Oversubscribed: How to Get People Lining up to do Business with You Read online

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Series Page

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Part I: Principles for Becoming Oversubscribed Principle 1: Demand and Supply Set the Price The Story of the two Bidders

  Some People Miss Out

  Profits, Losses or Wages?

  Principle 2: Separate Yourself from the Market How to Create Your Own Market

  You Don't Need Everyone

  Famous for a Few

  Principle 3: The Four Drivers for a Market Imbalance: Innovation, Relationships, Convenience and Price Driver # 1 – Innovation

  Driver # 2 – Relationship

  Driver # 3 – Convenience

  Driver # 4 – Price

  Principle 4: Buying Environments Create Buyers People Don't Buy What Others Want to Sell. They Buy What Others Want to Buy.

  Turn Your Clients Into Celebrities

  People Don't Buy What They Need – They Buy What They Want

  Principle 5: It’s OK to be Different The Power of Philosophy

  It's Ok to Fail

  It's Ok to say “No”

  It's Ok to Make People Wait

  It's Ok to Buck the Trend

  Principle 6: Value is Created in the Ecosystem Give Away Ideas – Charge for Implementation

  It's Easier to Climb Small Stairs Than to Jump Big Walls

  Innovate – But Don't Mess with a Winning Formula

  Principle 7: Nothing Beats Being Positively Remarkable Replace Your Marketing Budget with a Remarkable Budget

  Build a Remarkably Trusted Personal Brand

  Part II: The Campaign Driven Enterprise Method: Turning Principles into Strategy Phase 1: Campaign Planning: Know Your Capacity, who It's for and When you can Deliver It It Begins with a Happy Customer

  Who's Your Market?

  Clients versus Customers

  Getting a Grip on Reality

  The Real Number

  Your Schedule for Becoming Oversubscribed

  Create a Campaign Theme

  Create a Campaign Timeline

  Phase 2: Build Up to Being Oversubscribed The Power of Signalling

  Naming Your Terms

  Don't Ask for the Sale – Ask for the Signal

  Transparency

  There's One of Me and Lots of You

  Think Mobile and Media First

  Educate and Entertain

  The 7-Hour Rule

  Brains Don't Know it's Digital

  Products-For-Prospects

  Phase 3: Release When Oversubscribed Oversubscribe Your Capacity

  Measuring Interest

  Selection Process

  Managing Energy

  Staged Release

  Special Editions

  Price Rises and Time Limits

  Sales Conversations vs. Chit-Chats

  Set Your Targets and Stay Firm

  Phase 4: Remarkable Delivery Positively Remarkable Delivery

  The Remarkable Audit

  Energy Up, Down or Sideways

  From Now On, You're Also an IT Business

  Phase 5: Celebrate and Innovate Stories, Numbers and Insights

  Tell Your Stories

  So Many Great Hidden Stories

  The Truth is in the Results

  The Debrief

  Time to Party and Rest

  Part III: You, Your Team and the Crazy Times We Live In It's Time to Paddle

  Struggle, Lifestyle or Performance? Lifestyle First Then Performance

  The CDE Team When to Recruit Your Team

  Creating Culture from the Beginning

  The Roles of a Core CDE Team

  You're Ready. Let's Go!

  One Last Thing: The Chapter I Wrestled With

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  End User License Agreement

  “For the last 30 years I've worked on some of the world's largest events from mass participation running and cycling events to the Olympics. It's always a challenge to get a big event to engage with a large audience – this is one of the few books I've ever seen that distills powerful ideas and strategies that I know have an impact.”

  Chris Robb, CEO and Founder of Spectrum Worldwide and CycleAsia

  “This book contains powerful ingredients and delicious recipes for succeeding in your business. Savour it!”

  Pete Evans, Chef, Health Coach, Entrepreneur

  “After building an international retail business in three countries with over 1,000 locations I understand the pressure businesses are under to grow and scale. This book is perfect for an entrepreneur, leader or marketing manager to perform at their best.”

  Julia Langkraehr, Founder of Retail Profile Europe Ltd, Bold Clarity Ltd and international speaker

  “I've launched and sold over $5 billion worth of products and I know that successful product sales requires a unique approach. This book shares ideas that will increase your sales and scale your business.”

  Kevin Harrington, Celebrity Entrepreneur (Original Shark on Shark Tank)

  “I read Oversubscribed and found myself nodding and reflecting upon success stories that I know or have been a part of. Principles that would take a decade to learn through trial and error are spelled out clearly in this book. Daniel Priestley continues to cement his position as one of the most perceptive, influential, and also, entrepreneurial commentators on the planet.”

  Andrew Griffiths, Australia's #1 business author, Inc.com featured columnist, CBS Entrepreneurial Advisor

  Oversubscribed

  How to Get People Lining Up to do Business with You

  Daniel Priestley

  This edition first published 2015

  © 2015 Daniel Priestley

  Registered office

  John Wiley and Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, United Kingdom

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  Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. It is sold on the understanding tha
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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Priestley, Daniel.

  Oversubscribed : how to get people lining up to do business with you/Daniel Priestley.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-0-857-08617-4 (hardback)—ISBN 978-0-857-08619-8 (paper)

  1. Marketing. 2. Customer relations. 3. Small business—Growth. I. Title.

  HF5415.P65927 2015

  658.8—dc23

  2014048155

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978-0-857-08617-4 (hardback) ISBN 978-0-857-08619-8 (paperback)

  ISBN 978-0-857-08623-5 (ebk) ISBN 978-0-857-08618-1 (ebk)

  Cartoons: Andrew Priestley

  Cover image: ©iStock.com/denis_pc

  Cover design: Wiley

  DEDICATION

  For Aléna and Alexander

  INTRODUCTION

  There are restaurants that people line up for. There are products that you must pre-order months in advance. There are tickets that sell out on the day they are released. There are stocks that go roaring up in value right after they float. There are cars that were bought before they were built and properties that sell off the plan when they are nothing more than a set of drawings. There are consultants who are booked six months in advance and hair stylists who charge ten times more than others. There's furniture you can't buy, only pre-order, and bottles of wine that are purchased while their grapes are still hanging on the vine.

  There are people who don't chase clients. Clients chase them.

  In a world of endless choices, why does this happen? Why do people line up, pay more, and book so far in advance when other options are easily available? Why are these people and products in such high demand?

  This book explains why. It's caused by a phenomenon known as being “oversubscribed”.

  A product or brand reaches a level of being oversubscribed when there are far more buyers than sellers. It's when demand massively outstrips supply. It's when many more people want something than capacity allows for. This book is designed to give you a recipe for becoming oversubscribed, and introduce the underlying ideas that drive this phenomenon.

  But before we delve into these concepts and suggestions, it would probably be a good idea to give some background on why you should listen to me. Let me start by telling you a story.

  My company runs large business and leadership events around the world. We don't use typical conference rooms in typical hotels; we host our events in theatres and auditoriums that are normally used for popular musicals and shows. What's more, our events are premium priced and oversubscribed – despite the fact that most companies struggle to get 50–100 people to turn up to a free business event.

  For example, in January 2013, I issued an email to clients in Sydney, Australia that said: “We have sold too many tickets to the event that you've booked in for. The venue holds 700 people and we've now sold more than that and we have a waiting list forming. If you'd like to sell your ticket back to us – or for any reason you can no longer attend the event – please email us, and we will buy back your ticket today for DOUBLE what you paid for it.”

  As I mentioned, most business events in Sydney are free, don't get more than 100 attendees and are run by people who live in Sydney and have access to local contacts and networks. Our event was brand new, priced at the top end – and we didn't have a single staff member on the ground in Sydney at that time.

  The email wasn't a joke, a gimmick or a ploy. It was genuine. We had sold too many tickets to our event. We had a similar problem in Melbourne two weeks later, then in London, then in Florida.

  This wasn't happening by accident. It was orchestrated to be like this. And this book will show you how it's done.

  My business often books clients three months in advance. We don't do it to be difficult; it's just the amount of time people need if they want to work with us. If someone says they aren't sure about working with us, we don't argue or try to hard sell them. We smile politely and say that it's OK not to. We don't need to convince people – there are others lined up, waiting.

  I launched my first company in 2002 at age 21 with a $7,000 credit card. It was a boutique marketing company specializing in event promotions in the financial services industry. Within 12 months I'd made over $1 million in revenue and had over $300,000 cash in the bank. By age 25, I'd used the same insights to make over $10m in sales and had made myself an enviable amount of money for a young man. Along the way, I discovered some very valuable ideas on how to make a product or service oversubscribed.

  At age 25, I moved to London with my best friends and business partners. We launched a new business with a small amount of start-up capital and once again made millions in sales within 12 months. At age 29 I wrote my first book and used the ideas set out in this book to send it to the #1 spot for business books on Amazon. I've raised millions of investment capital for my businesses and helped charities to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in a short space of time by using the ideas that I will share with you in the pages to come.

  As you'll discover as you continue to read through this book, there's no scarcity in the world for people who share abundantly. One of the ways I keep myself oversubscribed today is by the very process of sharing big ideas. I've come to discover that the more I share, the more people demand.

  I also believe that the principles in this book lead to better businesses for everyone involved – for the customers who get a higher level of service, for the business owners who stop chasing and for the employees who enjoy working for a company that's in demand.

  My vision and hope is for millions of entrepreneurs and leaders to become more empowered to tackle bigger problems. This book is part of that vision. The ideas in this book are designed for quality businesses that care about what they do and want to be able to take their products to market more effectively. They are not for people who want to run a gimmick, make a fast sale or pull a swift win over their unsuspecting buyers.

  Before you even begin, you must feel confident that your offering is something that genuinely serves people. You must be passionate about it and the value it presents to the world. You must love what you do, care about your customers and want to be in your business for the long haul. For the rest of this book, I will assume that's a given.

  Being oversubscribed is the way for you to do your best work and spend more time with your current clients rather than chasing new ones. It gives you more downtime to innovate your products rather than running around selling them – and it allows you to build your brand rather than blending in with the crowd.

  I've also written this book because I understand the struggle most entrepreneurs and leaders undergo.

  We live in remarkable, changing times. Many ideas that worked five years ago aren't working anymore. Everyone is under pressure to innovate and put results on the board. The decade ahead is going to be both challenging and inspiring. The pace of change is speeding up and the way the world of business and society works won't look the same in ten years from now.

  Many people will see this as a great wave of change that sweeps them out to sea, while others view it as one they can surf and enjoy. If you're like me, you'll be paddling hard.

  By the end of this book, you'll have a method for becoming oversubscribed. I'm going to unpack a process for getting yourself in the enviable position of being in demand. Of course, it will be up to you to apply the process to your business – and it'll take trial and error before you get it right. Ideas are easy; it's the implementation that's hard. Stick with it though, because the payoff is extraordinary. Once you are oversubscribed you'll earn more money, have more fun and attract more opportunities.

  You won't have
to chase opportunities; you'll curate those that show up. Your inbox will become a garden of prospects rather than an endless stream of tasks to follow up on.

  This book isn't just about marketing principles and business methods. I will begin by addressing some problems that most businesses suffer from and sharing some of the stories and principles that drive the deeper philosophy behind the book. My goal is for you to understand these concepts on a deep enough level that you'll make better decisions intuitively and you'll be approaching your business with a different outlook.

  You might need to read this book several times and let the ideas sink in for that to happen. Some of the ideas are subtly woven into the stories. There's a rich tapestry out there and you're part of it. But as with any tapestry, you can't see it if you don't have the right perspective. When you take a few steps back you can see the bigger picture.

  I'm hoping this book gives you a look at the bigger picture for you and your business. Let's begin a journey together that starts where you are right now and leads you to where you want to be.

  PART I

  PRINCIPLES FOR BECOMING OVERSUBSCRIBED

  PRINCIPLE 1

  DEMAND AND SUPPLY SET THE PRICE

  You likely learned long ago that the market forces of demand and supply determine the price and the profit you'll make. But what you didn't learn is that you can make your own market forces.

  The Story of the two Bidders

  I was in a room with 400 people who had come to see renowned entrepreneur and author, Gary Vaynerchuk, share his ideas on social media marketing. He announced at the end of his presentation that he'd be auctioning off a 1-hour one-on-one business consultation with him and the proceeds would go to charity.