It’s June. Have you made vacation plans? If you haven’t, you’re not alone. Self-employed professionals and small business owners are notorious for delaying vacation time. You might escape to the golf course for a half day or take a three day weekend to attend a wedding, but a full-blown pack-your-bags-and-get-out-of-town-for-a-week-or-two vacation is tougher to justify.
Most of us find ourselves in the typical entrepreneurial Catch-22. If business is on the upswing, you’re working long hours to meet deadlines and keep customers happy. If business is shaky, you spend as many or more hours just trying to find new solutions to bring business up. Yet, whether you are struggling to revive a sluggish bottom line or trying to keep up with an unplanned surge of customer demands, you need to take a step back, reassess your challenges and make room for the solutions to come to you instead of you trying to find them.
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MONSTROUS Marketing Mistake #1: Sinking a Fortune Into an Unproven Product
Is your business idea built on market research or a hunch?
Entrepreneurs often fall in love with their products or services before they determine if there’s a real market, and they throw fistfuls of money into the venture. If you, your spouse, your uncle, and your neighbor think you’ve got a winning idea, that’s simply not enough qualified input to run to the bank and drain your savings account!
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“It’s easier to ride a horse in the direction it’s going.”
– Abraham Lincoln
Abe was probably talking about leadership, but the above quote is excellent advice for marketers. Go in the direction your customers want to go, and it will be an easier sell. In other words, make sure the marketing you do for your products and services reflect what your customers want, not what you want them to have. Marketing based on convincing someone he or she “should” have something is less effective than marketing focused on what your customers are already convinced they want. If you’re struggling with a SHOULD marketing strategy, heed Honest Abe’s advice: “ride a horse in the direction it’s going.”
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Every day I turn on the news, it seems there is another report about some company ready to lay off thousands of their workers. While it may not be the worst times there ever were, there’s no denying that the economy is throwing some tough challenges our way to keep our businesses going. Big business, small business — no one is exempt.
I’ve recently received an increasing number of emails from micro business owners and independents sharing the many fears that come with such economic uncertainty. While there is no one-size-fits-all solution to survive the downturn, a good place to start is to “read between the numbers.”
How?
We are all quick to notice that the economy is affecting profits. Yet, it’s important to
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We print it on our business cards and stationery.
We give it out to (almost) anyone who asks for it.
We conduct research and gather valuable information with it.
We rely on it for communication with associates, friends and family.
“It” is e-mail. And there’s no denying that e-mail is as common of a communication tool as telephones — maybe even moreso. Regardless of whether or not you have a Web site, if you are NOT using e-mail marketing for your products and services, you are ignoring a very low cost (and often no cost!) marketing tactic with high-return (and profit) potential. Why not squeeze every ounce of communicative powers e-mail has when dealing with clients and customers?
How? By using this easy four-step process:
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May 10
3
Quick Tip: Shower Power
If most of your best ideas seem to come to you while you’re in the shower but appear to have gone down the drain when you try to recall them later, try this: keep a grease pencil in the shower area so you can write ideas or key phrases on the shower stall walls. (But be sure to clean up after you’ve transferred those ideas to paper!)
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Apr 10
29
Get Great Business Advice for FREE
I often receive e-mails from business owners asking for advice in marketing, publicity, finance and operations management. Unfortunately, most of the advice I give has to be in fairly general terms because in order to give advice that will benefit each specific business, I would need to fully understand the dynamics of each individual situation, industry, demographic, opportunity, etc. This would take more time than I have to give without having to start charging for it. However, many small business owners and entrepreneurs – both online and offline – overlook one of the best ways to get FREE advice for their businesses . . .
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Apr 10
22
Quick Tip: Out of Sight, Out of Mind
If you have people who can’t serve customers because they are doing other tasks (i.e. making calls, tracking orders, preparing a bank deposit, etc.), arrange for them to perform those duties somewhere else. It’s frustrating for customers to approach an employee who is not willing to wait on them, or to be told to find someone else who will. You spend a lot of time and money to get people into your store. Make sure your “customer first” philosophy meets their expectations.
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Apr 10
17
Make Your Business Work Like Magic
I’ve been fascinated by magic and magicians since I was little. A successful magician can reach behind my ear, say “abracadabra” and – voila – pull out a quarter. Or with focused concentration, and two taps of a wand, a rabbit comes out of a top hat that was previously proven empty. On a bigger scale, a successful magician can drape a silk cape over a caged tiger and with a grand gesture and the flip of a wrist – poof – the cape falls to the ground and the caged tiger has disappeared.
I love that stuff. It’s amazing. It’s magic.
But it wasn’t until I tried to learn a few simple magic tricks myself that I discovered the key to such effortless success. It didn’t come from the words being uttered, or the brand of top hat being used, or the type of cape being flung … those are just the props and tools of the trade. The success of the magic comes from
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Whenever I sit with a client who has hired me to assess and identify ways to streamline their business operations, we eventually get around to what I call the “no pain, no change” discussion. I can present a neatly packaged assessment report with recommendations for increasing efficiencies or streamlining processes, but new efficiencies and streamlining requires change. And, change typically meets with resistance because the way of doing things has become habitual.
As the old adage goes, old habits die hard. It happens just as frequently in one-person operations as it does in businesses with 10s, 100s, or even 1,000s of employees. It’s just easier to take the path of least resistance by doing what we have always done. And, until you realize how ‘doing what you’ve always done’ dramatically affects your bottom line, change is less likely to occur. For any change in behavior, procedure or practice, there must be a desire for it – the benefits of change must become more attractive than the comfort of keeping old habits.
So how can a desire for change be ignited?
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29 Ways to Increase Profits & Productivity