It’s hard to believe the first month of 2007 is almost in the books.  Time flies at an incredibly fast pace and I’ve really come to realize this past month the importance of being organized, having a plan, and staying focused on making it happen.

Have you ever heard someone refer to the sales cycle as a sort of funnel?  In a nutshell, you want to get as many ‘suspects’ into the top of the funnel as possible and then slowly but surely you weed through the pretenders to find your true prospects, who you then work to convert to customers. 

As you work your way through each stage of this sales funnel, the number of candidates gets smaller and smaller, until eventually all you have passing through the bottom are the ones converted to customers.

Now, even though this is an excellent way to view the sales cycle, it’s actually quite short sited.  In fact, this view completely eliminates the bottom half of the sales cycle.

You see, what many view as a funnel, should really be seen as an hour glass.  Yes, everything I just mentioned about the funnel is correct.  But what it fails to address is the bottom half of the sales cycle, which is what happens AFTER your prospects have converted to customer and drop out of the funnel?

Once this happens, instead of completely dropping out of the funnel, they fall into the bottom half of the hour glass, which looks the exact opposite of a funnel.  Now instead of trying to convert ‘suspects’ to prospects, then customers, you’re now working to increase the value of every customer that passes through the top funnel into the bottom half our your hour glass.

Over the next few days I’ll share with you more details about this sales ‘hourglass’ and how you can use it to your advantage to grow you business in 2007.

Stay tuned!

I made it!  Actually, ‘WE made it’ would be a more accurate expression.  Yes, my wife and I successfully crossed the finish line yesterday in the ½ marathon we ran here in Phoenix, AZ. 

After standing around in 28 degree weather from 6am until we finally crossed the start line at 9am, it took us a little over 2 ½ hours to cover the 13.1 mile distance.  The race took us from somewhere in the downtown area of Phoenix all the way out to Sun Devil stadium, which I guess is on the out-skirts of Phoenix.

Now, even though my wife and I managed to cross the finish line in a respectable time, we definitely could have done better.  The reason we didn’t do any better was because quite frankly, we just didn’t train as much or as often as we should have.  My wife did a much better job of training than I did, but I know that had we put in a little more time and effort ahead of time, our time would’ve been much faster.

Believe it or not, as we were running I did quite a lot of thinking about you and how I can help you grow your business this year.  I mean heh, 2 ½ hours of running gives you a whole lot of time to think!  So over the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing lots of new ideas, suggestions, and lessons that came about as a result of my run yesterday.

The first has to do with what I already mentioned.  You see, if my wife and I had done more training, we would have received a much better result than what we did.

What does this have to do with you and your business?  Basically, if you’ll put in the time and effort up front, the results you’ll receive will be significantly better than what you’ve received previously or are receiving. 

That means take the time right now to plan out what needs to be done to reach your goals.  Write out your goals, plan the activities you need to do to accomplish your goals, make a plan to complete the activities, then head off to the start line and make it happen.

Stay tuned throughout this upcoming year for plenty of ideas, suggestions, and techniques and how to get better results from your marketing efforts.

Also, don’t forget about the ½ marathon special I’m running until tomorrow night at midnight Eastern.  That means you can get any one of the products or services available on my website at a 13.1% discount.

Remember the sale ends tomorrow night at midnight so don’t sit on this for too long!

You can only get the discount through this link right here:

http://tinyurl.com/ycr99q

I’m writing to you tonight from Phoenix, AZ.  I’m here in the dessert with my wife to participate tomorrow in the PF Chang’s Rock ‘N Roll ½ Marathon. 

Now, I could give you all kinds of reasons why I’d subject myself to such torture, but the story would be too long and full of way too many excuses.  To make a long story short, we did it to help raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. 

So, considering I must be somewhat off my rocker to run a half marathon, I’ve decided to run a special one-time only sale.  Here’s the scoop:

In case you don’t know, a half marathon is 13.1 miles in length.  In honor of this distance, you can get any one of the products or services available through my website at a 13.1% discount.  This includes any of the turnkey marketing packages and the website packages.

Now, this is a limited time opportunity.  You have from about the time I start off on my crazy adventure Sunday morning until midnight Tuesday, January 16^th.  Then, the discount disappears and all bets are off.

To claim your discounted packages, you must use this link:

http://tinyurl.com/ycr99q

So, don’t delay.  I’ve you’re looking to jumpstart your marketing in 2007, be sure to claim any one of these powerful marketing packages to help take your business to the next level!

I’ll be back first thing Monday morning to tell you how I did so until then, wish me luck!

One of the many blogs I read faithfully is the one by the founder of Vertical Response, Janine Popick. It’s usually got tons of great insight and suggestions about the latest in direct marketing. She made a post yesterday about word of mouth marketing that I thought was worth sharing with my readers so I’ve reprinted it here.

You can find Janine’s blog here:

http://verticalresponse.blogs.com/verticalresponse_blog/

I sat through many sessions at the Word of Mouth Marketing Show a few weeks ago in DC. I’m going to be posting a bunch of ideas that came from it. The one thing that really resonated for me was the fact that the customer is finally in control. Did you know that 30% of the population is reviewing products online today and making their voices heard? I didn’t. It’s a pretty big number when you think about it.

Word of mouth or “buzz” marketing has always been a necessity for any business. But since tools on the web make it easier than ever to talk about a product it’s becoming vital. Look at Amazon reviews or yelp.com.review center, even one on VerticalResponse. They’ve all got people talking. Salesforce.com has a

Andy Sernovitz, who up until recently headed up WOMMA.org, wrote a wonderful book on WOM and Buzz. I read it, I love it, you will too. It’s a quick read. I sat in his session and got some great ideas and examples on the 4 rules of WOM. Check them out…

1. Be interesting, be remarkable – Zaza Nail Salon right around the corner from us has HUGE theater-style reclining leather seats, Carnegie Deli in NYC has 7” tall corn beef sandwiches, each in its own way is worth talking about. Ask yourself, what have you got?

2. Make people happy – The Mini Cooper, Dyson working on the vacuum for 14 years to get it right, Target rolling a semi into Manhattan on the hottest day selling air conditioners off the back of the the truck, all of these brands created buzz because they’re fun and they’ve got a story that makes us happy.

3. Earn trust and respect – I trust that Starbucks is always going to have working WIFI and somewhere for me to sit. Nordstrom’s is always going to take a return, no matter what. We make sure your email is delivered. Have you got something people trust?

4. Make it easy for people to talk about you – Another example Andy gave was Kiehl’s skin products, whatever you buy, they’re constantly giving you free samples of other products you might like. What do you do? You talk about it.

I talked to Andy later on about his book and he said “Janine, all of the information in this book leads to buzz, but in the end, you’ve got to collect email address and communicate to them. Email is just the number one way.” I couldn’t agree more Andy.

I’ve got so much more to write about on this subject. None of us have big advertising budgets to play with so we all need more ideas about how to create buzz for our products or services.

So, what can you do to create more ‘buzz’ about your business? Have you considered implementing systems to stimulate more word of mouth marketing? I can tell you it would definitely be a worthwhile endeavor.

Hello again,

I’ve spent the past few days getting caught up from the time I took off over the past few weeks as a result of Christmas and New Years and I wanted to share one thing I came across with you. I received an email from one of my subscribers and I thought the question and my response provided a lot of instruction and insight.

Here’s the question:

“My question is what do you feel is a better marketing tool, postcards or brochures? I feel with brochures I can get more info to the potential customers, such as all the services I provide, as well as some photos of some of my customer’s lawns. What do think?”

And here was my response:

“In response to your question, the answer is…..it depends. It depends what you’re trying to accomplish. It depends who your target market is. It depends what your budget is.

As you no doubt know, sending brochures is much more expensive than postcards, but as you stated, they allow you to tell a much more complete story and include more of things like photos, testimonials, etc. If your budget allows, I would certainly suggest going the brochure route.

However, if you do decide to go that way, keep these tips in mind when creating your brochure:

• If possible, definitely include some pictures of your work but don’t crowd it with too many pictures. Leave some room for your sales message.
• Don’t be afraid to use lots of text to tell your story and deliver your sales message. If you were sending a salesman to their door, you wouldn’t limit him to 250 words or less, would you? Definitely not and you don’t want to do the same to your marketing collateral.
• Be sure to start your brochure off with an attention grabbing headline. Just because they receive it doesn’t mean they’re going to read it. You need to give them some reasons for reading.
• Don’t just list your services or features. Everything you say MUST be as much about the potential customer as possible, so take everything you think you want to say about all the services you offer and translate those into benefits for the customer. (Example: 15 years experience – We have the knowledge and experience necessary to ensure the job gets done right the FIRST time and without any unnecessary problems or expense)
• Present an offer that invites them to contact you for additional information or for a low-risk trial of your services. If you’re going to spend any money on producing these brochures, you’d be silly NOT to make them some type of offer that gets them to at least contact you for more information.
• If you have some customer testimonials, use them. Just as with the pictures, letting your satisfied customers tell the story will go a long way towards reducing the skepticism felt by your prospects.
• Give them a number of different ways to respond and then tell them exactly how you’d like them to respond. For example, give them your office number and tell them to call during the hours of 8am – 5pm. Or give them your website and tell them to logon and fill out the ‘Request an Estimate’ form. Don’t assume they know what they need to do to respond. You need to tell them specifically.“

So, what’s your plan for marketing this during this upcoming season? Have you decided on a method yet? Do you have your sales message carefully honed to perfection?

Now’s definitely the time to be working on and planning all the marketing activities you’ll want to pursue in the coming months. Don’t let things creep up on you because you’ll just end up feeling like you’re behind the 8 ball all year long.

Well, have a fantastic weekend and look for more marketing ideas next week.

So, a new year is upon us.  Many LCO’s are busy trying to wrap up their 2006 and prepare for 2007.  In many areas, snow covers the ground or the weather is at least cold enough that grass doesn’t grow.  As a result, they’re so focused on other things that they take their eyes off their marketing.

Big mistake!

Even though the first cuts won’t happen for a few more months, now’s an important time to work on your marketing.  Even if you’re not planning on sending anything out, it’s important to start planning your campaigns for the coming year.  Will you have a well-planned, coordinated effort or will it be haphazard and sporadic?

If you’ve been reading this blog or my messages for any length of time, I hope you answer is ‘a well-planned, coordinated effort’.  I promise, if you’ll put in the time and effort right now to plan and prepare your marketing for the upcoming season the results you’ll achieve will far surpass anything you’ve done previously.