When You Are Doing “Every-Thing” But Making Money
October 24th, 2013 // 11:38 am @ Scott Manning
Does it ever feel like you are doing everything, like literally every-thing you know to do, think you should be doing, and yet you aren’t getting the results you expect OR deserve.
If you are like most entrepreneurs you certainly bear the brunt of the responsibility for all things that have to happen in order to make your business a success. Of course you should, it is your business after all. And that’s fine when things are going great, when you are making good, big, or heck any money, when things aren’t going great though or your progress is anything but smooth, forward, or accelerating it is easy to get frustrated, to blame the rest of the world, or to get really down on yourself.
So, what, then, do you do and how can you change the course or at least turn things around in your favor? Usually it isn’t all that difficult to make that happen,
I’ve shared with you about the mental obstacles that get in your way. I have shared the environment and people that can sabotage your productivity, money, and general success and happiness. All of these are foundational core issues that must not be ignored and have to be managed and controlled.
Today though I want to nail down some marketing and money making secret weapons that can and will have dramatic impact on your results usually in very short order.
I call it the shortest distance between idea and money strategies.
There are of course other things to building a sustainable business and you may even have that down, it is just that things aren’t clicking from a cashflow or sales perspective.
Here’s a few things to give yourself a little check up on and find out.
1 – are your messages carefully and specifically targeted to your ideal prospect, are they niched?
One of the best ways to improve results and/or make some quick money is to reassess who you are spending your time trying to sell. Are you going after the right market? Are you using the right message to introduce your product, service, business to this market?
More often than not I see a major disconnect between what a business owner says they are doing for sales and marketing and who their target customer is and what they are actually doing to market and sell to this same person.
SOLUTION – take a step back, forget what you are doing now, and describe and decide who is your ideal customer and what is their biggest major challenge and pain that you provide solution to, go direct to that market with specialized marketing strategies and shorten the sales cycle by closing over the phone or in person – simply to get the money flowing back in.
2 – are you effective or is the person responsible for selling effective at actually asking for money, structuring the sale, closing the deal?
I have to level with you, selling shouldn’t be difficult. It is only difficult when someone is doing it wrong. Honestly, the whole sales training industry is great and serves it’s purpose; no question it works, however it is all about “Sales TRAINING” and if you are marketing properly, your marketing and selling process (key word PROCESS) should not require “training” it should just flow and happen…naturally.
Of course if you have a Salesforce or are outsourcing any of these things then you must train and hold them accountable, give them tools to use, and then you will see that selling is not something that is forced it should be an easy obvious and natural progression of a prospect transitioning into a customer.
The biggest issue is always the person or process not closing the deal, asking for the order, and making it possible for the customer to say yes – in other words – usually sales systems I fix are due to the prospect being UNSOLD.
SOLUTION – look carefully at your interaction with your prospects or your company’s interaction and be honest, are you closing the deal and how so? Or are you taking off all of their clothes and then leaving them laying there naked…not cool, and not very profitable when it comes to the expected and desired outcome.
When people aren’t making money like they should be and they are actually doing something, it is these 2 major issues that I see, wrong prospect and/or message, and lack of effective selling system or negligence in consummating the relationship.
Okay, here is one more big one that can change everything for you in very short order. Like, immediately. It is my favorite and depending on how confident you are it is easy to do.
Ready.
To get money flowing into your business and realign your efforts to be more effective and profitable you are best served to take out a sheet of paper and write down every single relationship, asset, customer, vendor, supplier, personal connection that you have that is tied to or related to your target market or someone who has access to opportunities that you can fit your business into.
With each of these human resources you are to write a personal email checking up on them, asking questions to reconnect, show them you are interested in them and then give them an update on what you are doing, say that you think it would be valuable to have a brief phone call to catch up and see if there is any synergy or mutual benefit between you and them. Compare goals and objectives and worst case you get to say hi and pass along appropriate referrals or recommendations in the future.
The sheer act of you reaching out will get them to respond in like kind and they will in almost every case entertain the idea of having a phone call. Smart people are always open to listening to new ideas and opportunities.
Remember to always begin with personal interest and then how you can help them…listen and learn, then share your ideas and opportunities, finally suggest very specific action steps and the next movement towards your aligned idea.
Don’t force, not everyone will work out, but you will unearth money and immediate opportunities. Have an open mind, be creative, new businesses have been formed in days like this.
I personally practice this method every 90 days beginning again, new list, new people, some times the same ones make it often, new opportunities, and start over – this being just one initiative I take every quarter to look for big breakthroughs and new directions worth pursuing.
I have given you gold here…and best of all, you own the mine to go find it in…and it’s unlimited. Remember the more action and movement the more momentum and that means the more money!!!
At the end of the day, nothing is more powerful than the human connection.
Now go forth and profit…create a river of money flowing that never stops.
Category : Blog
