Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

Scaling your way to success

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What’s the best way to scale your business for success? 

Here are my thoughts.

marketing tips, Jim Connolly

But first, I have a very quick question for you.

What do the following all have in common?

  • Kindness.
  • Honesty.
  • Caring.

The answer is that they’re attributes that are valued, extremely highly, by everyone. We are attracted to people who are kind, honest and caring. And given the opportunity, we prefer to do business with people (and brands), who are kind, honest and caring, too.

Now. Hold that thought.

Scaling your way to success

One of the BIG buzzwords right now, is ‘scaling’. Business owners are being told that it’s a cornerstone of commercial success. And that the best way to scale their business, is to automate pretty-much everything.

For example.

  • To let AI chatbots handle first-line customer service enquiries.
  • To have call trees handle incoming phone calls; especially customer service calls.
  • To automate their social media accounts.
  • To create impersonal, email / forum-based, drip-fed versions of their services.

In short: To cut back on the human touch as much as possible, whenever possible and wherever possible.

The huge limitation with that approach is clear. Automation software is…. well… software. And as such, is incapable of the human characteristics of kindness, honesty and caring.

The reason for the growth in automation-based scaling, is that it promises a lot and is extremely simple. It requires almost no effort. And it’s sold by the gurus pushing it, as a magic way to cut your overhead back to the bone; both in time and money.

Here’s the snag with automated scaling

As more business owners embrace automation-based scaling, prices and fees in their industries are being driven down and down. It’s a race to the bottom for those who’ve bought in.

Paradoxically, it’s also a race, which no one actually wants to win. This is why we hear these same business owners complaining about attracting fee-sensitive clients and how hard they find it to stand out and get noticed.

They’re discovering that it’s extremely difficult to build a successful business, with the most fee-sensitive clients, wafer thin profits and a customer base who will drop you in an instant, for a lower priced competitor.

Shrug!

Another way to scale… that actually works

While some business owners embrace the race to the bottom, where the winner is the cheapest provider, others have identified a far more profitable way to scale.

It’s a different race. A race to profitability and success. A race, where the winners attract the best clients, work on the best projects and earn the best fees.

You see, it turns out that kindness, honesty and caring, scale. In fact, they scale to infinity. People tell their friends about remarkable service. So, the word spreads. And they remain loyal to providers, who go the extra mile to look after their needs. So, they keep their clients for way, way longer too.

Yes, the cheapest prospective clients in your marketplace will always shop for the bottom dollar provider.

That’s perfectly fine.

Because every marketplace has a large and massively profitable niche, who eagerly pay a premium fee for a premium quality service. People hate automation and only opt for it as a last resort.

And even the bargain basement crowd seldom remain with an impersonal service for long. They often realize their cost-cutting error, once they’ve tasted the frustration and expense, of suffering with a problem, which can’t be resolved by automation software and requires a person. And there’s no person available.

So my friend, I suggest you scale your business for kindness, honesty and caring. It’s an excellent foundation on which to build a sustainable, valuable business.

Years spent in an industry does NOT equal experience. Here’s why!

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What is experience

Recently, I’ve been mindful of the title of the classic Jimi Hendrix album, Are You Experienced?

That’s because over the past couple of weeks, I’ve encountered lots of examples where people have incorrectly been labelled as experienced or inexperienced.

I think it’s time someone called out the automatic assumption, that experience can be measured by age. Or that experience can be measured by how long someone has been in a particular line of work.

As no one seems to have stepped up, I thought I would.

Time absolutely does not equal experience

In business, experience isn’t magically acquired with each passing day.

That’s to say, if someone spends 5 years repeating the same old mistakes from year 1, learning nothing new, they don’t have 5 year’s worth of experience. They have 1 year of experience, repeated 5 times.

Commercially valuable experience, (the kind this post is about), is gained through the acquisition of relevant knowledge and feedback, which the person then works with, in order to be better informed and make better decisions.

They’ve increased the depth and width of their relevant knowledge.

They’ve increased their commercial value to their marketplace and their business.

They’ve become commercially experienced.

Young and highly experienced

Here’s a great example of someone who’s young, but very experienced. I work regularly with a young guy who’s the CEO of an amazing technology company. He’s eager to learn. He loves to test and measure ideas. And he applies what he has learned in order to improve.

He’s VERY successful.

And despite his age, he’s very experienced.

The exact opposite

Conversely, I hear regularly from business owners, who’ve been in business 20 years longer than my client, but have a fraction of his experience. They have a few years worth of experience, repeated 10 times.

They’re still repeating rookie errors, really basic mistakes, which have lost them and cost them a fortune.

In summery

There are many amazing, relatively young business owners out there. Great providers, who care about what they do and who deliver as promised.

The same is true of many older business owners. (I am one of them, after all).

If we attribute someone’s commercial experience to their age or their time in business, we’re likely to make some lousy decisions. And the same holds true if we erroneously attribute experience to ourselves.

Ignore the masses. You don’t need them!

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directly relevant marketing, targeted marketing, ignore masses

Image: Shutterstock.

Here’s a very straightforward, proven way to build a successful service-based business. I’m going to suggest you ignore the masses.

All right. That’s the intro finished. Let’s go!

Depending on the service you provide and your location, there are thousands, maybe tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of prospective clients.

Except, they’re not really your prospective clients at all.

Whilst you may be able to provide a degree of service to some of them, for the vast majority you won’t be a very good fit. You can’t possibly be. None of us can.

After all.

  • Some will require a boutique style service.
  • Some will want a more local provider.
  • Some will demand the lowest priced provider.
  • Some will insist on the absolute premium, and happily pay the maximum to ensure it.
  • Some will need a provider that speaks a certain language.
  • Some will want a provider with a rare, highly specialist knowledge.
  • Some will require a provider who charges annually in arrears.
  • Some will only hire a provider with offices in multiple locations.
  • Some will want unlimited phone access at no extra charge.

Given you can’t possibly serve the majority of your marketplace, I have a strong recommendation for you. I recommend you adopt a much more focused strategy.

Here’s why. Along with how it works.

Ignore the masses

The temptation is to try and have as wide an appeal as possible, so you get a shot at as many prospective clients as possible. That’s a very common approach, but it’s wrongheaded. And a very expensive mistake.

Why?

Because by trying to be somewhat relevant to everyone, you fail to be directly relevant to anyone… including your actual prospects.

Your actual (genuine) prospects need to see your marketing and immediately identify that you’re talking to them. By weakening that message, you lose them.

They’ll assume you’re not what they’re looking for… when you’re exactly what they’re looking for and exactly what they need.

So my plea to you is simple.

Ignore the masses. They’re not interested. They’ll waste your time. They’ll want ‘this’ when you offer ‘that’. And you’ll go nuts trying to make them happy, let alone keep them happy.

Embrace your ACTUAL prospects instead

Focus on being directly relevant to the prospective clients you can absolutely delight with your services. These are the people who will hire you, pay you the correct rate, recommend you to their friends and stay with you for years and years. These are the clients you can confidently build an amazingly successful business with.

These are the clients you need. And they need you. They really need you!

Now, go and let them know! Focus all your marketing, so that it’s strikingly obvious you’re exactly what they’ve been looking for.

It’s a strategy that improves everything, because your marketing will be speaking directly to the right people. And marketing that speaks directly to people, is marketing that motivates people. And motivated people are the people who hire you.

Marketing tip: How to turn a ‘no’ into a ‘yes’!

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turn rejection into success, loss to success, how to

When a prospective client or customer decides not to hire us or buy from us, how can we turn their no into a yes? And how can we do this, even when they’ve had their objections or concerns fully answered and they still say ‘no’?

Faced with that kind of rejection, there are 3 broad ways we can choose to respond.

  1. We could just leave it. They’ve made their decision. End of story.
  2. We could contact them and tell them why they’re wrong and make sure they know they’ve made a big mistake. If we know the competitor who won, we could also include all the bad stuff we know about the lousy dirt bag.
  3. Or we could contact them and be more genial, helpful and good-natured to them, than if we had won the contract!

Yes, it’s number 3 I’m going to focus on.

Turning a prospect’s no into a yes

Imagine how the following might work, as a massively more effective way to respond to a prospect’s ‘no’.

  • You contact the prospect and thank them for the time they spent with you or with your proposal.
  • You also let them know, up-front, that you respect their decision. This is important. It shows you’re not doubting their ability as a decision maker.
  • You could also add that as a result of their decision, you’re working to improve your proposal or presentation.
  • You then find something generous to say about the competitor who won, so long as it’s true. Nothing sarcastic or tongue-in-cheek, but truly gracious.
  • And finally, you let them know that if they ever need anything, you’re there for them and happy to help.

Here’s what we know for absolute certain. Very, very few people respond with that type of good-natured, yet professional strategy. But when they do, they get remembered for the very best of reasons.

Here’s what can happen

Here are just some of the outcomes this can generate for people, who were originally rejected!

In many cases, the prospect who rejected them suddenly wonders if they made the wrong decision, in choosing the other provider. I’ve (occasionally) seen this result in an immediate about-turn, with the rejected provider winning the deal.

Much more commonly, I’ve seen the rejected provider given the contract, as soon as the winning provider screws up. It’s almost as if the prospect is unconsciously looking for their original choice to fail, after becoming fully aware what a wonderful provider they rejected. By respecting the prospect’s decision and leaving the door open to them, the rejected provider makes it extremely easy for the prospect to contact them.

But that’s not all!

Ask anyone who uses this ‘turn a no into a yes!‘ strategy, and they’ll confirm that it also results in a number of referrals, from the prospects who didn’t change their mind about hiring the rejected provider.

Given the fact we have this third way to respond, it makes sense to use it and maybe turn a no into a yes!

8 Small business tips, from a recent Zoom session

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Here are some of the small business tips I shared, on Monday’s Zoom session with local business owners. These are just the the bullet points, so you’ll need to fill any gaps so you can apply them to your unique situation.

In no particular order.

small business tips, Zoom notes
  1. Fire any client or customer, who regularly pays you late. As a small business owner, you simply can not afford to be their interest-free, cash flow solution. The time you gain after firing them, can then be invested in finding a new high-value client to replace them.
  2. Grab yourself life long, unlimited, free access to the world’s highest paid marketing writers. I explained it here.
  3. Take note of how much time you spend reacting today, rather than initiating. Make sure you get the balance right.
  4. What’s the biggest hurdle to your commercial success, right now? And how do you plan to remove that hurdle?
  5. Do your business hours reflect the needs of your clients or are they similar to your competitor’s hours? If the latter, you can achieve a HUGE win by adapting to your client’s needs instead.
  6. Do something today, which your future-self will thank you for. Do it tomorrow, too. Just by doing one small thing each day, you’ll radically accelerate your progress. Try it for 30 days. That’s what I did back in the 1990’s. I gave it a month… and I’m still doing it.
  7. You can’t hit an invisible target. Start replacing general wants, with measurable, numeric goals. For example, how many referrals a day do you want? What should next month’s income / profits be? How many new clients should you gain over the next 30 days, 3 months, 6 months and 12 months… numbers please.
  8. Answer this question, in detail: “If my business was perfect in every way, what would it look like?”. Remember, you’re describing your absolutely ideal business, not an even slightly watered down version. Think big.

I hope you find at least a few of these small business tips useful.

How to avoid the worst mistake in business!

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marketing idea, marketing opportunity

Image: Shutterstock.

One of the greatest barriers to business success, are our undiscovered mistakes. I’m referring to those errors we make, without even knowing it.

Undiscovered mistakes are especially dangerous. That’s because we don’t know we’re making them, so we’re likely to inadvertently repeat them. Again and again.

How do we stop these mistakes from happening to us?

My mentor’s advice to me

Here’s something one of my mentors shared with me over 25 years ago. It’s simple and quite brilliant.

  • He told me to undertake a review, every time something of any importance goes wrong. Today we’d call this ‘unpacking the problem’.
  • He advised me to do this in as much detail as possible, and as soon after the mistake has been spotted as possible, and that it was essential to do it in writing.
  • By unpacking the problem soon after noticing it, we can still remember it clearly. So we’re less likely to miss anything. Usually, it’s a small or minor-looking detail that’s causing the mistake.
    • IMPORTANT: Often, the minor detail is something we’re missing or doing incorrectly in multiple activities or strategies. Identifying it in ONE mistake, can dramatically improve our business results, when we eliminate it from all future activities and strategies.
  • By writing it down (especially on paper), rather than thinking it over exclusively in our head, we put space between us… and the problem.
  • He explained that the space between us and the problem, is where answers are born. This last step sounds almost poetic. However, it’s exactly what I’ve found happens. By looking at the problem on paper, and thinking it through in my mind, that space in-between is like fertile soil from which answers sprout up.

I have no idea as to exactly how this strategy works. I only know it does, and with surprising frequency. That’s to say, it’s worked for me again and again over the past 25 years. And I’ve literally lost count of how many others I have shared the idea with, who have seen equally good, or better, results from it.

Give it a try the next time something meaningful goes wrong. You have nothing to lose from the additional clarity the strategy will bring. And you could find it saves you a fortune… or helps you make a fortune.

Either way, it’s certainly worth trying.