47 afleveringen

Welcome to the Cloud Secrets podcast!

This show is for entrepreneurs and business owners who want to learn how to become the Cloud Expert in your area, without having to make any investments in hard- and software who provides customers with a secure and safe Cloud foundation.

HOW do you start in a way that lets you offer your products and services and start making money straight away?

Learn from Marcel Martens, the world-famous Cloud Expert and founder of M - IT Services.

Inside each episode, Marcel shares his biggest “a-ha moments” and Cloud secrets with complete transparency.
These will include all the Business lessons learned, my strategy to market and sell, Marcel take you with him into his world and shares his personal journey and secrets on how to grow your business to € 1.000.000 or more without having to loan any money EVER.

The Cloud Secrets Show Marcel Martens

    • Zaken en persoonlijke financiën

Welcome to the Cloud Secrets podcast!

This show is for entrepreneurs and business owners who want to learn how to become the Cloud Expert in your area, without having to make any investments in hard- and software who provides customers with a secure and safe Cloud foundation.

HOW do you start in a way that lets you offer your products and services and start making money straight away?

Learn from Marcel Martens, the world-famous Cloud Expert and founder of M - IT Services.

Inside each episode, Marcel shares his biggest “a-ha moments” and Cloud secrets with complete transparency.
These will include all the Business lessons learned, my strategy to market and sell, Marcel take you with him into his world and shares his personal journey and secrets on how to grow your business to € 1.000.000 or more without having to loan any money EVER.

    CS 047: 3 Ways To Clear Out Your Schedule By 80% - Part 2

    CS 047: 3 Ways To Clear Out Your Schedule By 80% - Part 2

    Three Ways To Clear Out Your Schedule By 80% Part Two. Hey, welcome back. Nice to have here. Cloud Secrets Podcast, Marcel Martens again, and today I'm going to talk about part two of how I free up my schedule for at least 80%, and the second option is by automating your tasks or things. Because when you automate it, you need to make sure that it happens on a consistent basis in the same way that you or one of your people would do. And to give you an example, we provide backup online as a service. And for that we charge the customer the quota that we reserve for them. We've got monitoring on it, and when it triggers that the customer's using 90% or more, the system will generate an email and send it to our support desk so they can increase the quota so that the customer can keep backing up all their data.
    Afterwards, when they update the quota they need to adjust the contract so billing gets accordingly to increase the numbers of size that they use, or well, can use, and change the contract to the amount of size that they use so billings get done correctly. Afterwards they need to close the ticket and inform the customer that that quota has been increased and that they don't need to worry, and we will make sure they can keep backing up all their data. But normally these, this task takes like five to 10 minutes for a person to carry out. And it's a lot of folds.
    Well, if somebody gets a call in between, they get disrupted and they forget to increase the contract. So we leave money on the table. By automating this task or this sequence of tasks, we not only can eliminate it from some person, I don't know, we've got like 40 to 60 times a week now that we need to increase quotas times a five minute average. Go count. It's going to free up a lot of time that we can spend on other projects, on other tasks, and instead of hiring more staff. So that's why I gave the order to automate that particular task for example, and that's what I do with every task that comes on my desk. And I asked my question, can I delegate it or can I automate it? And in part three I'm going to talk about another one. It's going to be a three part series. By automating a lot of those tasks, you can free up an enormous amount of time.
    Also, it's done 24/7 because it's going automatically so you never are limited down to business hours or whatever. It's on a consistent basis every single moment of the day, which is a huge advantage because in this case, when the back up exceeds the 90% it's going to be updated with more space within, I don't know, a few minutes and we can make sure that the customer can perform their job instead of canceling it when he's out of quota or out of size or you know what I mean? So ask yourself the following question, how many tasks or things at my plate can I delegate in a correct way? And let's recap the delegation. You just don't want to delegate the task to somebody else, which you also want to make sure that they perform the task on a consistent basis with the same output that you would provide so within the same time, within the same amount of time spent and within the deadline or if you got a deadline. Right. You know what I mean?
    So count the number of tasks that you can delegate that way. And the second question you need to ask yourselves is, how many tasks can I automate? Because when you've got a task, a repetitive task that at least, I don't know, maybe 10 times a week occurs and it takes you five minutes, you could free up almost an hour by automating it. So when you spend like $1,000 to automate it, it's going to earn itself back in no time because you can, you can have more time to help more customers, get more offers out of the door, sign up more contracts, or onboard new customers take the advantage where it is. So that's it for part two. Next week I'm going to record part three and I love to see you then. Thank you very much, bye bye. Marcel Martens.
     

    • 6 min.
    CS 046: 3 Ways To Clear Out Your Schedule By 80% - Part 1

    CS 046: 3 Ways To Clear Out Your Schedule By 80% - Part 1

    Three ways to clear out your schedule by 80%. First, go through the theme song, and then I'm going to talk about how you can free up 80% of your appointments or schedule or whatever you want to call it.
    Hey, welcome back. Marcel Martens of the Cloud Secrets podcast. And today, I want to share with you three ways that I use on a regular basis to keep my schedule as free as possible so I can attend to the things that matter most to me or move the needle the most as Dean Graziosi tells. What ways do you think works best to free out or to clear out your schedule?
    That's an open question. You can think about it for a while, but as one, as an entrepreneur, as a business owner or a CEO, or whatever you want to call it, or whatever your function is, or your role in your organization, when you're growing, you start hiring staff that you can delegate certain tasks to your employees or your colleagues or your staff. You know what I mean right?
    So by delegating tasks, you can free up your time. But when you start delegating your tasks, what is most important for you when you delegate a certain task? For me, it matters that it will be done in the same way that I do it, but there's more than just a simple system or routine or method. You know what I mean right?
    If they follow the instructions, then they can be done properly, but will they do it in the same amount of time if you bill by the hour to your customer? Will they deliver within expected timeframes? Will they fill in the blank. And those are the questions that you really need to ask yourself before delegating the task to somebody else.
    And besides delegating a task, who's going to be responsible that it gets done properly in time, in agreement with your customer or a colleague or whoever you the task is for.
    So what I've started doing, I'm a big fan of Ken Blanchard. I'll put a link below on this blog, podcast, video, wherever you watch or listen to this. Ken Blanchard has written several books with several people, and the one that inspired me most is the One Minute Manager or the New One Minute Manager because it uses the three principles as the one minute goal or one minute target, the one minute compliment, the one minute punishment if you... I don't know the exact translation for that right now.
    But those three principles, and then you combine it with the situational leadership method that he describes in the other book, you can assign or just discuss or agree upon with your colleague or employee or freelancer or whatever that you write this one minute goal so the person knows exactly what to be expected of them, and so knows what he needs to do, when it needs to be finished, how to do it properly.
    And with that, you can also agree upon the development stage, the person is in. If it's in 01 or 02, phase one or two of the development, well, then you need a lot of guidance or even some help to help them accomplish the task in a proper way or in time. While they are in development stage four, you can fully delegate the task and that's where you want to grow to with the person that you delegate your tasks to.
    So at first, you need to spend a lot of time and efforts in not only delegating it but teaching the person how to perform that particular task in the way that you would do for your customer or whomever you're doing it for. So you get to raise your standards and keep your standards while you're delegating the task to all the people, if you know what I mean.
    I think I'm going to make this a three part series because otherwise it will be too long to finish it up on all in one. But since I've been using Ken Blanchard's methods with my personnel or with my employees, they are making steps I wouldn't be thought were possible for any human being to make, except if you listened it in my last podcast, the power of coaching, how many steps or how quick you can grow with proper coaching. And it's an ascension, it's the same I'm trying to do with my employees so I don't hit th

    • 10 min.
    CS 045: The Power Of Feedback

    CS 045: The Power Of Feedback

    The power of feedback. First we go to the intro song, and then I'm going to talk about recent discoveries I had on a ... first go through the intro song, and then I'm going to talk about the feedback that I get from my online trainings or webinars, and the change I've made afterwards to improve my conversion rates. So, see you guys in a bit.
    Hey, good morning. Marcel Martens. Welcome back. It's good to be here, and how good that you are here. Last week I gave an online training, as I told in the earlier episode, using a webinar ... sorry, and I didn't do any conversions while I was having a lot more users who were attending the webinar. I believe that I had a show up rate of over 50%, which I read about is pretty high, but I didn't do any conversions. And I set up an automation that will send the people who opted in for the webinar an email if they didn't watch more than 80% of it. And then I'd just drop them an email the day after, I saw that you didn't make it or didn't finish watching the webinar. It's good that we have the recordings, so here's a link to the replay or the recordings where you can watch it. If you've got any feedback for me, please let me know because I like to improve things, and provide more value for you.
    And there was this woman who dropped me an email, I don't know, within five minutes, telling me that she left half in the webinar. First, it was because I told her she didn't watch it in the email, because I set a trigger on 80% of watch time. And she said, Hey, yes I was there, but I left because of the following reason, and now it comes, to me ... and I'm quoting her, to me you were like laughing about how customers use particular systems. I was in the webinar, I'm telling something about the people that are using POP3 emails, IMAP, et cetera, that in order for them to see their sent items on all their devices, they put their own email address in the CC, so they receive it again at their mobile device or desktop device or whatever.
    And for me, well since I'm, I don't know, a bit spoiled with the cloud solutions and the convenience of it, to me it's complete logic that I can access my sent emails on all my devices. But for a lot of entrepreneurs, and especially sole entrepreneurs, it's not, because they just get a mailbox with their website and they start using it and they don't know any better. Which is fine of course, because it's not their fault. I mean, nobody explained to them that they could separate those two things and set it up properly.
    So, I was actually telling a story that I was standing behind an entrepreneur of which I saw that he was sending an email to one of his relations, and putting his own email address in the CC. So I was asking him, why do you put your own email address in the CC, because it's in your sent items. Why do you want it twice? He said, oh, it's just to make sure that I have it on my cell phone and my iPad and whatever. And I started laughing, and I was laughing in the webinar, while I was telling that story, and that's where she thought that I was ... well, didn't take my customer seriously, and was laughing at him. And that was something I did unconscious. So, it's never my intention to make fun of anyone, especially in the open because well, it's not like me.
    And for her to take the efforts in providing feedback was of tremendous value for me, because now I'm conscious and I can decide not to laugh at certain points during the training or webinar. So I can keep it professional, and just keep explaining and sharing value with my prospects, because that's what they are in my webinar, I'm trying to sell one to many, instead of one to one.
    So to me it was an eye opener, and last night I did another webinar, or online training, as I call them here. Well, even my opt in rates dropped a bit. I had a higher attendee list. More people attended the webinar. And even got some ... well, it's not conversion yet, because they opt in for an intake call. So I'm going to ca

    • 8 min.
    CS044: To Automate, Delegate Or Eliminate

    CS044: To Automate, Delegate Or Eliminate

    To automate, delegate, or eliminate. First we'll go through the theme song, and then I'm going to talk all about it.
    Hey guys. Welcome back, Marcel Martens with Cloud Secrets Podcast. And today I want to talk to you about how I automate things, delegate things, or eliminate things that don't contribute to my personal goals, or things that I... Well, as Dean Graziosi names them, his needle movers. So the thing that don't move the needle for me in my life, that's the things that I automate, delegate or eliminate.
    And I hope you're doing fine. By the time you hear this, probably Tuesday or Thursday, for me it's Monday while I record this. I had a lovely weekend, had a lot of time with the kids, some parties, joined a soccer game, and well my son got his well diploma for swimming yesterday. So one step further down the road, one more to go, and then he's finished as well. So, well it was a nice weekend spent some time with family. Well then, that perfectly aligns with the things that I want to talk to you about today because, things that don't contribute to your goals or the things you set to do by this week, this month, this year. And as Tony Robbins calls them, calls it you... But most people overestimate what they can do in a year and they also underestimate what they can do in a decade.
    So by having a plan and stick to it, by sticking to it I mean, well on a weekly basis or make it a habit of using a method where you... But my wife told me, no not told me, teach me, I don't know maybe 10 years back, that when I write down three things I need to finish today and I do it on a daily basis, I get massively get things done. But now I'm taking it a step further and I'm doing it on a weekly basis for my weekly goals, on a monthly basis for my monthly goals and the same for my yearly goals. So every week when I go over my journal, I'll see the things that I need to get done this week that really as Dean again names them... have moved the needle. So things that really changed in my life or make it better or, you know what I mean, right?
    And same thing goes by daily goals, monthly goals and yearly goals. So for example, if you go hire experts and you go to these lance sites that I talked before in the early episode. And you got UPWork, you got Freelancer.com you got Fiverr, you got 99Designs. Yeah all these kinds of lance sites where you can just post a job description or a task and people apply for it. You can even mention your budget, so only people that can make it within that budget will respond. It's absolute gold because, let me give you an example, we got... We sell backup online and our customers pay by the quota that we reserve for their backups.
    So for example, we reserved 100 gigabytes and we set a 90% threshold. So when that threshold is breached, we get an email or a trigger that we need to increase the quota, so this particular customer can keep backuping his data. But all those steps is like five to 15 minutes manual labor. They need to go... Well, the email that we get as trigger is sent to our ticket system. So a support ticket is created, the engineer needs to bind it or the customer service user needs to assign it to the customer. Then he needs to increase quota, he needs to change contract so, billing gets done. And then he needs to close down the ticket, communicate with the client that the quota has increased. And all of these steps is like five to 15 minutes. And maybe we got 20 to 40 times a week that we need to increase that quota.
    And in this case, it isn't a needle mover for my own life, but when I can eliminate this and... Well, we can't eliminate it because it needs to get done. But when I can automate that task... At first, I delegated it because 10 years back I was doing it myself, then we hired some staff and I can delegate it to my staff. So that task is no longer on my desk and I can do a lot of things. And now my engineer is of too much value to, well basically do this kind of lame work. It's

    • 10 min.
    CS 043: Customize An Offer Or Not

    CS 043: Customize An Offer Or Not

    Customize your offer or not. First, you go through the intro song and then I'm going to talk to why I don't customize any offers any longer.
    Hi, guys. Welcome back. Marcel Martens Cloud Secrets podcast. Hope you're doing fine. We've got a great start of 2020. If you listen to earlier episodes, my webinars keep filling up more and more. Well, the ratio that shows up, I don't know, 10-folded last night. At first, I had, I don't know, maybe 1% or 2% of show ups, people that show up, watch the online training as they call it.
    Yesterday, I had over 50% rate that showed up. Of that 50%, almost 50% state until the end, I didn't do any conversions directly like last time. Last time, I had a 50% conversion rate. I did the same training, same slides, basically the same story, maybe a little bit different left some sheets, but in essence, it was all the same. I sent out an email today with the replay and for people to think about my proposal and they get until the end of the week to decide if they want to use the proposal I sent them. Yes or no.
    Then it comes, to customize or not. I got a lot of questions during the webinar of people who would like to customize or want to break up my Always Safe in Business suite. I tell him directly, no, it's not what we do. It's not what we stand for. By using my method, the MIT method of implementation and using the suite, I can guarantee success every single time. I can make sure people can use it everywhere on any device and have complete logic of where, what is stored and they know where they can find what data instead of with a OneDrive or SharePoint mixed together.
    Customizing offers, if I could tell you a story of my first, almost 10 years as an entrepreneur. I've set up and developed several Cloud services of remote desktop, Citrix. We were selling VPS machines. We were hosting managed services. We were doing all these different types of hosting and not web hosting, but dedicated application or service hosting for our customers or for certain industry. The hard part was not only that every single solution was, well, we couldn't sell it more than once because it was specially built for that particular customer, so we couldn't scale. The second problem that we faced was due to the diversity of services, well, it comes very hard to make it reliable money-wise because you've got all of these different expertise.
    While I love the diversity, usually IT professionals like to have as a specialism in some area and then all about that. That's fine. If we want to keep accommodating all those services and to level that we want to provide those services, we need so much experts that we actually start losing money. That's why we always, not always, almost got bankrupt during those times. That was the time that we decided this wasn't the best way to go. So we made, I don't know, 130 or 180 turn around and start focusing on only one thing. That's always safe for business suite. By doing so, our sales, well, are still exponentially growing because every new customer provides on average, again, three new customers and by that, the acquisition machine is fully running and fully operational. Like I told you last time, my only challenge for this year is to figure out a way to, instead of selling one-on-one, belly-to-belly, like they call it in personal meetings or on a phone call, I'm going to go for many-to-one so I can sell lots of people during, for example, a webinar or any other form.
    I chose the webinar format for now. I'm using the Expert Secrets and DotCom Secrets books as a guide for how to set it all up and how to present myself as the experts and convince them. Well, basically, it comes down if you read Russell's books. You've got three beliefs that, you got one big domino and if you let the domino fall and recreate new beliefs, then there's no other possibility that your customer has to give you money and there's no alternative. You've got the internal, the external and the resource false be

    • 9 min.
    CS 042: How My Sales Evolved

    CS 042: How My Sales Evolved

    Do you want success in business? Then you have to focus on what customers want, not what they need, because customers always buy what they want. After the theme song, I'll share with you how I apply this to my business.
    What does the customer want? For us, we are IT suppliers, cloud service providers or whatever kind of doing-it-for-you services that we offer. We provide services or we do things for our customers so they don't have to do them themselves, even if they got the knowledge or not, it's really not important. They just want to spend their time on their most valuable things, they are ave the things that generate the most revenue or whatever it is they do. And by outsourcing IT, that's what most businesses do these days, with cloud services, well you can outsource it directly to Microsoft or Google or Amazon or whatever kind of supplier that's in the market, but who is going to set it all up? Who's going to migrate all your data into the new system and who's going to maintain and keep your customers updated on the way they can go, the way they use systems, the way they can integrate systems.
    So, basically today what I want to talk about is sell your customer what they want. What does your customer want? Do you know it? Did you ever ask any customer or prospect that very direct question: what do you want? What outcome do you want when all things aside. Okay, pick an empty box and let the prospective customer think and explain to you what an ideal system for him or her would look like. And that will give you a ton of insights because they're going to share things on the way they like to see it and the way they can do business optimal in their situation, because every single business differs from another one.
    So, there's no one shoe fits all solution here, there's no one size fits all. You have to always look at customer wants and needs, of course, I'll come back to that later. Because the customer will always buy what he wants, not what he needs, he buy what he wants to have. If you let them explain why they want it, it could be a total different thing, which doesn't have to do anything with IT. If they got moral issues against Google for harvesting personal data, then you don't want to be starting your sales conversation about your Google solution.
    So, let them first explain what they want and when they do and then talk about, "Okay, I want to have the ease and comfort of working everywhere, anytime on any device and any place on and offline and whatever. And I've heard a few things about Office 365, which sounds amazing. I've got some friends who are using it for their business, some relatives of family members and I think that's the best way to go."
    "Okay, why do you think that's the best way to go?"
    "Yeah, because they'er telling me these stories that it's working for them, so I suppose it works for me as well."
    I say, "Okay. And how do you see that with your files?" That will be a question from my side because that's why we combine Office 365 with the Google Drive instead of SharePoint and OneDrive.
    And then they say, "No, well it's pretty easy. I can use so many devices I have."
    "Yes, that's correct"
    "And I can use it on and offline."
    "That's partially right." And well, then you can break down their beliefs. And when you break down their beliefs and rebuild proper beliefs, so you have to come with a good enough set of arguments and why that particular solution on its own is not going to solve all his problems. And when you focus on solving his problems, he doesn't care, or he or she, I don't try to make any difference here, but it's just a natural habit of me.
    So, that particular prospective customer doesn't care about what particular solution he's buying or needs to, actually wants. First we start off with a want and then we go to the need, because on the end you need to fulfill the need. Let's go back to the story. He or she doesn't care on what solution they're using, as long as is solves all thei

    • 10 min.

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