When you “hit the wall” in your business

In endurance sports “hitting the wall” is when you have depleted nutrients and sudden fatigue and loss of energy sets in. In milder instances brief rest and ingestion of food and drinks containing carbohydrates can remedy it.

When the phone stops ringing and your inbox is empty for business requests you have “hit the wall” in your business.

Endurance athletes have a plan in place to avoid “hitting the wall” on race day. Usually most of these athletes have experience “hitting the wall” before they had a plan in place. Maybe this is your situation as well. You didn’t have a business plan in place and now you need one.

What should your plan include?

The endurance athlete, like a marathon runner, knows where their finish line is for them. If their finish line is 26 miles when they start out they are not running 26 miles. They break down their plan into bite sizes.

What is your goal? Do you want recurring income that sets you free to use your time as you please? Do you want to build retirement? Many start their business to have freedom. However, many of these same people feel they are enslaved by it rather than being free.

Define Your Customer

Are they male or female? Do they have a budget for one time, occasional or recurring services? Do they spend a lot or little time on the Internet? Where on the Internet do they spend their time? Where do they go to find your product or services?

What am I selling?

Most make the initial mistake of thinking they are selling a service or product. I challenge you to think of what benefit you are offering to the customer. When you can connect on the emotional level you will increase your business.  Just look at all the automobile ads that connect on fear. They help the customer know they can feel safe in their product. What are they selling most of the time? Safety. Sometimes they show almost running over a child or sometimes they show how the performance of their engine will help you pull away from oncoming trucks or pass crazy drivers.

Connect the dots

Now that you know your customer and what you are selling you need to connect these dots to one another.

The most common mistake made today is an emphasis on quality and not quantity of connections. 

Suspension brides, boats and even rock climbers rely on many strands and not just one to support them. By using more strands of a weaker tinsel strength fiber you can create a stronger support than with one strand of a stronger tinsel strength fiber.

Marketing the rules of Seven and Three

Most all research has shown that you need seven different connections to turn a prospect into a customer. Many businesses fail to have a marketing plan that has at least seven different connections to their targeted audience.

While you may have planned seven different ways to reach your targeted audience you want to try each of the methods three times.

The first time you do something you spend a great deal of effort to make it happen. The learning curve alone is very steep. Your audience is just being introduced to whatever you are doing.

The second time you implement your idea you are able to make some necessary changes. You don’t have that steep learning curve and you are now building on some experience. The audience is now somewhat aware of what you are doing and therefore you have more buy in from them.

Third time you know you have worked out most all the kinks and your implementation is at it’s peak. At this point your audience may be a raving fan of what you are doing.

By the third time you are able to make a very good evaluation on the Return-On-Investment. If you did this on the first time you have too many things working against you from your mistakes implementing it and customer understanding what you are trying to do.

Marketing ideas

Make yourself newsworthy. You can enter contests and when you win you can send a press release out promoting yourself. You can get involved in a community event as a sponsor. By being there and involved you have a good chance of the local paper writing about your involvement.

Create a seminar. Create a program that will help your target audience. One small public relations agency that I work with in Roswell, GA created a free seminar titled, “Social Media Marketing Made Simple” to drum up business in the local market.

Create a brochure. If you meet your targeted audience one-on-one or they come to a seminar you put on having something they can leave with is another strand.
Website. While this is static you can point people to this and sometimes they may stumble upon it if you use the right keywords for listing your website.

Blog. By writing a blog you are establishing yourself as an expert in the field.

Social Media. Get involved in groups on the web where you can listen for topics that you can help with. You can find these groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter for example.

With social media it is important you are not pushing yourself on everyone, but pulling him or her to you.

This is true with all of your marketing.

Dale Carnegie said it best; “You can close more business in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get people interested in you.”