Business Boosters to Crush This Economy – Part II

I was at a meeting put on by marketing genius Bill Glazer. He has 25,000 customers that pay him every month ranging from $40 – $1000 (he also has some high end clients too). Do the math – he knows what the heck he’s doing. Bill shared 7 Business Boosters That ANY Business Can Do To Survive And Thrive In This Recession. Here they are…

Booster #1 – Get Out of The Commodity Business!!!

When the going gets tough, the natural inclination for many is to drop their prices. Afterall, when you drop prices you become more attractive and can compete better right? Problem is, your competition does the same and then at what point does it stop? Sure you win a job or 2 initially but then you hit a point where you are barely profitable. Your workload may stay the same but your profits drop significantly. Unable to keep margins up you have to resort to cost cutting and possibly letting go of people and getting back in the trenches yourself. Sure this may seem glamorous for a brief moment, but this gets old fast doesn’t it?

So what is the cure?

Get away from competing on price. Develop a list of why you are inarguably the BEST choice and ONLY choice. This way you completely separate yourself from your competition. One of the first things I do with my clients is to get them into a “category of one”. Where they are the ONLY choice for their prospects. The more you understand your market, the compeittion and what frustrates your propects and what their secret desires are, the easier it is to do this. In many cases you can actually increase your prices with no loss in top or bottom line.

Booster #2 – Constantly Build Your Herd

Little known fact… “Your Database is Your #1 Asset”.

I was recently talking with a friend that said he was thinking about buying an existing business. It would cost him 7 figures to buy this business. They have been around for over 20 years but have no customer list and no database. Sure they have a respected name but that’s it. No marketing system, no list, no database. He said he thought he could do much better than investing so much. I agree. For much less than that you can develop a sizable list and establish a powerful presence in the market.

So, back to your list… focus your efforts on developing and growing it. With a big list, you can make the initial sale and then come back around and sell them many other products or services later. Don’t have any you say? Put your thinking cap on and apply some creativity. It cost 7x as much to get a new prospect to buy from you vs. an existing client or customer.

And when you are looking at building your list, put an Iron Clad System in place for Customer Data Collection. Apply this to online data collection using squeeze pages. Apply this to offline data collection by training your staff to gather information on every customer. Next time you go to a restaurant, see if they collect your contact info or email address. Odds are they don’t. Do you think if they did and sent you great offers from time to time you would be more likely to come back more often? Think about how you can apply this to your business.

Booster #3 – 3 Step Survey Process

There is nothing so powerful to uncover your prospects and customers needs better than a survey. Who doesn’t like to voice their opinion about a topic they are interested in?

Here’s how you do it. It’s an easy 3 Step Process:

1. Ask 1-10 multiple choice questions. There are free online tools you can use like Survey Monkey and Survey Gizmo. Offer a gift or a premium for answering the questions. Note, for an existing database, you can get a great response with no premium. If you have no list or weak response, bribe them with a premium or a gift. This works really well. Then promise to report back results.
2. Report the results – people have more confidence in what other people want instead of what they want. That is a powerful statement. Go back and read it again. People want to know what others are interested in and will change their opinion and purchasing behaviour based on what others want.
3. Sell them the thing. Sell them what the biggest unmet needs are.

Here’s a note about surveys, when analyzing the results, don’t always look for the most popular answer. Look for the answers to where the most pain and frustrations are. This is where you can create even higher profits from even more loyal clients.

That’s enough for this week. Look for Business Boosters #4-7 coming soon!

Now go put one of these into play.

Blessings
Chris

P.S. If you don’t want to miss Business Boosters #4-7, you need to subscribe to my newsletter. To do this simply fill out the form to the right of this page to get your free report today. You will get marketing secrets guaranteed to make a difference in your business. As a special bonus, you will also get a Free E-book called “The 12 Biggest Mistakes Most Businesses Make in Their Sales, Marketing and Advertising and How You Can Avoid Each One”. I wonder how many you are making?