Jim's Marketing Blog

If you are a proactive business owner and you want to improve your sales or attract more high quality clients, this post is for you.

Jennifer, not her real name, emailed me yesterday to book a one-to-one “pick my brain” session with me. [If you read my work via email, you won’t know what that service is – read this.]

Jennifer’s business isn’t attracting enough clients and she doesn’t know what to do. Here’s an excerpt from her email:

“In the past I managed to get by thanks to client recommendations but these are unpredictable in both quality and regularity.” She went on, “[…] I’m tired of waiting for an enquiry to come in but I don’t know what to do.”

This is an extremely common challenge for service providers, so I’d like to share a few thoughts with you, which may help.

Acknowledge the urgency of your situation

The first step in resolving a challenge like this, is to acknowledge the urgency of the situation. That’s exactly what Jennifer has done. A challenge like this doesn’t magically vanish. It needs to be addressed and resolved. Doing more of the same won’t work.

Take intelligent action

The next step is to decide to take intelligent action. Knowing your business isn’t growing the way you want it to is very different from knowing you need to do something.

Many business owners put off taking action for months or years, hoping that things will just get better. I get emails daily from business owners worldwide, who are now almost broke. Unlike Jennifer, they waited too long to do something. Jennifer has a good business and booked a marketing session with me, before her challenge became a problem.

The lesson here is clear. Don’t delay. Once you acknowledge your business needs to improve, do something about it.

[Note: Intelligent action means doing exactly what you need to do, to get the results you want — rather than guessing and dabbling.]

What next?

My marketing business is 20 years old and in that time, I have spoken with thousands of business owners. I’ve found that they respond very differently when faced with the kind of challenge Jennifer has.

Sadly, most will wait until they are forced to do something because of the severity of their situation. They react when they have a problem, rather than act when they only have a challenge to deal with. That’s an extremely risky approach.

Others, like Jennifer, are proactive. They take intelligent action before things get critical and learn exactly what they need to do.

If you’re a proactive business owner and you would like a one-to-one marketing session with me, read this. It includes everything you need to know, including the fee.

Today, I’d like to show you how to massively improve your sales results or attract more clients, with a simple and powerful improvement to your marketing.

Your prospective clients

Let’s start by taking a look at your prospective clients. You see, most small business owners think that everyone with a need for their service is a prospective client. That’s a mistake. An expensive mistake too.

Your prospective client is someone who needs what you offer… PLUS… whose world-view is already aligned with the value you provide.

For example

Apple make billions marketing well-designed products to fashion-conscious people who have money to spend. Apple don’t invest a dime marketing to the coupon crowd. Think about that for a moment.

That kind of clarity allows Apple [and every other professionally marketed business] to create massively more effective marketing. It allows them to talk directly to their prospective customers.

Getting focused

It takes too much time and costs too much money, to change a person’s world-view. So, focus your marketing exclusively on those, who already value whatever your service or product represents.

Shun those who don’t “get it”. It looks like this:

• If you’re a high quality or specialist provider, focus on the quality crowd. The bargain basement crowd will always find you too expensive.
• If you’re a fitness service provider, focus on those who want to get fit. Those who are out of shape, who have no interest in getting fit, will ignore your marketing.
• If you’re a designer of high quality websites, focus on people who already have reasonably nice websites. Those who run a business behind an unprofessional piece of crap, won’t pay for a wonderful, professionally designed website.
• If you’re a marketing provider, focus on those who know they need expert marketing help. Business owners who dabble with their marketing think they can’t afford you… regardless of how much money they have.

Once you get specific about your prospective clients or customers, you can get equally as specific with your marketing. This allows you to market with clarity.

Just imagine how much more successful your marketing becomes, when you’re putting a clear, compelling marketing message, in front of the right people!

In short: Know your prospective client or customer. Market to them. Shun the rest. You will go broke [and possibly a little crazy], trying to convince the wrong people to buy from you.

I’d like to share something with you today, which you really need to know about. It’s that important. If you have noticed a sudden or gradual drop in business, this could well be what’s caused it.

It starts with understanding a basic truth of business: When you begin to find it harder to attract new clients or your sales numbers are down, there’s always a reason. Everything in business happens for a reason. As scientists say, every effect has a cause. The challenge is identifying the cause.

Here’s one major reason why your business may be struggling, along with exactly what you need to do about it.

Where did all our sales and inquiries go?

Remember yesterday, how I mentioned a new client I’ve just started to work with? Well, her competitors will soon see a significant drop in the number of high quality clients they attract.

They will wonder what’s happening; totally unaware that my client has just hired someone with an international reputation for his marketing results. Her competitors are unable to market against me. My client will win. And she will win big. The last client I worked with in her profession saw an increase of over 370% in revenues and a higher increase in profits.

Which is it to be?

Every business owner faces the same decision. I think the answer is blindingly obvious, yet many business owners find it so hard that they completely avoid it.

The decision is:

1. Do you become the victim that’s losing business daily to better marketed competitors?
2. Alternatively, do you become the business that thrives, because you invested in marketing that your competitors can’t possibly compete against?

[Note – Failing to answer that question is exactly the same as choosing option 1.]

Choose wisely.