Transcript of Want to Be Like Amazon?

Transcript of Want to Be Like Amazon?

Well we’re going to talk with Bryan Eisenberg about be like Amazon. But one of the things that they do is they’re just time and time again, not afraid to take on markets where people have said, “You’ve got no business going there.” And they just go there and they take the storm and maybe they lose money for a while and the next thing you know they’re dominating and changing the entire industry.Bryan: Yeah you know they’re definitely not afraid to fail and learn and I think that’s a critical component of what they do and we talk about that as one of their four pillars, this culture of innovation. The problem with a lot of business [00:07:06] books is that you know you have to read 150 pages and to get one point across you know and it’s the effort of the story. Bryan: It does have some humour and some nifty lines especially when we start talking about marshmallows and yeah there’s a few good ones in there.John: So how does this book then for people who have read Buyer Legends and again, we had you on the show to talk about that, how does this relate to that book?Bryan: So you know one of the things that Amazon has done so well and I think what Jeff [00:08:52] did, he didn’t think of anything new in terms of thinking about the four pillars that we said we talked about, you know he’s not the first person to focus in on customer [00:09:01] that’s not it. How he’s taken this [00:09:37] start-up and made it work which is two key things. Back in the day when you used to have a small store — and by the way this is something that frustrates me [00:12:14] retailers, I don’t care who you are. And it’s worrying that how to get great at delivering these experiences, we talk about also with [00:16:21] how they do it in the book. Bryan: Yeah you know and you know I started in this industry 1998, Jeffrey and I start the first agency for conversion rate optimization and this is why — part of the reason why we had to do this book as a [00:17:18] for 20 years, we had tried to get people to understand hey, you need to optimize, you need to take care of your customers right. And you can be just like Amazon. John: Well one of the things I love about this is you know in a lot of ways these four pillars, certainly they need to drive through the whole organization but they — you could look at this and this is the job of the CEO [00:25:49] organization with five or six people you’re still the CEO but quite often you know we’re doing whatever needs to be done work, as opposed to this idea of focusing on these four pillars and I think this would be the high pay-off work even in the smallest of organizations.Bryan: We have seen that over and over again you know, every company we’ve ever worked with that we’ve started doing this four pillar work with, the dividends are multiples because it does, it does affect everything from boardroom to stockroom, it affects how your bathroom looks you know, it affects how your parking lot is going to look, how people are greeting people to how things are getting delivered and when you start — and you need the buy-in from the CEO because it’s not going to work if not and you know, I think when we look at — I think we all know retail is going through some terrible times and lots of business are transforming based on the industry we’ve been in that’s caused so much havoc has also been wonderful, this online industry [00:26:57] but I think when you realise that many businesses are not going to survive because of the expectations set by people outside of their industry and newcomers are just going to come in and say, “Oh, well we can apply these same approaches at Amazon to your industry.” You know if they haven’t taken the effort to do it they’re going to really struggle to stay relevant to their customers.John: So Bryan, where can people find Be Like Amazon?Bryan: So here’s the cool thing right because after having done this for 20 years, yes they can get a Kindle version right away on Amazon, they can find that.

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John: You want to be like Amazon? Even in your small business? I mean who are we kidding, Amazon? Well we’re going to talk with Bryan Eisenberg about be like Amazon. Check it out today.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Bryan Eisenberg. He is a long time featured keynote speaker for things such as search engine optimization and conversion rate optimization, and I’ve had him on the show a couple of times, some of you may recall waiting for your cat to bark… maybe a call to action definitely [buyer legends 00:53] and a number of other books. Today we’re going to talk about Be Like Amazon a new book, even a lemonade stand can do it, it’s a book he wrote with his brother Jeffrey and… long time — I’ve been a long time fan of also contributor Roy Williams , wizard of ads [00:01:13] so Bryan thanks for joining me.Bryan: I am so excited to be here. You’re actually the first time I get to talk about the new book so it’s always a pleasure and again having that long-term relationship, I value really being here with you.John: Well thanks so much so yeah, dependent on when you’re listening to this we’re recording this mid-April 2017 and the book is freshly out at that point. So give me — what was the kind of big picture if you’re going to say, “Here’s the thing we wanted to accomplish with this book.” What is it?Bryan: So actually two things. One to clarify, only the kindle version is out so far, we’re still coming out with the hardcover and audio version in the next number of weeks you know it’s all happening. The big picture is you know at the end of the day, Amazon has now captures 43% of all US ecommerce, they’re growing faster and faster and faster, 52% of households are prime members today and Prime visitors when they hit the Amazon website convert at 78%, 22 times better than any other website out there and so they built a business, a brand, a tribe unlike any other. And there are lots of little pieces on it and as you’ve mentioned you know I’ve talked about conversation optimization, search optimization, I’ve talked about little pieces. But when you fully dissect the beast of why Amazon has grown and why the growth has scaled so much and then you realise other business can also apply the same leavers that they are, we need to make sure it’s out there for everybody.John: Yeah I’m that typical Amazon Prime buyer, if I want to buy something and this happens all the time my wife finds something and says, “Will you go on this website.” I go onto Amazon first and see if I can find it because I know they have my buyer information, I know they have my address, I know I’m going to get free shipping and so it’s you know, I’m sucked right into that. So the thing that I think Amazon does and we’ll get into the specifics of the actual book because while it is Be Like Amazon, it’s not really about Amazon per say. But one of the things that they do is they’re just time and time again, not afraid to take on markets where people have said, “You’ve got no business going there.” And they just go there and they take the storm and maybe they lose money for a while and the next thing you know they’re dominating and changing the entire industry.Bryan: Yeah you know they’re definitely not afraid to fail and learn and I think that’s a critical component of what they do and we talk about that as one of their four pillars, this culture of innovation. We all know they went into the Smartphone market and that bombed, but that’s okay, they’re not worried about losing it. And I know the first thing people are going to say is that of course I’m not worried about losing because the stock market is basically funding their growth, they’re not profitable blah blah and I hear that all the time. Even this morning in the last couple of days there’s been a popular video going on this guy talking about how Amazon is not profitable and disrupting retail and it’s not true. They’ve been profitable since 2001. They just know that the times are changing, we’re leaving in a world where customers are on quicksand and the marketplace is on quicksand. They’re setting expectations no matter what industry you’re in for how experiences should be like, how fast you should respond to things, how fast you should take core of issues, how soon you should get packages to people, how soon you should you know respond to a lead form. They’re doing all this, they’re going into home services, they’re going into entertainment winning academy awards. So… the management style — and this is what we really talk about in the book, the thinking of doing it is what allows them to come in there and because they’re so obsessed with the customer — no one is very upset when they get it wrong because they know at their heart the brand is in it for the good of the customer and I think more brands need to start thinking that way and certainly we can look at the [00:05:21] and that may not be the case there.John: Excuse me. So the — you already unleashed the four pillars so I want to come back to that idea but first I want to talk a little bit about the style of the writing of the book. It is different certainly for you and you know a lot of it is written in the metaphor parable style and you know like who moved my fish — kidding I was combining two [00:05:47] but somebody ought to — I’m going to write that, who moved me fish I like that.Bryan: You should like that one.John: But first off… clear up for some people because you know those books can be hoaky, they can be very message heavy and the story is sort of secondary or the characters or the dialogue are just really bad. So you worked with somebody who I think is brilliant [00:06:13] Williams in doing this and has done it in many ways and in many forms. How was that different for you in trying to write a book and how do you feel about how that turned out?Bryan: So I’ll never forget, we had a friend of ours after they [00:06:30] and you know that was the number one Wall Street Journal best-seller and they came to us and said to us you know, it’s amazing, you managed to put nine books into one. And you know, we’ve always had that habit and Roy talked [00:06:44] presentation about Amazon and it really blew him away with the depth of information that we were giving people and it was overwhelming, there’s only one way to tell this story which is through a story which is what [00:07:01] was about. We know stories carry different impact. The problem with a lot of business [00:07:06] books is that you know you have to read 150 pages and to get one point across you know and it’s the effort of the story. I think what Roy and clearly you know way more talent than me or my brother have, did an amazing job of passing it full of great nuggets of information but also making the story really entertaining. I mean we talk a little bit about the kind of does a little self [00:07:34] in chapter 11 what a good book needs or what a good presentation needs, what a good pitch needs and I think he really did that in the book right, [00:07:43] it needs the hope, it needs the big idea, it needs the step-by-step and it kind of put all of that into the book. I think to really deliver something that you know — Jeffrey and I alone probably couldn’t have done. And as we’re reading the reviews on Amazon [00:07:58] Kindle for now umm we’re seeing that people that are not a big of parables [00:08:06] couple of others are saying but this one does the job [00:08:11] still giving us the five stars so you know, kudos to Roy for his talent. I wish I had you know, a 10th of it.John: Well and it has a little of something that most business — in fact all business books lack and it actually has some humour.

Bryan: It does have some humour and some nifty lines especially when we start talking about marshmallows and yeah there’s a few good ones in there.John: So how does this book then for people who have read Buyer Legends and again, we had you on the show to talk about that, how does this relate to that book?Bryan: So you know one of the things that Amazon has done so well and I think what Jeff [00:08:52] did, he didn’t think of anything new in terms of thinking about the four pillars that we said we talked about, you know he’s not the first person to focus in on customer [00:09:01] that’s not it. This is something companies like [00:09:06] has done and plenty of other companies have done — we even have a free survey that people can take on the Be Like Amazon website where they can grade themselves on the four pillars and it comes from something that people have been doing for like 13 years. It’s just we’ve renamed to match our pillars, but it’s a study that we’ve been doing for these big companies and small companies for years and years and years. That part is nothing new. What I think Jeff [00:09:30] has done is how he’s turned it to scale. How he’s taken this [00:09:37] start-up and made it work which is two key things. One, small independent teams, nothing that [00:09:44] couldn’t feed right? But the second one is they actually use the concept of what we talked about in Buyer Legends, these small narratives. Before every meeting, all the executives have to write a five to six page document explaining what they want to cover [00:10:00] perspective of that customer. And I think once you start taking that approach and telling the story from there — of course we tweak it a little bit because we found Buyer Legends’ formula that’s worked when we brought it into other organizations [10:13] what Amazon does works for Amazon. When you combine the two and you understand how it all — you know how all the pieces work together that’s the brilliance of why they have such scale. So I don’t think you can just say, “Yes I’m going to raise my income and do all four pillars but now we also have to figure out how to inject it into our culture.” And that’s where the Buyer Legends falls in.John: Yeah and I think that one thing — so we’re going to start with the first pillar that you’ve mentioned a couple of times, customer centricity. You know I think an interesting thing when you think about an online store, I mean there is no — I mean customer interaction in the same way, you don’t walk into your store and say hi how are you doing, how are the kids, I mean it is — it is essentially interaction through clicks and through hotspots on webpages and on forums, maybe some customer service interaction obviously, but how do you think that they do such a good job at understanding what customers want without essentially sitting down like a sales person might with the customer?

Bryan: You know I’ll never forget — I was joking around with a friend of mine who’s in charge of — who led the personalisation effort at [00:11:26] many years back and he had already left [00:11:29] and I think this was when call to action came out and they first started putting out you know people bought this were also interested in this kind of stuff. And at one point he had found a picture of people who like a particular type of sexual…

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