Are you taking massive action?

So many businesses have great ideas and plans, but you fail to take right action to grow your business. You’re waiting for thing to be right, before you do anything. That’s understandable.

Most businesses are tight for money and you want to make sure your advertising pieces are laid out just right, the message is clear, you’re getting the very best deal on advertising rates, and that the market conditions are favourable.

All those things are very important. But it’s critical you don’t get paralysed into not taking action because of them. Because of you want to Increase sales and increase profits, you have to take ACTION.

When Apple Computers was first getting started, they were known for the “Ready, Fire, Aim” approach to business. They got a product “Ready” (it wasn’t perfect), they “Fired” (got it out in the market), then “Aimed” (listened to customer feed-back, then made modifications) and got it back out there again.

That is so different from the way most businesses run their marketing campaigns. You get an ad, a sales promotion letter or campaign ready then sit back and analyse it for months. Then you may or may not even run it. What holds you up? Why don’t you take a chance? Why not get the ad “out there” and see what happens?

Maybe the ad or sales promotion will be successful and will result in more customers, and maybe it won’t. But you’ll never know unless you test it to see.

I’m not advocating spending money and blindly running ads and Increase sales just to see it they’ll work. You need to put thought into the market you want to target, the and the offer you will make. It takes careful and calculated consideration.

The market will tell you if your product is right or wrong and whether or not your prices are too high. And, they’ll tell you exactly what you need to do to make it sale able to them. Not only that, as a bonus, they’ll tell you exactly how much to charge for it.

You only need to ask the market.

When you run an ad or sales promotion, if a lot of people respond the it’s obviously worked. If the response was too great, it may mean your offer was too good, or your prices too low.

On the other hand, if you get no or very few responses, then something is wrong.

1. Either you’re marketing to the wrong target.

2. The message you’re sending is not clear.

3. The offer you made isn’t attractive enough for them to justify parting with their money. (ie: your prices are too high.)

If all you ever do is conceptualise the ad, design it, lay it out, and spend months on end analysing

it, you won’t learn a thing except that procrastination cost you a lot of unnecessary time and missed income. You missed great opportunity to get more prospects, Increase sales and increase revenue.

It would be so much better to get the ad out and find out if it works or if it needs improvement.. Let the market tell you what corrections you need.  Do it carefully… by testing.  When you find something that works, take massive action.

Roll it out and let it bring more customers so you increase profits and grow your business.

Ok, so you now understand ideas to increase sales and you should track the results of every sales promotion. Follow this simple system.

ADVERTISING AND SALES PROMOTION RESULTS ANALYSIS

A. Date the ad or promotion ran or letters sent out

B. Promotion Name

C. Ad Code

D. Targeted Market

E. No. of Letters Sent

F. No. of Responses and Percent of Response Number Percentage

G. Number of Sales

H. Sale Value

Price per unit______ x no. of sales:_______

I. Less Cost of Fulfillment(Packaging, product, shipping, etc.)

J. Less Cost of Promotion or Ad

• No. of letters: __________ x stamp/letter: ________ =

• Printing of letters/unit: __________ =

• Envelopes: __________ x no. of letters:__________ =

• Stuffing envelopes (labour): __________ =

• Grabber/unit: ________ x no. of letters: __________ =

K. Net Profit (Loss) on Promotion

(Total Sales less cost of promotion and cost of fulfilment)

L. Profit-Loss per $ spent on promotion

(Divide net profit-loss by cost of promotion)

Comments:

Just because an ad didn’t make as big a profit or get as big a response as you would have liked, is not necessarily a reason to dump it. Sometimes all you need is a little tweaking or adjusting which can turn a mediocre ad into a real results-producer which will deliver ideas to increase sales and help you grow your business.

Going forwards, only use the ads and ideas to increase sales in the first binder. They’re already proven winners. By having a copy of the ad or promotion and the results it produced in a central place, will make developing your next sales promotion so much easier. No more guessing. No more wonder.

You’ll not only save time but if you can take a proven winner and make it a little better…the difference will be more customers and get ideas to increase sales so you grow your business.

Running the ad or ideas to increase sales costs the same whether it generates a two or three-percent response. However that extra one-percent is a 50 percent increase in response rate. And that one-percent may mean be enough to increase business.

Failure To Monitor Your Results

Results. That’s all that matter in business. Results.

Any promotion that’s worth putting your time, money and effort into, is worth measuring how well it performs. The only way you can know whether the promotion is worth running again or what you may need to do to change or tweak it to make it more effective  is by knowing the results the marketing effort produced. Did you get more prospects? Did they convert to more customers?

It’s astounding how many business owners don’t understand this simple concept.

You’ll let the local newspaper advertising salesperson sell you an ad and layout the ad, because they are “the experts” then let them run it with no way of knowing whether or not anyone called or a customer was obtained as a result of the ad. These “institutional” bran type agencies love you, because you have no idea whether the investment has worked, and they are in no way accountable, and they will keep selling you more and more, because “you have to advertise regularly” to be effective. Ha!

The ad has no accountability or measurability.  So next week or next month, they convince you to run it again and you continue to complain about how bad business is.

As a smart business person, you should never consider running an ad or executing a mailing campaign or promotion without having some type of response mechanism to measure the results. However, it happens every day. And millions of dollars are wasted because of it. If you want grow your business, you need to be smarter.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking your ads will create some kind of magical awareness of your product or service. Every one of your ads and mailings and sales promotions must have a definite, targeted purpose. And EVERY How To Improve Sales must be measured to see that it does achieve that purpose.

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Here’s a simple 4-step system you can set up to measure the results of every advertising or marketing tactic you implement to promote your business:

1. Put together an “Advertising and Promotion Results Analysis”book. A simple 2 ring binder works well for this.

2. On the inside of the binder, insert a few clear plastic page protectors.

3. Print out a few copies of the “Advertising and Promotion Results Analysis” form shown in Part 2 of Mistake #2, and insert one in each of the page protectors facing the back of the binder.

Every time you run an ad or Improve sales, put a copy of that ad or promotion in one of the page protectors facing the opposite direction of the Analysis form. If you do this every time you run an advertisement, or promote your business and you carefully analyse the results, you’ll quickly see which promotions are working, which ones need tweaking to improve, and which you should toss out ASAP.

As your binder grows, make three additional binders.

In one binder place all your “A” ads and sales letters – the ads that pulled the best.

In another binder, place the ads and letters that produced marginal results, or at least broke even; you could experiment with these in the future. And in the third binder, put all the “losers.” The ads and letters that absolutely bombed, which you want to stay away from in future.

This way when you are ready to do another Improve sales or want to boost sales you’ll know which ads or letters you can depend on to model the next promotion.

Failure To Let Your Prospects And Customers Know The Unique Benefits They Get From Doing Business With You And Not Your Competitors.

Previously we discussed the importance of having a well thought out and appealing Unique Competitive Advantage, or UCA that will differentiate your business and make you stand out from your competition as unique, different and special and the business that’s most desirable to do business with.

Coming up with your own Unique Selling Proposition or UCA doesn’t have to be difficult. It’s simply a matter of identifying what you have to offer your clients, customers or prospects beyond what the product or service you offer can provide. It could be for example,something you offer exclusive of the features or benefits of the product or service you sell.

Even if the advantage you offer has to do with quality Customer retention service, dependability, convenience, or professionalism it’s not enough to just state those facts. You must find ways to quantify or identify specifically how those items benefit or provide advantage to your customers. Phrases like, “Top Quality,” “The Best, Most Reliable Customer retention Service,” “Dependable Delivery,” or “top-of-the-line products, best service, and the lowest prices,” ring hollow in the ears of your prospects and clients.

These are too vague and meaningless. All your competitors say the same things. You want to be very clear about how the advantages you offer will benefit your customers. Tell them exactly what they can expect from you.

You need to show them very clearly how much lower, how much better, how much superior or how much of an advantage they’ll get by doing business with you. Spell it out exactly, clearly and specifically what advantages and benefits they will gain. Whatever you choose to make your UCA it must be perceived as desirable.  They have to consider it to be of value to them. If they do, you will get more Customer retention, and make more sales and grow your business!

If you can make the UCA exclusive and proprietary to your business the less competition you’ll have. If you’re the only one who offers that something extra, whatever it may be your clients and prospects can’t get it from anyone else at any price. It’s simply not available.

And if that something extra is exclusive to you, no one can compete, and that gives you a supreme advantage in your marketplace.