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Any small business owner who wants to grow their business and eventually free themselves up from the day to day grind is going to have to solve a few things.
You’re going to have to learn how to market your products and services effectively. I’m differentiating marketing from sales as the activities and efforts that draw interested, qualified buyers to ask about your product or service. Without marketing…the process of getting people to come to you, you have a major uphill battle when it comes to growing your business with strictly outbound sales efforts.
You also have to figure out how to systematize and automate all the major components of your business. Ultimately it needs to run like a machine…you build the framework and all the components, set up the systems that other people can run (or are automated) and it continues to generate money (and grow) even without your daily input! It’s the only way to scale your business.
One step in this direction is the combination of these two things – Marketing Automation…building a marketing machine…a system and automation that will help your marketing run (mostly) on it’s own.
Tornados are scary…you may go years without being anywhere near one…but if you do happen to get caught in one I can only imagine how helpless you’d feel. The devastation caused by the tornado in Joplin is hard to imagine…I’m sure you’ve seen many of the pictures.
My thoughts and prayers go out to the people of Joplin Missouri – I don’t know of anyone personally there, but I grew up only an hour or two from there and it seems awfully close to home.
•To support The Salvation Army Disaster Relief Efforts, people can text the word “JOPLIN” to 80888 for an automatic $10 donation; by calling 1-800-Sal-Army (1-800-725-2769) or by going to www.salvationarmy.us. Donations may be mailed to The Salvation Army, 3637 Broadway, Kansas City, MO 64111.
•To support the American Red Cross Disaster Relief, people can text the word “REDCROSS” to 90999 to make a $10 donation; by calling 1-800-Red-Cross (1-800-733-2767). Donations may be mailed to the Greater Kansas City Chapter, 211 W. Armour Blvd., Kansas City, MO 64114.
Finally – here’s a really intense video that was taken during actual tornado. It’s primarily just audio, but you can really feel the fear and intensity that people were going through.
I bet you’re really good at what you do. You add a lot of value to the right kind of customers…probably way more value than you charge for (if you’re like most business owners I know). You know your industry, your product and service inside and out. In fact you could go into painful detail on how the work gets done…which actually might be part of the problem!
Which would you rather hear – a litany of facts and figures, features and benefits…or an engaging story that illustrates a problem, an approach and a solution (a happy ending!)? It sounds like a pretty obvious choice, but look around at how most businesses present themselves from a marketing perspective. The ones who don’t know any better talk way too much about themselves and about all the cool features they offer. The smarter ones focus on benefits and outcomes, but even that can be pretty dry and unremarkable over time.
Maybe it’s time to think about telling some stories about your clients.
Customer service is critical to long term success…everyone says so, which is why you have great customer service – right?
Think about it though…what company doesn’t think they don’t have good customer service? Go into any establishment and there’s at least one sign in every business promoting customer service, even if it is only a sign the says “Customer Service”. I am sure the owners of the businesses send out at memos, hold a meeting, or maybe even dedicated an entire section in their employee manual to “Customer Service”. If you ask anyone if customer service is a priority – they’re going to tell you that it is.
Clearly Customer Service is important…but what is it really?
If you do much networking, then you’ll quickly realize that everyone starts to blend in…which does absolutely nothing for you. Garet King – a branch manager at CoreFirst Bank here in Kansas City shared the following article with me that does a great job of addressing this situation – take it away Garet:
If you pay attention to the conversations you are a part of and that happen around you, you will notice that we are all saying the same things. We talk to people on a daily basis. Collectively, we talk to a lot of people on a daily basis and most of these conversations happen in the same way. These dialogues may be about the weather or how the kids are doing. Conversations may drift towards a golf game or other sporting events. Comments are made about weekend plans or future vacations. On fewer occasions, people will open up about their life. Regardless, almost all of these conversations start the same way. “What’s new?”
“What’s new,” is an opportunity to talk about anything that you are working on. Whether this person is an advocate or acquaintance, they are opening the door and most of us waste the opportunity. The typical responses are, “same old, same old,” or “just work.” If you are having a challenging day, “same crap, different day,” might come out of your mouth or, “not much,” if you’re feeling indifferent. Regardless, these answers are a waste of a golden opportunity to create another connection.
Any small business owner who wants to grow their business and eventually free themselves up from the day to day grind is going to have to solve a few things.
