7 'Profit Turnaround' initiatives to make 2012 a success for your business...

It's that time of year again when we look at our lifestyle and businesses, and resolve to improve on the previous year. Here are some suggested New Year 'resolutions' for your business in 2012, along with some links to HOW to make them happen.

1.) I will map out my strategies and drive my plan proactively, instead of reacting

Before you look at anything else for your business in 2012, step back and take a look at the big picture. What do you want to achieve? Where are the areas of growth for your business? [Marketing? Where do you start? How does a 72.8% lift in sales sound?]

Then map out the journey a prospect will go through [Creating a Marketing Machine], from first contact to conversion to repeat purchase. Make sure all the elements of your marketing fit together cohesively, and look to increase the conversion rate at EVERY stage of the sales process.

2.) I will track ALL my marketing, from lead to conversion to future sales

There is nothing more true in marketing than the old adage: "If you do not measure, you cannot manage." The problem is, everyone pays lip service to this truism, but the importance of measuring and testing your marketing is often overlooked. [Are you looking for sales in all the wrong places?]

The biggest excuse business owners use is that they are too busy to measure. However, if that's YOU ... think of it this way. You may be "busy" with procedures that are leaking business to your competitors, or at the very least, not achieving the profit margins you deserve.

The bottomline is - if you constantly test the effectiveness of everything you do, while at the same time constantly trying to improve performance, you will ultimately succeed in optimising your profits.

3.) When I am selling, I will do more "ASKING" than I do "telling"

Unquestionably THE most powerful approach in selling is by asking questions [A powerful lesson in asking questions]: questions about your prospect, their situation, their needs, and what they're looking for. 

Again, this seems SO patently OBVIOUS! But listen to yourself. Listen to your sales people. Are enough of the right questions being asked to truly diagnose the problem or need? There’s a real temptation most especially with a salesperson with lots of product knowledge, to revert to TELL MODE.

Be like an investigative doctor, probing deeply about the symptoms in order to diagnose the problem before prescribing the treatment. Doing it any other way would be professional malpractice. The great thing about asking questions and listening to the prospect’s answers is that you can then ‘prescribe’ the solution exactly for their needs, using their language.

Getting to know what your prospects are looking for is the quickest way of increasing your conversion rates, the effectiveness of your ads, and ultimately, bottomline. [Improve your conversion rates]

4.) I will follow-up my old leads

Many years ago, a switched on client of ours, Mark Hartley of The Tree Doctor in Rooty Hill in Sydney (yes, Rooty Hill) purchased another tree surgeon business. He came across their old ‘quote book’, but was told all those leads were dead. Not daunted, he got his team to follow up every 'dead' lead, until they told him not to. He simply DIDN'T give up.

Result? He converted 32% of the old leads on the first follow up! And a further 10% in subsequent approaches. He estimated that one idea was worth around $80,000 in additional sales to him, and more than funded the purchase of the business he’d taken over!

So what should you do? Ensure you squeeze every possible sale, (as long as you do it nurturously and ethically) with a Multiple Contact Strategy. [Hidden Profits in Multiple Contact Strategies]

5.) I will only create 'educative' marketing material

Businesses across the country pour money down the drain with 'branding' ads. Ads with catchy slogans and lots of white space. Ads that quite simply do not work. [Why would a salesperson be vauge and walk away?]

Sure, a punchy headline [the 20x multiplier - headline] and a compelling offer [Multiply your success up to 300%] are important, but if you do not educate as to the REASONS WHY a prospect should act [Truth About Advertising] (whether that is contacting you, requesting a free report, or buying from you), they won't. You wouldn't expect gimmicky, punchy lines from a salesperson, and selling in the written word is no different.

Make a point this coming year to only create brochures, advertisements, sales letters, etc., that EDUCATE.

6.) I will get my quotes paid on time

When I first started out in consulting over 27 years ago, I used to invoice my clients and wait to be paid. It only took ONE client to fail to pay, leaving leave me with thousands of dollars of bills to pay my suppliers on his behalf, to teach me the folly of that.

So from that point on, my ‘terms’ have been 50% up front, and 50% on delivery of the creative. It works for me. Or in the case of monthly installments, they are paid up front on day ONE of each month.

You ARE no different, UNLESS you choose to be. It’s all about positioning. [Are your invoices inviting bad debts?]

It’s your choice as to whether you stand meekly in line, waiting to be paid, and being someone else’s ‘rich uncle’. Or whether you establish the ground rules, and be proud that you deliver such an amazing service, and that you expect to be paid.

One more tip. Consider re-writing your quotes to reflect this new mindset. [Are your quotes losing you business?]

7.) I will create a white paper (or another white paper)

One of the best ways to increase the number of prospects who contact you is by creating a white paper [Could this get you a truckload of quality leads?]. It is a great way to find prospects at all stages of the buyer cycle, from the ready-to-buy to those who are interested but perhaps months or years off buying.

But more than that, having a ‘white paper’ also positions you as the 'expert' in the industry, and gives you an opportunity to pre-educate your prospects before selling to them.

So it has a two-fold effect: it increases leads, and it increases conversions.

That’s it for 2011. My team and I wish you every success and great prosperity in the year ahead …

Chris Newton

Results Corporation

If you know anyone who would find value in reading this article, please forward (or tweet) this link on to them.

How to Make Sure Your Invoices Get Paid

As the economy continues to splutter, more of your clients are going to struggle to pay your invoices.  No surprise there.

In fact, those who’ve long been in the habit of using YOUR money to run their businesses (or their lifestyle) will stretch things even more now.  Some will default.

This begs the question... 


How do you make sure you get paid in full, on time?

The best solution of course, is to get paid UP FRONT.  And more on that in a moment.

Regardless though of what your payment terms are now, getting to the front of the payment line is a function of how well you’ve set up the expectation of getting paid. ‘Laying the ground rules’ on being paid.

If, at the beginning of the business transaction, your client senses a casual approach to being paid, that’s what you’ll get.  In contrast, by firmly but nurturously explaining your terms BEFORE providing the service, and then following up immediately if the client misses a due date, you have a far higher likelihood of being paid.

‘Laying the ground rules’ on being paid is something many businesses are uncomfortable with.  And they pay the price later in tardy collections, which then create their own cash flow crises.


Why not get paid up front?

Our own invoicing policy is an agreed first monthly instalment paid before we begin a project, and further instalments at the start of each month.  If it’s a ‘lump sum’ project, we require 50% of the funds upfront.

Of course, to be paid up front, clients need to trust your capabilities to ‘deliver’.  And trust that you’ll go all out to give them an amazing result. 


But the key point is this. 

Create the expectation of being paid up front, educate your clients to the value you’ll deliver, and most will accept this graciously.

On the other hand, if you present your product or service merely as a ‘commodity’, something your clients can get anywhere, you’ll simply invite them to shop around for another supplier who will give them 90 days … or 120 days.


Bottom line?

Be passionate about what you ‘deliver’, and about the value you bring to the table … communicating your ‘value package’, your legendary service, your responsive support, your problem solving strengths and so on … and you’ll create the right expectation in your client.  They simply won’t go anywhere else. 

The alternative is to be a commodity.  And that means, getting to the back of the line!

4 things to do immediately when sales start drying up

FOUR things to do immediately when sales start drying up (and a personal invitation from Chris Newton at the end of this email) ...

The current economic conditions are a fact of life.  But it’s no time to curl up in a corner in the foetal position.  

Now is the perfect time to be actively looking at new (or old) ways to turn things around.  Smart players boom in these times.

Let me give you four basic action steps to get sales pumping through your business again.

1. Tighten up your sales processes.

OK, I rant about this regularly.  But I get to look inside lots of businesses, and I have to tell you ... SALES are being lost every day for the want of some simple changes. 

• What about when the phone rings with a request for information?  Realise it’s NOT a request for information!!  It’s someone wanting to BUY.  Organisations are so laid back, they accept sending of a brochure and bland form-letter as handling the ‘sale’.  It’s NOT.  You need an elite team of trained ‘green berets’ hungry for sales, who make sure every possible (ethical) avenue has been covered, systematically and consistently, to get the sale.  And you need to track what’s happening ...

• What’s going on in the business?  In the ‘good times’, it’s so damn easy to ignore things that make you cringe, and be too busy to do anything about it.  Times aren’t ‘good’ right now.  FIX these things internally that eat away at your market share.  What sort of things?  Customer enquiries sitting for days unattended to.  Poorly worded letters going out, often with grammatical or spelling errors.  That square peg in a round hole person who should never be handling sales enquiries, who is still there.  I could go on.

• Sales skills.  Presenting at a conference recently, I invited a gentleman up on the stage.  Like most of the people in the room, he thought he was pretty good at selling.  But about 45 seconds into our role play (with me as the customer), he was stumbling, uncomfortable and disoriented as to how to handle my basic questions on price and why I should buy from him and not his competitor.  To relieve him of his discomfort, I switched roles.  With limited knowledge of his products, I showed him and several hundred other business owners how easy it is to keep control of the sale.  The whole room agreed this change in approach would work for them.  But up until then, almost NONE of them did these things.  Bottom line, if your ‘green berets’ aren’t seriously honed in the skills to handle a prospect’s enquiries, you are losing market share.  And with the “shrinking pie”, that’s a luxury you simply can’t afford.

2. Mass Marketing vs Boutique. 

I’ve talked a great deal in the past about ‘mass marketing’ strategies.  It’s time to think about ‘Boutique Marketing’.  This is awesomely powerful. 

There’s a wonderful story about how David Ogilvy arrived in New York, from the UK as an unknown, and went on to build one of the largest and most successful ad agencies on the planet.  How?  He focused in on exactly which companies he WANTED on his client list. 

He wrote a list of the FIVE ‘blue chip’ companies he wanted to get.  We’re talking Shell, Lever & Kitchen, Rolls Royce.  The big guys. 

He stuck his list of these five giant corporations on his bathroom mirror.  And every day, would not leave that bathroom until he had at least one initiative to get one of those companies one step closer to being a client.  The rest is history.  

He ultimately got all five. 

You see, when you break your market down into small ‘boutique’ numbers of prospects, you can bring enormous focus and energy to bear, just on them!   You can ‘afford’ to stand out and be noticed.

Fed Ex a package to the 5 decision makers, find ways to add value to them, create a dialog with them.

In tough times and in the ‘good times’, almost no one goes to this effort.  If you can be a bright star on the horizon for your prospect list, odds are you will ultimately win the prize.

3. How many ‘dead leads’ do you have? 

Just like some ancient reptile in Jurassic Park waiting to be reawakened, many of your dead leads may not be dead at all.  Chances are, they’re just waiting for someone to come along and poke them into action. 

One business owner said to me the other day that he has 50,000 unconverted leads in his database!  It’s taken the tight times for him to think about re-approaching these people. 

What if he can stir even 2% of them into life and they buy from him?  For his business, the recession would be over!  Do you have leads and past client names that are really just dormant, waiting to get a great offer from you?

4. Remember ‘Shoe Leather’? 

I love this story.  One of our clients is a very successful chiropractor. 
We’ve been writing his ads, supporting collateral and client referral and reactivation pieces on and off for years.  But he has just pulled off a coup of his own.  With ‘shoe leather’ marketing. 

No, he didn’t go door to door in desperation.  He leveraged himself.  He secured an invitation to go to the local gym, and for a nominal fee, offered to give the members a spinal check. 

The result?  Out of ONE visit, he’s gained 25 new clients.  A good morning’s work?  You bet!  His ‘lifetime value’ of a client is worth some $4,000 to him over the next four years. 

That’s $100K in new future business in a morning.  Now that’s inspiring.

What’s the bottom line on all of this?

Tough times are not for sitting in an ivory tower and worrying.  They’re times when different strategies, including well thought through ‘shoe leather’ marketing, can pay massive dividends.  May you boom in the ‘tight times’.  

Personal Invitation from Chris Newton:

Okay, this next bit is an invitation to work with us on your marketing ... if it's appropriate for you right now.  Go to the link below to hear:

www.resultscorporation.com.au/offer.mp3

(If you have trouble with the link above, you can also listen to the offer on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2agQgmvuGiM&feature=channel_video_title)

Chris Newton

Short business development Video from our UK colleagues

 Our colleagues in our UK office of Results Corporation have put together an excellent video that really encapsulates the basics on how we create a solid plan for optimising sales and client acquisitions.

To watch it, just click here. It may take a little while to load, but it is well worth it.

Or copy the URL below and paste it into your browser's URL address:

http://www.resultscorporation.co.uk/MARKETINGSALESMACHINE.asp?S=1

Enjoy,

Chris Newton

If you know anyone who would find value in receiving the recession proofing white paper or indeed to receive Strategy Briefs, feel free to email Daniel at: daniel@resultscorporation.com.au, and he'll organise to include them.

Marketing? Where do you start? How does a 72.8% lift in sales sound?

Few businesspeople can actually define what 'marketing' actually is. And the thought of having to do marketing can be daunting. Yet they (and YOU), are already doing marketing every single day, whether you realise it or not.

Marketing is your single most leveraged profit multiplier in your business. You can impact your profit line with just subtle twists on what you're now doing. And here's the really good bit. You only need to focus on 3 areas to get a massive jump in revenue. Those three areas are:
- the size of your client base
- your average value of a sale, and
- the frequency with which clients purchase.

Now just in case you're about to say you've heard this before... here's a critical point.

This blog and the supporting tools I create for small businesses are NOT about 'telling' you the obvious. They're about SHOWING YOU EXACTLY HOW to implement strategies to achieve the outcomes. And helping you set your priorities in an otherwise frantic day. Of course, once you uncover the dynamic behind such a strategy, often it IS obvious! Commonsense.

So what if you set an objective to improve each of the three areas of focus by 20%? You'll lift your revenue by 72.8%! I guarantee you, it IS worth doing. So take some time now for this mini-audit of your current marketing. First up, ask yourself:  

Focus #1 - Increasing the size of your client base

- Do you test different headlines on your ads and measure the outcomes?
- Do you test different offers?
- Do you tell your FULL story on your website and in your literature?
- Do you script the wording and role play how to deal with phone enquiries?
- Do you have a script and a system for generating more referrals?.

In just those five initiatives to increase the size of your client base, the leverage for increasing your profits is breathtaking. Testing headlines can multiply your number of enquiries by twenty times.

Testing offers up to three times. Role-playing how to deal with phone enquiries can DOUBLE your success on the phone. And so on! These are real figures, not theory!

And this is just scratching the surface. Let's look briefly a:

Focus #2 - Increasing the average value of a sale

- Do you articulate the full value of your services and charge what you're worth?
- Do you train all frontline people in professional selling and customer service?
- Do you test packaging products and services together?
- Do you have a SYSTEM for cross selling?

Again, these are just a few of the options open to you to increase your average sale value. Do nothing different than now, and chances are, it is costing you dearly in lost profits.

Finally, how can you increase the frequency of purchase by your client base?

Focus #3 - Increasing the frequency of purchase

- Do you have a 'client communications calendar'?
- Do you find ways to say thank you?
- Do you plan special events and actively create reasons to add value to your clients?


Where to from here?

Start doing 'stuff'. Remember, if you can implement initiatives to lift each of those three areas by 20%, it puts 72.8% on your revenue line. Do the numbers on what that does to your profit line! And work with your accountant too on ways to get your costs down as well, and your profits could well soar by over 100% or much more.

“Please don't hesitate to throw me in the bin”

So you've written an awesome sales letter. Spent hours sweating over every sentence. But does it go out to the prospect with a closing line that says, “Please don't hesitate to throw me in the bin”?

Of course you won't have used those words, but if it says “Please don't hesitate to call me if you have any further questions, or for more information” ... or words to that effect, you may as well have said “throw me in the bin”!

Wherever possible, say something PRO-active like: “Because this is so important for your business and I know you’ll have some questions, I’ll call you in the next four days ...” Then call. Will this make you more sales? You bet!

For more great small business strategies, ideas and tips go to MarketingHelpOnline.com