The 411 on the 80/20 rule with Perry Marshall
On today’s episode of Just the Tips, we have a guest who has been a mentor to me, someone who has been very instrumental in changing my thinking in terms of not just marketing but entrepreneurship in general. Perry Marshall is an accomplished and sought-after business coach who has been featured in Forbes and Inc. He’s also the author of the essential Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords. But today we’re talking with him about the biggest impact he’s made on not just internet marketing, but even NASA: the 80/20 rule for productivity. This is a can’t-miss episode of Just the Tips.
How Perry drank the Kool-Aid but didn’t drown in it
Perry discovered his love of entrepreneurship not by becoming an entrepreneur, but by becoming an engineer. In high school he got really into repairing and installing stereos and car stereos, and so the entrepreneur side just became the way he could do the thing that he loved. From there he hopped on the Amway train, and as he says drank the Kool-Aid. It took him a while to resurface, but when he did, he realized he wanted to do something on his own. Of course, once he went off on his own he ended up becoming a massive success and a huge influence on countless entrepreneurs, but you’ll have to listen to this week’s Just the Tips to get the whole story.
Getting in early on direct-response marketing online
Perry got his first job in internet marketing in 1997, before the Internet really took off. But he was able to figure out something that nobody really had up until that point: Direct-response marketing online was not that different from direct-mail marketing and sales, which he had already done. And so he gets a job with this company and starts working on their website and starts generating a healthy number of leads, even at the dawn of the Internet age. And then one night, not too long after he was fired from another job, his boss came over to ask Perry how they could keep him at the company. So Perry figured out something early on, and then grew it from there. So on this week’s Just the Tips you’re getting the best advice from literally a primary source on online marketing.
You better understand what you bring to the table as a salesperson
Perry tells this great story on this week’s Just the Tips about how he walked into a meeting at his work, and introduced himself as an electrical engineer, and his boss corrected him and said, “No, Perry is in sales, but sometimes forgets what his job is.” And that interaction led to a light bulb going off in Perry’s head. If you don’t know what type of salesperson or marketer you are, then you are going to get shoehorned into a type of marketing by someone else. And that led Perry to create a “Marketing DNA” test, which helps salespeople understand who they are and what their unique selling proposition (UPS) is.
80/20 and gaining leverage
Perry’s 80/20 rule says simply that 20% of what you do produces 80% of results (4x leverage), whereas 80% of what you do produces 20% (1/4x), and so the difference is enormous. As Perry says, 80/20 is a very counterintuitive process. What it teaches you is how to understand where you need to put in your effort, and when you need to quit something. Perry dishes all sorts of fascinating stories that illustrate the 80/20 rule on this week’s episode of Just the Tips, even (sssshh) when to fire your customers. Don’t miss it.
Outline of This Episode
- [2:43] Perry’s early days as an engineer
- [8:15] Why do entrepreneurs quit?
- [16:30] How Perry figured out how to make sales work
- [22:13] The dawn of Internet marketing
- [31:00] Marketing DNA
- [36:55] How important is it to endure pain?
- [39:39] 80/20 and leverage
- [43:20] What people get wrong about 80/20
Music for “Just The Tips” is titled, “Happy Happy Game Show” by Kevin MacLeod (http://incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
