Charlie Cook's MArketing for Success Insider's Club

Archive for April, 2008

Why I Don’t Have a Sales Team – Small Business Marketing

By Charlie Cook   |   April 29, 2008


What, No Sales Team For Your Small Business?

To listen to the podcast of this blog online, use this link >>

Can you grow your business without a sales team?

Do you need a team of aggressive sales people on the phone calling prospects, closing deals and taking orders?

The short answer is NO. You don’t need a sales team to be successful. And if you have one, you could be feeding them a lot more hungry prospects that are ready to buy.

At MarketingForSuccess.com we don’t have a sales team. The web marketing strategy we use works to bring in 300 to 400 orders a month and that number keeps growing. It’s a proven strategy that attracts 45,000 visitors to the site each month, and. our in-house subscriber list keeps growing at an astonishing rate.

Why is this strategy so successful? Get the details >>

It’s based on the simple idea that you attract qualified prospects and buyers, by giving them the information they need and the value they want. Do that, and instead of having to track down prospects, they’ll come looking for you, ready to do business.

We focus on sharing strategies and real solutions. We give you ideas that you can put to use to grow your business and build mutually beneficial relationships one-by-one.

Don’t you wish you had hundreds of orders and requests for your services pouring in each month without having to make a single phone call or pay for a single salesperson?

Discover how to make your web site sell like crazy.

Find out how before you miss another sale >>

You may already be familiar with some parts of the successful web marketing strategy that we use. But do you have them all in place working for you, bringing in orders and requests for your services?

Here’s the proven business-building strategy we use.

1. Make it easy for prospects to find you online.
Put your site at the top of the search engines listings and you could get over twelve thousand visitors a week, as we do.

2. Focus on helping instead of selling.
Your prospects aren’t looking to be sold; they’re looking for information to help them solve business problems. Give them what they want and they’ll buy from you.

3. Give prospects something for free.
Do you want your prospect to give you his or her contact information for free? Then give them something for free in exchange.

4. Build loyalty.
Demonstrate your expertise and show your prospects that you can help them. Remember that it takes time and many points of contact to win their confidence.

5. Offer complete solutions.
Whatever business they’re in, your prospects are looking for ways to solve their problems. Give them a value-packed solution. For example >>

6. Test and fine-tune key parts of the system.
The only way to know how much you weigh is to step on a scale. The same is true of your marketing. Test each component and then look for ways to improve it.

7. Automate everything.
Don’t do manually what software can do for you, whether it’s managing and coordinating calendars, using a phone forwarding service or automatic order placement system.

8. Develop strong relationships with key sales partners.
It can take forever to grow your business when you add clients one by one. Instead, you bring in new clients by the hundreds through referrals from strategically chosen sales partners.

9. Stay on the lookout for ways to improve your sales system.
You’re already pulling in tons of sales? Why not double that number?

10. Leverage your time to the max.
As the owner or director of marketing at your company, you’re the brains. Don’t waste your time on tasks that you could delegate to specialists or to administrative assistants.

Should you fire your sales team?

Why not improve your marketing so they’re swamped with inquiries from qualified prospects questions and keep them busy closing deals? Combine a turbo-charged web marketing strategy with high-touch personal follow-up from your sales team, and you’ll outsell everyone.

To your success,

Charlie Cook

P.S. Ready to make your web site generate dozens of leads and sales each day? Take action and get the solution >>

To listen to the podcast of this blog online, use this link >>

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Where To Focus Your Small Business Marketing?

By Charlie Cook   |   April 24, 2008

Where To Find The Most Clients…

Are you pulling in new clients one by one when you could be bringing them in by the dozens or even hundreds? Most people make the mistake of marketing to bring in new leads individually when they could be bringing many at a time.

If you fished for a living and had the choice of two places to drop your nets, where would you go fishing – in the spot where you’d identified one big whopper, or the place with a school of hundreds of fish?

Obviously you’d seek out locations where you’d catch the most fish with the least effort and cost. Shouldn’t you be doing the same with your marketing?

Every business has at least two sources of profitable prospects.

Individual Prospects
You’ve got loyal clients who may be big spenders. These clients should be treasured, but if you’re like most business owners, you need more than one or two ‘gorilla’ clients to keep your business growing.

Referral Partners
In any business, referral partners are those people who can send you not just one client, but dozens or in my case thousands.

What’s a referral partner? It’s anyone who targets and or influences your target market. In my business the best referral partners are others who have a list of 50,000 or more small business owners and entrepreneurs. For one of my clients who sells hearing aids referral partners include companies that target products to the aging baby boomer market.

The first step to growing your business by leaps and bounds is to identify potential referral partners. Then work out the details to provide them with a share of the profits to motivate them to promote your products and services.

Want to know the secrets to growing your business in leaps and bounds? Use this link to get the answer >>

In the last 12 months I used this simple referral partner strategy to increase my annual sales by 100%. At the beginning of 2007, I created a campaign targeting marketing partners who had the potential to send me huge numbers of new customers.

It was more work to develop a relationship with these partners than to sign up an individual client, but the return can bring in 50 to 100 times as many sales, at least in my business.

What’s the fastest way to grow your business?

Recently Joan, who owns a printing service in Philadelphia, signed up for my marketing mentoring services. Joan told me her sales were stagnant at $5,000,000. She wants to push sales to at least $7,000,000 in the next year.

When I asked her where her present sales were coming from she told me that 60% was from individual clients and the remaining 40%, or $2,000,000, was from one print broker.

As I’m sure you have deduced, the fastest way for Joan to grow her business won’t be in spending all her time bringing in individual clients. Instead the simple solution is to target a few more print brokers. Add one and she’d reach her goal. Add two or three and she’d double her business.

Want to double your business this year? Use this link >>

Marketing is like bowling.

To win you don’t aim to hit each bowling pin, one by one. The winning strategy is to hit strikes and knock down all ten pins with one ball. Of course it’s harder to do but bowlers who hit the most pins with the fewest balls win every time.

So where should you focus your marketing?

Prioritize your time and efforts based on your marketing goals.

Some businesses get 100% of their sales from marketing partners but until you do I wouldn’t recommend abandoning marketing to individual clients. The key is to prioritize your time and efforts based on your marketing goals.

For example, if you’d like to get 50% of your sales from referral partners, allocate 50% of your time and marketing budget to building these super-profitable relationships.

How much time are you spending now on developing referral partnerships?

Don’t be embarrassed if your answer is close to zero. Most businesses neglect their biggest sources of potential profit. Takes the following three steps to change this now.

Step 1 – Set Aside the Time
Joan knew she wasn’t going to make any progress with her marketing until she could carve out the time to work on it. Every time she set foot in her printing plant, she was deluged with questions from her staff. Finally, after months of hearing me insist on it, she took a big step and decided to work from home one morning a week so she could devote time to marketing.

Step 2 – Have a Marketing Plan
Setting aside time to work on marketing won’t pay off unless you know what to do and how to do it. Find out what works to attract both individual clients and marketing partners. Use this link to get the details >>

Step 3 – Take Action
Successful marketers and business owners take action to bring in new clients, including these:
– Developing the tools their marketing partners need to promote them,
– Following up every couple of weeks with their prospects and marketing partners to build and maintain the relationship.

Are you an action-oriented business owner or marketer who is focused on success?

Then you’ll want to take the next step and discover where and how to focus your marketing to maximize your profits. Use this link to get the details >>

Gotta go. I need to call a couple of referral partners and see if I can double sales again this year.

Charlie
Small Business Marketing That Sells

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How I Lost a Great Client…

By Charlie Cook   |   April 16, 2008

Ever have a client you really liked working with quit? You know how upsetting it can be.

This week, one of my favorite clients, wrote me to let me know that he wanted to stop working with me after just two months.

Did I blow it, tick him off or what? You be the judge.

Kris Simmons, of FireEye Productions owns a web and video production company. In 2007 he’d seen a devastating slow down in business and been forced to layoff most of his staff. Kris had signed up as a mentoring client in early February of 2008.

He thought his business was a victim of the slowing economy but believed there were still plenty of clients out there if only he could get their attention and their business. Then 8 weeks after signing up Kris quit!

Why? Why did Kris quit as a mentoring client?

From the start, Kris jumped on each strategy and idea I provided him and put as many of them as he could to use. The result?

Kris sold 30 projects in less than two months, which in his words “Is HUGE!” In fact it was more than he’d ever signed up in any two-month period since he started his business eight years ago and to boot he did it in the midst of a recession.

Kris wrote me to say that he had to stop working with me because even with outsourcing 90% of the new projects, he was working around the clock to keep up with the demand that I’d helped him tap. With all the new clients he’d landed he didn’t have time to keep up with the mentoring program and wanted to stop working together, at least for now.

I’ll miss working with Kris. He was fun to work with and most importantly followed through on the strategies and ideas I shared with him.

Want to benefit from my misfortune?

Fill Kris’s spot.

I now have one new space available in my mentoring program and if you act quickly and apply and you’re accepted you could be the next person to discover how to get more business than you ever imagined.

Use this link to apply >>

To your success,

Charlie
www.marketingforsuccess.com

P.S. Be forewarned! Kris had the same complaint that other clients have mentioned in the past. He told me I should have warned him about the tsunami of business that he could expect.

So consider yourself warned. The marketing strategies and ideas I share with my clients can bring you in more new business than you ever imagined.

P.S. II Want to see what Kris had to say? Use this link to view his video comments online >>

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Is It The Economy? – Try Another Excuse!

By Charlie Cook   |   April 15, 2008

Listen to the podcast of this blog online with this link >>

Were your sales stagnant last year? How was the first quarter of 2008?

What’s the problem? Is it the economy?

With all the news about the mortgage meltdown, sinking real estate values, rising unemployment and warnings of a recession, it’s easy to feel anxious and pessimistic. But don’t assume that your slow sales can be blamed on a faltering economy.

It’s true that banks are tight about lending and your customers are cautious about spending, but that doesn’t mean you can’t continue to grow your business.

There are profits to be made in any almost all economy, even in areas you’d think would be the hardest hit.

During the last week of March I took a vacation with my son in British Columbia to check out Revelstoke, a new Canadian ski resort. At a time when real estate values are sinking, the economy is slumping and the ski industry is stagnating, someone had the audacity to open a new ski resort.

And even crazier, the proposed resort isn’t anywhere near a population center. It’s at least a five-hour drive from the airports in Vancouver or Calgary. For many U.S. and Canadian residents, it’s more or less inaccessible. It took us over 18 hours to get there from Connecticut.

As you drive up the recently graded dirt road to the mountain, you see no condos, no golf course, and no model ski homes. Other than some amazing ski terrain and two new lifts, the place is more mud and vision than reality. (We went cat skiing but here’s a video of heli skiing)

So what happened when they put their first real estate offering on the market?

It sold out in 2 hours!
How? With some great marketing!

What’s the secret to creating a huge demand and successful sales campaigns?

I’d hired a driver to get us home from our return flight in the middle of the night. On the way, our driver told us that his business was down by over 50% from last year. The following day, I talked to another limo service that was growing steadily at 10% each month.

The big question is,

Is the economy to blame, or is it your marketing?

Conventional wisdom has it that your sales will fall off in a down economy, but that will be true only if you let it happen.

One of my clients came to me for coaching after laying off all his employees as a result of sinking sales last year. We retooled his marketing plan and wrote a new marketing message. One month later, he told he he’d never brought in so much new business in such a short period of time in the eight years since he’d opened for business.

Ready to see your sales take off even in a down economy? Use this simple strategy >>

If you’re using the economy as an excuse for not growing your business this year, think again. Sure, it’s easier to grow a business when money is plentiful. But when spending shrinks, the truly successful separate themselves from their peers and keep their businesses growing.

These people are leaders who see even the most challenging situation as a problem to solve. They look for answers and then take action. If you’re a leader, you can make your business more successful in almost any type of economy by getting the knowledge you need to grow your business.

Others look for someone or something else to blame for their problems or misfortune. ‘Blamers’ let themselves get stuck. Blaming others and looking for excuses is a way to avoid fixing something that’s broken.

Are you a Leader or a Blamer?

If you’re leader who wants to put your business on the fast track to success – take action and find out what works >>

Introducing More Business podcasts.
To listen to the podcast online, use this link >>

– Charlie
Marketing Strategies That Get… Results

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How Effective Is Your Small Business Marketing?

By Charlie Cook   |   April 7, 2008

How well does your small business marketing work? Use this marketing checklist marketing to help prospects become clients and customers today.

– Charlie
Proven Small Business Marketing

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3 Steps to Advertising That Sells- Small Business Marketing Secrets

By Charlie Cook   |   April 5, 2008

Most small business owners spend tens of thousands of dollars each year on advertising that doesn’t work. They spend thousands of dollars on print and pay per click advertising that costs more than it brings in in sales. Sound familiar?

The secret to using ads to generate more revenue is to stop using them to sell.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re saying to yourself, “aren’t ads supposed to sell?”

The answer is NO!

Click here to discover how use advertising to market and grow your business in this week’s article >>

Charlie
Small Business Marketing That Puts You Ahead of the Competition

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3 Breakthrough Marketing Ideas to Help You Reach Your Goals…

By Charlie Cook   |   April 3, 2008

Running your business often means starting work early in the mornings, working evenings and the occasional Saturday and Sunday. Wouldn’t you like to cut back this year, ease up a little, maybe take a few Friday afternoons off or get away on vacation this summer? How can you do this and at the same time build marketing momentum?

You know that you could expand your business if your marketing was more effective, but you barely have time to keep up with your present workload, much less take on a whole new set of business marketing ideas and tasks.

How can you take your small business to the next level and work less this year?

The secret of course is in the 80/20 rule. For most people 80% of your sales comes from 20% of your efforts. Now imagine you knew where to focus your time so it consistently helped you to get results. You could easily increase your sales by a factor of five.

In marketing most people are using the equivalent of smoke signals or Morse code. They’re using outdated marketing ideas and strategies.

Instead of using a marketing system they’re using bits and pieces.
That’s like trying to go somewhere in a car without an engine. It might look good sitting in your driveway but it certainly won’t get you where you want to go.

If you’re struggling to grow your business the solution is simple. Use a proven marketing system, one that can put your marketing in gear and help you achieve your goals.

Ready to finally discover how to make more and work less? Use this link to get the details >>

3 Ways to Reach Your Business Goals

1. Plan To Get More Done With Less Effort
If you want to make better use of your time start by setting aside time each week get the knowledge you need and to implement the proven marketing ideas you get. Make room for continuous improvement on your agenda.

Take out your calendar and block out an hour once a week, preferably first thing in the morning, when you’ll give yourself a mental vacation from meetings, answering the phone, and email. Use this time to evaluate your current efforts. It’s like stepping the scale each day.

Identify what to do more of, what to change and where to get help.
– What’s working and what isn’t?

– Where are you getting the best results?

– Which keywords are attracting the most prospects?

– Which marketing messages?

– What sequence of information results in the highest conversion rates?

– What follow-up strategy is working?
Etc.

If you keep managing and marketing your business the same way, what do you think will happen? You’ll get the same results. If you want a breakthrough you’re going to need to make a change and more from piecemeal marketing to using a proven marketing system. Interested?

Use this link to discover how to make more, work less and achieve your goals >>

2. Get More Attention With Less Effort

A common misconception is that marketing success is a result of plain old persistence. Most people think that using the same type of marketing message and advertising that everyone else uses will build their “brand” or grow their business.

Is using the same approach your competitors use helping you get all the attention you want for your business? Probably not.

Your marketing message is the first place to start. Replace it with a message that clearly and succinctly explains how you help your clients. Prospects respond when you speak to their needs.

On average, my clients report that composing and using a client focused marketing message increases their response rate by 400 percent. That’s 4 times as many leads generated with the same effort.

3. Generate More Qualified Leads and Sales with Less Effort
Getting attention is the first step in marketing; getting qualified prospects the second. You want more prospects so you can convert them to clients and increase sales, but you don’t have time to make more calls or write more emails or letters. But you can get more people to contact you and buy from you each month and reduce your long-term marketing costs.

Establish systems for prompting prospects to contact you. Then automate every function of your marketing you can.

Want to increase your marketing reach and your sales while reducing your marketing costs and efforts? Use this link to get the details >>

I leverage the web, related software and a set of proven systems to manage my marketing and my sales. The result is that I can manage a continually growing enterprise with less effort. You can do the same.

You deserve some R and R this year – and you can get it and still grow your small business with the above three strategies. Start by setting the time aside, making a plan to implement your marketing ideas and a vacation plan so you can enjoy your life while steadily increasing your revenue.

Best,

Charlie
Marketing Ideas That Save You Time and Make You Money

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