Massive Returns When You...Invest in YOU!
Editorial By Peter Singleton
I sit down with BUSINESS OWNERS on a daily basis from all different walks of life, industries and reasons for wanting to talk and critique their business and their NUMBER ONE REGRET IS not investing in themselves long before they did! I believe the quickest way to achieve financial freedom is through educating yourself on operating a PROFITABLE BUSINESS. I'm not talking about investing in traditional education so much, but rather making a habit of investing in the attainment and fostering of customers for your business!
More than investing in real estate, more than trading in stocks and shares, more than anything else, by investing in your own business, you create the greatest potential for building the cash flow that will enable you to buy good assets such as property and real estate. Cash flow from successful business is what enables you to buy solid/profitable assets and keep on paying for them!
I know databases that grow tired and void from lack of a contact strategy. I'm talking about dynamic, entrepreneurial business minds and I'm talking about THOUSANDS of names on cold, cold lists. Enormous amounts of money, time and effort have been invested in making first contact after which thousands of potential customers are never contacted again! No further investment, no return, lost cash flow = lost investment opportunity.
There are three ways to grow your business only 1) Build a database (find new clients and align with people that already have a relationship with them). 2) Increase your unit of sale (packaging, bundling, ask ‘do you want fries with that?’). 3) Increase the frequency at which people buy (regular specials, new offers etc). Most businesses concentrate on finding new clients continually if this is ‘you’ you do not own a business you own a ‘promotion’ and are working too hard for not nearly the return you otherwise deserve. Effectively learning how to foster and nurture ‘2 and 3’ will create windfall profits that otherwise would effectively go to waste.
Let me put this as simply as I possibly can. Focus on your wealth creation through your business efforts because nothing returns in multiples as predictably as being a well-versed business entrepreneur. NOTHING! Real Estate is sensational but show me a real estate deal that can double your return in 12 months.
So we are at the beginning of the year. There's a strategy that I can virtually guarantee has the potential to ensure 2007 is your best year yet, if you're in business or make a sale. And let's face it who isn't (you have a product called you and you get paid for it) or doesn't (make a sale all day everyday one of which is to yourself!). That strategy is the creation of a rock-solid, bullet-proof, make-the-phone-ring, time sensitive family orientated marketing plan for the next 12 months. And now is the time to do it! What should that plan look like? It should include strategies for getting new prospects and clients and then fostering these relationships with a strategy.
The fact is that if you're not growing you’re dying. Probably more importantly, your plan should include strategies for nurturing past clients, designed to get them to come back more often, or get them to buy joint venture products from you or a JV partner which is easy once you are taught properly.
How often should you make contact with clients or prospects? Well, if you have ever read Bill Glazer’s works, you’ll know that this marketing icon believes you can never contact your prospects/clients too often provided you are ‘educating’ them. If you do not contact your list once a month they are not your ‘prospects’. This equates to a mere 12 times per year. And don’t think for a moment that you have to be 'selling' every time more to the point you should be ‘educating’ every time. Being in contact and the first person they think of in your category/industry is the hidden secret, which allows you to dominate your competitors and create a profitable playing field, they’ll never know/understand, or be able to copy.
So get yourself a Yearly Planner and start planning and investing in ‘you’ starting TODAY. Plan your marketing for the next 12 months with a professional and get the results you and your family deserve. In most businesses the owner completely confuses ‘Being Busy with Being Successful’! The two absolutely do not go hand in hand!! Almost without exception, this (developing a rock-solid marketing plan and contact strategy) will be revolutionize your business and your subsequent level of success!
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