I read once that something like 30 percent of all drinkable water gets wasted on the way to the consumer by leaky pipes. Likewise, your business may be letting potential revenue drip away, to be lost forever, all over the place. Use this checklist to make sure you are taking best advantage of all the opportunities for earnings that would be arriving safely if you only plugged up those holes.
1. Improve your followup. According to the National Sales Executive Association, only about two percent of sales occur on the first contact. Eighty percent of sales require at least five contacts before the transaction occurs. That means that if you put out your sales message just once or twice, you're barely out of the gate. Those who might eventually buy are hardly even beginning to pay attention. You must repeat that message again and again before it wakes up busy people to what you are offering.
2. Put your marketing activities on schedule with a plan. I see a lot of businesses bedeviled by the "feast or famine" syndrome, where they stop marketing when times are good and therefore have no pipeline in place bringing them new leads when the economy slows down. They get busy marketing, but there's a time lag before new business comes in, and when it does, they stop marketing once more, keeping the cycle going. Instead, invest time or money in creating a marketing plan that tells you what to do each week or month to keep business continually flowing in. If it's too much for you to handle, hire assistants or outsource it to hungry but competent colleagues.
3. Increase your personal productivity by working at your most creative times. Once I incited a firestorm of criticism on CompuServe's PR Forum by revealing that I hardly ever spend more than one hour writing a press release. Other PR professionals opined that I couldn't possibly create decent work that quickly. Well, I do, and here's my secret: following a process that creativity researchers will tell you is used by top scientists and inventors, I absorb all the facts and define the challenge for myself, then go to sleep, take a walk or step into the shower. Within a day, my unconscious mind brings me a "Eureka" experience with a terrific headline. The rest of the press release pours out right after the headline. Had I sat down to try, try, try to write that document, it would take triple the time and not reach the same quality.
4. Stop unproductive marketing activities, boosting your profits. Advertising pros know that most advertising doesn't work, but they continue to spend like crazy because part of it does. If you can identify which marketing efforts of yours are not giving you a return, and stop spending money and energy on those, you'll be earning more from what you spend. Admittedly, it can be difficult sometimes to pinpoint what actually brings in customers and clients. However, if you begin asking each new buyer how they heard about you and keep track of the answers, patterns almost always emerge. One graphic artist learned through this kind of research that nearly all her clientele came from word of mouth and none from her ads in the local business journal. Of course, the opposite discovery could have happened, too. Don't assume, find out!
5. Market more often to your customer base - much more often. Hardly anyone stays in touch with existing and past customers often enough. They think they might be "bothering" their clientele by letting them know about new products, opportunities to buy before a price increase, success stories of other customers like them, and so on. Nope, it's not so. On the contrary, staying in touch ensures that you stay in the awareness of people who have done business with you before, so that when they need you again, they come to you rather than go to your competitors.
6. Hire help for mechanical tasks or a virtual assistant to help manage communications. Feeling overwhelmed? If you can make, let's say, $100 an hour doing what you do best, you should not be spending too much energy on routine things like stuffing envelopes, doing errands like going to the bank and the copy shop or putting together slides for your upcoming lecture. Instead, pay someone $25 an hour to get those to-do's accomplished and free you up to get more high- paid work accomplished. An exception to this principle is when you do the repetitive tasks as a break or rest from money-making activities that tire you out.
Increasing your productivity means increasing the income from your business without spending more hours working. Get started on at least one of the above today!
Marcia Yudkin is the author of 6 Steps to Free Publicity and 10 other books. She runs a private member site, MarketingforMore.com, which supports business owners who are growing their businesses. Learn how to avoid the most common pricing mistakes in her free report, "Charge More & Get It," available from http://www.marketingformore.com/survey.htm .
shuttle to Midway Beardstown .. Lockport Chicago limo O’HareA focus group is a group of employees or current... Read More
If you own a mobile franchise business and wish to... Read More
There is a story, about a business owner who wasn't... Read More
I'm not talking about posting the HBO schedule on your... Read More
David E. Gumpert, author of Burn Your Business Plan, often... Read More
Please take a moment before you read any further and... Read More
When looking at Akron carefully one cannot help but notice... Read More
If you own the mid-size business and actively work in... Read More
Business seems to drop, slow or even stop during the... Read More
The trick is to determine what uniquely identifies your best... Read More
Where would your business be without a proper plan? A... Read More
American Eagle Outfitters and Wet Seal Stores have issued statements... Read More
How are you feeling today? Good, not so good, great?... Read More
Cassy was an employee of a nonprofit who had been... Read More
No matter what business you plan to start in your... Read More
Most companies that are worthy of raising venture capital have... Read More
Want to become more strategic? Add these traits to your... Read More
No "meme" isn't a typo and Got Milk, the more... Read More
Although North Americans were the dominant population on the Internet,... Read More
There's nothing automatic about corporate growth, particularly in the information... Read More
Business rises and falls on leadership. According to business guru,... Read More
If ever there were an industry where we want zero... Read More
Franchised companies often require what some believe to be excessive... Read More
Conventional wisdom has it that there are only three ways... Read More
People often ask "What makes a good business plan? Or,... Read More
Green Bay Hummer H2 SUV rentals ..Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains serves mid-size and large clients... Read More
If you own the mid-size business and actively work in... Read More
Writing a Business Plan these days is tough, venture capitalists... Read More
From time to time there seems to be a flurry... Read More
Strategic alliances are increasing at a rapid rate. It is... Read More
Franchised companies often require what some believe to be excessive... Read More
Have you ever done a SWOT analysis? No, it's not... Read More
ACTION PLANNING: Action Planning is a process to develop strategies... Read More
I am surprised how few sales professionals, independent consultants, and... Read More
I recently took an organizational behavior class where my professor... Read More
In this small article we'll concentrate on farmers associations and... Read More
A focus group is a group of employees or current... Read More
To stop a computer virus you must understand how it... Read More
Does your overall business strategy include the recruitment of college... Read More
We have been spending many hours surveying the market for... Read More
When you start your program to purchase your "ideal" company,... Read More
As a business owner, you've likely created a hurricane plan... Read More
The trick is to determine what uniquely identifies your best... Read More
Building a dynamic small business is a constantly evolving, increasingly... Read More
A recent conversation started with a typical question, "How's business?"... Read More
In 1989, Sony founded its Institute of Wisdom at the... Read More
One of the key challenges for any business is to... Read More
Succession planning requires the owner of a small or medium-sized... Read More
We all know that nothing runs without a plan, and... Read More
One Research Scientist at the Hewlett-Packard (HP) Imaging Systems laboratory... Read More
Strategic Planning |