How to write a cover letter?

Here is a general structure you can use.

🧵👇

◻️ 1. Opening

- Dear Sir / Madam
- Dear *company name*

◻️ 2. Reason for writing

- I am writing to express my interest in the position of...
- I wish to apply for the position of...
- I am writing in response to your advertisement for...
- I am writing to enquire as to whether there are any vacancies...

◻️ 3. Introducing yourself

- I am currently working on... / I am currently studying...
- At present, I am working for... where I am responsible for...
- I have been working in my current position for the past(time)

◻️ 4. Talking about your education/experience

- I graduated from University X with a degree in...
- The nature of my studies has prepared me well for a position such as...
- As you can see from my CV, I have worked for... and gained experience in... working on...

I spent the last few weeks thinking about how brands differentiate themselves

Thread 🧵

1/ Let's start with this line by Ted Morgan.

“Positioning is like finding a seat on a crowded bus”

Most brands sleepwalk onto the bus and sit on top of one another.

The smart brands look left, right, find an empty row, paint their logo on it and sing sweetly like the Sirens.

2/ Positioning is an easy thing to complicate so let's keep it simple.

*Your goal is to own a space in the customer’s mind. You do this by differentiating yourself.*

Differentiation is not a dark art. It's something you can learn. Here’s the different ways to achieve it:

3/ Through contrast

Point at the status quo and pit yourself against it. Contrast burns your brand into the customer's mind.

• Hey pit themselves against mainstream email
• Lemonde pit themselves against insurance stereotypes
• “I'm a Mac” pit themselves against the PC

4/ Through values

Think Patagonia and the environment, Ben and Jerry's and social justice, Black Rifle Coffee and gun rights.

Some will hate it. Others will rally behind you. And that's the point. Fence sitters don't buy.

The essence of Customer Relationship Management is to segment your customers as high value customers and low value customers, develop systems and procedures to take good care of the high value customers. 1/n

The belief is that 20% of the customers give 80% of the business and hence need to be nurtured.

Now where have I seen this philosophy being applied?

2/n

Let me roll the years back. I lived in a rural area. My father, being the local Executive Engineer in Electricity Board, was considered to be a mini VIP and in turn a high value customer. 3/n

We had nearby a tailor, named Aruchami. This guy had a small tailoring shop with a single sewing machine. He will make personal visit to 10 or 15 important clients in the area, take measurements at our houses, collect the materials and deliver the finished dresses in person 4/n

A kind of customized personal service. Our work used to get precedence over the other relatively non affluent working class people, whom he used to run around in circles to the extend of positively discouraging them. 5/n

The 20 Commandments of Email.

Lessons from making over $50 Million for clients and building a 7-figure email marketing agency from scratch.

//THREAD//

1) Treat your subs with respect

People didn't sub to your list to be spammed.

People subbed to your list because you have something to offer and they're interested in you.

Keep it that way.

2) Test Everything

-Subject lines
-Email length
-Sending times
-Copy
-Angle
-Preview text

"Never stop testing and your advertising will never stop improving."

-David Ogilvy

3) Have Systems

-Welcome flows
-Purchase flows
-Abandonment flows

These will keep earning money forever.

You need sleep.

Systems don't.

4) Leverage List Segmentation

Never blast your whole list.

That's just asking to land in the Spam folder.

Focus on people who actually open your emails and click on your links.

An engaged list > A huge list.

How to Sell Anything Online

-A Thread-

Retweets appreciated!

Guaranteed 🔥🔥🔥🔥

1) Set Goals in Writing

- Before you sell anything there needs to be a plan.
- Create the plan and make your goal BIG!
- You are not just an designer, writer, marketer, programmer. If you are in this sales industry you are supposed to close deals. This is the end goal.

2) Establish Trust

- Can you sell things without trust? Sure. will you do it consistently, NO!
- Pay attention to everything. Use all the information.
- Take your time building the sale. Your client is not in a rush and if they are, slow them down. Lead them. Be yourself.

3) Build Value

- Be an expert in your field. Show them why your product is the best. Don't tell them, SHOW THEM!
- Be a trend setter. DO NOT be like every other salesman.
- People want a good deal, so help them find one. But do it on your terms.

4) Identify a Need

- If there is no need then you have little chance to sell anything.
- QUESTIONS. QUESTIONS. QUESTIONS.
- Ask them... mean them... listen to their answers. Listen to what they aren't saying. Pay attention to EVERYTHING!

1/

Bruce Greenwald EPV valuation:

Get a cup of coffee.

Today I will help you understand the Earnings power value framework and how you can implement it in your valuation analysis.

@contrarianEPS @10kdiver
@FI_InvestIndia @Dinesh_Sairam

2/

Before proceeding, let me tell u a thing. We make two assumptions when using this approach. Those are

1. Current profits are sustainable.

2. No growth (More about this later)

Let's get started.

3/

Imagine, you have 50 lakhs of cash. You invested 30 lakhs into bonds, gold, real estate, and crypto. You plan to invest the balance of 20 lakhs into a business.

4/

An owner of a food business in your town planning to sell his biz for 15 lakhs as he was about to retire. You thought to buy that biz.

Looking at the accounts, you have understood that the biz is making 2 lakhs profits yearly.

5/

As an investor, you demand a minimum of 10% yield from the biz.

Why? Simple. The risk-free govt bond yield is trading at 6%. Since you are taking some risks, you demand an additional 4% return.

1 Cold Email, 10 closed deals

This email is based on “actions’ your prospect took. These actions might be a product launch, a new offer, a new blog, a press release…any action that might represent an opportunity for you to help.

Having action gives you a reason to email and

makes the email itself feel less cold and unsolicited.

You have to do some leg work in order to find relevant actions you can email them about.

Here is one way to find “actions” that you can use as a reason for your email:

Use LinkedIn or a Google Search to find businesses

you’re interested in working with. Compile a list of the names of the businesses, web address, and contact information of decision makers.

Identify potential needs of these businesses and how you can fill those needs. Can you write blog posts? Articles? Facebook Ads? Video

Scripts? Emails or Sales Copy?

Use a Google Search to determine “new” things that have shown up on their website lately. You can also use social media or LinkedIn to see what these businesses have been up to recently.

To do this, type “site:URL” into a Google search, using

the URL of the business you are looking to work with.

Next, select tools, and pick a recent time frame (1 month usually works well) to see what new things they’ve been working on or releasing.

Skim the search results for recent happenings, events, launches, or publications

SaaS Marketing: Getting your first 10 and 1000 paying customers

So you've identified a problem and built a SaaS product. What's next?

Finding customers of course!

Thread 👇

👉 What is SaaS marketing?

Marketing is the set of activities you perform or strategies you execute that help build awareness of the problem you solve and the solution you provide in the minds of your target audience.

Lol, that's a boring definition.

Marketing is when you tweet, when you post on LinkedIn, when you wear your company's branded t-shirt before going on a podcast or video, when you run Google or Facebook ads, or if you write an article answering the specific pain points and questions faced by your target audience.

In the context of SaaS marketing, what you need to understand deeply are

• Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
• Lifetime value (LTV)

If you are selling a $50/mo SaaS product, should you spend time or money equivalent to $300 to acquire 1 customer?

It depends on LTV:CAC ratio.

If your average customer stays with you for 1 year, then $300 is a perfectly fine CAC.

Marketing experts have figured out that having a 3:1 ratio of your LTV:CAC is perfect, but in the early days you just need to know whether you are spending less than you are earning.

GrooveFunnels Affiliate Program: Earn $1000 Recurring Commission per Week
https://t.co/fY1Dab6lZH

Recently Mike Filsaime, the Co-Founder of GrooveDigital and GrooveFunnels, released a new video about the GrooveSell, GrooveFunnels JV, and Affiliate Program.

The Ballad of Paul O'Neill:

Get a cup of coffee.

Today, I will talk about one of the brilliant management stories I have ever read. Let's get started.

1/

It was the year 1987, where a bunch of analysts and investors have teamed up to meet the new CEO of Alcoa.

Alcoa is one of the largest aluminum manufacturing firms where employees work in a dangerous environment. Millions have invested in the stock.

2/

Recently management has made missteps letting competitors take away profits and market share.

It was a sign of relief when investors heard about a management change.

The new CEO is Paul O Neill, who is a former Govt bureaucrat.

3/

AGM has started. Paul entered the stage. His only emphasis is *worker safety* He aimed to bring down worker injuries to zero.

He talked nothing about firm profits, capital ratios, taxes.

The investors were confused. They thought he is crazy and sold their shares.

4/

But to their surprise, the firm market value has increased from $ 3 billion in 1986 to $ 27.53 billion in 2000 while net income improved from $ 200 million to $ 1.484 billion.

What's more, all the growth occurred while Alcoa becoming one of the safest firms in the world.

1/13

Successful enterprises do not relish in the faults of competitors.

They relish in competition.

They relish in a market with multiple use cases.

Rising tides lift all ships.

I am ashamed of the ETH community today.

2/13

We fault the close mindedness of Bitcoin maxis, but then mock any project that takes a new approach and hits a snag?

If you want to mock rip off grifter scams like Tron, that’s one thing.

3/13

If you take pride in “dunking on” legitimate projects who have differently philosophies and approaches to our industry then you are now better than the foaming-at-the-mouth BTC maxis you denounce.

4/13

Worse still you forget the faults we had along this journey. The times ETH went down, the times we had forks.

We sit high and mighty on some judgmental ivory tower, when most of you have never worked on consensus problems or chains.

5/13

I do not own any SOL, but I recognize that there is room in this industry for a range of products with different use cases and different trade-offs.

This blind cultish commitment to one implementation is childish and short-sighted.

I don’t want to put anyone on blast, but I’ve seen a few people saying, erroneously, that superhero comics sell more by the numbers, that they have the biggest sales overall and (most wrong of all) that they are the best selling comics globally. And, uh...Shounen Jump called. 📞

I’m not saying this to detract the historical and global importance of B2 comics... they were once huge. They are also old, so as far as historically, yeah they have decently big numbers. They are not doing those numbers now, or anytime in the past decade.

The best selling series, ever, by a Big 2 is Spider-man, selling 650 million since 1963. You can tally up all their series together but that’s a bit unfair so let’s stick to individuals. 650 is VERY respectable.

One Piece, Japans top selling collected manga, has sold 470 million....since 1997.

But that’s collected volumes...manga magazines are really a more equitable competitor to floppies, although not exact because, in fairness, they contain several series. That said, shounen jump has sold 7.6 billion. There are several other shounen magazines in that range.

Physical things that influence your personal brand.

-Thread.

This is going to be a very different thread from the ones I’ve done before on personal branding. People are looking for people who they can proudly advocate for and recommend, hence in today’s economy

you’re the most important touch point of your product / service and this is why personal branding is important. In previous threads I’ve spoken on the fundamentals to building a personal brand, here I want to share a few things that influence your personal brand.

1. EARS: The things and people you listen to influence your actions, behavior and character.

2. MOUTH: How you say what you think says a lot about how you feel about yourself and how you treat others. Do you leave room to be teachable? Listen as well as you speak? Your destiny is dependent on what you say.

In your business, how do you handle the sales and price and T&C parts of the sales?

Specifically, when clients try to haggle, or try to make you play by their rules - what do you do?

It’s very common to then start to appease the buyer - and it's a grave mistake.

[Thread]

When you start to reduce your price, or you agree tot terms you’re not happy with, you’re setting up for an experience that will disappoint your buyer and you as well.

In fact, the more you let go of your own rules, the lower level of customer satisfaction, no matter how good of a job you do.

Saw this tweet the other day:

“Just said goodbye to a potential client because they wanted me to go against everything I've learned and start work without a deposit payment.

"But we're BIG and you're small. You can be flexible."

"No. It's because I'm small that I can't be."

Now this is a correct and true response - but it’s also the wrong one.

Because how big a client is doesn’t have to affect your terms and conditions, and shouldn’t.

Because with that reply, the client heard ‘you’re right, you’re bigger and therefore dominant.