Small Business Marketing from Charlie Cook

Have you ever passed by a bakery display case without feeling the urge to buy at least one cookie, dessert or cinnamon bun? Have you ever taken a child into a candy store and not had them ask to buy at least one of their favorite sweets?

The smell of fresh baked goods and the memory of the taste of a candy bar makes us want to buy more. The owners of bakeries and candy stores don’t have to spend a lot of time extolling the merits of their goods or the length of time they’ve been in business; they can concentrate on helping us satisfy our appetites.

Wouldn’t you like to be in a similar situation with your business marketing? How would you like to have prospects who were so eager to buy that you didn’t have to sell, but could focus instead on taking more orders?

If you are like most small business owners you’d like to increase your sales but you don’t enjoy selling. You don’t want to be seen as a pushy person, whether it is on the phone, in person or in your small business marketing materials. The problem is that you don’t sell baked goods or candy instead you may sell accounting, design, engineering, or informational products and services.

What can you do to increase your the success of your sales & small business marketing and spend less time selling?

Learn how to help prospects sell themselves on your products and services and you’ll make more money >>

Stop Selling
Stop worrying about closing the sale. Focus instead on understanding what your prospect wants, and open the door to a mutually profitable relationship. When a prospect thinks that all you care about is getting their money, they’ll view the relationship negatively and this can easily kill the sale.

Start Helping
Once a prospect is at your web site or on the phone with you, they’ve demonstrated an interest in finding a solution to one of their problems or concerns. Take the next step and demonstrate your interest in them. Use your conversation or your site to ask them questions that will identify what they want to accomplish and how you can help them.

Help them clarify the problem they are trying to solve. Even our prosperous bakery owner has questions to ask. Is the hungry customer looking for bread for lunch, or a dessert for a celebration. How many people are they feeding? Once you have all the details, you confirm it by repeating the information back to them. “You are planning a party for five couples and want a chocolate cake with mocha frosting. Is that right?”

When your customer says yes, you’ve got your order. You just used a series of questions to get your prospect to tell you what they wanted. You didn’t have to sell anything: they sold themselves. You helped them get what they wanted. Isn’t that what you’d prefer to be doing?

Obviously, the questions you use to “sell” are going to be unique to the products and services you provide. Remember that when people come to you, they are hungry for a solution. The questions you ask can help them define exactly what they need and, more importantly, what they want. Then you can take their order.

Learn how to use your web site and your internet marketing to help prospects sell themselves >>

Does this approach apply to selling less tangible and less immediately satisfying services and products?

Imagine you’re a financial advisor and you’re having an initial conversation with a prospect. You could launch into an explanation of your services and the seven ways you help clients grow assets using a strategic mix of stocks, bonds, currency and commodities. If you did this you’d be likely to lose the sale. Or you could ask them a couple of questions to identify what they want.

Most people have a common set of concerns related to managing their assets. Use these to formulate your questions. Ask them:

•  Do they have a strategy for growing your assets?
•  What is it?
•  What have the results been over the last five years?
•  How risky or safe do they feel their strategy is?
•  Are they happy with the return of your portfolio?
•  Do they want to know how to get better returns without additional risk?

You could use a similar set of questions to ask them about their taxes, investments, and whether their individual financial strategies complement or conflict with each other.

Whether you sell cakes and cookies or services and informational products, you can use questions to move your prospects to become clients and customers. Ask the right questions and you’ll establish your credibility while you help your prospects clarify what they need and help them determine the value of your products and services.

Focus on helping instead of selling and your prospects will thank you by increasing your sales.

Have you ever found a new strategy or idea that really boosts your performance – a true breakthrough?

Last January after skiing for over 40 years, I decided it was time for a tune up. Even with occasional lessons and a conscious effort to improve, I just wasn’t getting any better. I was working too hard and falling too often on the challenging terrain that I enjoy skiing with my son and my friends.

Ever find yourself working to hard and not getting the results you want?

I signed up for two days of ski coaching with master skier John Clendenin who has reduced the complexities of skiing to four movements. Despite having skied for decades, over the years I had developed numerous bad habits. The crux of it was I wasn’t using the skis the right way to get where I wanted to go.

Is your small business marketing stuck in a rut or has it become cumbersome, a result of layering on ideas over the years? Want to learn how to use your small business strategic marketing to take your business where you want it to go?

Working with John and his staff, we focused on mastering the four fundamental movements that enable skiers to turn with ease. The results of Clendenin’s coaching were astounding. After just two days my skiing had jumped several levels. The friends I was with, whose skills ranged from intermediate to expert, experienced the same leap in performance. With the benefit of additional practice, I now can ski with much less effort and manage far more difficult terrain than I ever imagined I could handle.

We all have to be reminded again and again: to improve perf0rmance, you need to get the basics right. Even if you’ve been at it for years the key is knowing how to eliminate what’s holding you back and where to focus your efforts.

Create a breakthrough with your small business marketing >>

Use your web site to create a breakthrough in sales for your business with an internet marketing strategy >>

Are you getting the results you want from your marketing strategy?

Want a marketing strategy and plan that won’t hold you back? Do you want to learn the marketing principles that work for small business and that work on the Internet?

The first three are:
1. Focus all your marketing on client problems to Get Attention.

2. Position your services by giving away ideas your prospects can use.

3. Stay in touch with your prospects and clients to help them remember you when they need your products and services.

What happens when you apply these fundamental small business marketing principles?

According to one client I worked with, “No matter how good of a marketer you might be, having outside assistance in formulating business building strategies truly was key to my success.” For another client, focusing her marketing on the problems she solves was the key. now her advertising leads with a focus on client’s concerns and attracts many more clients.

My 18 year old son still skis better than I do but now I can ski where I want with ease (mostly in the woods dodging trees) and I’m having a lot more fun. I made a breakthrough in my performance by learning and applying a handful of core techniques. You can do the same with your marketing.

Learn and apply the marketing strategies that work for small business owners and you’ll find yourself taking your business where you want to go and having a lot for more too.

Three weeks ago Mary Ann, a real estate broker in Iowa emailed me. After 27 years in the business, she wasn’t getting as many new clients or selling as many homes as she wanted. Her ads, mailings and web site weren’t attracting enough new listings or prospects. Mary Ann wanted to know if I could provide her with a foolproof means of generating new business.

Could I guarantee that Mary Ann would get more clients using my recommendations? What is the key to effective marketing?

To improve your marketing learn what works and how to spend your time.

Successful marketing involves understanding and applying these five fundamental marketing principles:

1. Start with the Client
No matter how long you’ve been in business or how sophisticated the processes you use, clients’ primary concern is what you can do for them. Make this the focus of all your marketing communications.

2. Target Your Market
Save yourself a lot of time and money simply by focusing your marketing. Pinpoint your marketing efforts on your ideal clients to be more successful.

3. Demonstrate Value
Show people how you can help them or how well your products work and they’ll become believers. Let them sample your expertise or products.

4. Grow Your Network
If you want more clients, you need more qualified prospects. Generate new leads each week and you’ll sell more.

5. Build Relationships
People buy from people they know. Stay in touch on a regular basis, share helpful ideas, and you’ll develop positive relationships with your prospects and clients.

No marketing system by itself is completely foolproof. These Insider Secrets to Attracting More & Better Customers won’t help you be successful without one essential ingredient that only you can provide. Mary Ann had it. She wanted to improve. She was motivated to do better. She just needed to know how.

Discover how easy it is to attract many more clients and be more successful >>

Just after Mary Ann wrote me, she purchased “The Insider Secrets to Attracting More & Better Customers” manual online. She started reading it most nights before bed and making notes in the margins and on the back of pages as it prompted her thinking. Within two weeks Mary had applied ideas from the manual to her mailings and advertisements.

The result? Mary Ann told me recently her marketing is more focused and she is getting more calls and new clients.

If you have the motivation, you too can improve your marketing by applying the “Insider Secrets to Attracting More & Better Customers“. It’s not foolproof, but if you understand and apply the Insider Secrets to Attracting More & Better Customers, like Mary Ann, you’ll have more clients calling you.

You want to improve your marketing strategy, attract more clients and grow your business, but don’t have the time to make these things happen. Every month or so I get a call from Carl who wants to learn how to improve his marketing. He knows he could do better, but between client meetings, phone calls, and managing his business, Carl just can’t find the time to focus on improving his marketing strategy.

Sound familiar?

Small business owners have a plethora of management and administrative tasks including product development. Who has time to tune up their small business marketing?

If you want your business to run like a fine machine, start treating it like one. Handle your time and your marketing the same way you’d treat a Mercedes. Don’t just give it gas and oil, give it a regular tune up. Here’s how.

WRITE DOWN YOUR GOALS
What are your personal and business goals? Owning a fancy car? Selling a successful business you started? Making three hundred thousand dollars a year? Donating a fortune to your favorite charity? Write them down.

For each goal you write down, identify the relevant subset of goals. If you want to improve your marketing, write down annual small business marketing goals and then each week and each day write down the specific goals you need to achieve in order to reach your larger goals.

If you want to reach your goals, you need to have them. Research shows that writing them increases the likelihood that you’ll remember them and achieve them.

STOP WASTING TIME
If your car was limping along on only a couple of cylinders, you’d take it to an auto mechanic and get it fixed. If you’re not attracting as many clients as you’d like, get expert advice. Don’t waste your time and money using marketing strategies and tactics that only bring in a trickle of clients.

If you want your marketing to run as well as a new Mercedes, invest in it, tune it up and do the required maintenance. It will get you where want to go in less time.

Discover how to tune up your small business marketing >>

PRIORITIZE YOUR TIME
Spend your business marketing time on the tasks that generate results. Generally, 20% of the marketing tasks that you do generates 80% of your new business. Each week I receive hundreds of emails and dozens of requests for assistance. If I responded to each one I’d be on the phone all day. By using a qualifying process, I’m able to make fewer calls and get more clients in less time.

Which small business marketing tasks should you spend the least amount of time working on?

SET ASIDE TIME FOR KEY MARKETING TASKS
My weekly newsletter is a vital part of my marketing. Writing requires discipline and hard work. It would be easy to come in to the office and spend my day answering phone calls, or responding to emails, instead of writing my weekly ezine. If I didn’t set aside each Wednesday morning to put the first draft together, it wouldn’t get done and my business wouldn’t grow.

Do you have a marketing strategy you are following?

Which are the most important marketing tasks you should be spending your time on?

Of course the most important task to schedule is the time to plan your week and your day. Turn off the computer and your phone for fifteen minutes to half an hour at the end of each day and take the time to plan your marketing goals and tasks for the next day. When I leave the office with a clear plan for the next day in mind, I can use my evening bike ride to come up with new marketing ideas to help me achieve my daily objectives.

When do you set your marketing goals and tasks for the week and the day?

Focus your marketing on the tasks that generate new clients and avoid wasting time on unproductive efforts and you’ll find you have more time. Use your new-found time to get even more clients, go home early, get some exercise, spend more time with your family and friends or start work on your next business.

Building a small business that grows steadily in size and profits is like building your dream house. First, you identify what kind of home you want, then you and your architect plan and create blueprints for your house, then you’d build it, move in and enjoy it.

Now imagine that you didn’t have the time to plan your home but went ahead and hired a builder to get started. How would he know what to build? Without a plan, the result would be unlikely to meet your needs and you’d have wasted a lot of time and money.

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