Have you been watching TV or reading the newspapers? The bad economy makes great headlines, and they’re full of it. You can’t miss hearing or reading about how terrible it is for business. But if that’s all the news you’re getting, you are missing the good news.

The good news about this economy is plentiful. It just doesn’t make great headlines on TV.

It’s true: Many businesses will struggle or even fail during this downturn… but at least ten percent will prosper. That’s right: At least one out of ten businesses will see their profits grow!

Want to be one of those ten that attract more clients and profits? Find out how >>

Every week, I talk to entrepreneurs and businesses that, despite all the bad news in the press, are holding steady or even growing in this economy. And, they all have one thing in common: Their efforts are clearly focused on 3 simple ideas I’ll share with you below.

For most business owners, it’s not a lack of ideas that is the problem. It’s knowing which ones to use. So today I’m going to give you the keys to the kingdom: the three key ideas to use whether you’re thinking of starting a business or have been in business for decades.

These are the three most important ideas I’ve ever shared, and I recommend you read them and then tape them to your forehead, or rather to your computer monitor, and use them to focus your efforts, so you maximize your sales and profits this year and for the rest of your business career.

The 3 Keys to Ultimate Business Success

1. Needs
Whether you sell sunglasses, hearing aids, sports training, legal services, or financial advice, the place to focus is on your prospects’ needs. I know one entrepreneur who thought that the sunglasses parents were buying for their young children were a joke. So she came up with a line of quality unbreakable sunglasses for young kids, and her business is growing like wild.

Every product or service you create and market should be designed to meet an apparent or perceived need of your target market. No need, no sales. High perceived need, high sales.

The same is true of your marketing. It should be focused on your prospects’ needs. Focus your marketing on yourself, and you’ll struggle forever. Focus on what they want, and you’ll get their attention and their business.

Discover how to transform needs into profits >>

2. Relationships
Your biggest competitive advantage isn’t the quality of your products or services; it’s the number and strength of the relationships you have with prospects and clients. It’s the amount of confidence you command. So, where should your marketing be focused?

Focus 80-90% of your marketing efforts on relationship-building activities.

Typically, most marketing is aimed at getting the sale, not at building relationships or confidence. Big mistake! People need to first know you and trust you before they’ll buy from you. They need to be sure you’re the best company to buy from, and your product or service does what you say it does. Where confidence flows, money follows.

How do you gain someone’s confidence so he or she will buy from you? You help them get to know you through repeated contacts and demonstration of your expertise.

Find out how to build relationships for business success >>

3. Profits
Most entrepreneurs and business owners’ attention is squarely focused on increasing sales when instead they should be focused on profits. This can be a fatal mistake, skewing your marketing efforts and distracting you from what you should be paying attention to.

In the past few years, Washington Mutual had amazing success increasing the sales of mortgages. And as you know now, they lost money on each of these and, ultimately, caused the bank to fold.

Whether you are testing a headline, an ad, a sales letter, a website, an upsell strategy, or a followup strategy, the question you should be focused on is, “What will help us maximize our profits?” Yes, you could send out ten thousand postcards and get a few more sales, but if your response is low, your marketing costs are going to decimate your profits.

The solution to making more is to continually test and improve everything you do to market your business, so that each month, you’re generating more leads, more sales and yes - more profits.

Want to maximize your revenue? Discover how >>

That’s it! Needs, Relationships, and Profits.

Tape those 3 words to your wall, and if every day you ask yourself the following five questions, then you’ll be headed in the right direction.

-  What are the needs of my prospects (perceived or real)?
-  How can I do a better job of fulfilling those needs?
-  What am I doing to start more relationships with prospects?
-  What weekly and monthly activities am I doing to strengthen relationships with prospects and clients?
-  What elements of my marketing am I testing and what would work better to increase profits?

Interested in finding out how easy it is to increase your profits? Apply here >>

- Charlie
Small Business Marketing Success in Any Economy

Every time I hear about the bailout I can’t help but wondering, “Where’s my $700 billion dollar bailout? Hey, I’d even be happy with just a couple billion.”

Unless you work for one of the Wall Street firms or banks that created this crisis, you know that you’ll never see a dime of the proposed bailout. And in fact you and your children and their grandchildren will be paying for it.

What can you do to bailout your business in these tough times?

I’ve owned boats all my life, small motorboats and sailboats, and periodically passing rain storms fill the bottom of the boat with water. This makes the boat sit low in the water and go slow. The obvious solution is to bail the boat!

Let me ask you one question?

Who do you think ends up bailing my boats?

I do. Over the years, I’ve been responsible for bailing my boats. If I didn’t they’d sink.

While Wall Street may be looking for and getting a bailout, the only one who is going to bailout your small business is you. But I bet you knew that already.

If you want to bailout your business, and put in on the track to success, the simple answer is find out what works. Find out the fastest way to attract clients, keep them coming back and maximize your profits.

Interested? Get started >>

When you do, you’ll discover yourself making more than ever and laughing at the failures of Wall Street all the way to the bank.

- Charlie
Small Business Marketing That’s Proven and Practical

What makes an ad get your attention and then keep you interested and help generate more sales? It’s when it clearly identifies a common problem and then shows you an obvious solution that you can’t live without.

Here’s an example that does exactly this >>

Just use the above link and click on play to see what I’m talking about.

- Charlie
MarketingForSuccess
Small Business Marketing Ideas That Attract Clients and Increase Your Profits

What is it with putting lipstick on a pig?

Obama and McCain both seem to love this phrase. According to Meghan McCain her Dad uses it frequently and at last count McCain used it plenty publicly referring to Hilary’s health care plan and to Mitt Romney.

What’s it mean?

It refers to dressing something up and trying to sell it as something it isn’t.

Obviously you can take this idea too far and the first thing I’d recommend is that to anyone who uses this phrase drop but don’t dump the concept.

What am I saying? Should you put lipstick on a pig?

No! But regularly businesses rename products and bring them back to life. For example book publishers look at poorly selling titles and if the book looks like it could have life they come up with a better title, one that catches attention and sells.

So don’t throw the baby out with the bath water, use this idea, just not to literally.

Does this work? Does renaming and repacking existing products or services work to bring life to a poor sales?

Yes! It’s one of the easiest ways to ramp up profits. Just don’t call it putting lipstick on a pig. And of course I’m assuming none of your products or services are pigs anyways.

- Charlie
MarketingForSuccess

Many small business owners, entrepreneurs and marketers struggle to be more profitable and overlook simple, effective strategies that could increase their sales by as much as 200%.

Are you one of them? Have you overlooked these marketing opportunities, too?

• Do you have a list of satisfied clients but you’re having trouble increasing your sales?
• Do you send out mailings and get a miniscule rate of return?
• Do you run ads and expect a landslide of new business?
• Do you have a web site that barely pays for itself?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you’re burning up time and money stretching and straining to increase sales and missing the low-hanging profits you could be taking in.

Have you been to one of those Pick-Your-Own orchards? It’s an annual fall excursion in my family. Each year we drive to our favorite orchard in Monkton, Vermont and pick a few pecks of apples for eating and baking.

If you’ve picked your own apples, you know that it’s a lot easier to grab the ones hanging on the lower branches. The wooden ladders that reach to the top of the trees are heavy, awkward, and never nearby when you need them. Once you’ve located a ladder and wrestled it into position, you’ve got to scramble up without damaging yourself or the brittle branches of the tree.

You can pick five times as many apples in the same amount of time by moving from tree to tree and grabbing the ones within reach. Likewise, there is profit potential within reach if you know how to take advantage of it.

Discover the easiest way to pick up more profits with your business. >>

Small Changes Add Up to Big Profits
Recently my VW dealer sent me an email detailing 4 ways to improve my mileage by 20%; replace filters, change the oil, tune the engine and keep the tires properly inflated. Each is a small, low cost change but making them could add up to significant savings. You can improve sales with similar low cost changes in your marketing and have a big impact on profits.

Here are seven small changes that can yield big results:

1. Replace your marketing message; Increase sales by 20% to 3,000%.
2. Use an automated lead generation system to target your best prospects; Increase sales by 100% to 1,000%.
3. Change your pricing strategy; Increase profits by 20% to 65%.
4. Replace your sales script; Increase closing rates and sales by 50% to 80%
5. Change your sales page headline; Increase your income by 50% to 150%.
6. Include related up-sell offers; Increase profits by 12% to 25%.
7. Use every page on your website to generate leads, instead of just one or two pages; Increase your sales by 15% to 40%.

Ready to discover how and where to increase your profits? Find the easy answers >>

The solution to making more with your business isn’t to look for a magic marketing pill that will solve all your problems instantly. It doesn’t exist. The solution is to pick the low hanging fruit to get 10% and 20% and bigger improvements.

How to Increase Sales by 300%
If you could find a way to increase your profits by 10% every month, you would have more than tripled your income by the end of the year. Harvesting low-hanging profits can do that for your business. Like plucking the apples at arm’s length in an orchard, it’s less work and a whole lot more fruitful.

Interested in harvesting low-hanging profits to grow your sales and your business? Discover how >>

- Charlie

Marketing Ideas that Make YOU Money

P.S. Add a few thousand dollars here and a few there each month and within a few months you’ll be on your way to making an additional $100,000 to $300,000 or more this year.

Recently I mailed my subscribers an offer of a free report in exchange for answering one question. The response was terrific. I got thousands of people to download the report and got tons of data about what people are looking for. But then I got one person who wrote in and asked,

“How do you use your marketing to get people to contact you?”

Didn’t he see how I got him to contact me? Was I being too subtle?

If you haven’t done so already, sign up to get the 7 steps to build your business and increase your profits. It’s written for small business owners and marketers and it’s free, at least for now. Use this link to claim your copy >>

Am I being too subtle? Sign up before I start charging for this exclusive report.

- Charlie
Small Business Marketing Based On Results Not Opinion

What’s the one web marketing disaster that happens every day?

It happens to almost every website owner dozens, if not hundreds, of times a day.

A visitor clicks to your site. They take a look at your home page and then they leave without so much as an email or phone call to you.

If you have a top search engine position, this may happen hundreds of times a day. If you’re using pay-per-click advertising, this happens as often as you can afford to pay for it.

In the first case, you’ve probably invested a lot of hard work into achieving a top search engine ranking and in the second, a lot of money in advertising. The result? You’re losing money or barely breaking even on your web site investment.

Most business owners with well-planned sites get hundreds, or even thousands, of interested prospects visiting their sites each week and then - nothing. Your prospects don’t come back and they don’t buy from you in spite of all your efforts.

“What’s going on?” you ask yourself, as you try to make sense of all these lost opportunities to generate a lead or a sale. “What did I do wrong? Aren’t people interested in my products and services?”

It just doesn’t compute. You know that your existing customers are happy, so why don’t more people contact you and buy from your website? Find the answer here >>

For most business owners, the problem has nothing to do with you. You provide top quality products and services, don’t you!?

Yet, something happened when your prospect visited your website and left without a word. And this, more likely than not, is what that something was…

One of three things could have happened when your prospect landed on your site to make them leave without contacting you or buying from you.

1. They were looking for something different.
Your site sells jewelry and they were looking for dog treats. Unless the copy on your site has nothing to do with what you sell and the keywords you’re using for your pay-per-click ads are totally wrong - this is highly unlikely which brings me to…

2. Your prospects only had a passing interest.
When they saw your site they lost interest in looking for a solution to their problem. While anything can happen, most people are much more dogged about finding answers.

What’s the web marketing secret to that will get your prospects to come back? Find the answer here >>

Most people will search for hours online until they find what they want, which brings me to the third and most likely reason your prospects left without contacting you…

3. Your site didn’t show them what they wanted to see.
The key information they were searching for was missing entirely or wasn’t readily available. Or your site may not have given them information in the order they were expecting. Prospects are picky that way.

If you want your prospect to stay on your website, contact you and buy from you, you need to know:

- What your prospects want to read at the top of your homepage.

- How to get them to contact you before they leave your site and forget about you.

- How to lay out your web page to get your prospects to take action and buy from you.

- The common design mistakes that will send your prospects packing.

When you know this and build your site around the information your prospects want, you can easily convert up to 20% of all the visitors to your site into qualified prospects and up to 10% into clients and customers.

Let me ask you something. Who built your website?

Most business owners are way too busy to master the technology to build their sites themselves. They hire web designers and programmers. Sounds like a good idea.

Unfortunately, hardly any web designers know how to create sites that sell, either!

Let me repeat that. Web designers don’t know how to build a site that sells.

Most web designers know nothing about converting prospects into customers, which after all is what your site is supposed to do. If they had any formal training it was in design or programming, not in generating leads or sales or in how to make a profit with your site.

It’s not that some web designers aren’t creative and smart but without the right copy or a clear plan you’re asking them to do something that they don’t know how to do. It’d be like hiring a carpenter and telling him to build your dream house but not bothering to give him the plans for the foundation or layout of the house.

Want to make a profit with your web site? Discover what works >>

Leaving your site up and hoping your response rate will change and you’ll start raking in the sales is a waste of time, too. The truth is that you can be successful online if you have great products and services and if you know what works to get prospects to contact you and buy from you.

Ready to find out how make your site sell? Get the web marketing details here >>

Charlie
Web Marketing Ideas that Sell

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

What’s the Once Thing 35 out of 40 Businesses Forget to Do That Kills The Sale?

“I’m having trouble selling my hearing aids even though I discount them 30%. Should I sell it for even less?” — George R., MI

Why Prospects Don’t Buy

Ever wonder why your prospects aren’t buying?

You know the situation. You’ve got a qualified prospect on the phone or you’re meeting with them in person and they’ve agreed that your product or services are the perfect fit. Then you mention the price, and they don’t bite. They tell you that they want to think about it or they need to talk to X or they just flat out tell you its too expensive.

You could offer them a discount but is that the right thing to do or are you just shooting yourself in the foot.

When a prospect who needs your product or service walks away and doesn’t buy, typically it’s not price that’s the problem. And if your prospect isn’t buying, lowering the price won’t guarantee the sale.

Why Price Isn’t The Problem

Typically when your prospect doesn’t buy or objects to price, the real problem is that they don’t understand the value of your products or services. And it’s not their fault; it’s the fault of your small business marketing. Whether you sell consulting services, hand tools, hearing aids or chicken legs, the price you can charge is based on your prospect’s perception of its value to them.

Want your marketing to sell more? Go here >>

Don’t Make This Mistake

Want to avoid losing clients? Here’s an example of what not to do.

Last year I was planning a family reunion at a charming old inn in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. As part of the festivities, I wanted to organize a light breakfast buffet for the 50 or so relatives attending. The inn quoted me a price of $29 per person, without giving me any information about what was included. When I got the quote I was shocked. It was much more than I’d anticipated, and I decided to drop the whole idea.

What was the fatal mistake the Inn made?

Without a clear understanding of what I was going to get for $29 per head, I had no means of determining whether it was worth the money. I didn’t know whether the $29 per person charge included just a cup of coffee and a donut or a full buffet breakfast with a chef on hand to cook custom omelets.

Either way, the inn lost an opportunity to feed us another meal and profit from the presence of our large group.

When your prospects object to price or just leave without buying, it’s a signal that your marketing isn’t doing its job. You’re not giving your prospects the information they need to understand what your products or services can do for them. As a result, they don’t buy from you.

Want to discover the secret to overcoming prospects’ objections? Go here >>

How to Increase Sales

Want to avoid objections to price, sell to more people and even raise your prices?

Since the price a prospect is willing to pay for your products and services is directly related to their understanding of its value to them, then the higher the perceived value, the more you can charge.

One of my clients, Janice, was working way too hard at bringing new clients to her phone coaching business. She helps clients eliminate anxiety and replace it with self-confidence so they can be more productive in their work and lives. She had dozens of prospects, but when she quoted her fees, too many prospects opted not to sign up.

When I asked her to describe the things she does for her clients and the benefits of her services, she gave me a lot of information and many examples of her successes. Then I asked her how much of this information her prospects knew. Very little, she said. Whoops!

I find that most small business marketing managers and owners I’ve talked to make the same mistake. They have a great product or service but neglect help their prospects fully understand the value.

What’s the best way to define value so prospects become buyers? Go here >>

Define Value In Terms Of What Your Prospects Want

The solution was simple. I showed Janice how to structure her sales conversations and how to ask the right questions to get her prospects talking about their goals and needs. This sets the stage so that when she explains the services she provides, it’s clear that they are the perfect solution to her prospects’ problems.

The result? Instead of lowering her prices to get more business, Janice increased her fees. Within a week she was making 50% more money.

Wouldn’t you like to have prospects eager to pay the prices you charge? Sound impossible? It isn’t.

When your prospects fully understand of how much better off they’ll be or how much more successful they’ll be with your products and services, more people will want to work with you and buy from you and they’ll happily pay more to do so.

Interested in closing more sales? Go here >>

Charlie
Proven Small Business Marketing

You can use this small business marketing tip to close more sales.

You’ve got a live qualified prospect on the phone and you don’t want to lose this one. What do you do when they hesitate to make a commitment and want to think about it?

You know that if the prospect disconnects without placing an order, the chances are slim that they’ll call back and you’ll get the sale. What do you do?

Last week I got a call from another Internet marketer, who I’ll call Rex Relentless. Rex offered me a commission to promote his services. He wanted me to promote his business in my newsletter, on my Blog and, to top it off, add a flashing banner to my site.

I get dozens of requests like this each week and I wasn’t interested. When I balked, Rex shifted into sales overdrive. He wouldn’t stop talking about how great his product is. He kept pointing me to more and more pages of supporting data and testimonials.

Did he think I would agree to promote him just to shut him up and make him go away? I couldn’t get a word in edgewise and finally had to interrupt him to end the call.

Rex was like a dog with a bone. He just wouldn’t let go, and in the process he chewed up the bone and destroyed it. If you’re a dog that’s basic instinct but if you want to build a sales person who wants to build a positive relationship with a prospect and close the sale it’s a bad idea.

When I was done with the call I never wanted to hear from Rex again, much less work with him. If you’ve ever run into a similar salesperson you know how obnoxious they can be. And I’m sure you don’t want to emulate them with your small business marketing.

What’s the alternative? What’s the best way to close more sales?

Discover how to get your prospects to sell themselves >>

Rex couldn’t stop asking for the sale and in doing so, killed the sale! The irony is that he does have a great product that I might have been willing to promote. But he was so focused on getting the sale that he gave no thought to what I would want out of the deal.

Should you ask for the sale?

You may not be as relentless a salesperson as Rex, but in most cases asking for the sale at all is a mistake. It’s the fastest way to kill the sale and lose a potentially lucrative client.

That’s right; if you have to ask for the sale, that’s a clear indication that you haven’t sold your prospect. You need to do a better job of eliminating the obstacles to the sale.

By now you’re asking yourself, “Is Charlie off his rocker? If I can’t ask for the sale, how do I close more sales?”

3 Rules For Making A Sale

1. Never tell the prospect what they want. Ask them to tell you.
Discover how >>

2. Never try to convince a prospect to buy from you. Make them convince you that your product or service is the right one for them.
Find out what to do >>

3. Eliminate the obstacles to the sale so when you get to the close the client does it for you. You’ll sell more in less time and make more money. Learn how to use this strategy >>

To help you understand who should be doing the selling and why let me ask you a question before you go.

“Whose voice is music to your ears?”

Most of us have to admit we like the sound of our own voices. So put yourself in your prospect’s shoes. Get a prospect talking about what they want and why. They’ll do a better job selling themselves than if they listen on and on to your voice. For the most part, prospects would rather hear themselves talk than hear you lecture them on the benefits and features of your products and services.

Want to double your sales with your small business marketing?

You can do it by using these simple strategies to lead your clients to sell themselves. Get the details here >>

Charlie

Want to listen to this week’s small business marketing podcast?
Use this link >>

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

You’ve got a qualified prospect on the phone and you know they could use your products or services. What do you do? What do you say to convince them to buy from you today?

Should you start by telling them about the features of the products you sell or the high-tech machines you’ll be using to get the work done or about the history of your firm? What should you say first, second and third to make the sale?

Stop! If your primary concern is making the sale, your prospect will know it. No one likes to be sold. So if you’re focused on convincing your prospect of your expertise or persuading them to buy, you’re taking the wrong tack.

What Not To Do
Fran is a search engine expert who helps keep my site in the top ten listings for my keywords. I’d referred one of my clients to her and then followed up a few days later to find out why she hadn’t signed up the client. I knew the client wanted SEO help and Fran wanted to work with the client, so I wanted to find out what had gotten in the way

When I asked Fran how the call had gone, she explained that she had spent an hour and a half talking with the prospect. She gave them a detailed review of their site and explained what could be done to improve it’s search engine positioning. On top of that, she sent the prospect a Camtasia of the call, a video file of the lengthy consultation.

But after all that and several follow up calls Fran still hadn’t closed the referred prospect.

Is it taking you too long to close the sale? Are you getting the brush off? If so, you’re using the wrong approach. If you want to close more sales, use this link >>

There is no set amount of time it takes to close a sale, but unless you’re selling something that costs tens of thousands of dollars, you’re not going to make money if you spend hours with each prospect. In most cases, 30 minutes is all you should need to close the sale.

How can you close the sale in 30 minutes or less?
Use this link >>

How to Pitch Your Prospects
Here’s the secret. The way to close the sale is to avoid pitching your prospect. That’s right; don’t try to prove to them you’re the perfect solution. That’s the wrong strategy and is a waste of time.

The best way to “sell” your prospects is by getting your prospect to do the work for you. Get them to tell you three things:

1. What they are trying to achieve
2. What they want
3. How your products or services can help them

Ask them questions to get them talking about the three points above. Then let them tell you why they should buy from you today.

How would Fran’s call have gone if instead of focusing on proving herself, she had asked questions such as these:

• How many unique visitors are you getting a week currently?
• How many sales does that generate?
• How much more could you be making with 4 to 10 times as many unique visitors to your site each week?
• How would you like me to help you?

Fran would have closed the sale and put money in her pocket and the prospect would be a happy client.

Ready to dump your pitch and discover how to have your prospects pitch themselves? You’ll close many more sales in much less time. Use this link to get the details >>

What’s the perfect sales pitch?

It’s the one your prospect gives you to convince you to sell them your products and services. And it’s 100 times more powerful than any you could come up with yourself.

- Charlie
Small Business Marketing Ideas that Get Results

P.S. Imagine if you could close twice as many prospects with less effort. How much more would you make?

Interested in making twice as much? Find out how >>

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