An image overhaul is the first step, including a newly revamped marketing plan. Consider what has worked and not worked in the recent past and also consider future plans for the firm. Here are some more tips:

• Make deadlines and timetables for making sales: treat the sale like any other task in your ‘to do’ list with step-by-step plans to completion. Mark tasks, starting with initial sales calls, and map out step-by-step follow up-plans, ending with closing the deal.

• Don’t discount the little things or the more classic and traditional methods – not everything has to be new fangled and fancy. A solid and information-rich, easy to use website; or brochures and flyers still have credibility. Employing both the classics and the trends can broaden your target audience and generate the maximum amount of business.

• Include more client-friendly information such as testimonials, guarantees, feedback, referrals and surveys that offer real life ‘proof’ to your advertising campaign. Plus you can align yourself with recognizable groups that stand for solid and sound business to classify your firm as trustworthy and secure.

“ Treat the sale like any other task in your ‘to do’ list.”

• Never let your own belief in your product falter – stay enthusiastic and find ways to truly believe in what you are offering. Upgrade and maintain your service levels so that you always feel that what you are offering is honestly the best product for the job. Potential clients can see right through an insincere sale and will look immediately to the competition.

• Look into offering specialty services, or find a hole in the market that might need to be filled. Engage your team members with these challenges by offering incentives or recognition for instigating new strategies or generating new business.

• Don’t discount the continuous exposure that advertising can provide. Try something new and venture into a niche previously ignored. Be creative and think outside of the box on how your service or product can benefit non-traditional markets and venture into them with zeal.

Successful marketing comes from a clear understanding of your unique core differentiator – that’s what differentiates you from your competitors. If you aren’t sure about the compelling reason why your prospective clients should be contacting you then it might be a great time to contact us. We have resources designed to help you with this critical phase in a cost-effective way.

Unfortunately, becoming an entrepreneur takes more than a single good idea. Motivational speakers come up with favorite lists of essential qualities of successful entrepreneurs but within those there are some basic requirements.

Tenacity, or the refusal to give up, is a fundamental characteristic. Running a business is not easy and every day throws up new challenges, such as aggressive competitors, slow cash flow or difficult team members.

Entrepreneurs have to rise above the problem, find a solution and press onwards.

A competitive instinct is essential. Even if your idea is original there will be plenty of imitators who decide that they can do it better or add it to their adjacent portfolio.

Decisiveness is another important trait. The best CEOs don’t make the right decisions every time but they won’t let critical issues hover over the company either. If you make a bad decision there is often a chance to correct it with a better decision later on.

“Entrepreneurs have to rise above the problem, find a solution and press onwards.” Get out and talk to clients, suppliers and vendors to hear their side of the story.”

Businesses are about making money. Your team members depend on it. But they also depend on leadership to inspire them and make their contributions feel valuable. This is truer when you’re asking people to take a gamble and join you in building your great new project before you have time to prove its success or pay them what they’re worth.

An entrepreneur needs to pitch a company’s higher purpose to team members and make them believe in its ultimate goal. Anything less and they’ll struggle to make it through Monday.

Attention to detail is another essential characteristic. Entrepreneurs tend to know the minute facts about their business, the market in which it operates, their competitors, and a good grasp of expenses and sales.

And entrepreneurs need a willingness to change. If a great idea turns out to be less than perfect in reality, an entrepreneur must learn from the experience and take the idea or business towards a modified course that promises greater success.

REGISTERING A BUSINESS

In the excitement of starting a new business, make sure you check that the business name hasn’t already been taken. It’s a detail that can cause a major headache if left too late.

These days businesses of all kinds are finding that they are making more sales to clients that have found their shop through the internet rather than on foot. It makes sense that firms spend their attention and money proportionally on the storefront that is attracting the most sales, even if it’s a virtual one.

There are two important factors in attracting online visitors:

1. DESIGN AND PRESENTATION

This doesn’t necessarily mean spending lots of money on a site with all the bells and whistles. It is easy and inexpensive to put together a nicely designed home page with information about what your firm sells, where it is located and how to contact a company representative. If your firm is a consultancy of some kind that might be all you need. Less effort needs to go into the web design itself than the graphical and written elements that make up the page – the logo, the selection of font and especially the text. In this case spending more money on a good graphic designer and copywriter will bring better results than a good web programmer.

If you want to advertise and sell products on the website itself you will need to invest more in the mechanics. A good e-commerce engine, a secure billing system and integration with your inventory database.

In either case it is important to remember that your website is a powerful marketing tool which will help form your clients’ impression of your firm. A cheap looking site will encourage viewers to think the products must be sharply priced – or that the service will be substandard.

Similarly, even a small firm can give the impression of a sophisticated, professionally run operation if the tone and presentation is right.

2. MAKE IT EASY TO FIND

The second most important factor is making sure people can find you on the infinite expanse that is the internet. The easiest way to do is to advertise on search engines so that people looking for your products will see your ad and take a look. Just like a physical store, a company website needs to attract virtual foot traffic by appearing in the business listings and advertising in magazines and locales used by your clients.

Google and Microsoft’s Bing make this easy through their keyword-based advertising programs. It pays to think laterally about the kinds of things your clients will be looking for. The more obvious the keyword or phrase, the more the search engines are likely to charge to advertise alongside it.

The internet has made it possible for firms to avoid the hassle and expense of television networks by screening video commercials themselves. Your firm’s website is a channel of information that your clients will seek out to learn about the products or services you sell.

BRAINSTORMING

You can use a video to show satisfied clients recommending your firm; demonstrate a product in action; or use music and images to create an emotional connection with potential clients that will encourage them to buy. One of the most popular video categories are ‘how to’ guides. A list of the most common questions fielded by your sales or support staff may offer inspiration.

Unlike a television commercial, you can make the video as long as necessary or host a series of videos. If your video is amusing or impressive in some way, it can ‘go viral’ and receive enormous amounts of traffic, with ensuing publicity.

A growing trend among new software companies is to show nothing else on their home page but an introduction video that explains in simple terms why the software is worth using. This direct method of communicating with potential clients is far more engaging than filling the page with detailed explanations of the software’s features and pricing.

HOSTING

Firms can host a video on their website itself but this can be technically challenging. If your firm’s website receives a spike in visitors – in response to a sale or over Christmas, for example – your video might take too long to load on visitors’ computers.

There are several services which will host video for you with the ability to scale up resources to make sure the video doesn’t slow or stutter.

YouTube is by far the biggest and best known, but some may consider it inappropriate for hosting a business video that displays a YouTube logo.

Amazon Web Services (a division of the online shopping behemoth) can host video without any branding, but it requires more effort to set up. Once hosted, you can promote your video through social media sites such as Facebook.

PRODUCTION

The required tools for creating videos have become more affordable with prices of digital video cameras plummeting. Simple-to-use, high-definition units can be found for $200.

But before you rush out and start filming, consider hiring an actor or a studio to help write the script and shoot the video for you. Done well, video is a very effective tool for marketing your firm. Done poorly and you could look unprofessional, cheap or worse.

But if you put some effort into the steps that lead your customer to a sale, then you can easily overcome those marketing filters.

Step 1. Get to know them

Make it your business to know everything there is to know about your ideal customer or prospect.  Where do they like to shop? What time of day? Are they usually rushed and needing quick service or do they prefer to browse? Is price most important to them, or follow-up support? Are they single or married? Male or female? Teens wanting to impress friends, or families needing solutions that accommodate adults and kids at the same time?

Once you’ve figured this out, your messages become much more relevant and targeted. Which gets your prospects attention and makes your prospects feel as though you are truly interested in them, not just a sale.

Step 2. Follow up consistently

Research shows that it takes around 7 repetitions before a person takes on board your message.  There is also evidence that 80% of the time they don’t buy from you until after 10 encounters with your business. The interesting thing is that most businesses give up on marketing after 3 or 4 attempts, in other words, a long time before their prospects have even taken in the message, let alone are ready to buy.

So stick with it. When you consistently and effectively follow up with your prospects, your message will eventually sink in.

Step 3. Offer more value

Every marketing message out there is an attempt to get money. Like hawkers in the bazaar, we businesses are all trying to persuade our prospects to part with their cash. Naturally, buyers suspect our motives and are inclined to be cynical at the start.

Stand out from the crowd by making your message do more than ask for a sale. Aim for it to educate, engage, entertain or even help your prospect in some way.

Step 4. Nurture your customers

Once your prospect becomes your customer, don’t abandon them. It’s a common complaint that once a prospect becomes a customer, businesses fail to put the same effort into providing them with good service. They’ve signed up, paid the deposit, agreed to the terms, they’re hooked … well and good for the short-term maybe, but don’t expect them to remain loyal.

Customers need the same attention you offered them as a prospect. Offer that same personal attention and they will become loyal advocates, or possibly even a raving fan!

These are fail proof methods for turning your prospects to customers and your customers to raving fans. And that is worth a whole lot to your bottom line!

Remember, prospects are everywhere

Whenever you travel, attend a sporting event, go to a parents’ night at your local school or even wait in line at a bank, it’s possible there is a potential customer among the group. So always be willing to talk to people. You never know who you might be talking to. Naturally not everyone is going to be a potential customer but even if somebody isn’t a prospect for your business they may well know of another person who is.

This doesn’t mean pushing yourself onto anybody and everybody with a business card in your hand, but it does mean keeping a business ear tuned in to the conversations you are having. It’s really a matter of your mindset.

Develop your elevator speech

It pays to prepare a little story about you and your business that’s interesting and only takes a minute or less to go through. Most conversations eventually get into a “What sort of work do you do?” phase and that’s your chance to tell others about yourself. “I solve people’s mobility problems by working out the most cost effective way to maintain their cars” is a lot more interesting opening line than “I’m a mechanic”! You could discuss the way your workshop assesses how clients use their cars, who uses which vehicles for what purpose, and how you use that information to suggest a maintenance schedule that provides best value for money. The car that just does the weekly shopping doesn’t need the same level of expenditure as one that is used for constant long trips. People will be impressed and intrigued – they’ll certainly remember you.

Show a real interest in the people you talk with and take the time to hear their story. Listen carefully and you’ll always learn something. Ask additional questions if you think there’s more to learn since some people only tell part of their story and wait until they’re encouraged before they say anything else.

Help whenever you can

The old maxim, “those who help others, help themselves”, definitely holds true in business. If you realize during a conversation that you can be of some assistance to the person you’re talking with, it’s an opportunity to get to know them better. This extends to those you’re already doing business with. You might have a solution to their biggest business problem and can make a friend for life!

Share your expertise

Whatever your line of business, you’re an expert in it. Before you disclaim this, just think about it. You know more about what you do in that business than anybody else who isn’t in the same business. If you can make up an interesting presentation about what you do, others will gladly listen.

Contact local organizations and offer your services as a guest speaker. Begin with any that you’re already a member of and go from there. Join twitter and start posting short comments – you’re limited to 140 characters so it doesn’t require a long essay on the subject!

When it clicks, personal marketing places you in a one-on-one situation with a prospective customer who shares many of the same concerns about running a business that you have. If you can be informative, interested and helpful you’ll find your business growing and possibly make new friends at the same time.

Straight price cutting in response to competition is a dangerous strategy, one that can ultimately cut your profits to the point where you might as well sell your business. Far better to sit down and work out a pricing strategy that reflects the nature of your products and market, AND makes you money!

Covering costs
Reaction pricing – lowering your price because the person up the road just lowered theirs – is not usually a workable long term solution…The first step in developing a pricing strategy is to work out your overheads. It’s really important to identify absolutely everything that costs you money, including rent, wages, utilities, software, and insurance. Don’t forget to include your own salary in this. Also include the cost of servicing capital assets (loan interest and depreciation charges), including any IT equipment and vehicles that you own.

Market research
Once you have identified the costs associated with running your business you can begin to think about how you want to price your product. To get a feel for the market, it’s a great idea to find out what your competitors charge, though it’s inadvisable to base your prices on this alone because they might be offering a different mix of product and associated services, and their overheads are also likely to be somewhat different.

Pricing strategies
Reaction pricing – lowering your price because the person up the road just lowered theirs – is not usually a workable long term solution. A price war means no-one makes money. And if you position yourself as the lowest cost option you run the risk of customers leaving you when another, even lower priced alternative, comes along. Keep in mind that if your customers perceive your price to be too low, it will make them just as suspicious as when they perceive your price to be too high.

Conversely, it’s important not to price yourself out of the market. So instead of just checking what price your competitors are selling at, evaluate the services they offer their customers and whether they market on the basis of any unique core differentiators. Then consider what you can offer. If you feel that what you can do is worth more than what your competitors offer, price your services accordingly. This is called a premium pricing strategy. For it to work, you need to be able to demonstrate your value to your customers in a convincing way and to get the message out among them.

Be prepared to negotiate your prices to win business. Negotiation involves a little planning but is a useful business tool when used properly. To ensure you’re still making money, you need to build in a premium to the initial price quoted and also determine a price floor under which you are not prepared to go.

Another pricing strategy that’s worth considering is straight discount-for-volume. Loss leaders are also an option, as are two-part pricing strategies. Peak pricing (when you charge a premium for made to order products or for work done at the last minute) is another pricing alternative you can look at.

Price increases
Take your time to do some homework on your product offering and selling points when determining your pricing strategy, because, once in place, it’s difficult to change without upsetting customers. If you are planning on raising prices, it’s a good idea to do it incrementally rather than wait for years and then slug clients with a massive price hike.

The best way to start considering pricing is to first step back and get some professional advice on how you can differentiate your product, improve your marketing and deliver great customer service. Then you’ll be able to consider a premium pricing strategy that cashes in on the things that make you different, rather than fighting it out on cost alone.

Used with permission from RanOne Inc., McQuaig & Welk, PLL are licensed RanOne Consulting Group Members.

Our industries, our society and even our planet are in a state of flux as we struggle to come to terms with turbulent economies, dwindling resources and a changing climate. In The Sixth Wave, a book on business and innovation, authors Moody and Nogrady predict that we are on the cusp of the next great wave of change for the future. They also demonstrate that periods of change in history have always been the time when the greatest opportunities exist for the introduction of new technologies, new products and services, and for inspired ideas about whole new ways of doing things.

If you see change as a threat, you’re taking a “glass-half empty” perspective. You probably say, “I can’t keep up with this constant technological innovation. There’s something new to learn every week. It’s like I never left high school!” You’ll be annoyed whenever there’s a new trend in management. You’ll wince whenever you hear of competitors introducing new business processes. You’ll see change as the slings and arrows of business misfortune.

You’ll say to yourself, “I’m a small business. I have a small, flexible and effective team. Adaptability is my middle name. We’re the can-do people!”On the other hand, if you see change as an opportunity, you’re taking a “glass-half full” perspective. You are likely to think, “Every time there’s a change, new niches open up for me.” You know that some of your competitors will be slow to adapt and you’ll be the first to step in and relieve them of a few customers. You’ll say to yourself, “I’m a small business. I have a small, flexible and effective team. Adaptability is my middle name. We’re the can-do people!”

While your larger competitors need to look ahead a year or more, you’ll change focus much more quickly. If you’re a manufacturer, you have smaller production runs, so you can customize to suit the needs of particular customers. Customers can reach you much more easily than they can a CEO of a large corporation – you’re responsive.

You look ahead with anticipation, not with anxiety. You think, “Well, some of my products are nearing the end of their life cycle. What’s the next big thing? How can I surprise and delight my loyal customers with something that they don’t even realize they want?”

If you take this attitude, business will become more of a game than a chore. You’ll feel freer to think creatively. And you’ll try to communicate this attitude to your team. You’ll do so with a frank and open management style, because honesty is the best way to help people manage change. Fear of the unknown is one of the greatest impediments to change in the workplace.

You can also get people to feel positive about change by empowering your workforce. Reward people who have good and innovative ideas and let them have a say in implementing them. Offer both praise and monetary rewards for innovation.

So, in this time of transformation, stay alert and keep well informed. Look out for the winds of change. Seek advice. A Business Diagnostic and Performance Review might be a good way to help you scan the external environment for changes in the industry that could sooner or later have an impact on your business, as well as analyze the internal operational strengths and weaknesses of your business as part of the process. Yes, it may mean major change for your business, but the way to look at that change is to see it as the opportunity for growth and improvement.

Please contact us if you are interested in a Business Diagnostic and Performance Review.

Used with permission from RanOne Inc., McQuaig & Welk, PLL are licensed RanOne Consulting Group Members.

Classify and monitor prospects

The stages in a sales pipeline can be different from business to business, and particularly between B2B and B2C type businesses, but there are some essential similarities. In all businesses there is a need to generate inquiries. The technique may be through advertising, shop front display, cold calling, word of mouth or networking.

In B2B the next steps might involve arranging an appointment with the prospect to establish their needs, making a sales presentation and quoting. In a retail situation the sales team is responsible for asking the right questions, treating the customer with care and selling the merits of the product. In both, the common aim is to achieve a sale.

The sales pipeline functions most effectively when there is a consistent process that leads prospects through these stages into becoming customers. The 4 Step formal selling process is Qualify, Propose, Negotiate and Close. Following this path is a prerequisite to effective pipeline management. The second component is a system that tracks the progress of each prospect through the sales pipeline, so that you always know where every lead stands.

Sales pipeline analysis

The sales pipeline concept can be applied to assess how many prospects you need to reach and convert to hit your sales target. Do you need to generate 100 leads to get 10 quality prospects to sell to 1 customer? Then to double your customers you’ll need 200 leads and turn them into 20 prospects to get 2 customers. Now you can make adjustments to your customer conversion process, testing various methods to turn 10 prospects into 2 or 3 customers instead of 1.

Alternatively, you can use this information to identify at which stage you are losing prospects (where the pipeline is leaking). Once you can identify specific leakage points you can apply the appropriate plug.

Too many unqualified prospects wasting your time? Develop a screening process that will identify tire kickers, bargain hunters, or poor credit risks, and remove them from the pipeline before wasting precious time on them. Losing prospects at the proposal stage? Maybe a selling script for your salespeople is needed, or training in how to establish rapport, understand the customer’s real need and build the value of the product in the customer’s eye.

For B2B businesses, knowing which stage each prospect is at shows how many sales to expect, (and hence how much income to expect), and when to expect them. This knowledge will affect business strategy. If the numbers are insufficient, then more decisive marketing action is required to lure more prospects into the pipeline. If numbers are very healthy, will demand outstrip capacity? Will you need to hire contractors, extra staff or upgrade equipment?

Maintaining the flow

The point of a sales pipeline is to encourage prospects to flow through to the sale. Use your system to keep track of which prospect is at which stage, and feed them information or assistance at the frequency, and using the channel they prefer, so as to move them to the next stage along. Don’t miss out on opportunities by losing track of likely prospects and failing to follow up.

Used with permission from RanOne Inc., McQuaig & Welk, PLL are licensed RanOne Consulting Group Members.

Entrepreneurs do seem to have some common traits, though, including:

• physical and mental stamina
• a drive to take control of their own destiny
• a competitive instinct
• resilience in the face of defeat
• good judgment
• decisiveness
• the ability to inspire others
• an unfailing positive attitude
• great communication skills

This could be quite a daunting list, if you take the perspective that entrepreneurs are born, not made. Fortunately, it’s clear that nobody is born with good judgment, and good communication skills need to be nurtured, even if you are gifted in that area.

So some of the key entrepreneurial traits can be acquired or enhanced. They often need to be, as not all entrepreneurs are natural marketers when they start out. Some work hard to expand their skills. Others work in partnerships, where the partners pool their skills and parcel out the work accordingly.

In many ways, entrepreneurs are as diverse as they are similar. Race, gender or age seems to be no bar to a successful entrepreneurial career. But there’s one entrepreneurial trait that is not so often mentioned, but which may actually be one of the most crucial: anxiety. Not a pathological anxiety, of course, but merely the level of anxiety that won’t let you be satisfied until you have a deep understanding of all parts of your business and your business environment.

Successful entrepreneurs are constantly asking themselves questions. Is this product what the customers want? Is there a way to improve it? What are competitors doing in this area? Are they posing any new risks?

They want to keep an eye on all aspects of the business. Are there problems with operations or marketing? What are the profit projections for the next three months? Is everything adequately financed?

Basically, successful entrepreneurs have trouble sleeping unless they have a good sense of what is happening in all areas of their business. And they need to be confident that all areas of their business are working well together.

They need to understand every aspect of their business so that they build a “feel” for it. This means developing a business “vision” that is based on a lot of hard facts. They’re in touch, so they can spot problems on the horizon. Or if there is a need for a snap decision, they can trust their intuition, because their intuition is built on solid foundations.

If you’re one of these “driven” entrepreneurs, and you feel the need to understand your business at all levels, that’s great. And if the task seems a big one, seek help. The great entrepreneur can rely on great help. Using the Targeting Business Results Plus software program, you can set up benchmarks and Key Performance Indicators for your business, monitoring them on a regular basis to make sure you’re moving in the right direction. Another great place to start would be a Business Diagnostic and Performance Review, where you’ll get a holistic analysis of your strategic and operational position and an Action Plan to get you back in control of your business…so that you can sleep easier at night. At McQuaig and Welk we can assist you with these issues so they don’t keep you awake at night.