(Add to Favorites | View All Articles | Resource Directory)
|
|
|
What does business success look like?Small Business Marketing - Clarify SuccessWhen you hear the word "success" does it bring on visions of fame and fortune for your business? Have you clarified and articulated what that success will look like for your business and how you'll know when you've achieved it? What's the definition of success for your business? Most small businesses are selling their time and expertise to deliver a service to their clients. So the question I want you to reflect upon is this? "What does success look like?" Now before you start answering with responses like, "I'll do $X Million in sales this year." - STOP! That's not what I meant. The question is? "What does success look like for your client(s)?" Remember, your clients? Isn't it generally fair to say you're in business to provide a service to your clients? When you do it right, what does it actually look like for the client? Don't get me wrong. I understand that we're in business to make money - to make a living for ourselves. But that's rarely enough in life. Most of the service providers I know love working with and servicing their clients. If you focus on taking care of that, the rest will almost certainly take care of itself. So what does success look like for the client when you do it right? Spend some time and clarify success for your service business. What are you passionate about? What is it that you're trying to do for your clients? What difference do you want to make? What do you "love" doing for them? What is it that they will have or be able to do because they bought your service from you? This definition covers a broad range of issues for you and your business. All aspects of your business must be working well together to achieve this success. Be as specific as you can. Now, if you really want to make this a valuable exercise for your business, then I challenge you to take the results of your own brainstorming and sit down with a few of your best client(s) to see what they think and get their input. I think you can see that this type of reflection goes beyond listing your services or the results of your services. This is not, "I'm providing marketing and business growth services to help my clients' realize greater return on their marketing investments." Instead, let's get down to, "Clients won't have to struggle with their marketing efforts, wondering how they're going to get more clients. They will be able to easily generate a consistent supply of high-quality leads and convert them into more business so they can focus on what they love doing - servicing their clients." See the difference? For most small business owners I've known and worked with, owning their own business is a "dream." Unfortunately, if they're constantly stressed about how and where to find more business, then their "dream" may become their "worst nightmare." Success then for my clients means helping them put a more systematic approach in place to ensure they're constantly generating leads and converting them into more business so they can realize their "dream." When you clarify success in this way, you'll be able to devote your attention to continuously improve what you do and how you deliver your services to your clients. You'll be motivated to ensure you're delivering that value to your clients and not just doing what you always do so the clients will pay their bills. With success clarified, you'll be able to ask yourself, "How is what I'm doing today contributing to delivering success for my client?" And here's the real kicker - because of your focus on your clients' success, expect to see more success for your own business! (c) - Kevin Dervin, KPD Marketing About the Author: Kevin Dervin is focused on helping small businesses that are ready to grow, but struggle with how to consistently attract more clients. Visit http://www.proven-small-business-marketing-solutions.com for more great marketing information you can put to use in growing your business today. Find Kevin's Kansas City based KPD Marketing practice at http://www.ABCDgrowth.com and subscribe to his free ezine called ABCD Grow.
MORE RESOURCES: News provided by Yahoo! News and Google News $1M goes to Mass. small biz supporters - Bizjournals.com Poll: 25% of small-biz owners worry about survival - Bizjournals.com Wage Increase Will Hit Some Small Biz Hard - NBC4i.com 26% of Small Biz Raises Ad Spend, Precipitating Online Growth - Marketing Vox News US Celcos Urged To Create New Small-Biz Programs - Telecomweb Smallbiz Brain Presents America’s Best Companies - PressReleasePoint (press release) Small Biz: New shop strives for global connection - Online Athens |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Shopping For a Franchise Shopping for a franchise is easy if you know what you are doing. You can choose between radio adverts, newspaper adverts, personal recommendation, Internet, or visit a franchise exhibition. More Business Card Marketing If you are worried about how many different business cards you should carry, let me speak from experience, you need only ONE!The best way to confuse a potential customer is to present them with more than one business card. You may be doing a number of things and have cards for each one (even have several businesses where you do work) but you need to focus on what it is that you do best. Small Business - Big Business...Whats the Diff? Small Business, Big Business - What's the Diff?Well a lot actually!I become frustrated and angry at the government's paying lip service to assisting small business. It appears as though all governments, bureaucrats and many accounting advisers do not know what a real small business is. Franchising 101- What You Absolutely Need to Know Franchising has made the world look really small. The well known flavors are now not just restricted to a single town or city but can be enjoyed world wide. Market Makers Play a Significant Role in Reverse Mergers One overlooked individual in the process of taking a company public through reverse merger is the market maker. The market marker is critical especially if the company is going to be listed on OTC Bulletin Board or the NQB. Creative Business Card Marketing Announcements can be handed out as a business cardAnnouncements can be more than just a press release that lets the world know that something special has occurred at your place of business or to you personally. You can make announcements for almost anything. Be Prepared When Business Investors Look Beyond Your Business Plan You have spent considerable time pulling your business plan together, contacting potential business investors, making management presentations and pitching your business plan to prospective business investors. Now you finally have a serious investor who wants to conduct "due diligence" before investing real cash into your business. How to Bond a Business Relationship When should you create a foundation in order to solidify a business relationship?Before you bond any business relationship, you need to make sure that this is a relationship that you both want to have. No relationship is a one way street; the relationship must work in both directions. Perceptions may be more important than the facts, themselves When small businesses fail, the wreckage is often assigned to undercapitalization, among other mistakes. Seldom is failure attributed to a lack of effective communications that might have modified the behavior of sales prospects in a positive way, thus averting bankruptcy. Web Based CRM Systems: Get Mobile; Get Results Everyday more web based companies enter the business scene. The low initial investment, potentially high revenue, and convenience of owning and operating a business from your home PC or laptop is enticing an ever-increasing number of entrepreneurs to try their hand at e-business. The Role of the Business Model and Strategy for Business People will always stress that having a well researched business plan is key before you start your business. Although creating a business plan is often an important step in the evolution of a business, particularly if you need financing or you are not experienced at running a business, it is not necessarily the essential first step. Debt Collection Techniques Here are some sound debt collection techniques that can be followed by businesses to mitigate the bad debt crisis:Sending a pre-collection letter. Hiring a collection agency. Alliances: What works, what does not Why Alliances FailWhen do you know an alliance is falling apart?An alliance will surely fail without good communication on both sides. It will also fail if the alliance partner is not capable of completing the tasks set out in the service level agreement. Fleet Washing Operations Manual Sample Outline In the Truck Washing Business every single type of vehicle is washed differently. If you are going to run a mobile onsite fleet washing business with multiple trucks in multiple cities you will in fact need a comprehensive manual to keep your crews and equipment running at an optimum. Small Business Checks - Money Saving Options When you go into business for yourself, there are many things to consider. What you don't want to worry about is spending too much money on unnecessary items. From Birth to Death Your product is dying. With the same inevitability that we humans move ever closer to death, so does every software application move towards its eventual demise. If You Want Business - Be Consistent Why does consistency in the message have an effect on how the business relationship is formed?Your message to others needs to be consistent. You need to define your expertise and develop your elevator pitch. Put off procrastinating until another day One of the most common issues that comes up for business owners is procrastination -wasting time, putting obstacles in the way of taking action towards goals, making excuses for delays, creating confusion/busyness etc. Procrastination is a self-defeating behavior. Taking Stock Back when I owned an inventory-based business, one of my better customers had a clever barb in his repertoire. If we were out of anything he needed in his order, he would say "You know, this would be a great place to open a supply house. Home Based Franchise Case Study Here is an interesting case study of a company, which franchised mobile car wash units. It started with the humblest of beginnings indeed.
|
| home | site map | articles |
| © 2006 |