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Need some expert business advice? There’s nobody better to turn to than the “billion dollar man” himself.

Jay Abraham is the King Midas of the business world. The more than 10,000 businesses that he’s touched over the course of his career have turned to pure gold. Look up any renowned marketing experts and there’s a good chance that Abraham is one of the main reasons for their success.

During his career as an executive coach, Abraham has made billions for both himself and his clients. He also charges them a pretty penny at the going rate of $5,000 per hour.

So how does he do it?

He’s famous for his out-of-the-box thinking. You don’t achieve success in today’s business surroundings by staying in your comfort zone. Abraham has helped many business owners develop a winning mindset, and the results have been fascinating.

As you can imagine, getting the legend himself to mentor you isn’t exactly easy, financially speaking.

Luckily, he doesn’t shy away from sharing some of his most valuable knowledge with the world for free. Here are some of the best ways to rise above the crowd, according to the man himself.

1. Turn Your Customers into Clients

The difference between a customer and a client goes far beyond semantics. Abraham insists that every business owner knows what it is.

Many business owners make the mistake of focusing on the transactional part of their business. This leads to the creation of customers or buyers. Such a simplified relationship might make sense in the short term but it isn’t likely to pay off in the future.

Instead, you should focus on creating clients. This means that you need to build a relationship beyond just the transactional. By doing this, you provide long-term stability to your business.

Just ask Ray Furr of Breakthrough Marketing Strategies. Abraham has had a huge influence on him and his business. Learning the difference between customers and clients has made a world of change.

For his subscription-based business, Furr uses the terms ‘subscriber’ and ‘member’. Can you feel the difference?

A subscriber is someone that has simply paid for a subscription. A member is a part of a community. This simple change in perception has helped Furr steer his business in the right direction.

It really doesn’t matter what you call the people you’re selling to. It’s about forming meaningful, long-lasting relationships. Once you do this, you’ll notice significant changes in the performance of your business.

2. Measure and Record Everything

You might’ve heard the saying, “You can’t hit a target you can’t see.” This means that success calls for a precise definition of goals.

But how do you measure your progress towards achieving them?

Simple – you measure and record everything that happens in your company. Even though this isn’t a ground-breaking concept, many business owners fail to implement it.

This is exactly what Abdul Mozid’s main problem was. When his uncle gave him temporary control of his restaurant, it was making £1,200 a week. This isn’t a small amount of money, but there was definitely quite some room for improvement.

The main mistake that Mozid made was not making any records about his clients. For this reason, they stayed at customers. Mozid didn’t know anything about them aside from their names.

He didn’t gather any useful information nor did he calculate the marginal net worth of each client. This data is very important to business development.

After reading Abraham’s books, Mozid started fixing his mistakes. He adopted an index system for collecting all the relevant information about the restaurant’s clientele. Thanks to this, he was able to start handing out notes with menus and weekly specials.

What do you think the results of this small change were?

Mozid managed to double the proceeds over the next six months and secure a weekly revenue of £2,500.

Here’s the lesson. if you’re not keeping track of your clients, you might want to start immediately. This can help you take your business to the next level fairly quickly.

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3. Get Creative and Experiment

As mentioned, playing it safe will get you nowhere. Moreover, it takes a certain amount of creativity to run a successful business.

Abraham pushes his clients outside of their comfort zone and debunks the myths that they’ve subscribed to. Andrew Russel, the owner of Arron Aromatics Ltd, knows this better than most.

When he first joined the company that his parents founded, Russel saw that sales growth was an issue.

There was a couple of underlying problems that led to this. First of all, the products had seasonal sales peaks, so retailers wouldn’t buy them outside of these periods.

Also, the retailers were picky about the products they wanted, so the company could never sell the full range of products.

Drawing from Abraham’s advice, Russel found one creative solution to both issues. What he did was offer the clients a chance to buy the entire product line. In return, the company would ship items in January and the retailer would have until the 1st of June to pay.

This way, the company was able to sell all their products and avoid seasonal peaks at the same time. On the other hand, the retailers received a very favourable payment method.

The results were astonishing. Before this strategy, the company was making £1.4 million in sales. After implementing this and a few other strategies, the sales revenue jumped to £7 million. Better yet, it was able to achieve year-on-year growth of 25% after that.

This is all the proof you need that one creative idea can make your business skyrocket. If you hit a brick wall, don’t be afraid to experiment until you find the best solution.

4. Apply the Risk Reversal Strategy

Abraham’s Risk Reversal strategy is one of his most famous. According to Abraham, one side in every encounter always takes on ‘most of, all of, or more than all of the risk’.

How can it be more than all of the risk?

You’ll see. Let’s take Carol Ann Wilson’s business as an example. She runs the College for Divorce Specialists. The company trains financial specialists to ensure better divorce settlements for their clients.

The cost for the College’s course is anywhere from US$1,255 to US$1,895 depending on various factors. So, let’s say that someone pays US$1,255 for the course and doesn’t get the desired results.

In this case, the aspiring divorce financial specialist hasn’t only lost the money for the course. They would also not achieve the success they were hoping for since they couldn’t help their clients. This is what Abraham refers to as ‘more than all of the risk’.

So how did Wilson reverse it?

It’s simple – she offered a money-back guarantee.

Many business owners are hesitant about this move due to the fear that they’ll lose money. But this is how you can show confidence in your business.

Wilson believed in hers, and it paid off. Over the course of 9 years, her company has had more than 1,500 clients. And there were only four refunds during that time and out of so many clients.

If you can make your offer less risky, you can expect more people to accept it. There are many ways to do it, so think in this direction.

5. Aim for Pre-eminence

In the words of Abraham himself, ‘You’ve got to be able to distinguish yourself and be a provider of advice, not just the taker of a transaction.’

You need to ensure that your clients can rely on you to provide superior value.

There are many ways to go about this, but Becky Morris’ example is one of the best. Her company sells assistive devices and she wanted to set it apart from the crowd. She decided that the way to accomplish is to become a recognised leader in her field.

To make this happen, she had to present her company in national and regional conferences. This eventually led to her publishing articles in a trade journal, which greatly enhanced her credibility.

At first, she held conferences at her own expense. After publishing journal articles and becoming an expert in her field, her company managed to rank 5th for the entire industry.

This is what happens when you strive for pre-eminence, which Abraham considers one of the most important things to achieve in business.

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6. Be an Entrepreneur, not Just a Proprietor

If you want your business to succeed, you need to get on the current marketing trends. The main one is to focus on your clients. The ability to align yourself with them is what makes the difference between an entrepreneur and a mere proprietor.

Arthur Murray understands this to the fullest extent. His company sells high-end software and its target audience is government officials.

As you can imagine, these officials aren’t really excited about all kinds of sales pitches aimed at them. This is why Murray’s Telart Technologies takes a different approach.

Murray learned from Abraham that you need to love your clients. This is why the company doesn’t just sell products. Instead, they educate and mentor.

As soon as they started taking this approach, the business saw great success. To the point that they now have a connection with more than two dozen federal agencies.

If you can show your audience that you care about them, there are no doors that you can’t open.

7. Have a Systematic Approach

Looking at your business as a living organism is essential to success. You can’t focus on separate functions and hope for the best. Instead, you need to take a look at the bigger picture and systemise everything.

This is the most important lesson that Allan Pollock learned from Abraham. His business deals in insurance and benefits for companies.

Pollock made it a point to make sure that each person in the company knew exactly how every process worked to the finest details. The employees created detailed job descriptions so that they could show they understood every single task.

Another thing that Pollock adopted was the bonus system. His employees continue to receive bonuses for their productivity, ideas, and other contributions.

After making these changes, Pollock’s company started providing high-quality services to clients. Thanks to the systemisation, the staff became more productive than ever.

The Takeaway

This is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Jay Abraham’s contribution to the world of marketing. Still, it’s tried and true and good enough for a sound beginning to great business success.

At CUB our ambition is to unite those who are changing the world through their businesses. We support these people by building a private community of Australia’s next titans of industry. And we bring these titans together to accelerate the achievement of each other’s ambitions.

If you wish to be considered for membership, please feel free to request a club introduction on our membership page: www.cub.club/membership.