Christo: Hey there welcome back!

Franziska: Hi!

Christo: Another jam-packed episode for you today. What we‘re gonna be covering in this episode are. You‘re gonna share a tip

Franziska: Yep!

Christo: Well, it‘s kind of a tip for five parts, around how to increase cash flow in any business. It‘s a really cool tip, it doesn‘t matter what style or size of business you have; these are five areas we look at in any organisation to increase cash flow; basically increase profit, so a really cool tip that you‘re going to be sharing there. Then we have customer question, so it‘s around how to gain more credibility, which is really cool, so ‘round through bunch of tips on how you can get credibility quicker with basically with any style of business once again. We‘ve got a team share, we‘re gonna cut to Julia, and Julia‘s gonna show us some things to include on a website which will help us gain credibility; Say ingredients to include on a website will relate to that customer question around how to gain more credibility, and we‘ve got a recommendation for myself..

Franziska: Yep!

Christo: Book recommendation that you think is awesome, very good. And.. then we‘ve got a Word of Wisdom from myself. So really cool, jam-packed episode with a lot of golden nuggets. Enjoy the show!

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Christo: And now we‘re gonna hear a tip from Franziska, she‘s gonna share something that. Well, part of this could apply to any business, so listen up.

Franziska: Yes, and the reason why we are showing this tip today is because a lot of questions that we do get other than marketing is cash flow. How can we increase cash flow, because cash flow is one of the biggest challenges that small business owners have, so we wanna give you now 5 tips and 5 questions with each tip. So the first one, how can you increase your cash flow is to attract more customers. The question to ask yourself is how can you attract more customers through marketing. So the action I‘d like you to take is to look at your marketing for the next 30 days and look at what‘s working and what‘s not working and only focus of the course and ramp up what‘s working. The second one is to increase the frequency of purchase per customer. And the question to ask yourself is how can you get your customers to come back more often, or refer other people to you. Think about. The action is to think about how can you motivate your customers to come back more often or refer you.

Christo: There was a famous shampoo. I can‘t remember which brand it was. But they said, “Wash your hair” like directions, “Wash your hair, then rinse it out and repeat”. And they sold much more product because people started washing their hair twice, so they used the product. It could be that, it could be mechanics putting “Next service due”. Yeah, they got it.

Franziska: Exactly. And the third one is to increase the average spend per customer. So everytime they come to you, how can they spend more on a purchase. So the question is how can you increase the average spend per customer. And here, the action and the thinking I‘d like you to do is look at your products and services and see if you can bundle some of them to increase some of your packages to have a higher amount per package so that also people get more value potential by having it packaged, not just one thing.

Christo: Up-sell, down-sell, round-sell cross-sell.

Franziska: Yeah, exactly. Round-sell, left-sell, right-sell. And number four is to increase your prices potentially. And the question is, can you add more value and hence increase your prices. And you know a lot of small businesses are probably undercharging a little bit, of course, the value has to stack up. Again, look at your offering and write down ideas that your product and services. Write down ideas in regards to how you can add more value, in order to also charge more. There has to be a fair value exchange of course. And then number five is to decrease your operating expenses. Here you just basically ask yourself where you can reduce your spending and the action that we like you to take is for the next 30 days, keep a really close look at every single cent that is going out. Basically, all the invoices that you‘re paying, look at every single one of them. You might have team members or bookkeepers looking after money coming in and out. Just for 30 days, just look and sign-off everything. Because there might be stuff you‘ll find that you don‘t need or that you‘re getting overcharged, or there might be ways that you can get better options, just keep an eye on that. And look at what you think your expenses.

Christo: Yes, just question it within yourself, is there a better way I could do this, or could we find a better provider of this, and it‘s a good way to do it, 30 days of reducing costs is my way to do it.

Franziska: Yep.

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Franziska: Next up we have an audience question from you. So do you wanna share that one?

Christo: Yes, the question is, “How can I gain more credibility?” This one‘s a common question that comes from a lot of service providers and consultants and things too when you sell a service, how do you get more credibility? Two ways: which I‘ll share from now, most marketing out there, says you know, “I‘m fantastic, buy from me” so let‘s look to include social proof in your marketing, a social proof can come in many different forms like it could be testimonials, could be reviews, it could be business awards, putting that stamp in your marketing, have an association membership or an accreditation on something you can put on your marketing, even it could be a small scale, someone says something nice about you on social media, screenshot a photo and you can use that comment in marketing down the track, so basically anywhere, anyone else says you‘re fantastic. Social proof is everything. It‘s like when there are people in your restaurant who tend to choose restaurants that have people in them. Tip jars in a restaurant, if they half-filled it with money before they open on the day, we‘ll more likely put money into the tip jar, when we see that there‘s already money, or buskers, you know, buskers put money in their hat or the guitar case. This is all social proof. Us humans, we‘re a little bit more like sheep, to some extent. We just see that if others have already gained trust with something or done something, we‘re more likely to know, “Okay, it‘s the wrong thing if I go and do it.” So include social proof. The other thing I was gonna mention to the three ways is.. third way is sometimes certain industries out there, you can demonstrate credibility yourself. Write articles, create video tips. Show that you know your stuff. Maybe create a podcast, could be writing a book. There are lots of ways. Might be a trial or a taste test, or a sample or something like that that you offer. There are three different ways. In terms of social proof, let‘s have a quick look now with one of our team to look specifically at some social proof like on the website as an example, some different ways to do that on a website. We‘ll cut across to Julia right now, and she‘ll show us some social proof on our website, let‘s go.

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Julia: Hi guys! I‘ve got a really quick tip to share with all of you when it comes to your websites. Always make sure that you use social proof. What do I mean by social proof? If you have any testimonials or case studies, basically anything that other people, past clients or customers would‘ve said about your products or services, obviously after asking permission to use their feedback on your website, please put it on to your website. Use it on your homepage or relevant inner pages because it‘s just a great marketing strategy and tool really to help sell your services or products because people trust other people. People trust what other people already have experienced with your own business. Makes sense right? Because it doesn‘t really come from you, it comes from other like-minded customers who already were willing to purchase.

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Christo: There you go. So awesome to hear from Julia on the team. And now we‘re gonna cut to you, young lady, Franziska, with a recommendation.

Franziska: Today I have Scaling Up which is an excellent book by Verne Harnish. Verne Harnish is an incredible entrepreneur, he runs a company called Gazelle, he‘s one of the founders of an organisation called Entrepreneur‘s Organization and I actually just had him present at a summit that we were hosting, and this book here Scaling Up, I highly recommend this one because it gives you specific frameworks and tools to help you with people, strategy, execution, and cash. This book covers four components, and in each of these components, you get specific frameworks and then practical examples on how to use the framework to look after each of these components. The book is great is its won a million awards, I don‘t even remember which ones anymore, but it definitely won a lot of awards and it‘s definitely a book that I would highly recommend. And he has a few other books that are also very good. So that‘s it. That‘s my recommendation for today.

Christo: Nice! Now we got a word of wisdom.

Franziska: Yeah, do you have a word of wisdom?

Christo: I‘m gonna share a word of wisdom. It‘s not my own wisdom, I could try and claim it as my own, but I‘ll probably. it‘s a bit late now, isn‘t it? I slipped kind of big.

Franziska: Unless you have something that comes up.

Christo: It‘s not mine. No. It‘s his quote. William Faulkner, Faulkner, if I pronounced it wrong.. Faulkner, a famous writer/author, basically this is good for people who you know, have to use our brains from time to time, could use creativity, and challenge our own procrastination, and all these things. But basically, someone asked Mr. Faulkner if he writes by inspiration or by habit. And he said, he wrote by inspiration, but luckily, inspiration arrived at 9 AM every morning. So, he writes by inspiration; now, you can take what you like from this, ‘cause it‘s definitely a habit if he‘s doing it at 9 AM everyday, but he‘s creating space for inspiration to strike is the way I like to look at it. So for example, if you create space and you create time where you don‘t just clutter yourself with everything you‘re doing off your to-do list, and you really allow that time to be creative, it‘s almost like creating a habit for allowing inspiration to strike. For example, whereas if were just busy-busy-busy waiting for inspiration to strike all the time, it‘s never gonna hit, because we‘re always busy when we get to the end of the day and we‘re exhausted and the last thing we feel is inspired to create, to fix things in business. This could apply to not only in writing, but to those kind of big rock ideas you need to do in business, the big chunks, the big challenges, the big things you need to implement, allowing the space to work those out ‘cause we need to be creative and you know, let our inspiration strike so that we get stuff done. It‘s pretty cool.

Franziska: Yes, you know I will use this too. Especially in writing. In the last book that I wrote, I felt something‘s not right, and I would get up really early and my writing hours were always between 6 and 8 in the morning, and then I would get up, and sit on my computer, and I‘m like, I don‘t feel it, like I‘m really not feeling it. Like I have no ideas, and then I just forced myself, and maybe that first 45 minutes were just doodling and not getting anything done that was really smart. But then suddenly it came, and some days it would start, that‘s just how it is, almost forcing inspiration to come when you just start doing that task, whichever task it is.

Christo: Awesome. Very good. So there we go, that‘s the word of wisdom for today, and that is a wrap. If you‘ve enjoyed the episode, please do feel free to share this with the world and beyond the universe, and if you got any questions for us, feel free to send through on any of our contact details at basicbananas.com or any of our social media platforms. And if you got a question that you‘d like to have answered in a future episode, just fire those off through social media or via email or our contact form and we‘ll look after you there.

Franziska: Yes, see you next time!