Rich Schefren's seminar with Paul Lemberg (StomerNet) on Formula Five, July 28, 2009 1pm PST

Here are my notes from the Rich Schefren's seminar 7/29/2009 1pm PST with Paul Lemberg (StomerNet), the creator of Formula Five. The usual disclaimer, no guarantees of representation, you are just peeking into the fellow student notices. For the original material go to the source: Formula Five program sign up page or Formula Five trailer with the free opt-in list.

No business problem that cannot be fixed with revenue.

There are tons of ideas how to grow the business, but there is not enough
time in the day to implement all them (and Formula Five gets to limiting
to those that work together and fit in time people have)

Most techniques require to be brilliant (A+ grade) at something, Formula

Five picks techniques that work even if implemented at C grade.

It's about incremental things in five parts of your business that multiply
each other.

Previous time 93% of students who took action were able to grow their business "in a meaningful way". That's in the depth of a worst recession, autumn 2008.

If you follow tactics that are not simplified or integrated you are wasting a lot of time.

Original name of the program was Five Focus Factors, it's all about focus. Many lack focus and that's what hurts.

Things in FF are ordered to get money fast.

#1: Margin: what you keep from each sale. Increase margin 10%, your profit increases 10%.
Making marging too small results in pathtically small profit.
"Capture the value": pile value on top of value so that you can charge more and get higher margin.

#2: Monetize your customers well. #1 expense is customer acquisition.
Don't just sell one thing, continue to monetize. Resell. Upsell. (he did not mentioned that: Downsell.) Cross-sell.
But important: make sure that the customer is satisfied, figure out what else he needs, offer that.
Customer acquisition is on average 25%, for new companies may be even 40-50%

#3: Steady stream of new opportunities.
Most business owners have one, may be two ways to generate leads only.
To be successful you need 5-7 ways, and FormulaFive gives 51 ways to generate/increase leads.

"Brain Dead Simple techniques to grow business"

When you get more, you can pour more into the business creating growth.

#4: Increase closing.
"People suck at closing sales" Typical sales person (software) 1 out of 4-5.
Online business: 1 out of 100-200.
Even 10 out of 1000 to 11 out of 1000 is 10% increase! And it costs nothing, just work to tweaking sales letters, etc.
You don't have to double or triple, even small increase counts and meaningful!

"Secret sauce": when you started you did not had time for that, but later you do.

#5: "Turbo Thruster": time management, work-life balance, get more done, managing outsourcing & employees.

"How much time you spend on things that bring money?" Average, very little. ~2.5 hours according to formal research.
That's (increasing closing percentage) one of the things that do!

Write it down:
"Is what I am doing right now bringing me the greatest value?"
[EM] Nope.

If you train yourself to ask yourself this question, it will help you be more productive and transformational.

Review of the program:

StomperNet Formula 5 Review: Margin Magnifier
StomperNet Formula 5 Review: Sale Stackers
StomperNet Formula 5 Review: Lead Landslide
StomperNet Formula 5 Review: Conversion Control
StomperNet Formula 5 Review: Turbo Thrusters

"Margin magnifier"
Increasing margin:
1. Value stacking. If you get tons of value, you can charge much more. Tech people why they need in a dollar-sense ("dollarization")
Jay Abraham: "People who don't charge enough, don't revere themselves."
If you are in a so competitive market that you cannot raise margin, you still will sell more.
2. Sales stackers. How to get more out of what the customer more, how to make customer spend more. Upsell, resell, cross-sell (again missing downsell). Have backend. Reactivation strategy - get passive customers back.

Here I had to drop from the call (1:58pm PST, two minutes before the end)