For those of you that are using Infusionsoft, I would highly recommend ICON. It’s extremely valuable and you can really learn a lot.
The people that attend are typically already running 6 or 7 figure businesses and looking to make the most out of their sales and marketing software.
The best presentations for me was Simon Sinek’s one. People don’t buy what you do. They buy why you do it. You can watch one of Simon’s talk here on Ted.
The next that I enjoyed and dovetails nicely with Simon Sinek’s talk is Greg Head’s “The 5 Keys of Marketing Strategy” which you can watch here:
(If the video doesn’t load, then it means Infusionsoft has taken it down)
The 5 Keys to your unique positioning that Greg talks about are:
- Target Customer
- Category
- Unique Benefit
- Competition
- Unique Differentiator
For [target customers], [your company] is the [leading category] that provides [unique benefit]. Unlike [your competitors], [your company] does [unique differentiator].
Most small businesses execute tactics without thought for the strategy which is a mistake. To be more effective and to dominate your niche, you really need to have these things defined first. In addition to the books recommended by Greg (Al Ries & Jack Trout, and Seth Godin), I also highly recommend Reality in Advertising by Rosser Reeves (who came up with the idea of the USP).
Working On the Business
After meeting and connecting with people at Infusioncon, I would say that 8 out of 10 aren’t using anything past the most basic Infusionsoft features (mainly just for email broadcasts) and could get away with using basic email service providers like Mailchimp. In fact, most of the people I met were so busy running their business they didn’t get much time working on their businesses. I must have mentioned Sam Carpenter’s book, Work the System, at least 7 or 8 times. You can get the book free by the way on his website in exchange for your email, rather than purchase it on Amazon.
If you have a similar problem, work on eliminating tasks, delegating tasks, and automating tasks. I personally use oDesk to outsource tasks and have had great results hiring virtual assistants, developers, graphic designers, content creators and more. This will enable you to spend more time on marketing and taking advantage of what Infusionsoft has to offer.
Here’s what you can do to filter out time wasters and non-performers when hiring on oDesk:
Start with a Small Task
Post a small part of the project (not the entire job) on oDesk and hire the best 5 people (for example) to do the task.
You can then choose the best person for the project for small risk. This will give you a good idea of how they communicate, their promptness, their attention to detail, among other things.
Make sure the task is related.
Ask for Something
When you post the task, ask applicants to do something. Ask them to write something at the top of their application. This alone will typically filter out 50% of applicants. The bigger the project, the bigger the initial ask. If you want to hire immediately for a $30k project, then you should get them to fill out a form or do a smaller test project.
Choose the Best Person for the Task
After going through this process, you should have 1 or 2 people that completed your test project successfully, on time, and maybe even exceeded your expectations.
Document the Process
If the job is ongoing, you should have the employee document their job. Use videos, audios, checklists, excel sheets, word documents to make it absolutely clear so that you can just hand this document to a new employee.
For tasks that you don’t enjoy doing or shouldn’t be doing, you should document this process too so that you can hand it off to your employees.