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0:00Unternehmer/Gast Hey Alex, thanks for everything that you've done. Uh I'm James. I sell custom branch railings to homeowners. Okay. I we did 420 or so last year. Uh I was I've read 10x is greater than 2x. And so last night it was coming to me again like do I really just want to double or do I want to try to 10x? >> Sure. Um and so what I want to try to do is to develop a network of product specifiers, architects, designers, contractors that can act kind of like a referral network. I want to shift away from the minnows Okay. and to focus more on whales. We had one client last year about $50,000 worth of handrails. And if I could get 10 of those in a year then I would double revenue just with 10 clients. So kind of what are my best strategies to go about achieving that?

0:41Alex So where did you source the single whale this year? He found me. It's all inbound. It's all through search. Okay. So SEO or PPC? >> SEO. Okay. >> started Facebook ads about three or four weeks ago. They're going pretty well good. Qualified about half of the leads so far. So I would So if you want to go whale hunting then I think your your initial thought strategy of finding the architectural firms and engineering firms and whatnot is a good one.

1:09Alex I would probably try the outreach method as my primary way cuz you can be hyper targeted in terms of who you're reaching out to. And the the key to making it work though is like what's in it for them to refer you business. Are you asking me that? Uh-huh. That's an excellent question. Okay. So architects will typically in a plans like if they make a set of plans they'll specify what kind of tiles to use and what kind of windows to use etc. So I've we've gotten plans in the past where it's like it's got the pictures from the website with the CAD drawings and everything on the plans.

1:41>> Mhm. And so it's like how to persuade them to do that kind of in absentia. And I should also note that we ship nationwide. So this is not like you know a hyper local >> shipping or you are you doing installs or no? No, we haven't done any installs. >> just you just We just ship product. Interesting. Got it. Then who are the decision makers? Well right now it's been primarily residential is what it sounds like. >> Right. It's primarily homeowners. We've done some commercial work, you know, but it's primarily homeowners who are you know looking for something different.

2:12Alex And so it's very I what I call intentional inbound search. It's like they're looking for something. They are deliberately searching it out. They find it. You know, we have a lead magnet kind of which is like 250 deck rail ideas. It's SEO and I you know, yeah. >> Well, this is a fundamental change in business strategy. So you're aware of that. So with that comes risk. Cuz the highest risk adjusted return move or lowest risk I guess is probably at like if I were like tomorrow what I do I'd probably just add PPC in right now because you already have something that's working on SEO. I would probably see how can I get way more articles written so that my SEO traffic can go up. Can I tackle more you know, more keywords?

2:51That's like the for sure will work and make you more money play. The going after whales for sure can make more money cuz why not add zeros to things? It'll just be a completely different sale and you'll have two levels of sales. So sale number one is going to be for the affiliates and then figuring out what's going to make it worth it for them. And then the second level is what's the you know, what's the actual sale to the to the whale customer. So what James has is he's using affiliates to get customers which is this is inside of the Leads Book. All right. And so um affiliates are businesses that have your customers that market and sell your stuff to them. All right. And so fundamentally I walked James through the three different ways that I have found that work best uh for affiliates. So who's the decision maker with the whales?

3:38Um like the final decision maker? It's going to be the it's going to be the homeowner whoever's doing the project. So you just want bigger homeowners? The architects have the ability to specify it and to put it in front of the client. So like we also did another one which was about 60,000 for a guy that was doing a development of Airbnbs Yeah. in Virginia. He put up like six year kind of things. And you know, so I had two very

4:04>> of them were architects that sent you these The one was an architect and the other was a construction company. Okay. Yeah. So you're going to have to go B2B outreach is the pri basically when you look at Core Four that's going to be your what you're going to do. And then they're going to be your affiliates. And so the the million dollar question is what's in it for them? So my my proposition would be So there's three ways you can do affiliates at least you know, in the world of Alex. So you have they sell you for you and they they get a commission. That's option one. That's typically my least favorite option but it is an option.

4:40Option two is that you give them some morsel of something that you sell that they can sell for a 100% markup. They can keep all the money but you get the introduction. This is my favorite way of doing it. The third way is that you allow them to just bundle in your free thing with their services. Now with architectural firms it's not like they're going to bundle in a railing uh for their service but just for everybody else. Like those are the three things. So it's like they bundle your your basically your lead magnet in for free with their thing they sell so it makes it enhances the value of their overall package. You give them the things that they can upsell your lead magnet for an amount of money that they can keep 100% of or they just sell your stuff and they get a kickback.

5:19Is there a version for this where they can just upcharge? Like you can do a small portion of this that they get 100% of? 100%? Like I don't think so. Like maybe some kind of contractor's or architect discount? We wanted them to be stupid to say no. Yeah, because like the generic like you get 20% kickback is just like everyone does it. Like who here does 20% kickbacks for anybody who refers you business?

5:45You can raise your hand. I'm not going to be upset. Okay. And so the point is is that and you probably no one here has referred anyone else business and it's because no one cares. That's that's kind of the point. And so it has to be an irresistible offer. And so if we give away the lead magnet or something. Think about it as like my CAC for a $50,000 customer is the cost of the lead magnet. And if I close one out of three introductions then it's 3x the cost of lead magnet is my cost to acquire a customer which is usually pretty darn good. So what I outlined with James is right here on page 237 is that there's three ways you can integrate your product into their offer. Basically getting an affiliate to sell your stuff.

6:24And so I order these from easiest to hardest. So first you can give away your lead magnet with every purchase. So they just give away your stuff for free in order to to get to get leads, right? So they'll sell their product with your lead magnet or they'll just give your lead magnet away. But either way you're not making anything from it. They're just going to give it away. Second is that you can get them to sell your lead magnet separately to their audience which is my preference. Right? You give away something that has hard cost or real cost and you let them sell it for whatever and then the cost to you is just the cost of delivering the thing, right? And so if I had a marker business, right? I might say I will let you sell one of my markers and let's say my marker cost me 50 cents uh for whatever you want to charge for it. And they're like I can sell this marker for $5. I'll be like cool. You sell it for $5 but I now have a contact of somebody who bought these markers and I might call them up and say hey, you've got blue, do you want red and do you want green and do you want black? And all of these are $5. Now my hard cost is just the 50 cents it cost me to deliver the marker. And so the question is what percentage of customers who buy a blue marker buy the other three? And so if I found out one out of two customers who buy a marker at 50 cents end up buying these then my cost to acquire customer through affiliates is 50 cents times two. So the cost of delivering my lead magnet is the actual cost. And here's the crazy part. If they go make zillions of dollars selling your thing, great. It means that you're going to make even more money upselling your stuff. And so a lot of people get very greedy about what other people are making off of their stuff. Just focus on the money you're making with it the deal makes sense for you. That's one of the piece of advice that Layla actually taught me. She said never count the other guy's money. Um and it's a really good piece of advice and I'll pass it on to you. But it sounds like an irresistible offer to the architectural firm cuz they're like we can just sell this and keep 100% and you're like yep, just make the introduction and I'll deliver that. And then when you talk to the customer you're like yeah, I'll deliver that. Here's one rail but you need 10 more.

8:15Alex And then you make the sale. Does that make sense? I'm not entirely sure like people would order the entire project. Okay. >> not like you can just like I can't just ship you a sample and be like hey look, here's a >> Yeah, then you're going to have to do the commission based structure which is not my favorite but um that's probably the way you're going to have to do it. So either you can do the discount I mean I would say guys, I have 20% that I can play with here. So you can take all 20 and give them no discount. You can take a 10% discount and then they get and you get 10% kickback. Like this is what I got. I'll make it work whatever way you want but this is my bare bottom price.

8:47>> Okay. And I think that's what like that's the outbound strategy. So should I then in turn raise prices for direct to consumer? Yeah, I love that. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, he said >> [laughter] >> Love that for you. The reason I like that second offer cuz I think it's very compelling. Now obviously the third way you can do it is just get them to sell your offer and then have some sort of kickback. Obviously many companies do this. It has to be very compelling because almost every business I know is like yeah, I give 20% at least in services. Every business I know gives 20% uh you know, kickbacks for anybody who refers business their way. It's like yeah, but no one does anything with that. And so it has to be enough that would really change someone's behavior.

9:25And so think about it like this is that the offer has to be good enough that it changes what they do with their business. If it doesn't change what they do the offer wasn't compelling enough. Or you made it too hard. Right? So it's either make the thing better or make it easier for them. So if you've hit a revenue ceiling or your entire business relies on you to grow then I'd love to invite you out to our headquarters here in Vegas to learn how we scale. It's a my team spends two days with you to identify the thing that's holding your business back. And so if that sounds interesting click book a call and if you're a fit we'd love to potentially see you out here in Vegas.