Empathy is rarely discussed when people talk about building a successful business. However, empathy is one of the most important components of effective marketing.

Think about it.

• The vendors you feel closest to are those who understand you.
• The vendors you value the most are those who appreciate you.
• The vendors you’re most loyal to are those who take the best care of you.
• And the vendors you tell your friends about are those who eagerly go the extra mile for you.

Why does this happen?

It happens because business is all about people.

More specifically, it’s about how people feel. That’s because our feelings are what drive the decisions we make, and our decisions are what lead to the actions we take. Feelings are what cause people to hire you, buy from you, trust you, recommend you and remain a loyal client or customer.

You truly care. So don’t keep it a secret

Yes, you care about your clients. And they know it.

But what about your prospective clients? Does your marketing reflect the fact that you’re passionately committed to helping them? If you’re not sure, try this.

Take a look at your most recent marketing or the content on your website, through their eyes. Does it leave the prospect in no doubt that you care about the people your business serves? If not, get to work on it.

A lot is said about the importance of out-smarting our competitors, yet little is ever said about out-caring them. Ironically, one of the smartest things we can do, is to make darn sure that our prospects know how much we care.

Why?

Because very few of your competitors, even those who care a great deal, will make it a core part of their marketing. They just take it for granted that prospects will know.

So, give your business a huge competitive advantage. Make it clear that you genuinely care about the people you serve. It will massively improve the way prospects feel about you. And those feelings are what drive their decisions and their actions.

They say it’s not what you know, but who you know that counts. That’s because knowing the right people is essential for business success. It’s also why you’ll never meet a successful person who hasn’t built an extremely valuable contact network. Today, I want to help you build an equally valuable network of your own. 

It starts with a question: How many business contacts do you have?

You can easily get an approximate figure by adding together your LinkedIn contacts, your social network followers/friends and the contacts in your address book, etc. For some reading this, the number will be in the hundreds. For many it will be in the thousands or tens of thousands. And for others it will be a hundred thousand or more.

Here’s a far more meaningful question: How many business relationships do you have?

Business relationships are harder to count. These are the people you connect with on a deeper level. Not just numbers on the social networks you use. Not just names in your address book, who you have no real history with. 
 

Vanity metrics 

Building more and more contacts can be intoxicating. These contact numbers are often referred to as vanity metricks, because most of the numbers are visible to others, such as our social network contacts, and how many followers or online friends we have.

It’s a way for normal people (like me) to finally be like one of the popular kids at school. Even though we know hardly any of these people, we have the BIG contacts number. Go us!
 

Business relationship building

The number of meaningful business relationships we have is a lot less public than our vanity numbers, but a lot more meaningful and massively more valuable. With this in mind, how much time do you dedicate each day or each week, to building and nurturing business relationships? 

Here’s a tip to help you get started.

I want you to imagine you already had meaningful relationships, with 6 people who are useful and/or influential. Now write those 6 names down. Next, take time over the coming week to learn a little about them and how to get in contact with them. Finally, get in touch with each one, introducing yourself and letting them know how YOU can assist THEM.

[Important] Read this: Bring your seed, not your need.

The number of positive replies you receive will depend on lots of factors. This includes things like, how useful your assistance is to the other person, how effective your initial introduction is, how interesting you make yourself sound, and even how good your timing is, etc.

But if you stick with it, always seeking to improve your approach, you will find yourself building extremely useful, mutually beneficial business relationships, with amazing people.

Plus, they’ll get to see just how awesome you are, and introduce you to their contacts. 

Photo credit: Bruce Mars

There’s a better way to market your business. I’m going to share it with you today. Read this short message to the end, because it is not what you think it’s going to be.

Agreed?

Let’s go!

For your marketing to succeed, you need to focus like a laser on your major business growth goal or goals. For this exercise, your business goals should be expressed in numbers.

For example: To increase your sales in 2024 by 200%.

That goal becomes your focus. Because as you’re about to find out, that focus is what leads you to making the right marketing decisions. It guides you toward engaging in the correct marketing activities.

But first, there’s a problem you need to overcome.

When I speak with, and receive emails from small business owners, the vast majority are focused on improving a part, or parts, of their marketing. Things like.

• Better email open rates.
• Improved SEO.
• Linkedin training.
• More subscribers.
• A better sales funnel.
• More effective ads.
• A bigger list.
• More client enquiries.
• A bigger social network.

In this example, the correct marketing activities are not on that list. That’s because small business owners have never heard of them or are unaware how they work. So, they focus on what they have heard of and work hard. By focusing on the wrong thing, they take the wrong action.

Here’s what they need to focus on.

• A 200% increase in sales by the end of 2024.

Armed with that measurable goal and timescale, they are free to consider and select the best options. (I list a handful in a moment). As you’ll see, there are lots of massively better alternatives.

Here’s just one example I often use with clients, to achieve far better outcomes, and faster.

Endorsed relationships

You can smash an annual financial goal using what I call endorsed relationships. An endorsed relationship is where you form a relationship with a suitable business owner or company, and they endorse (or recommend) you, your products or services to their customers.

Because their customers trust them, their recommendation can lead to spectacularly high conversion rates. And it happens fast. Of course, in return, you do the same for them. Your ‘marketing’ task is simply to identify and connect with a handful of potential endorsed relationship partners.

Depending on the annual financial goal you have for your business, it’s possible to achieve it with just a few, good, endorsed relationships. Sure, you need to know the correct way to do this, but when you get it right, it’s exceptionally powerful. It also frees you up from being bogged down with marketing. I know, right!

Freedom to grow your business

If you focus on smashing your specific goals, you’re free to benefit from lots of other wonderful opportunities like endorsed relationships. Here’s a handful.

• Compound marketing.
• Joint ventures.
• Prospect bridges.
• Becoming a zero competition provider. (I absolutely love this one)
• Introducer networks.
• … and the other, similarly great ways to transform your business results.

So don’t simply look for ways to improve what isn’t working.

Focus instead on your outcome — your defined, numeric business goals for 2024. Because there are vastly more powerful tactics available to you, which have nothing to do with typical marketing. You’ll then be free to think, plan and grow the business you always wanted. With none of the marketing limitations that have held you back.

I think you’re going to find this really useful. Today, I explain why you really should offer a new service or product to your existing customers. PLUS, I give you some proven advice on how to get started.

If you don’t already know, here’s why you should think seriously about developing a new service.

The quickest, most profitable way to generate additional income for your business, is to sell new services to your existing customers. It’s a lot faster and more profitable, than finding new customers for your existing services.

Faster and more profitable — why?

Because your customers already know you. They already trust you. They have an existing trading relationship with you. And marketing to existing customers costs a fraction as much, making it more profitable, too.

Whenever I share this idea with a new client, they immediately see the potential. After all, these cookies were already smart enough to hire me. They then follow it up with a great question.

“How do we get started creating this new service, Jim”?

Obviously, when I work with one of my clients on this, I work with them to develop exactly what they want and need. However, I thought I’d share some general pointers that you may find useful, if you’d like to have a do-it-yourself shot at it.

Go premium

A useful place to start, is to take a look at one of your existing products or services, and think of ways to add valuable, premium features to it. Something that significantly increases its value to your customers. In every economy, there is a very eager marketplace of people who actively seek out premium products and services. It’s why we have luxury restaurants, clothing brands, hotels, watches, cars, etc.

There’s an additional benefit from going premium. In my experience, those who purchase premium products and services are often far, far easier to work with than any other group.

Express yourself

Alternatively, you could look for opportunities to create an express version of one of your current services, for those who value speed and will happily pay for a new, faster service.

Express services always work best, when you offer a guaranteed deadline. It’s not enough to say you’ll do (whatever) faster. You need to tell them that it will be done/ready by 9am, or in 24-hours, etc.

An all new offering

If you want to introduce an all new product or service, a useful place to start is to look for things that will compliment what you already provide. For example, if customers already use (x) they’ll have a potential need for (y).

Accountants discovered this decades ago. They figured out that their clients would value new, complimentary services from them. So they started offering profit improvement planning, document storage and the development of HR policies for their client’s businesses, etc.

Do some research and if it stacks up, dive in and give it a shot.

Sustainable

You might also want to consider the huge market for environmentally friendly products. Sustainability has become a major factor in purchasing decisions. In some cases, sustainability is a requirement before companies can purchase from a provider.

Developing a product that’s kind to the environment, or finding a more sustainable way to provide your products, makes sense on multiple levels.

Give it a try

I hope those examples offer some food for thought.

Important: Creating a new product or service is especially useful, if you find yourself with a cashflow problem. As you know, it takes time to market your existing services to prospects who don’t know you, then go through the various processes/meetings/testimonials/follow-up, etc. However, the speed with which the type of ideas above can be put into place, offered to clients, sold and invoiced is rapid.

I hope you’re inspired to examine the huge potential here. Because as I see over and over again with clients, when you get it right, the results can be absolutely transformational.

Photo by Alex Padurariu

Why don’t people hire me, Jim? I get asked that question a lot. Here’s what you need to know, in order to regularly get hired by great clients or sell to equally great customers.

I need to start with a simple question: can you guess what every single one of your prospective clients or customers has in common?

Here it is:

They can all, easily afford your products or services! All of them. Every. Single. One.

Here’s why people really don’t hire you or buy from you.

1. You’re attracting enquiries from the wrong people.
2. You haven’t given them a powerful enough reason to buy from you or hire .
3. They don’t trust you enough, so they don’t believe your message.

Let’s look at these 3 challenges in a little more detail. Plus, how to overcome them and make massively more sales.

Let’s go!

1. People won’t buy from you because you’re attracting the wrong people

No matter how amazing your products are. No matter how outstanding your services are. You’ll never achieve the results you want, if you’re talking to the wrong people.

Let’s say you provide a premium quality service, which rightly has a premium price tag. If so, you’re wasting your time marketing to the low-fee crowd.

Yes, very occasionally you may be able to change someone’s world view. However, you’re far more likely to sell your premium services, if you market only to those who already value premium service.

The key phrase here is: Market to the unhappy, NOT the uninterested.

In other words, using the above example you’d market your premium service to those who are unhappy with their current situation, and who value a premium service.

It’s never ever about the money. It’s always true that your prospective customers can afford your products or services.

And here’s why.

If someone genuinely can’t afford what you offer, they were never a prospective customer in the first place! Think about it. For someone to be a prospective customer, they need to have the ability to pay you.

So, identify who your ideal prospect is. Then, make that select group of great people the sole focus of all your marketing. The alternative is to do what most failing business owners do, and try to be all things to all people. That approach can’t work. It will drive you nuts and lose you a fortune.

2. People don’t hire you because you haven’t given them a powerful enough reason

This one is huge. No. It’s bigger than that!

We need to start here by looking at motivation. The word motivation comes from a fusion of the words: motive and action.

When the motive (or reason) is powerful enough, we take action. In contrast most small business marketing lacks motivational power. It’s generic. It’s predictable. And as you’d expect, it lacks the impact that’s essential, to inspire people to buy from them.

Why do so many businesses rely on weak marketing that fails to generate the results they need? Having transformed the marketing results of small business owners for more than two decades, here’s what I’ve found. And it’s something I see examples of pretty-much every working day of my life.

It’s the business owner’s attitude to marketing. They’ll happily pay an expert to style their hair, but they’ll willingly risk their financial future with lousy, ineffective, DIY marketing.

They honestly believe that dabbling with their future is safer, than hiring an expert to do things correctly. They tend not to admit it publicly, because in many cases they don’t admit it to themselves. In conversation, you find that this happens when the business owner still operates and makes decisions, from an employee mindset. They see risk in all the wrong places. Unaware that the riskiest thing a business owner can do, is avoid expert help when it’s clearly needed.

However, this is great news if you want your business to thrive.

Really, Jim?

Why?

Because you can massively outperform the vast majority of your competitors, simply by being professional enough to invest in expert marketing help. It’s the easiest win in business. Low risk. Massive return.

3. People don’t buy from you because they trust you yet, or believe your message

For your marketing to work, people need to believe it. They need to trust you enough, to accept that what you’re telling them is true.

Sadly, many sales are lost this way, even though the marketing message is completely true and honest. The provider really is as good as they say. Maybe even better then they say in their marketing.

So, why does this happen? And more importantly my friend, what can you do about it?

Trust is lost when there’s a disconnect between.

• What the marketing message says.
• And how the prospective client feels.

Here are just 2 very common examples, to explain the point.

• Promising an expert service, yet charging average fees. Your prospective clients have been told since they were kids, that when something sounds too good to be true, it is too good to be true. So they don’t believe it. ‘High quality’ and ‘cheap fees’ are opposite ends of the spectrum. Putting them together creates massive doubt in what you’re saying.
• Promising a professional service, yet having an amateur looking brand. It’s like a restaurant serving a delicious meal, but on a dirty plate! It totally destroy trust. And it does so literally in seconds. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. You lost the sale or new client needlessly. And you won’t even know.

If you notice anything that could cause a stranger to get a negative impression of your business, fix it. And fix it correctly.

Why?

Because while it’s broken it’s losing you money and opportunities. While it’s broken, the lifeblood of your business is broken. And to ignore it is like ignoring black smoke bellowing from the back of your car, hoping the car will ‘just get better’. When in reality that car will soon grind to a halt.

Summing up: Why people don’t buy from you

Those 3 examples of why people don’t buy from you are easy wins. They’re easy, because with the correct approach, they can easily and quickly be overcome, allowing you to blow the lid off your potential.

What you can’t do, is carry on as you are in 2024 and expect things to magically improve. You’d think that goes without saying, right? Yet time and again, we see small businesses that still face ongoing struggles, for years and years.

Here’s just one example, from an email I received.

The guy who wrote to me is in his late 60’s. He’s worked hard all his life. He told me that he’d never made any “real money” and that he kept waiting for things to improve. With some expert help, he could have quit working decades ago and been very comfortable now. However, he explained that he still needs to work in order to pay the bills. It’s heartbreaking, because it’s easily avoidable.

As Einstein said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” In business we simply say, “more of the same leads to more of the same”.

In short, if you want massively better marketing results, financial security and everything that goes with it in 2024, you have to improve things accordingly.

Photo by 愚木混株 cdd20