Some signs to help you to the top!

This post is designed to help you advance further, faster – by helping you spot some warning signs, before they become a major issue.  You know what’s great about this?  When you spot a warning sign and act on it correctly, it is transformed from a warning sign, to a highly positive leap forward in your business!

Warning signs and flashing lights

I was prompted to write this post, after a conversation with a friend, who had been ignoring a warning light in his car.  He checked the handbook and thought that as it seemed like a very minor fault, that he would leave it “for a while.”  Fast forward 3 months and his car was broken down with a major engine problem!  Apparently, has he heeded the warning light, he would have been able to avoid all this, with a small fix and for a very small fee.

The problem with the warning signs in business, is that they don’t come with flashing lights, like those in our cars.  This means a lot of people miss them while they are still tiny problems – Then, like the car story above, they end up with a much bigger, costlier challenge on their hands.

From a marketing perspective, here are some early(ish) warning signs that are easy to miss:

• Too large a percentage of your income is from too small a percentage of your customer base.
• Too few enquiries from your direct marketing.
• Your turnover or revenue figure has been static for more than 3 quarters or it has started contracting.
• Not enough targeted people visiting your website or blog – and little sign of an improvement.
• Your attrition rate is high.  Your attrition rate, is the rate at which you lose clients or repeat customers.
• Not enough sales or marketing enquiries from your website or blog.
• Too few referrals generally – But ESPECIALLY if you are not getting regular referrals from existing customers.
• A low conversion rate, when dealing with sales leads.

All of the challenges listed above are far easier to resolve, the quicker you take action.  If you recognise one or more of those challenges in your business right now, don’t panic!  With the right help, all of them are relatively easy to resolve.

I suggest three possible courses of action – depending on your resources:

1. Speak with a marketing professional.  Pick someone you trust or if you don’t already know someone, ask a friend or business contact who THEY use for marketing.  Most marketing professionals will be able to tell you very quickly if they can help and what’s likely to be involved in time and fees.
2. If you have a lot of marketing knowledge yourself, but have not been using it for whatever reason, get into action!  List the challenges in order of importance and put a strategy together to turn it around.  The key thing here is to get started.
3. If you don’t have the resources to pay for professional help and you are not an experienced marketer either, check out this post, which lists lots of free information and over 140 marketing ideas and answers.  Also, use the search box on the right hand side of this post and search for other marketing tips and advice.  There are hundreds of pages of answers here and thousands of ideas – all free.

Bottom line: Whatever your current marketing challenges are, they can be 100% resolved with the right action.  You can achieve amazing results and see the kind of rewards that make all your hard work worth while – so long as you do the right things, correctly.

Go for it

As we approach the second half of the year, this is a GREAT time to renew your focus and start kicking the butt of your sales targets for 2010.  Go for it!

Let’s work together and grow your business. To find out more click here!