Revolutionize Your Bottom Line

We all know intellectually that Goal Setting is fundamental to success, so why do so few people use goals? This section will highlight some tips to make Goals work for you and your business.

1. The old saying may be a cliché, but it's true: "If you don't know where you're going, all roads lead there". If you care about where your company's going, set goals!

2. It's equally important to set personal goals as it is business goals. Without them, you can end up feeling un-fulfilled and your business will suffer.

3. Set short term goals as well as long term. This can give you a sense of achievement when you complete them.

4. It's important to know the goals of your staff. If you know what motivates them to come to work in the morning, you can work with them to achieve this. This will soon lead to a strong feeling of belonging within your team.

5. Set goals that are achievable, but require you to stretch somewhat. This will fulfil one of our basic human needs - growth.

6. Review your goals regularly. They're not set in stone so feel free to change them as your needs change.

Do you know who the best targets are for your products or services? Usually, they're your existing customers! In this section, we're going to look at ways that we can profit from your current customer-base without huge investment.

7. Note that we've entitled this section "Selling to Existing Clients". 'Customers' are people who buy once. 'Clients' have a nurtured relationships with your company. Make a mental note to refer to your customers as 'clients' in the future.

8. Measure your penetration rate into each client. Decide how you will improve this.

9. Measure the penetration of each of your products (or product lines) across your customer base. For each product, decide how you could improve this.

10. Implement a policy of measuring conversion ratios at each stage of the sale cycle. Remember - you can't manage what you don't measure!

11. Make the time to join your best people on sales calls to see what you can learn from them. Feed this back to the rest of the sales team.

12. Make the time to join your worst performing sales people on sales calls to see how you can help them improve.

13. Everyone who interacts with your clients should be trained to provide outstanding customer service. This will allow you to retain your clients for longer and make them more likely to refer new business to you.

14. Systemise your client interactions as much as possible, then personalise the exceptions.

15. Aim for 'Wow' service - not 'Ow' service!

How much more likely do you think it is that your sales team will convert a referral into a sale as opposed to a cold-call? If you agree that it is much more likely, then what have you done to implement a systematised referral process? This section explores some ideas on this to help you get started.

16. People will only do what they have to report they've done. Make sure you have a systematised referral process so your sales team have to report on the number of referrals asked for, and the number received.

17. Ask for referrals on a regular basis. This should be at LEAST once a quarter!

18. Produce a 'referral script' to ensure that everyone in your organisation is asking for referrals in the most effective manner.

19. Only ask for referrals once you've established rapport with your client.

20. Ask for referrals whenever you establish rapport with your clients!

21. Look for opportunities to give referrals to others as this engages the 'reciprocity principal' - people are more likely to help you if you help them first.

22. Give referrals to your clients and your prospects.

Do you advertise? If so, do you know whether your advertising is effective? If not, would you consider it if you felt you could measure the effectiveness? This section is a collection of tips relating to the creation and use of effective advertising.

23. Don't waste your advertising budget on ads that you can't track. Every ad should contain some method of identifying where the lead came from.

24. Ads need to prompt people to do something. If they have to call a number to get a free report, there's a good chance that many of your ideal prospects will call. You then have a database of warm prospects!

25. Why are you advertising? Do you simply want to improve your brand perception, or are you trying to get people to buy? People are bombarded with media messages today, so keep your advertising budget focused where it's most effective.

26. Only advertise in places that are likely to be seen by your target market. This may seem obvious, but many companies make this mistake.

27. Make effective use of low-cost / no-cost marketing methods, rather than blowing your budget on high-profile ads.

28. One of the best methods of promoting your business is still networking. The more people who know about your business, the more likely someone will hear of you.

At some point in your business, it's likely that some form of telemarketing will be necessary. Whether this is carried out in-house by your existing sales team or by an external agency, this section will give you some thoughts on how to achieve the best results.

29. Ineffective telemarketing can be a huge drain on your cash. Avoid using it telemarketers simply to cold call an unknown database.

30. People don't like receiving cold calls. Give them a reason to take your call, or warm them up with a letter beforehand.

31. Telemarketing to follow-up a letter is more effective than cold telemarketing. Following up on a response to a letter is the most effective telemarketing.

32. When making cold-calls, it's better to have a script which is used as a guide. This keeps you on track, as long as you don't read it 'word-for-word'. Beware of telemarketing companies who don't use a script of any sort!

33. Be clear as to why you're doing telemarketing. Is it to get appointments, or just to clean your database? Clarity of purpose, leads to focused action.

The Internet today suffers somewhat from the 'Marmite' syndrome - you either love it or you hate it! Whatever your personal view on this technology, it's becoming an ever more popular route to purchase for many buyers so should be considered as part of your overall marketing strategy. This section will give you some ideas to help you use this medium to best effect.

34. Your website is your sales brochure. There's no point spending thousands having a glossy brochure printer, and then letting one of your IT guys design a mediocre website! Make sure the two complement each other and that the quality is the same.
[A good rule of thumb is to look to spend the same budget for each]

35. Depending on your business, you may want to consider capturing the details of every visitor to your website. Once you have this, you have the opportunity to drip-feed marketing information to them.

36. Make sure you have enough information on your website to pique a prospects interest, but not enough to enable a decision!

37. If you want to be found on search engines, pay a company to maintain your ranking. It's almost impossible to do this today in-house, unless you have a dedicated web-team.

38. When sending out newsletters via e-mail, make sure you're 100% certain that the recipients have agreed to receive them. If not, it's Spam! Ideally, you should implement a double opt-in, where an e-mail is sent out to elicit a confirmation.

39. Be aware of spam filters! If some of your messages aren't getting through, consider sending a simple URL link and have the newsletter online. This has the added advantage of making your newsletters searchable!

40. Don't send out your e-mails to your list using Outlook (or similar), otherwise the e-mail addresses will be readable by everybody! If you really must use this method, put all the addresses in the BCC field (this hides all others, apart from the recipient).

This section is not about what computer system you've got hidden away in a dark room processing your databases, but about what your sales 'back-end' is. In other words, what you sell after you've sold what you initially sell in order to increase the lifetime value of your customers.

41. If clients usually only spend small amounts with you, what higher value items can you sell to them in the future?

42. Make sure you capture as many details as possible about a client. This makes it easier to target them in the future.

43. OK, so I said this wasn't about databases, but make sure you have a database of your clients, otherwise you'll find it hard to promote your back-end!

44. Write a regular newsletter. If the perceived value is high enough, clients will be willing to purchase it from you for an annual subscription.

45. Books and booklets are great things to sell to clients as part of your back-end. If your main business is something other than publishing, then you can use this to add great value to your clients by educating them about the services you offer.

Joint Ventures are growing in popularity today. Put simply, it's about selling your products to another company's customer-base, and letting other companies sell to yours. This section contains ideas on how this might work for you.

46. Look at your client base. What other non-competitive businesses do you know that would benefit from access to this list? Why not approach them and offer to promote their product to your clients, for a percentage of the sales?

47. Look at your products and services. What other non-competitive companies do you know who sell to your target market? Can you structure a deal with them to promote your products / services to their client base?

48. Networking is the key to Joint Ventures. If you don't know any of the businesses in your area, you'll find it much harder to approach them!

49. Be open to approaches from companies that you don't know about Joint Ventures. Just make sure you check them out thoroughly before you sign anything%u2026.!

Public speaking is a fantastic way to raise awareness of your business. This section will look at how you can maximise the opportunities presented from seminars to grow your business.

50. If you've never done any public speaking before, join an organisation such as Toastmasters (http://www.toastmasters.org) to learn the basics.

51. Once you feel ready, consider approaching an organisation such as the National Speakers Association, (http://www.mynsa.org/). Here, you'll learn the finer points of public speaking.

52. Look for opportunities to speak. Often, your local Chamber of Commerce will hold regular lunches at which members are welcome to speak. Look around for similar venues.

53. If you can't find an existing opportunity, create your own! A dedicated seminar will not only raise the profile of your business, there's also a great opportunity to make a profit from it! ?

Public Relations is essentially 'free' advertising! With this in mind, the tips in this section will help you get the most out of this often underused strategy.

54. Find a great PR agent! The better the agent, the further your PR spend will go.

55. 'Publicity Stunts' are usually seen just for what they are. If you're going to do something crazy like this, at least make it BIG!

56. Find newsworthy events in everything you do. This creates multiple opportunities to have something published.

57. Get involved with charities. If you have a high profile within a charity, you can get masses of free publicity.

No tips booklet on improving your business performance would be complete without a section on Time Management! Whether you're already pretty good at managing your time, or whether you're surprised that you get anything done in a day, there will be some useful tips in this section for you.

58. There's a huge difference between working efficiently and working effectively: 'Efficient' is doing things right; 'Effective' is doing the right things right. Make sure you and your company are working effectively.

59. As a business owner of manager, it's important to spend at least as much time working on your business as in it. Look at where you are currently focussing your time.

60. Carry out a 'Time Log' exercise to see exactly how you're spending your time each week.

61. Avoid procrastination (do this today - not tomorrow!)

62. Make time for 'thinking' during your week. This time should be 'sacred' and not subject to cancellation for more important matters. Nothing IS more important!

63. Delegate tasks effectively to free your time to manage the business.

This lens was created from tips booklet that was one of my marketing strategies. With this in mind, it would be remiss to not include a section on relevant tips.

64. Tips booklets are a great way of demonstrating your knowledge to prospective customers. Send them out as part of your 'Sales Pack' and it's likely that they'll be read.

65. You can sell your tips booklets to help recover the initial production costs. Remember that this still allows people to sample you expertise so don't price them too high.

66. Get yourself an ISBN number to add credibility to your booklet. These can be obtained within the US from http://www.isbn.org/, or within the UK from http://www.whitaker.co.uk/.

67. As an alternative to producing a tips booklet, why not create a 'Tips Squidoo Lens', just like this one?