you’ve planned out every step of the sequence!
5. Leave a few cliffhangers to make sure people tune back in
   This is so key that I’m going to be adding a whole workshop on autoresponder writing to my Protégé program from February.

Now I’m off to the airport—enough travel time to overhaul at least one of my autoresponders!

UBC7: Stuck for ideas? Read this!

I’ve been reading. It’ll be no great shock to anyone who knows me or indeed who has followed this blog over the years. The fact is, the demise of Borders merely made way for more time sitting in Costa downloading ebooks to the Kindle app on my iPad rather than sitting in Starbucks leafing through paper books 

But my latest read has been a “real” book. With hard covers no less!

UBC5: Use Social Media Strategically If You Want More Clients

 

 

Most coaches and consultants use social media very badly. In this 6-Figure Blueprint Brief, Rob Cuesta discusses how to use social media to help you market your coaching, consulting or advisory practice and get more clients, make more money and have more fun.

Key points?

1. Figure out where your clients are i nthe Social Media space

2. Figure out what they're doing there

3. Join the conversation, don't hijack it

 

Visit www.PracticeMomentum.com to get a copy of my book

UBC4: If you want to sell coaching, figure out your real competition

One of the keys to growing in business is understanding who or what your competition is.

Whether you're trying to sell coaching, sell training, sell marketing or sell any kind of professional advice, it's only when you know the competition that you can track what they're doing, who's working with them, and why people choose one competitor over another (or over you). But if you don't know how people choose, it's difficult to influence or change their choices.