What is stopping you?

This week it is quick and to the point.

What is stopping you from increasing your business?

Is it a product problem? Do you need to make changes with what you are offering your customers?

Is it a people problem? Look at your staff and those around you. Can they get you where you want to go. A few years ago I made two additions to my sales team. When they came on board I became an immediately better manager - because I had a better staff. You might love them. But can they get you where you want to go?

Is it a you problem? Are you working hard enough as an owner or manager to make it happen? Are you relying enough on your team or are you trying to do it all yourself?

Is it an advertising problem? If you are in good shape with the above questions, you probably need more people to know about your business.

Spend some time this week thinking about these questions. Ask your key personnel for help. find the answers and you are well on your way to increasing your revenues and hitting your goals.

Sometimes you just have to ask?

Last week, I was involved with a sales meeting, where we asked our team a series of questions about their jobs. It was enjoyable, informative, and provided us some opportunities.

It also showed me how I was in the way of the team. I walked away with a game plan to make sure I can remove some of the stumbling blocks in the teams way. (These were real stumbling blocks not just imagined on the teams part)

Is your business putting stumbling blocks in your customers way? Some examples could be, but are not limited to:

1. Expecting the working people to shop your store during 8a - 5p, Monday through Friday. That is a problem and one of the reasons the box stores do so much business.

2. Not having a web presence people can use to truly shop with your store. Complaining about or ignoring on-line shopping are not good strategies, getting into the game is.

3. Not finding out the big boys weak spots and attacking those spots. Goliath had a weak spot and our guy David found it, attacked it, and won.

4. Listening to the wrong people is a stumbling block. How do you know who to listen to? -- they are usually the one telling you the things you don't want to hear.

How do you find out? Follow my lead and ask. You will be surprised what you find.

If you ain't growing your dying!

In it's simplest form, marketing your business is about telling your business story.

So, how are you and your team improving your story? What did you do last week that helped you improve? The ole "If you ain't growing you're dying" is not proper English, but it is true. More importantly, it is something that we have to handle for ourselves, we have to have our own self improvement program. I beleive that it starts at the top.

Managers: Are you reading books? Are you putting that knowledge into action? Are you allowing the people who answer to you to teach you? The job of manager is not to "be in charge" or have the I the manager syndrome, it is to orchestrate. And when you can get everyone on the same page playing to their strength you can make beautiful noise.

Employees: How are you improving every day? Whether you have a manager that supports this or not, it is vital that you are working everyday to get better. If you are a sales person, you will find that your clients will get better when you get better.

So what does this have to do with marketing? Marketing is telling the businesses story. When the story is created by people who are hungry to learn and implement the learning, the story is better and better stories make for better marketing. Go find a book and read it.

Do you customers know what you do?

Most people know the old saying about giving a speech, tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them. In radio, we try to promote what we are going to do, then do it, then tell them what we did. My boss says it best, if you don't tooteth your own horn, no one will tooteth it for you.

What about you? Are you tooting your own horn? I see a number of businesses who are doing some incrediby nice things for their customers and not getting the credit. Now, I understand that most of us were taught to be nice and not brag about things. This is dangerous in business, here's why.

1. What is given this year is expected next year.
2. If you are doing more than your competition and you don't tell your customer, they will never know unless they start doing business with your competition.
3. You are training your customer to expect more and more freebies.

We have a vendor who usually twice a quarter, would out of the blue send us some material. His email would say "here are some freebies". I sent him an email and told him that I appreciated that very much -- but I would suggest that he cahnge his wording. Instead of freebies -- say something like....For having a great credit history with our company, we wanted to provide you a good customer bonus.
This reinforces good habits and does not cheapen his product. So now if I call up and say, I need some more freebies, he can easily say, that was becuase you paid your bill x amount of months in a row on time, etc.

Make sure that your customers understand what you are doing for them and the value of your gift. Give them a specific reason why you are doing it.

Marketing is an ongoing job. You are either getting new customers or reinforcing the customers you have. You have to train customers and like anything else, it is important to start early.