Episode 253: Essentials of the Modern Business – The List

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In business, having a list is very important for its success. Whether it’s a shopping list or a mailing list, no matter how old-fashioned it is, it’s important to keep track of products, clients, and other important things. How do we use a simple List to become one of our biggest asset and help the business?

In the fourth installment of the Essentials of the Modern Business series, Adam Stott shares the importance of having a list. Adam talks about how to put potential clients on a list, build them up, and turn it into sales in the future. Listen to learn more!

Show Highlights:

• Why having a list is usually forgotten by business owners
• How having a list of clients can increase the business’ sales
• Promoting new products with the help of your client’s list
• Creating a list of potential clients that have expressed their interest in your company in the past
• How Adam created a “list” since the start of his business career

Links Mentioned:

Join the Ultimate Three Day Business Event and learn more Business Growth Secrets

Be part of our Facebook Group Big Business Events Members Network

Connect with me on Instagram @adamstottcoach

Transcript:

Please note this is a verbatim transcription from the original audio and therefore may include some minor grammatical errors.

Adam Stott:

Hey everybody. Welcome back to Business Growth Secrets. You’re with your host Adam Stott again and ready to rock and roll with another Essential of the Modern Business. This series has all been about some quick short tips to make sure you’ve got some of the basics covered of essentially what I consider to be the basics of a modern business. That has these in place that can produce them better results on an ongoing basis.

And last time out, we spoke about having that demonstration of power that really does start to get people noticing you, get you inquiries coming into the business. And let’s say you are a more established business already. You’ve probably got that coming in already, but if you really want to skyrocket that you implement what I said last time out about demonstration of power.

What do need to make sure you haven’t and this is so basic, but it’s something that’s so many miss. It’s gonna be very simple yet powerful episode this one. For me, obviously training so many different businesses, thousands of businesses trying very few do what I’m about to say. Most don’t do anything at all, which can really separate you as a business. But certainly more established businesses are I’m using what we’re about to talk about in the right way to generate them income. To help them to grow their businesses, to reduce long term their advertising spend much, much more.

So of course, what am I talking about? Today, we are gonna be talking about the modern business has a LIST. A list that they manage, a list that generates them leads in inquiries on an ongoing basis. So of course, if we are doing what I’ve said already, we’re going out there. We’re giving that demonstration of power. You’ve got new inquiries coming in, where a lot of people make a fundamental mistake.

It’s not from the very, very, very beginning. Collecting all the information and data and making sure you are building a list that you can use for the future. This is so important, but so many people miss it. So don’t make this a mistake that you make. Even if you’re in business two years and you don’t have a list right now, you should start today.

Even if you just started your business. You should start a list today, right? And of course, we’ll get to some of the how, of how you do that. We’ll give you some simple ideas that you can follow here to get this in place for your business. And of course, I’ll tell you why you need it in a moment.

So having a list is incredibly important. Because, what it allows you to do is capture the information of every inquiry that you make, every sale that you make, all the activities of your business. And as you collect that data, that information, it gives you multiple different benefits. It gives you the benefits where on an ongoing basis, you can go back to your customers. You can make a new offers, increase in the lifetime value of those clients, which is really, really important.

People that you haven’t heard of, heard from or done business with maybe in 12 months. If you had your list in place, you can go back making a new offer. They’re gonna become your clients again, which means they don’t buy once, they buy more than once they buy twice. They buy 2, 3, 4, 5 times over time, which means you make 2, 3, 4, 5 times the money. But if you don’t have a list, you’ve got no one to go back to.

Now, of course, the list also gives you information and data. Meaning that if you have something coming up, you have a new product launch. You have a new event, you have a new webinar, you have a, a new. No tool or a new thing that you want to communicate to your audience, you can go straight out to your audience and tell them about it. Say you’re launching a podcast. You can tell them about your podcast. You’re launching in a YouTube channel and tell them about YouTube channel.

Just gives you a way of communicating with people that have expressed interest in your products or services in the past. This is something that if you’re not doing is one of your quickest, easiest win to take your business from where it is now to really locking in lots of future revenues. So I suggest, make sure if this isn’t in place, this is something that you really do need to get in place ASAP.

So depending on the size of your business, that you that’s listening today, depending on the size, if you had just started right at the beginning, I’ll tell you what I did right at the beginning. Because I kept a list from the very beginning, first day in business, every inquiry went on the list, every sell, went on the list and my list in the beginning, I just did it on a spreadsheet.

And actually for the first couple of years in business, I used spreadsheets. My list is zero cost. Didn’t cost me absolutely anything. I was able to go back, look through those spreadsheets. It helped me with my follow ups. It helped me, helped my team with their follow ups and me to be able to say, hey, you know, we haven’t heard from that person.

They were interested. Why don’t you give them a call? We’re able to continually follow people up and have conversations with them and turn people that were called into buyers with zero market and spend because we kept a list. So you want to keep a list of all your inquiries, every inquiry you receive within the business, you really, what do you need name, phone number if you’ve got it and email and there maybe a note or two just about who that person is, something that can trigger your memory, prompt you so you can continue to sort of know who’s on the list and go back to them. So now that’s the basics is using a spreadsheet. That’s the very, very lowest level, right?

The second level of that will be then going out and getting a CRM system or an email system. Maybe look next stage an email system. Something like MailChimp, where everyone can go into your list. You can email them on a consistent basis, you can text them on a consistent basis. Or you can use a software like that. Alternatively, as your business gets bigger, you’re probably gonna wanna manage more than just your list. You’re gonna wanna manage daily activities, daily tasks. Then you can go and get a CRM system of some kind where you can keep all the inquiries in one place, all the activities in one place, new projects that you’re going on in one place.

So you can then move to, maybe we don’t go spreadsheets, maybe we don’t go with an email software. Maybe we go with like a project management software and keep the list on there. So that would be something like click up, you know, Asana, Monday, these type of things. And these type of softwares and look, you know, people that then straight away like Adam, what’s the best one. You know, I think that there is no best one. I think it’s what suits you best, what you can get along with the most and what you enjoy using and what you’re gonna use. There’s no point using something that you find endlessly complicated. Because frankly, all that happened is you end up paying for a software and not using it.

So it’s really important to just make sure that you get along with it and you like using it and the features that you need on there. And you just need to establish that just for testing one or two systems, most of them come with like a free trial and things like that. And eventually, you move into more of a CRM system for the entire business.

Where you get something a bit more advanced, and potentially to help you manage the sales as well as the list. So then you look at something maybe like Salesforce, maybe something like Zoho, maybe something like infusion soft, which is, which combines these different things or now called keep, you know, so you’ve got all these different types of software that can help you with this.

And there’s a reason they exist. Let me tell you the reason why they exist, because people that keep lists and actually build a list of make more money. So if you wanna make more money, you should be building, keeping your list and using it to increase your sales, using it, to communicate with your customers, an ongoing basis, using it to continually go back to people because that is just gonna make you more money. And if it’s something you’re not doing already, make sure at the end of this podcast, the first thing you do.

Is you get on with putting this in place and you can thank me later, cuz it will make a big, big impact. You know, these things really, really build up over the years. So for example, if you start today, you know, you might have 5,000 people on the list in a year’s time, you might have 10,000 people in two, you might have you know, 50,000 in five, six years. And then you’ve got a massive asset that you can go back to 50,000 people tell them about product launches, tell them about different things you’re doing, you know, invite them to different things and really build your customer base and build your sales because a list becomes your biggest asset in the end of your business.

And we have over a quarter million people on our list now. That’s been developed over years and years and years and years and years and years and years. And it is one of the biggest tools that we have in order to communicate with people, you know, of course, so something you should be doing if you’re not doing, and you’re not doing that, we’re making a little bit of a mistake. There that’s something the Mo every modern business should be doing. Make sure you do it ASAP, put it in place, implements it from this podcast. Very important. Because it’s gonna make a big, big, big difference to you. So it’s a really simple, easy to action thing that you can do here to get you better results.

And that’s it for today. I think so. Hopefully you’ve enjoyed the podcast today. If you have please take them 30 seconds of your time. To go over and either give us five star review or make sure you subscribe. We want to get this message out to more people. Of course, the podcast is a free resource free asset. We don’t do advertising on it or anything like that. We just do it to help people. So if you could help us as well by spreading the message further and just going over, giving us a fire style review or subscribing, or if you are a lovely kind beautiful person, perhaps you can do back. Thanks everybody.