One of the most important things any business owner can do right now is to keep their head up, remain optimistic, and keep pushing towards their goals.  As I’ve said again and again on this blog, the news media wants us all to believe things are headed for Hell in a handbasket.

Yes, the financial picture is pretty bleak and yes, people are losing their jobs and yes, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to grow your business.

BUT, that doesn’t mean it’s time to throw in the towel.

When times get tough, it means you’ve got to get tougher.  You’ve got to identify those areas where you can control the outcome and focus on those things.  Not everyone’s going to purchase your services.  Not everyone’s going to pay your prices.  However, there are still people out there that WILL purchase your services and WILL gladly pay the prices you’re charging.  It’s your job to go find them!

In yesterday’s post I gave you a list of 10 different ways you can beat the question of price.  I’d like to elaborate just a bit on that again today.

Of all the ways you can beat price, the one that stands head and should above the rest is positioning.  In other words, you need to position yourself as much more than just a ‘lawn care guy’.  You need to become the lawn care or landscape EXPERT and you need to provide a service so valuable that anyone would be foolish to hire anybody but you.

So, how to you position yourself in this way?  Here are a few suggestions:

• Become the recognized expert in your marketplace by writing articles for the local paper, giving interviews to local TV and radio, offering seminars at the local home improvement store, etc.
• Make it difficult to get on your schedule.  With this one, there are two ways to do it.  The first is perceived business, which basically means when somebody calls demanding your service RIGHT NOW, you tell them you’ll have to see if you can squeeze them in.  The second way is to just become so busy that you really do have to try and squeeze them in.  You do this through relentless, effective marketing.
• Provide such a quality service that everybody’s talking about you.  Remember, customer service these days is pretty much dead, so anything you can do to go above and beyond what your customers and/or prospects expect will help set you apart and position you as the ‘go to guy’.

So, as you work to build your business, remember that price is the LAST thing you want to compete on.  Find others ways to differentiate your business and you’ll soon find yourself the top dog in your chosen marketplace.

I’m sitting in a Panera Bread in Orlando, FL right now writing this post, and even though that may not sound like a big deal, it is to me.  You see, if you didn’t already know this, I live in Rock Hill, SC which is a quiet little suburb of Charlotte, NC.

I’m in Orlando today because I was meeting with a prospect I’ve been trying to get some business from for quite some time.  Now, the big deal really isn’t the fact that I’m in Orlando.  The big deal is how I got here.

You see, I woke up this morning at 2:30am, in Rock Hill, SC, to hit the road for a 12pm meeting with this prospect, in Orlando, FL.

That’s right, I didn’t fly.  I drove. All 8+ hours of it and just so I could sit with a prospect for no more than 2 hours and talk about MAYBE doing business together.

Now, I know it sounds like a totally crazy idea, but in my mind it was something I absolutely HAD to do.  See, I’ve been working on building a relationship with this gentleman for quite some time now so I knew he was qualified.  And he’s a bit scatter brained and ADD so if I wanted his undivided attention I knew I had to be sitting in front of him face to face.

No problem, right?  Not so.  He’s on the road about 200+ days a year so getting in front of him is no small feat.  When he told me he’d be in Orlando, FL today and would have a few hours to sit and chat I knew it was an opportunity I couldn’t miss.

So, what are the marketing lessons to learn from this?

First, know that I very carefully qualified this potential opportunity.  I knew he’d absolutely be a good candidate for my services, plus he has the potential to be a very big add for my business  so I was willing to take steps I wouldn’t take with most prospects.

Second, something you just have to do in person.  As much as I talk about creating marketing systems for generating leads, screening and converting those leads, and then maximizing your customer relationships, absolutely NOTHING beats sitting face to face with your prospect.  You just can’t get the same level of communication via email, direct mail, or the telephone you can when you sit down together.

And third, be willing to do big things to land the big fish.  Sure I drove 8 hours to get here and am getting ready to turn around and drive another 8 to get home, but with the way the meeting went, it will be 16 hours VERY WELL spent.

Oh yeah, and why did I drive instead of fly?  Because it was a last minute meeting (I found out about it on Wednesday) and I couldn’t really stomach paying over $700 for an airline ticket when it’ll end up costing me less than $100 in food and gas.  Heh, maybe when I’ve got Donald Trump type money it won’t be that big of a deal. 

The Future of Your Business After Today

Today’s Election Day here in the US and I thing’s for sure, things are going to change.  No matter which Presidential candidate you voted for (you did vote, right?), life as we know it is going to change.

People have been unhappy with the direction our country has gone the past few years.  Terrorism is always a constant threat.  The economy is on a roller-coaster ride.  And people have little trust in our elected officials.

In a nutshell, there’s a pretty good chance things will look significantly different 4 years down the road.  The question is, will they look better or worse?

Now, while many on both sides of the political isle want to say life will be much better with ‘their’ candidate in office, the way things look will ultimately come down to ourselves.  You see, no matter which candidate is elected President and no matter how divided the Senate or Congress is, the success we achieve is nobody’s responsibility but our own.

So, how can we make sure things are better for us 4 years from now?

Here’s a list of 5 steps you can take to ensure this happens:

1.    Focus on building a lean, efficient business

For the foreseeable future, the economy’s going to continue to be on a rollercoaster ride.  If you want to do more than just survive, it’s important to build an organization that’s lean and efficient.  To do this you’ve got to cut the dead weight, systematize EVERY aspect of your business, and ensure you’ve eliminated as much waste as you possibly can.

2.    Know who your ideal client is and focus your efforts on them

To ensure you’re as lean and mean as possible, you’ve got to focus your marketing efforts on those candidates most likely to purchase your services.  If someone’s not a good candidate, don’t send them your marketing materials.  If you don’t know if someone’s a good candidate for your services, find out.  If you can’t control who receives your sales message, consider using a different medium.

You absolutely MUST market using a rifle with a laser sighted scope, not a shotgun.

3.    Use ONLY direct response marketing to ensure maximum effectiveness

Only direct response marketing allows you to track your efforts, measure the results you get, and scale up or down as necessary.  While most businesses are busy trying to build their brand or establish name recognition through branding style marketing, you’ll efficiently build your business, attracting clients RIGHT NOW while at the same time building the name recognition without wasting money to do it.

4.    Build an impenetrable fence around your existing clients

As the face of marketing continues to evolve, the effectiveness of traditional marketing methods will continue to decline.  As a result, it will become increasingly expensive to market your business.

However, if you focus your efforts on the clients you ALREADY HAVE, you’ll find that you have a ready-made market that already knows, likes, and trusts you, and as a result, you’ll be able to grow your business WITHOUT having to worry about ineffective methods your competitors are desperately trying to make work.

5.    Become a student of effective marketing

As the owner of a business, customers are your lifeline.  Without new customers and the ability to hang on to them, your business will dry up.  As a result, it’s important to constantly be learning new and innovative ways to generate new customers and maximize the existing relationships you already have.  The only way you can do this is to constantly learn about new ways to market your business.

So, whether your candidate gets elected tonight or not doesn’t really matter.  Again, what matters most is what you do with the challenges and opportunities that we’ll be presented with over the next 4 years.

Will you use them to grow your business?  Or will use them as blame for the reasons why your business is not where it needs to be.  The choice is up to you.

I don’t know what you have planned tonight, but I can tell you I’ll be up to my eyeballs in Halloween craziness.  My wife and I moved into our new neighborhood last year just in time to experience the Trick or Treat madness and let me tell you, it’s total chaos.

You see, we live in a pretty quiet neighborhood in Rock Hill, SC, which is a suburb of Charlotte, NC.  It’s a fantastic neighborhood in that it’s not a tract development so every house is a little different, everyone has good sized yards, and there are LOTS of trees.  Plus, there are culdesacs EVERYWHERE, so I don’t have any problem letting my kids ride their bikes in the street because there’s no way anyone could speed.

Anyway, Halloween is total chaos because every year, local churches and other neighborhood groups bus kids into ours.  Yes, they bus the kids to our neighborhood.  Crazy, I know.

So from 6:30pm until at least 9pm we’ll have a steady stream of kids trounce up our front steps hoping to get some candy.  We bought 5 HUGE bags of candy, over 1,000 pieces total and I wouldn’t be surprised if we ran out before the last little ghost rang the doorbell.

But, I didn’t write this email to complain.  Nope.

See, as I was thinking about all the kids that would be ringing my doorbell hoping to score a little Halloween loot I thought, “why not give my loyal customers and subscribers some Halloween loot as well?”

So, that’s what I’m doing.

Beginning right now and running through Monday at 11:59pm ET, you can score anyone of the various products or services I offer at a full 31% off.  That’s right, you can almost 1/3 off the final price.

That includes my best selling, step-by-step business building guide ’28 Days to Defining and Dominating Your Target Market’, as well as getting a powerful, profit producing website.  Basically anything (with the exception of the Silver website package or Champion’s Circle membership) is 31% off.

But remember, at 11:59pm ET on Monday it all goes away.  So if you’ve been thinking about investing in one of my products or services, now is DEFINITELY the time to act.

To claim the discount, simply go through the shopping cart process and then enter coupon code ‘SPOOKY2008’ at checkout to apply the discount.

If you have any questions or trouble with any of it, please don’t hesitate to let me know and I’ll get you squared away.

So, I hope you have lots of exciting things planned for tonight, and hopefully you won’t have to suffer through the madness of having kids bused into your neighborhood!

I had a meeting with an associate today and he asked me to review one of his marketing pieces.  And true to form, like almost 99% of all small businesses, the piece was a menu-board style marketing piece.  It had their company name up top, a few words about what they did, and then it listed the services they offered.  Unfortunately, it was pretty blah.

Now, if you know me, then you know how much I had branding style or menu-board style marketing, mostly because it’s a HUGE waste of money.  Sure, you’ll get some business as a result of it, but only a very small percentage of what you could if you used true direct response style marketing.

In fact, even if you only changed one small thing about the piece and added some type of low risk offer, you’d increase the response 10 fold.  You see, people are lazy and even though they may have a need for the products or services you’re offering, unless you give them a reason to pull their lazy behinds off the couch, they won’t act.

So, in EVERY PIECE of marketing you put out, be sure to include some type of low risk offer that will motivate them to pick up the phone and call RIGHT NOW!