“I hate sales pitches!” You may have felt this way yourself or heard others say it. If it’s such a common response, what’s the best way to organize your small business marketing plan to attract new clients and customers?
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Get in the habit of asking every client or customer for letters of praise.
-Ask them to state how great your work was and how much they enjoyed working with you. You’ll be surprised how highly they extol you and how wonderfully they express it.
-Ask for endorsements during the first thirty to sixty days or as soon as short-term projects are complete. Read More »
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Sometimes you need to look at your business from a different direction and perspective. To see where you are going with it.
* Where have you positioned yourself in the marketplace?
* How can you increase revenues and profits?
* What can be done to cut costs?
* How do you find new customers? Read More »
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So now, according to the experts, it’s official we are in a recession. What are you doing to prosper in this tough economy?
What are you doing to guarantee that you can continue to see your income grow and you’re not stuck in the same place years from now? Read More »
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Want more clients and bigger profits?
Did you know that most smart business owners, despite working dawn to dusk could be making 2-4 times as much just by making a few simple changes to either their business model, their pricing strategies or their marketing? Read More »
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“What do I do now?”
Is that a question you’ve asked yourself recently about your business?
For most entrepreneurs and small business owners, the past 18 months have been tough. It doesn’t matter how smart you are or how great your products and services are, in the midst of a recession it can be easy to get bogged down and watch while your profits plummet.
Most summers for the last 50 plus years, I’ve spent a week or more on the coast of Maine. And much of that time has been spent in boats: rowboats, canoes, kayaks, sailboats and small motorboats.
When the sun shines and the sky is blue, it’s easy to go for a picnic or motor across to the nearest store to pick up groceries. But when the Maine fog rolls in and blankets the bay, it’s easy to get disoriented and lost.
The current recession is just like a big, damp, cold fog bank for most businesses. It’s disorienting and many people are panicking and losing sales and money.
What can you do?
Discover what works even in a recession
Years ago, I discovered that with a few simple skills I could navigate through the thickest fog and magically get where I wanted to go, most of the time, much to the surprise of my friends. Now with a GPS it’s so easy anyone can do it.
The same is true with your small business marketing. Once you know how to stay focused and navigate through this recession you’ll amaze yourself as you see profits pouring in.
Use the following five steps:
1. Begin with an urgent and compelling goal. Pick a goal that’s vital to the success of your business. It could be lead generation, referrals, increasing repeat sales, customer retention, etc. But whatever you pick, it should be so important that it motivates you to follow through.
2. Pick something you can accomplish within a few weeks, a month at most. If your goal is to write a book, identify a short-term sub goal, such as completing the first chapter.
Or if you want to get referrals, you could start by writing the sequence of questions you’d use to get existing clients to tell you how much they love your products or services and than to get them to give you 1-2 names of people they’ll help you contact.
3. Pick something you can measure. Improving customer service is a nice idea, but you need a specific sub goal you can measure. Increasing repeat sales this month would be a good measureable goal.
4. Make sure the larger goal and the sub-goal you have picked is one that everyone on your team can commit to. If half your team doesn’t agree that it’s urgent, it won’t happen.
If everyone can agree, for example, that they’ll focus on adding one more sales partner each month, it’s more likely to happen.
5. Pick a goal you can accomplish with the people and resources you have. That way you’re not dependent on additional funds or new resources.
That’s it. Now get started.
Pick an urgent small business marketing goal, stay focused and you’ll be amazed at what you can accomplish. Anyone with motivation and determination can bring in more sales this way.
- Charlie
P.S. Remember, that to change the behavior of your prospects, to get more people buying, you first need to change your own behavior.
P.P.S. Ready to stop struggling and start profiting from your small business marketing in this recession?
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| About Charlie Cook Related Resources More Posts by Charlie Cook To discover the easy and inexpensive ways anyone can attract more clients and maximize their profits, sign up for your FREE Profit Now Report. |
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“Can I make this business profitable?” Jim from Kansas City, Kansas asked me a few weeks ago.
Jim installs glass into existing steel or fiberglass front doors, bringing much needed light into homes and increasing their resale value. He has a steady stream of customers and has increased his customer base each of the 8 years he’s been in business.
Yet he was just breaking even before the recession and is now losing money.
What’s the problem?
Any small business marketing that is built around selling just one product or service is going to struggle. In Jim’s case, his only opportunity to resell to past customers is when — or if— they move into a new home. He has to find a new customer to make almost every sale.
BIG MISTAKE!
Finding new prospects and converting them to customers is the hardest part of growing your business.
Once you have a satisfied customer you can sell to them again and again. To run a profitable business, you want to offer a number of related products or services or a service or product that people need more than one time.
Once you have a satisfied customer, you can sell to them again and again. It’s ten times easier to sell an existing customer than to start from scratch with a new one.
Discover the easiest way to attract a steady stream of profits >>
I asked my barber what his life would be like if he had to find sixteen new customers every day. He looked at me as if I were crazy. He only needs to attract new customers periodically when an existing customer moves away or goes bald.
Jim simply does not have a profitable business model. Instead of using each sale to a new customer to generate additional sales, he’s stuck on a permanent treadmill, constantly needing to find new customers and trying to close the next first sale.
Is It A Hobby?
If you only have one product or service to sell and it’s not something people need over and over, you don’t have a business, you have a hobby. There is no way to grow your business and your income. You’ll always be struggling to make a profit.
Ready to stop working so hard, and make more with less effort? >>
To be profitable, you need to attract first time customers and then sell them multiple products and services or help them buy again and again.
Here’s the sequence that generates profits:
1. Attract prospects to your mailing list
2. First time sale
3. Up-sell or cross-sell a higher price point product,
4. Sign them up for an on-going service and help them
5. Create customers for life (well at least for a year at a time).
Of course there are many variations, but the goal is the same; leverage the first sale into additional revenue so you maximize the value of each customer.
That’s what my trainer did when he signed me for an annual season pass to the gym. That’s what my HVAC company did when they signed us up for an annual maintenance contract.
That’s what the phone company does too. They get you in the funnel with an incredible deal on a cell phone and then sign you up for a two-year contract.
WalMart uses the same strategy. They put the lowest, practically free item at the end of the aisle to get you in to the store. Most people buy a higher priced more feature-laden version, and pick up a handful of other items while they are in the store.
Without a marketing funnel, a way of up-selling or cross-selling – you’ll be permanently frustrated and perpetually broke.
Want to stop being frustrated and start making more with your small business marketing? Start here >>
Is there anything Jim can do to turn his “hobby” into a business?
Absolutely. Jim could expand the services and products he offers to meet more of his customers’ needs. He could offer replacement windows and window washing, for example, and have sales partnerships with people who clean carpets, refinish floors, and do home renovations.
By offering just a few of these related services he could easily double his income within a month or two and have a wildly profitable business. But he didn’t want to change his business model. Last I heard he was headed for bankruptcy instead.
If you just want to be busy, get a hobby.
If you want to make money, your business model needs to systematically help first time customers buy from you again and again so that you make more with less effort. It’s not complicated, and you can easily increase your income by 50% or more within weeks.
- Charlie
P.S. Tired of just being busy? Want to find how to find out the proven formula for attracting clients and profits?
Use this small business marketing blueprint to get the profits you want >>
P.P.S. I’ve known people who worked 50 to 80 hours a week just to make ends meet, when they had an untapped goldmine in their hands. Find out how easy it is to get all the business you want and see your income grow.
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It was the day after Thanksgiving when I lost my pants. I was headed in from Connecticut to New York City with my fiance to explore what was then a still-emerging art gallery scene in Soho. We were enjoying the trip in but things started to go wrong when we got off the subway.
We’d misread the subway map and got off one stop too early. That wouldn’t normally have been a problem, but when we emerged from the subway station, rain was coming down in buckets. We had rain jackets but no umbrella, and the temperature was just above freezing.
By the time we’d walked a few blocks, our jeans were soaked through and we were both shivering and miserable. We were too cold to spend the day wandering around soaking wet. The choice was, either to give up and go home, or do something about our wet clothes and try to save our day together in the city. We opted for the latter.
What would you have done?
We stopped at a corner store, bought a newspaper and went looking for a way to dry our pants. A block away, behind a heavy metal door, we found a tiny laundromat with just three washers and dryers.
We peeled off our wet jeans behind the newspaper and popped them into a dryer. We sat down to wait, trying to be as discreet as possible about our state of undress. (Newspapers are handy in such situations, but to tell you the truth, the New Yorkers around us didn’t even blink when we took off our pants.)
Thirty minutes later, we had warmed up, our jeans were dry, the rain had let up and we were back on track. We’d salvaged what could have turned into a really bad day.
Ever have something bad happen that turned into something good?
This current recession is like a cold rain. It’s soaking lots of people’s profits, and anticipating a difficult year or two is downright unpleasant.
Want to find simple solutions to salvage your business plans and dreams? You can do it.
The email I’ve been getting over the last three months falls into two distinct camps. The first group is paralyzed by fear and worry. They’re watching and waiting, and they’re unhappy.
The second group of people are worried, too, but they don’t feel stuck. They are highly motivated to find a way out of the problems the recession is causing them.
These smart business owners, people like you, know they need to adapt to these challenging conditions, improve their business practices, and look for new opportunities to maintain profits — or even grow.
Last year, during the first year of this recession, my clients on average doubled their sales. You can do the same by taking action now.
Contact me by filling in the application for my one-on-one mentoring program. This program isn’t for everybody. It’s for qualified business owners who can show me a track record of past success, and who are motivated to find solutions to today’s problems.
Want in? I’ve only got two spots open.
Start here to schedule a time to talk >>
- Charlie
P.S. Don’t lose your pants in this recession. Do something about it.
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There are two kinds of people: those who panic when things go wrong and those who get a grip and take action to solve the problem.
Which are you?
Who Will Be The Business Marketing Winners In This Economy?
Over a month ago, U.S. Airways Flight 1549 out of New York’s LaGuardia Airport ran into a flock of geese within minutes after takeoff, shutting down both engines. You probably read about it or saw the reports in the news.
The pilot, Captain Sullenberger, kept his wits about him and chose to make a very tricky water landing. He pulled it off, easing his jet down into the middle of the Hudson River without damage, saving everyone on board.
Talk about a winner. It’s an inspirational story, but how did Sullenberger do it? How did he know what to do to save himself, his crew and his passengers?
Captain Sullenberger has years of experience flying, but he credits his training for preparing him to handle a once-in-a-lifetime emergency like this one. He didn’t panic because his training had taught him a set of maneuvers to choose from in extraordinary circumstances.
As a business owner, you may feel like you’re piloting Flight 1549. Just when your business marketing is airborne, a flock of misguided bankers and lenders (turkeys in this case) threatens to bring the whole economy down and your business with it.
It’s bad. Credit is tight and buyers are harder to find. You can panic and watch your company’s profits sink, or you can take your cue from leaders like Sullenberger. The winners in this economy will be business owners — pilots— who take action to save profits and even grow in this economy.
You need to pull your business out of danger and keep pulling in sales. Institute emergency procedures. What are they? Start here >>
How can you save your business and even increase your profits in this economy? There are many ways, and I’ll be discussing them in this and future articles. The first is to…
Create efficiency in key areas. Especially marketing.
Does that sound like strange advice from a marketing coach? It isn’t. You can’t afford marketing that isn’t working.
Marketing is the engine that drives sales and profits. You may have years of experience marketing, but if you aren’t using strategies that run this engine efficiently, you’re losing prospects and sales at a critical time.
In my experience, 90% of potential sales are lost due to poor marketing copy, limited followup, and/or a low percentage of conversions. That’s not a typo; 90% of potential sales are lost due to marketing inefficiency. Institute emergency procedures!
You can improve your marketing efficiency in just a few days and see gains in profits of 400% or more.
How can you improve your marketing efficiency? Find out >>
Most companies are lucky if they’re getting a 1% response to their marketing. Your response rate could be as high as 15%. Think what that would mean for your sales and your income.
1. Lead Generation
Most company’s conversion rates are terribly low, and you probably wouldn’t be reading this if yours weren’t, too. Whether you’re using direct mail, cold calling or a web site to generate leads, a typical response rate is less than a half of one percent. Improve your conversion rate to 1% and you’d have twice as many leads.
Is it possible to get 1% of the people who see your information to contact you? Yes. 10 to 13% is possible!
How can you improve your lead generation? Find out >>
2. Conversion
Once a lead comes in, how many do you convert to sales? Here’s another marketing sinkhole: most companies lose 80% of potential sales from leads due to lack of follow-up.
Emergency procedure; improve your follow-up system. You could be landing five new customers a day, not just one. Or 50 instead of ten. It doesn’t have to be a perfect follow-up system for you to double your revenue.
How can you improve your conversion rates? Find out >>
3. Sales
Use every sale as the stepping-stone to the next one and the one after that. Up-selling and cross-selling can easily double or triple the amount you make from a client. Yet most businesses leave these profits on the table. Is that what you’re doing?
How can you improve your up-sell and cross-sell? Find out >>
Business owners who learn how to market efficiently now will not only survive the recession; they’ll be way ahead of the competition when it’s over. They will be the winners in this economy and the next one.
You’re in the pilot’s seat. You can’t sit back and wait for the economy to improve; you’ve got to take action. But don’t panic. Discover how to make your business marketing efficient and stay in the air. When you do you’ll be able to smooth out the bumpy ride you’ve been experiencing and enjoy the trip.
Ready to be a winner with your marketing?>>
- Charlie
P.S. Can you really afford to keep marketing the way you are now? Want to avoid watching your business crash? Improve the efficiency of your business marketing and you’ll instantly get more leads, more sales and more profits.
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I’ll never forget that drive back from Vermont, one winter evening in February when I was 14. I’d been skiing in Vermont with my parents and on the way home we got stuck in a blizzard.
We were less than 60 miles from home when all traffic on our side of the highway came to a stand still. We could see that there was an exit a quarter-mile ahead, and wanted to get off but we couldn’t move forward, not even an inch.
We sat and waited for ten or 15 minutes. It snowed and got darker outside. I was contemplating a long cold night in the car when my father suggested we take a look, get out and see what the problem was. To be honest, at 14, the idea hadn’t occurred to me. I was just waiting for some big snowplow from the sky to show up and magically take care of things.
We walked forward past hundreds of cars with people sitting inside, running their engines to stay warm. When we reached the exit we discovered the problem. Six cars were stuck in the snow blocking it so no one could get off.
Six relatively small cars (this was pre-SUV) had slid sideways in the snow. And in every case the drivers were just sitting inside doing nothing.
My father and I looked at the situation and quickly realized that all we needed was five or ten strong backs and we could easily clear the downward slopping exit ramp and get things moving.
That’s when I got the surprise of my life – remember I was only 14.
With hundreds of cars lined up on the highway, we figured it’d be easy to get a few people out into the snowy night and get things going. By now we’d been there for almost an hour without any signs of help or movement.
When we tried to get the other stranded motorists to do something - hardly anyone seemed interested in leaving their warm cars. They were just waiting and slowly using up the gas in their tanks as the snow piled up around their cars.
We had to knock on dozens and dozens of car windows just to get a handful of people to take action and help themselves and dig out the few cars that were creating the bottleneck.
You know what drives me crazy – totally bonkers? APATHY!
Apathy drives me crazy! It drives me nuts when people wait for someone else to solve a problem – when an easy solution is right in front of them. Ultimately it took us longer to round up a few action oriented individuals than it did to clear the ramp and get on our way.
This recession reminds me of that wintry night years ago stuck on the highway. This economic climate is like a big blizzard and it’s slowing things down for sure. So what are most business owners doing about it?
Most business owners are hunkering down and hoping someone else will solve the problem. They’re sitting tight while their sales dry up – when instead they could be taking action and increasing their profits.
Which are you doing?
Last year Mary Ellen and Ed, two therapists from California came to me with what might seem like an improbably task. They had recently started their business, were struggling and wanted to see if I could help them while most other businesses were floundering.
They could have just hunkered down and lived with it – waiting for some miracle but instead they sought a solution and took action. One year later – they’ve more than doubled their business and have almost as many clients as they can handle. You can do the same!
There are four remaining spaces available in the MasterMind Mentoring Group and if you apply today, you may still be able to get in. Just use this link to apply or email Jessica@marketingforsuccess.com to schedule a time to talk with me personally to get your questions answered.
Just in case you’re confused by the name – it’s called a MasterMind Mentoring Group so you’ll benefit from the others experience but don’t have any doubt about it, I’ll be showing you what to do – I’ll be mentoring you directly.
Once these four remaining spots are full, the group will be closed. If you’re one of those people overwhelmed by apathy, this isn’t for you. But if you’re smart, an action taker and you want to do something about making sure your business comes out on top this year – don’t wait – do something about it.
In Tuesday’s email, I’ll detail the four simple steps Mary Ellen and Ed used to increase their leads and convert more leads into clients and more than double their business in the past 12 months.
- Charlie
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