It’s the plight of many a business, sales are steady, things seem good but over time there is a case of the disappearing profits …

It’s enough to drive you nuts. Why does a company that is going good, keeping its best customers happy and retaining good employees seem to be going slowly under?

Pretty simple actually.

Retaining customers without increasing prices, keeping employees who get pay rises, staying with suppliers even though prices may rise 1 or 2 %.  It all adds up and your profits magically fade into thin air …

So, what can you do about it … ?

Well, there are solutions and to be blunt, one very important solution …

Growth …

In business as in life, you’re either growing or you’re dying. Take a look at your garden. The trees can’t stop growing, or they wither and die …

You have to think of your business in the same light.  Growth or death …

And given that death is probably not a viable option, let’s go for growth …

So, how do you ensure you’re always in growth mode … ?

Before we get to the top nine ways to keep growing, remember that it doesn’t just have to be sales growth, it can be growth in many areas of your business …

• Top Line Revenues Growth – always a favourite, getting more sales and revenues flowing makes cashflow positive and really gets the team fired up.
• Bottom Line Profits Growth – my personal area of passion, getting more dollars in the top doesn’t seem as much fun if there isn’t more left over for the owners.
• Product or Service Lines Growth – often seems harder than it really is …
• Team or Staff Growth – so often new people bring new ideas and new business to handle growth in other areas …
• Geographic Growth – opening new territories again leads to other growth …
• Other Growth – so many other areas that you can open yourself up to …

Whatever the growth focus you have, remember the simple story of the tree, either growth or deterioration.

So, my top 9 strategies for immediate growth in companies I start coaching …

#1 ... Raise Your Prices – Simply put, if you haven’t done it in the last year, you need to.  Most business owners are scared stiff of moving prices, but the reality is, very few customers ever complain or even notice a 10% shift.  The ones that complain are already complaining about your prices.  Just test it on a certain range if you don’t believe me.

#2 ... Add on Sell or Package – You never get to leave McDonalds with the obligatory “would you like fries with that?” Learn from their systems, what can you add on, or how can you package your services and products together to get people buying more every time they do business with you?

#3 ... Debt Collection – I know it’s not really growth, but too many companies have no debt collection system in place.  Make the letters, calls and emails happen on a set schedule so people know to pay on time.

#4 ... Newsletter – Just a simple monthly few quality pages is where it can start and eventually turn into a masterpiece.  People love to know how to buy from you again and again, teach them what’s happening right now so they stay in touch and see you often, even when they are not in your store.

#5 ... Entire Range – You’ll be amazed how many times a business owners hears, “Oh, I didn’t know you did that,” from their customers.  Make sure you have a marketing piece or strategy to keep every customer or potential customer on your database (yes you need a database of every customer) aware of everything you do or sell.

#6 ... Sales Training – Probably the biggest area of growth potential for any company with a salesperson or two.  Doctors, sports stars and almost every other profession needs constant training, so too do salespeople, keep them learning and closing more and more deals.

#7 ... Referrals – Most companies make it so hard to refer people, how can you make it simple?

#8 ... Test and Measure – you cannot manage what you do not measure.  You’ve got to know your numbers, everything from how many new leads you got today down to your break-even numbers.  Learn your numbers and you’ll be far more in control and far more profitable.

#9 ... Follow Up Your Prospects – every time I go shopping, it blows me away how many companies never ask for my details, never call me back, never send me anything.  You think that is too pushy, you’re right, but the “so called” pushy companies are the ones getting the clients.  Follow Up.

No matter what, put growth on your agenda.  Set new goals, sales targets and challenge yourself and your team.  Ask big questions and chances are you’ll get big answers …

This article is reprinted courtesy of My Business magazine, one of the leading business publications in Australia.

As a business owner, I'm always amazed at how many opinions people have about networking.

Opinions that are backed with absolutely no substance, no research and no "bloody"  understanding at all.

You would literally be amazed at how people’s opinions are so polarized by what is such a fundamentally solid business model.  A model now taught in Universities and colleges across the planet.

In fact, if you do your home work, you’ll see that Network Marketing, or Direct Selling or Multi-Level Marketing has taken a massive about face in the last 10 years.

Industry figures show a 91% growth, more than USD$100 billion a year globally and, investors such as Warren Buffet and Richard Branson owning companies that use these marketing methods.

Yet, “so called” consumer advocates, pathetically weak investment advisors and every day people who have literally no experience, have done no research and have no grounds to be even thinking of making comment are doing you a disservice by possibly turning you away from a model that has proven to help millions create extra income.

As Jim Rohn puts it so well, you go to work during the day to pay the bills and at night to build your wealth.  Then you ask why Robert Kiyosaki calls it the “perfect business” and even wrote a whole book about it titled, “The Business for People who like Helping People.”

Then we go to noted economist Paul Zane Pilzer who has two books on the subject and you start to see that those who bother to educate themselves find that this industry is huge and full of amazing growth companies.

Here’s how it really works …

You’re a new company and you don’t have the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars needed to advertise, stock and sell your products through retail channels.  In reality, just the advertising budget alone kills most companies. Look at Big Kev.

So, the next best form of marketing is word of mouth.  And, if you want word of mouth to work, you have to have both a great product and the ability to pay the people who spread the most word.

That my friends, in simplest terms, is word of mouth or network marketing.

You pay people to spread the word.  Now, many will call it pyramid marketing.  Again, do your research, this is just not factual.  In a pyramid, you buy directly from the person above you who marks up the product (if there is one) and then you have to mark it up to the next person.  For many good reasons it’s illegal.

On the flip side, in Network Marketing, everyone buys directly from the main company, and everyone pays the same price.  Then, the company rewards those that spread the most word with the most compensation.

And, why do people get so upset and emotional over this … ?

Simple, it’s like any other business, if you do nothing you get nothing.  If you do a lot, you get a lot.  Some people join, do very little and wonder why it didn’t work for them.  They then, to justify their experience, state that networking doesn’t work.  It couldn’t possibly have been them.

Well, the same could be said for going into your own business, the same for investing in the stock market, or property for that matter.  Let’s be real, in life if you do nothing, you get nothing, if you do a lot, you get a lot …

If it seems I’m mad, you better believe it. If someone needs to stand up and be an advocate for this industry then let it be me. I am sick and tired of the Australian tall poppy rubbish. It has got to stop.

This industry has the ability to in a fairly short space of years help the average person create an extra $1,000 a month for a very small investment of money and a reasonable investment of time.  Something I’d love to see the people who knock it show you how to do.  All I want you to do, it do the research, don’t let these morons impress you with their attacks, let the real information speak for itself.

Go to www.networkingtimes.com and read as much as you can, get some books, watch some of the DVD’s.

Whatever you do, if you are in networking or thinking about getting in, listen to people who have done it, look to people who have achieved and then, judge for yourself the difference between informed and ignorant.

This article is reprinted courtesy of My Business magazine, one of the leading business publications in Australia.

Mention marketing to the average business owner and they think mainly of advertising, however there are far more cost effective, far more profitable and much easier ways to get yourself new customers …

But first, we need to understand a simple idea about what business really should be focused on, and that’s profitable customers …

Let me explain.

When you “buy” a new customer with any form of advertising or marketing it costs money.  Simple example, if you ran an advertisement for say $2,000 and got 100 calls and 20 sales then you spent $100 per new customer.

That number is your “acquisition cost” or “cost per sale.”  Essentially it’s how much it costs you to buy a new customer.  Take that one step further and you got 100 people who called or 100 leads so your “cost per lead” was ($2,000/100) $20.

So, if you don’t already know these numbers you need to go and work them out.  If you get a lot of business by word of mouth or passing traffic you still have to count them as well.

If we follow this example and pretend it was a restaurant, we can presume each person coming in spent only $100 on dinner.  How much money did you make from each customer?  That’s right, you lost money, It cost you $100 to get them there, $30 for food and drinks to serve them, $30 for staff and $10 for overheads, so all up $170 out for $100 in …

In other words, all 20 of these new customers were on average a loss.

So, there are four ways we can turn them into a profitable customer right up front.

1. We can work on writing better advertisements. Create a better headline, a better offer and make sure we only advertise in media that makes sure we are getting to our target audience. From there we should be able to get a much better response, many of my clients we’ve doubled and tripled advertising responses with just a few simple changes. So, let’s look at the numbers if we doubled the responses, and you can fairly easily do this. Now we get 200 callers and your cost per lead goes down to just $10 each …  That’s a great start and assuming the other numbers stays the same, we are down to just $50 cost per sale and thus $120 out for $100 in.  Still more work to do, but we are on track …
2. Next we work on getting more of the callers to come in and buy.  Boosting your conversion rate is often as simple as measuring it and as complex as creating scripts for your salespeople or receptionists to follow.  So, what if instead of 1 in every 5 (20 out of 100) coming in we could get 2 from 5 and really make sure the marketing and advertising dollar goes further. So, we are now getting 200 callers and instead of just 1 in 5 we get 2 people to come in and buy. That means we are up to 80 people booking in and buying from you. Your acquisition cost or, cost per sale is now down massively. Your $2,000 advert now gets you 80 buyers at just $25 each.  So when we do the math, our marketing is starting to make a profit on ever new customer, just $95 out for $100 in. Great work …
3. Next we need to get them spending more every time they buy from us. Instead of $100 each time, how can we work on raising sales, suggesting other items, a better wine list etc.  all these ideas you can sit down now and work on. What else can people buy,  Think of it like one of my clients, a pharmacist who offered ever single person who bought from him a bag of those wonderful chemist only jelly Beans. He ended up selling hundreds of packs a week, just by asking.
4. Finally, we need to get people back.  Collect their details, send them a monthly newsletter, special offers, even a simple thank-you card and invite them back as often as you can …

No matter what you do, remember you are buying customers and it’s getting more expensive every day. Once you’ve got them, keep them for as long as you can. Good service goes only so far, from there it’s up to you and your marketing to invite them back and give them reasons to buy from you again and again.

This article is reprinted courtesy of My Business magazine, one of the leading business publications in Australia.

Let's get to the facts ...

Facebook has more than 58% of all Social Media traffic or as I call it, Interactive Database traffic ... and it's growing just like any business owner would want it to.

Twitter has less than 2% and falling ... that doesn't accurately reflect Twitter's real growth but percentage decline ...

Myspace is dying at a rapid rate of knots ...

WHY ...

Let's go back to E-Bay ...

E-bay showed you how you could make money using it's system ...so we all signed up and used E-bay ...

Facebook allows us to find and create customers, it allows charities to raise funds, as well as allowing friends to communicate and meet each other ...

Twitter helps us grow our business, LinkedIN helps us grow our business ...

The benefits here are why companies hire people to sit all day and work on Facebook, Twitter and so on ...

As for MySpace ... if they could find a way to help business people make money, then I tell you, MySpace would have it's fortunes turn around pretty dang quick ...

Think of it this way ... business is the engine room of your customers, no-one will spend as much money with Myspace and business people, now maybe the music industry is a good  place to do that, but going after iTunes, Rhapsody, Zune and other music sites and systems that are firmly ingrained would be like saying I want to beat uTube when they already have such a massive lead ...

Something new MySpace, something new ...

http://remarkablogger.com/2009/07/23/ultimate-beginners-guide-marketing-business-twitter/

I have enough trouble keeping up with Facebook and the posts of all my friends, let alone actually following the Tweets of more than 1,000 people.

Facebook we generally update once a day or so, Twitter people seem to do abut 6 a day ... no way to actually follow them in real life is there ????

Love to know your thoughts ... Brad Sugars

You know I know many business owners are struggling with deciding to use Social Media, some are even attending workshops and paying many thousands of dollars to learn this ...

Brutally honest and most of you know I am, you can learn Facebook, Blogging, LinkedIN, Twitter and YouTUBE pretty easily with just a few days work and about 20 to 30 minutes a day ...

If you have been wavering, then get to it.  It's a great way to build a reputation for your profession, to build a library of video testimonials, to build relationships with your customers and team, to even reconnect or connect with personal friends ...

Almost every site now has enough training online to teach you how to make the most of it ...

Some tips for those of you online already ...

1.  Keep a balance, about half business and half personal ...

2.  Provoke thoughts and comments ... even use great quotes ...

3.  Reach out and comment or "talk" to people online, make comments as often as possible ...

4. A picture is worth a thousand words ...

All the Best ... Brad

PS.  Be careful to check in often and watch what people say on your page or on your files etc, sometimes people are simply out to use you to sell to your database or worse, rip you off ...