Maximising Business Growth

By bpjames | August 14, 2008

While there is no guaranteed route to business success there are key methodologies that you can apply to your business. These include key survival and success factors and building customer value. Let’s consider these aspects in greater detail.

Survival & success factors

Two key survival factors are delivering customer value and producing bottom line profit. Let’s take a mobile cleaning services business as an example. Your barriers to entry into your business are quite low. While you do have to invest in equipment, these costs are relatively modest. You don’t have to invest in massive organisational costs of premises and numerous staff. These overheads can be taken on progressively as you grow.

The costs of delivering your service are mostly labour intensive rather than high material costs. By minimising your labour resource and only expanding as your customer base grows; you can manage these costs too. So overall, you should be able to sustain net profit at reasonable levels. You want to aim for net profit levels in excess of the cost of raising capital. By ensuring this you will always have the ability to manage your cash flow during growth spurts.

Delivering customer results

Your ability to deliver results for your customers is almost totally within your control. Your customers will judge your business capability from the quality of result they see and how you make them feel during the process. People will make buying decisions based on good feelings and to what extent you solve their problems.

How can you add value to the buying experience of your customers? There are a number of elements you need to focus on. These include perceived value pricing, a supplier that will be there for them in case of future need or difficulty and a result that meets expectations. The most value you can add in developing competitive advantage is the “you factor”. This includes your general attitude and that of your staff. Positive attributes would include empathy, enthusiasm, integrity and a commitment to the customer to provide astonishing service.

Key drivers for growth

What are the key drivers for maximising your success?  I believe there are two main factors, namely, innovation and effective marketing. Give serious thought to what you can do to be creative and provide innovative solutions to your customers. One thing is certain. You have a unique blend of skills, attributes, qualities and values. Nobody else in business is exactly able to duplicate what you do and how you deliver it! When it comes to effective marketing, this is easy. There are many tried and trusted success formulae you can use.

Here are some concepts you may want to consider:

  • To what extent are you using direct response marketing to promote your business?
  • What process do you have in place for creating up-selling and cross-selling opportunities?
  • How do you segment your customers for marketing purposes?
  • How do you make use of endorsements and customer testimonial statements?

Combine all of the above and maximise your business growth.

Brian.

Topics: Customer development, Profitability | 1 Comment »

How to Get More of What You Want in Business

By bpjames | August 11, 2008

Setting and achieving goals effectively allows you to have more of what you want in business and in life. However, have you set goals in the past and not achieved them? Most people have. Does this mean goal setting is a waste of time? Not at all - If your goals are set in the right way, you can achieve more of them, more of the time.

Sometimes it’s a matter of being more persistent and resetting goals until they are achieved. Often though it’s a matter of ensuring the goals are set correctly to increase the likelihood of achievement. I provide several methods to help you set goals more effectively.

Why traditional goal setting is unreliable

It’s important to understand that what we get is not necessary based on what we want - It is based on what we expect. We can consciously have desires about want we want to do, have and become, however, it is not until we unconsciously believe and expect these outcomes that they become a reality.

This is because the unconscious mind is often programmed with conditioning from the past that no longer serves us. These are typically negative conditions of loss and failure and this vast store of information will undermine our conscious mind trying to steer us towards a better future. It’s like a small tug-boat attempting to pull a vast ocean liner on to a different course.

Traditional goal setting is therefore often ineffective and even when combined with self-talk and affirmations is inadequate and slow. To operate effectively we need to set goals using ‘whole mind’ methods that embed in our unconscious as well as our conscious mind.

To begin with, all of your goals need to be aligned. For example, your business goals need to be aligned with your personal goals which need to be aligned with your overall vision, mission and values. They also need to be stated positively, in the present and have a date attached to them. Here are 4 ways to help embed goals into your unconscious mind:

Focused questions

We want to immerse ourselves in the experience of achieving our goals. We want to envisage what we will be doing, saying, thinking, hearing and feeling. Focused questions help us to achieve this and here are some examples.

  • What do I need to start doing?
  • What do I need to stop doing?
  • What do I need to continue doing?
  • What do I need to do more of?
  • What do I need to do less of?
  • What strengths can I draw on?

It is also important for you to track progress, to know when each goal is achieved and how you will celebrate success.

Graphic representation

Draw a picture using different colours as a graphic representation of the achievement of your goals. The eye and hand coordination plus the use of colour builds deeper links with the unconscious mind.

Visualisation

This is a closed-eye method where you visualise the attainment of your goals and involves several steps. You want to be able to envision a stream of time both into the past and forward into the future. Here are the key steps

  • Imagine the achievement of a goal
  • Fully engage with the experience and enhance the qualities as if it were real
  • Picture a scene with you in it achieving your goal
  • Rise up into the stream of time taking the picture with you
  • Move forward in time to the date your goal is achieved and drop the picture in it
  • Notice the stream of time adjusting events to coincide with the achievement of your goal both in the past and into the future
  • Come back to now

Coaching

I recommend working on a regular basis with a professional business coach. This will significantly help you to clarify, challenge and prioritise your goals. If you don’t have a professional coach you can choose a like-minded partner to establish and share your goals with.

The above methods will help to dramatically improve the effectiveness of your goal setting and increase the achievement of your goals. This will get you more of what you want. Make sure all your goals are win-win scenarios for you, others and the planet.

Brian.

Topics: Strategic planning, Winning mindset | No Comments »

Protected: Growth Issues Facing Small Businesses

By bpjames | July 23, 2008

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:


Topics: Winning mindset | Enter your password to view comments

5 Key Direct Response Elements

By bpjames | July 17, 2008

Effective “direct response” marketing is a proven method for producing profitable business. Direct response messages can be communicated through any media including personal letter, email, website, telephone or targeted advertising.

When communicating your product and service proposition there are 5 key elements that will impact on your success.

These are: 

  1. Targeting
  2. The message
  3. The media
  4. Timing
  5. Response mechanism

For example, targeting requires communicating with those individuals or companies that are in the market for your products and services. It is very easy to confuse prospects with suspects if your targeting is unclear. It is very ineffective to send out “blanket” messages to an audience that have no current use of your services. This is one of the reasons traditional advertising produces such poor responses. Seek to get people to respond to something with a request - even if it is free information - it indicates they are interested.

The message involves providing something of value to the recipient, not just pure sales hype. The message needs to focus on what tangible benefits and results they will obtain by using you. Use an informative and educational approach within all your marketing messages.

Regarding the media, most people have a preference as to how they receive information. For example, they may prefer telephone contact, email or letter. You need to communicate with people using their preferred method whenever possible. Include this as a question in your feedback forms and discussions with customers.

Timing is critical when it comes to buying decisions. If you are tuned in to your customers and prospects “schedule of buying” then you can communicate at the most appropriate time. Most people buy in phases of purchases. For example, they may want their garden landscaped shortly after having a conservatory fitted to their home. You can benefit by approaching them when they are making related purchases. So in this example, a landscape gardener would be wise to have an alliance partnership with a conservatory business.

The response mechanism is the means by which you allow people to respond to your promotion. It is good to state all your contact details alongside a clear call to action. They can use their preferred communication method to respond. This might be by phone, email, website or post.

Brian.

Topics: Customer acquisition, Customer development | 1 Comment »

Leaving the Engine Room of Your Business

By bpjames | July 11, 2008


Are you constantly working in the engine room of your business? As the owner of your business, you might love the role you play within it. If this is the case you may be very happy with how your business is performing. On the other hand, you might feel you are stuck in the engine room of your business and not moving forward!

What does it mean to be stuck?

You can tell if you are stuck in the engine room of your business by answering the following questions:

If you answered YES to all these questions then it is likely you are stuck in the engine room of your business. This might not be a problem for you - it just limits your options.

How do business owners get stuck?

This could be the result of many factors. Some of the main ones include insufficient growth in the business, apathy or fear. Let’s consider each in turn:

  1. Insufficient growth

Ultimately resources cost money. The business requires sufficient profitability and cash flow to fund resources beyond you. If your business hasn’t grown to the level you want it to, this could be the reason for your current situation.

  1. Apathy

You may have injected time and effort without receiving the desired result. Maybe you have given up trying to make changes and improvements

  1. Fear

It is perfectly natural to have fears linked to failure, rejection and the unknown. Fear can sometimes paralyse activity and stifle progress

Why would you want to become unstuck?

Working away in the engine room of your business is OK for the short term. Typically, engine rooms are hot, noisy and messy places. If not already, you might soon get tired or bored and want to move on.

By moving on there is greater scope for controlling your destiny. (That’s why you went into business in the first place, isn’t it?). You would have more control of your life and feel more empowered. There would be increased flexibility and the potential for total freedom in how you spend your time and your money.

Away from the engine room, there are excellent opportunities to expand your horizons, develop other business skills and discover your true vocation. This provides more fulfilment.

What’s the solution to becoming unstuck?

Your business can grow to any size you are prepared to drive it to. This is going to involve vision, strategy, effective sales & marketing and lots of focused activity. It requires reliable support from your team and efficient systems.

By constantly keeping your business moving forward you avoid complacency. If you have felt frustrated with how your business has performed then get excited. Your enthusiasm will inspire you and your team to keep striving for more. Act in the face of fear and you will succeed to a greater level of achievement.

Consider developing you and your team by gaining greater knowledge and learning new business skills. In time you get to choose exactly the role you want to play within your business. Who knows - you might even wish to revisit the engine room occasionally!

Brian.

Topics: Strategic planning, Winning mindset | No Comments »

Transform the Results from Your Website - 24 Hour Special

By bpjames | July 3, 2008

I go to Ed Rivis for my web marketing advice. In my opinion - he’s the best. Ed delivers the most practical and result achieving methods available on the web.

Through a special arrangement with Ed’s publisher I have secured a limited half-price offer for his great book - The Ultimate Web Marketing Strategy.

Discover the most powerful Web strategies to blast through every sales record you’ve ever witnessed. Dominate your market within just weeks or months.

For the next 24 hours you can buy Ed’s book for half the usual price at just £9.99 plus £1.60 P&P. Offer ends at 2pm (GMT) Friday 4th July. Find out more information now.

Brian.

P.S. If you want more results from the web, this book will deliver them without question. Get more information now.

Topics: Special Offer | No Comments »

Develop the Right Strategies for Maximising Profits

By bpjames | July 2, 2008


Many business owners can become sceptical of the real potential for their business to develop and grow. Try to avoid this trap. You must offer value to your customers and in turn have the confidence and belief in the achievement of your goals.Almost every business has the potential for rapid growth over a 12 to 18 month period. This becomes more believable by breaking down your goals and objectives into smaller manageable chunks. By combining the right strategies you can double your profitability within a year. For example, by focussing on 4 key areas with improvements of just 10% to 20% in each area, you can double your profits. The 4 key areas are:

  1. Grow your customer base
  2. Cut out wasteful activities
  3. Increase the average spend of your customers
  4. Increase the frequency of customer purchases

Let’s take each one in turn and consider strategies to achieve them.

24 Hour Special

 Grow your customer base

The easiest, quickest and most cost effective way to grow your customer base is through quality referrals. To begin with, define your best customers and ask them for referrals. You can do this in multiple ways. You can send them a referral card in the post or get them to complete one the next time you see them.

You can offer a modest incentive, for example, a free bonus along with a purchase or a free entry into a prize draw. You can offer the same or similar reward to the new referred customer so there is an incentive to make a buying decision as soon as possible.

Cut out wasteful activities

Review your total marketing spend. Consider what activities are generating gross margin for your business and other activities that are just adding to your costs. For example, Advertising in local printed directories can be very costly and often wasteful for small businesses. A small well written and strategically placed advert can usually produce similar responses, compared to a much larger and more costly ineffective advertisement.

Try to minimise your long-term commitments to spending on directory advertising and other potentially wasteful marketing activities. Review your major fixed costs, such as running your premises and staff costs. There are normally dozens of opportunities for significant savings by working smarter. Look to systemise all your regular activities such as customer contact and back-office functions such as banking and bookkeeping.

Increase the average spend of your customers

One of the best ways to achieve this is by selectively raising your prices. Pricing is the only marketing activity that generates rather than depletes your financial resources. Most businesses undercharge for their products and services. So what is the correct pricing for your products and services?

The answer is simply the highest price you can demand. This assumes you provide quality products and consistent services to the best of your ability. If this is the case you deserve to maximise your profitability so you can prosper and generously give back to your customers and staff in the form of greater value and reward.

You need to constantly test your prices and trial limited price increases on an ongoing basis.

Increase the frequency of customer purchases

Your best customers will buy more often if you give them good reason to do so. Your best customers will spend between 5 and 10 times your average customer spend during the course of a year if you make the right buying opportunities available.24 Hour Special

By recognising and rewarding loyalty you can significantly increase regular purchases. Establish a loyalty scheme and be sure to reward increased spending rather than sacrificing your profitability for the same spend. Invest in the appropriate systems to track your customers spending.

Brian.

Topics: Customer acquisition, Customer development, Profitability | No Comments »

Provide Regular Newsletter Contact

By bpjames | June 23, 2008

 Marketing communication with your customers needs to include both promotional and informational content. By this, I mean you want to be educating and informing your customers as well as tempting them to buy your products and services. Contact that is purely sales oriented soon becomes tedious and irritating for your customers and prospects.Regular newsletters are an ideal means of maintaining quality contact that is information rich and not just sales-hype. Your newsletters can be printed and sent in the post or electronic and sent by email as an e-newsletter.

Some of the main advantages of e-newsletters include substantial savings in printing costs and the tracking of readership. Powerful web tools are available to manage the complete requirements of maintaining a newsletter service and capturing detailed information about how your newsletter is being used. This provides you with an incredible opportunity to influence your customers and prospects on an ongoing basis. Two great examples of excellent e-newsletter tools are available at :

You will want to use every opportunity to encourage targeted prospects to opt-in to your newsletter.  Your website is an ideal tool for this. You can also gain newsletter subscribers by having a tick-box option on your customer surveys and other feedback and contact forms you make available in your business.

Here are just some of the topics you could include in your newsletter to make it interesting and fun. You could include tips on how to make the most of purchases they have already made in relation to the types of products and services you provide. You could make recommendations from your range, regarding different combinations of your products and services to maximise the value of their purchases and enrich their overall customer experience.

You could provide case studies and profiles of some of your customers. This would provide fascinating insight to the range of people benefiting from your products and services and could increase the referrals you receive.

You could provide background information about where and how your products are produced or how your services are delivered. Information about how you create innovative solutions for people and your particular area of expertise would also provide interesting reading.

You could provide information and make recommendations regarding other related products and services. By working with other businesses and building powerful alliances with them, you can promote their products services and benefit from the sales revenues and profits that are generated as a result. So you gain irrespective of whether your customers buy directly from you or via one of your alliance partners.

And finally, of course, you could include special offers in your newsletter. This could be for combinations of your products and services packaged in a special deal - the possibilities are endless.

Brian

Topics: Customer development, Email marketing | No Comments »

Promote Your Business Effectively Offline

By bpjames | June 18, 2008

Offline marketing activities can be just as powerful as promoting your business online. You want to test a comprehensive range of direct marketing activities including direct mail, telemarketing, SMS text messaging, business networking, developing alliance partnerships and public relations using closed-loop marketing methods.

Closed-Loop marketing

This incorporates highly targeted “permission” based contact with your customers and prospects and is much more effective than an “intervention” based approach, such as blanket advertising. This involves using your marketing database on an ongoing basis to connect with your contacts.

The main benefits of this approach are to:

  • Maximise sales from enquiries
  • Add more relevance to each customer communication
  • Improve customer loyalty
  • Increase customer referrals
  • Increase cross-selling and up-selling opportunities to existing customers
  • Reduce customer complaints

I focus below on telemarketing and public relations.

Telemarketing

Whatever stage you are with your business you can always benefit by applying good quality telephone based selling. Telemarketing, as it is generally termed, provides you with a powerful method of keeping in contact with existing customers and developing new ones. However, it is essential to practise effective and ethical methods in order to make telemarketing work for you.

The real power of telephone based communication is the level of interaction it provides. Coupled with the power of positive influence the telephone can be a highly persuasive tool used as part of and combined with other marketing approaches.

One of the many benefits of using the telephone as an interactive marketing tool is time effectiveness compared to face to face contact. This provides cost savings and added flexibility. I’m not suggesting that the telephone replaces face to face interactions, but it can very effectively augment and supplement the overall mix of how you maintain contact with others.

Telemarketing activities are best planned and operated in conjunction with other less labour intensive methods such as direct mail, email marketing and targeted advertising. Ideally, you want targeted prospects to visit or contact you rather than you calling them, so all of the other methods you use to create genuine enquiries are essential.

Public Relations (PR)

Effective PR helps to enhance your brand and provide greater influence over your target market.

Good quality PR can literally generate thousands of pounds worth of effective free advertising.

PR activities include writing press releases and sending them to your local newspaper for inclusion in their business columns. This might include new services you add or news of your expansion plans and staff recruitment activities.

I would recommend positioning yourself as an expert in your field. People like to buy from those who have specific expertise. There must be specialist knowledge you have relating to many aspects of your business.

You can submit articles to the local press, specialist industry magazines and online resource directories. You may be able to agree a regular feature on a particular theme and this gives you an ongoing presence with your target market - positioned at a high level. You can also have written reports, audio recordings and videos reproduced on your website and in other promotional materials.

The real power of maximising the value of your PR presence is when it is combined with your other marketing activities. For example, you can substantially lift your response rates to standard advertising, by combining your advertisement with an interesting and thought provoking article to produce an advertorial.

You can establish worthwhile sponsorship activities, for example by supporting local events or charitable causes. While this has greater cost implications, the higher rewards make this equally viable as part of your PR activities.

Brian.

Topics: Customer acquisition, Customer development, Public Relations (PR), Telemarketing | No Comments »

Right People, Right Message, Right Time Using the Right Approach

By bpjames | June 12, 2008

We are constantly prioritising and reprioritising our business activities throughout the day. Sometimes this can be part of a planned strategy and often it can be in response to another person’s agenda - An important customer, perhaps, with an urgent need!

The overall success of your business will be greatly determined by how you manage to control your activities and the activities of your team. Sometimes this takes ruthless prioritisation and having to say ‘no’ to others.

The extent to which you routinely carry out the appropriate sales and marketing activities will directly determine the level and speed of growth in your business. Of course, immediate customer needs have to be considered and a level of adaptability is desired.

When considering your sales and marketing priorities it’s good practice to arrange your activities based on a range of different approaches. To help with this process, I would suggest separating your marketing methods into two distinct groups, namely Primary activities and secondary activities.

Primary activities

You want to spend 80% of your time and resources in this area and they include the following activities, which I will explain further in a moment:

  • Face to face contact with your ‘Top 30 list’
  • Telephone contact with your ‘Top 30 list’
  • Email exchange with all your targeted contacts
  • Pay-Per-Click advertising for lead generation
  • Direct mail to your targeted contacts

Face to face versus telephone contact will depend on geographic and time constraints. Your ‘Top 30 list’ is a group of individuals that collectively have the biggest impact on the success of your business. These are one-to-one mutually beneficial relationships. It might be more or less than 30 people, in your case; although I would recommend 30 is the approximate number of other individuals that one person can have proactive contact with on a regular basis.

Each member of your team could have their own ‘Top 30 list’. The ‘Top 30 list’ typically consists of a combination of other staff members, your best customers, business associates and suppliers who can influence business on a mutually beneficial basis.

The reason these are primary activities is they include both the development of your best existing relationships and the creation of new relationships in the most time and cost effective manor. Email is less personal, although it enables you to communicate with larger numbers of people very cost effectively.

Pay-Per-Click advertising is capable of generating new targeted leads in sufficient volumes on a cost effective basis. It is also the most flexible and track-able form of advertising available.

Direct mail is important as not everyone will be contactable online and may prefer contact by letter. A personal letter is still one of the most satisfying and influential forms of direct communication.

Secondary activities

This leaves 20% of your time and resources to concentrate on other activities such as:

  • Business networking
  • Developing public relations
  • Leaflet and flyer distribution
  • Printed advertising and directories
  • Optimising and developing your website or blog
  • SMS text messaging
  • Testing new approaches and marketing methods

Business networking is a great way of meeting new contacts face to face in a friendly, welcoming environment. Quality PR can provide extremely valuable positioning and differentiation for your business and produce virtually free advertising.

Leaflet and flyer distribution can provide worthwhile responses if they are targeted correctly and contain compelling information. I would recommend spending a maximum of 15% of your total marketing budget on printed advertising and in most cases substantially less - it is very wasteful and costly for most small businesses.

Your website or blog presence can be integrated with your other activities both online and offline. Website optimisation is costly and beneficial as part of a long-term Internet strategy. SMS text messaging can be extremely effective to act as a reminder, perhaps prior to an appointment or event.

I would recommend you continually test new approaches you haven’t tried before. You may find an approach that can transform your business and produce immediate results.

By combining Primary and Secondary activities using the 80/20 formula I have suggested, you will be developing your best existing relationships as well as working on the equally important aspect of new customer acquisition.

Overall, I would suggest your business spends approximately 20% of the time on sales and marketing activities. This leaves 80% for people development, financial management, customer fulfilment and the ongoing systemisation of your business.

Brian

Topics: Customer acquisition, Customer development | No Comments »

« Previous Entries