The 8020 Blog

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I get this quite a lot.

Potential client: “I am so sick of being stuck on this treadmill! Tell me what I need to do in order to increase my earnings and reduce my work hours.”

Me: “Well it’s actually very simple. I can show you how you can swap your treadmill for a conveyor-belt that brings new clients into your business and delivers value to them, even when you are holiday.”

Potential client: “Sounds great. How much time will it take?”

Me: “30 - 60 minutes a day for the next 16 weeks to set up the plan and then about a day a week to execute it over the following 2 - 3 years.”

Potential client: “Oh. I don’t have that much time to spare.”

Me: “Ding, next please”

There is no way around this folks. Anyone who is serious about increasing earnings AND reducing the need to be delivering the value personally needs to put time aside, off the treadmill, and firstly learn how to build a business conveyor-belt and then put time aside to actually built it.

It takes time but my oh my, it is worth it. Treadmills suck.

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I am locked in mortal email combat with the editor of a very good e-zine in which I placed an advert and received a dismal response.

The reason for the underwhelming response is that they camouflaged my advert … it was “buried” in an article near the bottom of screen #2. Note: it was not even placed at the end of the article but rather inserted, in identical font size and near identical font colour, IN the darned article near the bottom of it.

I asked my wife to open the e-zine up and tell me what she thought of my advert. She read the e-zine and then had to ask me where my advert was. Exactly.

On emailing my concern to the editor he replied that Google recommend “visually integrated” adverts for a higher response rate.

Idiots.

I replied that the first thing that needs to happen in order for any advert to work is that it must get noticed. Then is has to get read and acted upon - but those two things will never happen until it get’s noticed.

Contrary to what some pimple-faced MBA graduate kid at Google says, make sure if have any option your adverts STICK OUT like dogs balls. The uglier and more outrageous, the better.

(Interestingly, the editor had four adverts on the same page for different products and services that he supplied. Every one was in full living colour … NOT visually integrated … hmm … good for the goose ….)

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Amazingly there are people out there who bust their butt to get new leads/new clients and then fail to follow them up.

Maybe they lack personal organization or maybe they are overloaded. Either way, it makes it easier for you to shine when you do the simple stuff reliably well such as following through on any new referrals or other potential new client leads.

Now I realize that this is not exactly rocket science but there are people out there spending many thousands on marketing or “get new clients” courses (good idea) looking for some quick-fix-secret (bad idea) when they have not yet developed the habit of following up good quality leads that are handed to them on a silver platter.

Go figure.

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What makes a business a salable business as opposed to a collection of people who work together and bring in some money but that is worthless when it comes to selling ?

Well for starters buyers will be looking for processes that reliably and predictably bring in new clients, convert them to customers (repeat clients) and keep them for as long as humanly possible.

Astute buyers will also be looking for evidence that the effective running of those processes is not significantly dependent on one person, be that the owner or another key player.

I think it was the great Peter Drucker who said that regardless of whether or not you want to sell your business you should aim to have it in such a condition that it is ready to sell at any time.

The key is to break both the marketing and product/service/value delivery down into a series of teachable steps. When you do that and prove that it works by bringing in significant amounts of cash then your business will be worth millions. Literally.

Worth thinking about?

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Its easy to think that the reason we want a new client is so we can make a sale however it’s more profitable when we begin to think that the purpose of a sale is to get a client.

(It’s OK if you need to read that twice!)

The real wealth in your small business lies in the quality and quantity of relationships that you have with prospects and clients.

If you have a relationship of trust and respect with many prospects and clients you can make multiple sales to them over an extended period of time - so the real value lies not in the sale, but in the client.

This different way of thinking will cause you to re-evaluate how much you are prepared to invest in order to get a new client.

It will also make you think very carefully about the levels of service you provide to those clients and how to respond when you have a client complaint to deal with.

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The majority of businesses can’t be expanded beyond the capacity of the owner’s time for three reasons.

The first is the lack of proven marketing systems that generate quality leads coming into the business on a regular, predictable basis.

The second is the lack of a documented, teachable sales process that converts the leads into clients.

The third is the lack of a documented, teachable value delivery process that fulfills client expectation (and more) and turns them into returning customers.

These last two have the power to take the owner out of the sales and delivery cycle and frees him/her up to do more marketing and more product/service innovation.

The lack of these three items not only stop the business from expanding, they also prevent the business from being saleable.

So to free up your time, to drive growth and to make your business worth (potentially) millions, focus on those three things.

If you want more on this the register for my zero-cost training coming up next week … you can click here to find out more.

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I interviewed Ryan Allis today. He started his business in 2003 and in the first two years he lived in a rented office … yep … lived in his office.

In those two years his sales totaled $12,000 and his expenses $17,000. He slept on a mattress on the office floor and ate noodles for 24 months. The only reason he did not go bankrupt was that a friend lent him $5,000 to pay off the most aggressive creditors.

This year Ryan will do $30 million in sales. He will turn 26 years of age in August.

Ryan’s parents were neither wealthy nor business-minded (father a priest, mother a social worker).  He got where he is today by thinking … finding a specific unmet need in the market place, then putting his all on the line to bring that idea to life in the market place.

He demonstrated guts and determination in the face of self-doubt and market place ambivalence.

Ryan has thus made it almost impossible for any of us to offer excuses - which is the main point of this blog … Ryan was born to lower middle class parents … no money apart from rent, food and power. No big advantage apart from a big heart. Nothing special … and yet he has achieved, at age 25, the extraordinary.

Thanks Ryan for the inspiration.

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Thanks to Liz Cassidy of www.thirdsigma.com.au for the idea for this post … from which I have taken unreasonable poetic license (Liz is your go-to-gal if you have any problem leadership behaviors you want to make disappear).

If you have a “push” marketing strategy then the appropriate pricing model is to figure out your costs, add a margin and go sell it.

By way of example, I had a discussion with the Managing Director of one the worlds largest motor vehicle manufacturers about two years ago. I asked him a question about vehicle production and he stopped me and said “Tom, you don’t understand, we are not in the business of making cars, we are in the business of selling them. We have a policy of estimating market needs and we then deliberately set about to produce an excess of cars which we then push down our dealers outlets and back them by advertising special deals.”

That’s a good example of “push” marketing which normally means that you wind up competing on price which eventually, if you are not careful, becomes a zero sum game.

The other style is “pull” marketing which is where you differentiate your product and create such an interest for it, if not a demand, that people are approaching your business wanting to buy.

This type of marketing means you can price on the basis of value perceived by the client as opposed to cost (see above “push” marketing”). Consulting services - at least the smart ones - price their services on this basis.

Pull marketing means that you can charge a premium price, partly because you have all but eliminated direct competitors but mainly because you don’t base the final price on costs such as time and materials but rather on value.

Probably the worst thing you can do is have a “pull” product and charge “push”prices … if you do that you are leaving a LOT of money on the table.

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A couple of days ago I visited the web site of one of my client’s competitors.

I was delighted to see that they were making  a big mistake which many, many other solopreneur and small business owners make, time and time again.

The big mistake is to take “you” out of your brand.

On the afore-mentioned web site under the all-too-predictable “About Us” tab there was something to the effect that “we are a husband and wife team”. Not even a name. Nothing about what they love/hate/admire/fear/loathe/believe/dream about/like/opine/read/listen to/respect/value etc.

The surgical removal of your personality costs you clients … end of story.

Why?

Because of two facts:

1. People are bored and are more interested in something unique and non-mainstream i.e. your personality.

2. People want to have a relationship with you BEFORE they buy your product/service.

Big mistake. There are few advantages that small business has over big business but one of them is that it is VERY easy for us to inject personality into our marketing message and into our products and services.

Steve Irwin (a.k.a. The Crocodile Hunter), Richard Branson, Walt Disney and Dick Smith all knew this when they started out and they kept it going. Personalize your brand, message, marketing … find the authentic you and strut your stuff …

Frankly, failure to express the essence of you in your business and with staff and clients etc is not only a bad marketing mistake but more importantly it robs the world of a unique and very special gift … you. And as Coco Chanel said “In order to be indispensable one must be different”.

Sameness = boring. Different = interesting.

Which one do you think might be the easier path to the sale?

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Here are seven easy things about getting a business up and running:

1. Coming up with a good idea that will sell (it’s not that hard)

2. Getting excited about your cool new logo

3. Writing your cool sexy new web pages

4. Kicking your web developer’s butt when he/she/it has still not got your web site up

5. Reading interesting business web articles/books, doing courses/workshops (especially mine!)

6. Talking to friends about your cool new idea

7. Tweaking your cool new logo and re-writing your web site (then refer #4 above)

Here’s the one hard thing about getting a new business up and running (yes, there is only one):

1. Pushing through the fears, doubts, frustrations, disappointments, let downs, cash flow snarl ups, demotivating moments, apathy, lethargy, self-esteem issues etc etc etc

… and continuing to push through them day after day, week after week and year after year … until they dissolve (perhaps) into the nothingness they always were.

It’s really not complicated … do what you know you need to do … and keep doing it with sheer bloody minded persistence despite your doubts and the small minded nay-sayers…

Go for it … push … harder … that’s it … now keep going …