I was sitting in my client’s office last week listening to him describe all the creative and costly ways he finds new customers, then lament his failure to retain those customers.

Later, as I drove away from his office, my mind drifted back 20 years to a fishing trip and the marketing lesson I learned while on it.

It was the summer of my junior year in college. I was working as a bartender on an island dotted with hundreds of fishing ponds. One day, a friend asked me to go fishing with him. Always game for a new adventure, I agreed.

After work I found him busily preparing for our fishing adventure. I was amazed at all this entailed.  He gathered, prepared and organized rods, lures, lines, tackle, worms, nets, knives and refreshments. Then he loaded his truck, hooked up the rowboat and drove to the pond. This all took about 3 hours and we hadn’t even cast our first line.

Then it happened! After 45 minutes, he felt a tug on his line and said, “Oh, I got a big one.” With great finesse and patience he reeled the fish in, lifted it out of the water and set it carefully in the boat and said to the fish, “Hey, George!”

“You know this fish?” I asked.

While he removed the hook he replied, “Oh, yeah. I’ve caught George many times before.”

I was stunned by his words, but even more so, by what he did next. He threw the fish back in.

“What are you doing?” I whined, “You worked so hard to catch him!”

He replied, “It’s called ‘Catch and Release’. I’m just fishing for fun.”

And now 20 years later I think of that fishing trip whenever I discover a business owner who has a great marketing plan but no customer retention plan. I call it Catch and Release Marketing. Are you just marketing for fun?

- Colleen

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

“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?

While getting all aspects of your marketing right can be complicated, the simple truth is that you can attract many more clients and be far more successful by doing just one thing.

To get the attention of your prospects and gain their trust and their business, base your marketing on the way your prospects make buying decisions. Just as a sweater needs to fit its owner, your small business marketing needs to fit your prospects.

Mirror Your Prospects’ Decision Making Patterns
How do your prospects make purchasing decisions? A research study by Enquiro and Marketing Sherpa found that 86% of Internet users begin a search using Google. Of these, 63% scan the search results, looking for key phrases in order to determine which sites to visit.

If your target market doesn’t find the key phrase they are looking for, they won’t contact you. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been in business or how happy your clients are; if your small business marketing message doesn’t match the language your prospects use, tens of thousands of people will n/ever find you. This is true even if they need and want your products and services.

First
If you want people to respond to your search engine listing, billboard ad, radio spot or business card, the handful of words you use need to grab their attention, invest the time and effort to create a brilliant marketing message. Tailor it to your prospects’ problems and concerns and they’ll take notice.

Once you have your prospects’ attention, you may want them to buy your products and services right away, but this is not realistic. While a small percentage of prospects with an urgent need may buy on first contact with you or your web site, the vast majority won’t. The research by Enquiro and Marketing Sherpa found over 80% of people looking to buy research a purchase for a period of time ranging from one week to four months, with 54% taking one to three months.

You may be doing a great job at getting attention, but if you’re not motivating prospects to contact you, your business is leaking leads. You could be missing more than 80% of potential buyers.

Does your company have a web site?

How many visitors stop by your site each month?

How many of these contact you?

If you’re a small business you could easily be attracting 3,000 to 20,000 people a month to your web site. Typically, 10 to 30% of these people can be motivated to contact you, amounting to 300 to 6,000 leads per month.

You may be attracting more leads than you need. Make sure you capture them so you can market to them. One of my coaching clients had a web site that was attracting 40,000 visitors each month. With a site this popular, he should have been able to generate 8,000 leads each month. All he needed was structure his web site to prompt prospects to give him their contact information. Instead he was getting an average of only 10 leads each month.

Discover how to use your web site to generate leads and convert visitors into clients and customers >>

Second
Motivate prospects to give you their contact information. Give them a reason to contact you. I give away a free marketing guide that prompts almost a thousand people a month to give me their contact information. Once you have your prospects’ contact information, follow up regularly to further establish the credibility of your firm and clarify the value of your products and services.

Moving Prospects to Client or Customer Status
When you provide your services or develop your products you shape them to fit your prospects’ wants and needs. Similarly your marketing needs to be shaped to fit your prospects’ buying patterns. When your small business marketing strategy and materials reflects the information prospects are looking for, you’ll get their attention and their business.

- Charlie

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

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.
-Have your clients/customers write their testimonials on their letterhead and limit them to one or two paragraphs.
-Explain to clients/customers that you plan to post the testimonials on your newsletter, blog, and Web site, and use them in promotional materials.
-Point out to your clients/customers that the testimonials could help them by increasing their visibility.
-Offer to prepare drafts for their approval if clients hesitate to write them themselves.

When you begin receiving testimonials, update your web site regularly to add recent praise and delete that which is dated. However, you may want to continue to run a few older testimonials because they attest that you’ve got a long track record delivering customer satisfaction.

- Rick

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

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?

The Wall Street Journal, in a recent special report, told the fascinating story of Kuniyoshi Konishi, who started a chain of barbershops – QB House – in Japan in 1996.

Mr. Konishi saw opportunity within a problem: He got tired of paying 3,000 to 5000 yen ($25 to $50) for a haircut that took an hour.

He thought to himself: “Would it be possible to create a no-frills barbershop where the customer could get a haircut in ten minutes at a cost of 1000 yen? (About $10.) If so, could it be systematized so it could be done on a large scale?”

He looked at the situation and tried to eliminate all the tasks that kept a barber from cutting hair.

Today QB House has:

* 200 outlets.
* 3.5 million customer visits in 2002.
* Revenue of $16 million (1.92 billion yen).

QB House is now opening barbershops in Singapore, and Mr. Konishi is looking to grow his business to 1000 barbershops throughout Asia.

This is the business model he created:

1. No Cash Register.
QB House’s barbers don’t accept cash. In place of a cash register, each barbershop is equipped with a ticket-vending machine.

The customer puts his money – only a 1000 yen bill is accepted – into the vending machine, and is given a ticket that he hands to the barber. (The barbers no longer waste time making change.)

This did two things to increase productivity and reduce overhead costs:

A. Eliminated the time-consuming task of collecting money in payment for a haircut.

B. Eliminated the need to make change. Since only 1000 yen bills are accepted – the customer must have exact change -  the cost of bookkeeping and accounting at the end of each day has been dramatically reduced.

2. No Reservations.
QB House does not take reservations. None of their shops have telephones. This eliminated the need to hire a person to sit at the front desk to schedule appointments.

It also eliminated the interruptions of incoming calls for each of the barbers.

3. Using Electronic Sensors
Customers are informed of a barber’s availability – and waiting time – by lights that are displayed outside the shop as they walk or drive by.

* Green means no waiting.
* Yellow indicates a wait of about five minutes.
* Red tells a customer that there may be a 15 minute wait.

QB House created this system by placing electronic sensors under each seat in the waiting area and in each barber’s chair. The system keeps track of the number of customers in the shop and how long each customer has been sitting in a chair. The waiting times are displayed outside the store.

4. No Shampooing.
Most Japanese barbers shampoo their customer’s hair after a haircut, to remove loose hairs. This isn’t possible if your goal is to complete the cut in ten minutes.

Instead of shampooing a customer’s hair, QB House’s barbers use a special vacuum cleaner – they pull a hose down from the ceiling – to tidy up their customers. Mr. Konishi named the vacuum cleaner “The Air Wash” system.

5. Serving The Next Customer.
When a customer’s haircut has been completed, he gets up from the chair, the next customer sits down, hands the ticket to the barber, who begins another ten minute haircut.

QB House’s barbers are able to serve six customers per hour – generating 6000 yen per hour – as opposed to the 3000 to 5000 yen per hour generated by a traditional Japanese barbershop that is only cutting one customer’s hair.

6. Monitoring Traffic Volume.
QB’s management monitors the information that is transmitted from each store over the Internet – in real time – and studies the reports for volume trends.

When sales volume for a particular store is much higher than average, the company often opens another store nearby.

What Are Your Processes And Procedures?
What are the processes and procedures you follow?

Kuniyoshi Konishi looked at each step in the process of cutting hair and eliminated many of the wasted steps. He dramatically reduced the time it takes for Japanese men to get their hair cut, and passed the savings onto them.

What is it that you do every day that takes up your – or your customer’s – time, that adds cost to your business? That eats up your profits?

How can you do things

* Quicker?
* Better?
* Less expensively?

What is your strategy for reducing costs, improving the quality of your product or service, and increasing profits.

Challenge yourself. Look for ways to make everything you do simpler.

It’s easy to do complex. Everybody does that.

Simple is hard. Remember the KISS Principal:

Keep It Simple… Sweetheart.

- Jeffrey

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

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?

I’m amazed at the number of people I see, smart business owners, who haven’t taken action, haven’t got a plan to deal with this “recession.”

Have you got one?

The problem isn’t that there is no solution. THERE IS!

Interested in solving your profit crisis >>

The problem is that business owners are going through the five stages of grief, you know the ones that Elisabeth Kübler-Ross introduced in her 1969 book, On Death and Dying.

In case you missed these, Kubler-Ross outlined the steps people go through when faced with their own death.

1. Denial — “I feel fine.”; “This can’t be happening, not to me.”

2. Anger — “Why me? It’s not fair!”; “How can this happen to me?”; “Who is to blame?”

3. Bargaining — “I’ll do anything for a few more years.”

4. Depression — “I’m so sad, why bother with anything?”

5. Acceptance — “It’s going to be okay.”

WAIT A MINUTE!

Your business doesn’t have to die and you can end the profit losses and the suffering.

It’s time to step away from denial, anger, bargaining, depression and you don’t need to lie down and accept the cards you’ve been dealt.

You can profit from this recession when you accept the simple truth, that THE ECONOMY HAS CHANGED…

Everybody knows it’s easy, or at least easier to do well when cash is abundant. That was the case until recently. With easy money available, everyone was buying.

But when the money supply shrinks, and people are more reluctant to buy, only the fittest survive.

This is the time when smart action takers, start-ups and small business owners like you, can leave the companies that persist on doing business the same way, in the dust.

While it’s not “easy,” right now, most of your competitors are still dealing with denial, anger, bargaining, depression or have just accepted their fate, and are doing the same thing that lost them money last year and even the year before.

Would you rather continue to live in fear or plan for true wealth creation?

It’s your choice, stick with your current plan or work with a select group of winners and discover the secrets to thriving in today’s markets. This is one of those singular opportunities when you can stand out and set your business on a trajectory to the top.

As I mentioned recently, I’ve opened up my MasterMind Group again. And it’s not for fatalists.

If you’re one of those people who are serious about your success and determined to make it, find out more about this chance to work directly with me.

Interested in your future?  Take action to do something about it >>

Wouldn’t you agree that if you’re struggling that it makes sense to do something about it? If you don’t, who will?

Take the first step and put your name on the list of applicants before it fills up.  Find out the details here >>

- Charlie

P.S. Remember your decisions dictate your success. Rich and successful people aren’t any smarter than you. They just made some smart decisions at the right time.

Get started >>

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

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?

93% of all small business owners are sitting on hidden profits and in an effort to stay afloat or make more, they inadvertently do the wrong thing.

The mistake that almost every entrepreneur and small business owner makes is they copy what they see others doing and then they get the same results instead of standing out and making it to the top.

Don’t believe me?

Kris came to me at the beginning of 2008. After having a successful business, in 2007 he’d seen his sales dry up and he’d had to lay off his employees. He’s one of the smartest people I’ve worked with but he was struggling.

And like most small business owners he was sitting on a huge source of profits that he’d missed.

While he’d always appreciated the occasional referral, he’d never directly asked for them from his best clients. It’s just not something he’d seen others doing or been taught how to do.

When I showed him my simple referral formula, he immediately took action and put it to use and landed 30 new clients in a 6-week period.

That’s right, he turned his business around making 2008 his best year ever just by using one simple strategy I gave him that cost him absolutely nothing to implement.

Watch Kris tell you his story in his own words >>

You can do the same or even better with your business. When you make room in your schedule to find out what works and apply it, there is no saying how many more clients and profits you can bring in.

And to make it easy for you, I’ve opened my MasterMind Group to 20 new members.

Here’s how it works. We meet twice a month on the phone using GoToMeeting so we can share documents and I give you one key tactic and strategy anyone can use to attract more clients, close more sales or maximize their profits. Then we work together to help you implement the profit generating strategy and answer your most pressing questions.

You get direct access to me and you get the support and advice from others like you. It’s like having me, Charlie Cook, working with you as a virtual VP of Marketing, a focus group, support group and handful of expert advisors all rolled up in one.

And if you miss a meeting once in awhile, no worries. The notes and podcast from the calls are up on the MasterMind site within 24 hours so you can listen to them anytime and contact other members of the group.

But right now I’d like to give you a valuable gift for reading this far. It’s a link to a very informative podcast I did a while back.
Listen to it now >>

Want to sign up for VIP access to the Mastermind Group?

Fill in the application form at the bottom of the page >>

- Charlie

P.S. The last time I opened up a MasterMind Group program was nine months ago.

And it SOLD OUT in 72 hours.

If you’re at all interested take action to apply. There is no cost involved in filling out the application form. Once you do, we’ll schedule an interview with you to see if there is a match.

That way we can get a better understanding of your business and your goals and YOU CAN make an informed decision as to whether the MasterMind Group is right for you.

Fair enough?

Discover the fastest way to reach your business potential.

Take action >>

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

“What do I do now?”

Is that a question you’ve asked yourself recently about your small business marketing plan?

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 small business marketing plans. 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 plan. 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 small business marketing plan. 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 plan in this recession?

Get a team of experts working for you

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

“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.

Get started >>

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

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.

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

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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