3 hour Brand Accelerator – hosted by Glen Carlson of Dent Global
Background:
Daniel Priestly and Glen Carlson created the “Key Person of Influence” program in Australia in 2010. Their brand has now expanded and they offer their 40 week “Growth Accelerator” program in the UK, USA, Australia and Singapore. They take entrepreneurs through their ‘5 step sequence’ of Pitch, Publish, Product, Profile and Partner to help their businesses and their brand succeed. In 2014, they were awarded Australia’s 9th fastest growing company. With a strong track record and over 2,000 alumni success stories, it’s pretty safe to say that becoming a Key Person of Influence can work for you too.
Quick Summary:
After reading and reviewing the Becoming a Key Person of Influence book, Jonesy found this event online that happened to be the night after we recorded the last podcast! We went along and brought our friend Long Nguyen along for the ride too. There was a little bit of crossover with the information in the book, but I found that this event went a lot further and went into a lot more depth. Some of my favourite bits, which I’ll detail below, included the Entrepreneur’s Journey, the five inhibitors to success, focusing on the unaware population, Complete and Remarkable Solutions, the Ascending Transaction Model, and improving your personal reputation (not personal brand).
Who should attend:
I’d say the book is for everyone, but the event was a lot more business focused. If you’re in business and want to really accelerate and add a zero to the end of your profits, this short event is a good place to start. It’s all about, as the title suggests, accelerating your brand. It’s not going to instantly 10X your sales, and there’s definitely a lot more to learn, but it definitely gives you a few things to think about and a few key ideas you can implement immediately.
Favourite Sections:
The Entrepreneur’s Journey
Great breakdown of the different stages of a business’s life. I was just agetting ready to do a write up of the story Glen tells, so I went online to find the image they created, and I actually found an 8 min youtube video Glen’s made telling us exactly what The Entrepreneur’s Journey is! It’s a lot better in his words and he’ll go into a lot more detail, so I’d recommend checking out his video here.
The 5 Inhibitors to Success
There are 5 things that your business is missing if you aren’t achieving the success you dream of:
– Lack of Clarity
– Lack of Confidence
– Lack of Capacity
– Lack of Cut-Through
– Lack of Compatibility
I like these and I can definitely see that these things would inhibit success. How do you fix these? Of course! The KPI book tells us! Pitch, Publish, Product, Profile and Partnerships. These seem to marry up quite nicely…
The Unaware Population
I hate using this term, but this is seriously a game changer.
Let’s divide the population in two: there is a segment of the population that is aware that they have the problems you are trying to solve, and there is a segment that is unaware and doesn’t even know they have the problems.
Which of these segments is larger? UNAWARE
Which segment is easier to sell to? AWARE
Of course if people know they have the problem and are aware, they will be much more ready to buy. Because the unaware population doesn’t even know they have the problem, you first need to educate them that the problems exist, THEN you need to try to sell to them. So, if the aware population is easier to sell to, of course that’s where all of your competition is! And because these people are aware, they are aware that there are competitors, so they will go shopping for the cheapest option and you get stuck in the race to the bottom of who can cut their prices furthest and still try and make a profit.
If the aware population is smaller and that’s where all the competition is, hopefully you’re starting to realise that you should be focusing on the unaware population – it’s a far bigger market and there is a lot less competition! You need to take your future customers on the journey to help show them the problems and show them that you’re the best person to buy for. By the time you take them on the education journey from unaware to aware, even though they can shop around, they’d be much more willing to buy from you because they have already got to know and trust you – you’ve shown them the light!
7 / 11 / 4
This is a simple breakdown of how customers need to see your brand before they become pre-sold. This stands for 7 hours across 11 touch points on 4 different platforms. As an example using the KPI guys, this might include doing three hour-long sessions reading their book, listening to two half-hour podcasts, reading two ten minute blog posts and watching four forty minute youtube videos. That’s 7 hours across 11 touch points on 4 platforms.
This is what you need to do to get someone “presold”, and ready to confidently buy from your brand. Big companies know this. They don’t just buy one thirty second TV commercial and hope people will come in and buy from them – the buy TV ads, radio ads, build social media presence, create billboards, sponsor events… While most of us probably can’t yet afford these, we can definitely build out our platforms and create content for potential customers and constantly build our brand.
Complete & Remarkable Solution
Glen encouraged us to have a main product that we make at least $2,000 profit on. The CRS is a way that you can charge more. By becoming a Key Person of Influence and becoming oversubscribed, you don’t need to compete on price. The CRS is how you solve ALL of the related problems, not just selling one product or service to solve one of your target market’s problems. This ties in well with the ATM, detailed next.
Ascending Transaction Model
Another amazing takeaway – “Products don’t make money – product ecosystems do”. You don’t just have one product and expect to make money. You need an ecosystem of products and you need an Ascending Transaction Model to progress prospects into customers.
You need a few gifts to give away, you need from products for prospects as the first point of sale, or products for partners so your partners can easily and cheaply recommend your services, and finally you need your core product (the CRS mentioned above that has at least a $2,000 profit margin). The gifts generate the leads, the P4P qualify the leads, then the core business is where you make your money.
Glen uses Apple as an example. Their gift was iTunes that everyone can get for free. They product for prospects include the iPods and iPads, even iPhones. And the core business is the full suite of computers, laptops, phones etc.
Personal Reputation
A lot of people are worried about building their ‘personal brand’. Especially in Australia because we have the ‘Tall Poppy’ Syndrome. We are worried people will view us as being a ‘shameless self promoter’ and constantly trying to sell people stuff. Glen says the easiest way to overcome this hesitation is to replace the term ‘personal brand’ with the term ‘personal reputation’. Who doesn’t want to have a good reputation??? Who wouldn’t want to work to improve their reputation?
Favourite Quotes:
As it was a live event, I was more focused on taking in the information, rather than writing down exact quotes, so this section will be A LOT shorter than usual. Check out the post where I review their book, Becoming a Key Person of Influence, for more quotes!
“What’s the best way to walk through a minefield? Follow someone else’s footsteps”
“Competition is the enemy of profit”
“Products don’t make money – product ecosystems do”
“Your environment dictates your performance”
