Hi Champ!

We have been talking about the life cycle of a business and how to get the most out of each maturity level.  Today we will dive a bit deeper into the Expansion stage to outline key building blocks for success.

As a reminder, the five different stages of a business life cycle are:

1. Inception
2. Survival
3. Growth
4. Expansion
5. Mature

Stage 4 Expansion

In order for a business to expand successfully it is recommended that they have shored up any holes that may exist in the previous life cycle stages of stage 2.)Survival and 3.)Growth.  We work to develop key targeted improvements for companies looking to add locations or franchise.  Filling these holes in the business maturity helps to build a steady foundation as one expands.  It is in this phase, successful entrepreneurs and leaders start to understand the phrase – “You can’t get to where you want to go with the same thinking that got you here”.  This is often difficult to hear or...

There are three key areas of public relations you can use to boost your advertising results ten-fold over your paid advertising.

The key to public relations lie in:

• Public relation or publicity
• Merchandising
• Promotions

With a solid plan in place that encompasses all these areas, you’ll have a great approach to use public relations in the best way possible.

Public relations include all that is the media. Don’t limit yourself. The attention of newspapers, television, radio, magazines, bloggers, ezines and more are all equally powerful. Online marketing is just as, if not more, important as conventional media.

Here are the steps to get noticed by the media:

1. Put together a press release for your company. The press release should be relevant to your target market and address consumer interest, not just announce your business.
2. Compact your press release to include one hook and one angle. Choose the most attention-getting to make sure the media person you are sending it to...

It’s extremely important to build relationships with your vendors and those around you can bring in new customers/clients and increase awareness of your company branding.

The people you work directly with on your products and services are really the ones with the most to gain when you find success. By taking the time to get to know them, you’ll find a whole host of opportunities you didn’t realize were there.

Look for great ways to offer your vendors rewards for helping grow your business and everyone wins. One of ways you can do this is by offering performance based incentives and strategic alignment strategies that are much larger than their normal charges.

Here’s the step-by-step process to putting together a strategic partnership with a vendor:

1. Approach all the vendors you work with and offer an incentive based on performance.
2. Put the generous incentive plan together from their perspective, even take suggestions.
3. Develop a clear, concise and easy to...

If your marketing is doing its job, you should have qualified sales leads/prospects interested in learning more and becoming future customers. There are a few key ways to draw them in and seal the deal. You need to be:

• Inviting
• Informative
• Enjoyable 

The biggest fear of most new customers is buyer’s remorse. You want to avoid this at all costs and this should be mitigated if you’ve provided a quality product/service that delivers on the marketing claims you’ve made.

However, this can still occur. There are a two ways to deal with this:

• Offer to refund money-no questions asked
• Offer a bonus they can keep even if they return the product

These offers alone will also mitigate buyer’s remorse because the customer will trust you more, just for offering these things.

There are number of other ways to turn a prospect into a customer:

1. Offer a special price as an opportunity for you to test the market.
2. Offer a referral incentive.
3. Offer a smaller, more...

There is a lot of crap out there these days.  We have so many ways that advertisers, marketers, and salespeople are using to fight for our attention we are becoming numb.  That is until something POPS and we see something of value.  Something other than the same old crap.  There are 5 major components to good advertising copy that breaks through the CRAP-O-SPHERE: (The order of these is essential to success)

• Command Attention
• Showcase Benefits of Products/Services with Insights
• Prove the Benefits
• Persuade People to Embrace the Benefits
• Call to Action

Advertising is sales in print. So, you need to think about the unique benefits your products/services offer and showcase that in a persuasive way. You need to emphasize results, not features.

Let’s take a minute to talk about each of these components:

1. Command Attention: This is usually accomplished with the headline. You need an attention-getter that makes people want to know more about your...

As an advertising sales representative at the Dallas Business Journal in the early 2000’s I sold ads to business owners who were always interested in direct response.  Advertising is necessary but there is more you need to do for achieving direct response success.

Direct response marketing is a marketing method that demands a direct response from your potential customers. This type of marketing is used to answer questions, present your branding, products and the reason you do what you do. Customers are offered the opportunity to respond, whether that be in the way of signing up for a newsletter, posting a comment on your site or blog, or purchasing a product from you.

So, what does direct response marketing look like? Well, it comes in many forms, including:

• Direct mail
• Print and Social Media ads
• Radio and TV ads
• Coupons or other incentives
• Telemarketing

Some of the advantages of direct marketing are:

• A great way to use free time during lulls in business
• Productive way...

Today I’d like to teach you about the three most important startup marketing tools you need to get and keep new customers.  By the way, these startup tools should be a checklist for those of you who have been in business for over 2 years.  If you don't have these keys to success you should plug the holes and use this as a roadmap for success.  

Get ready for value and some behaviors to help you Sell Like A Champ!

In person:

It’s essential you meet with customers/clients in person whenever possible. This shows you respect them and take the time to work with your clients to give personal attention to each of them.

Follow up letter:

Always take a moment to send a follow up letter or email about what you talked about, new agreements or partnerships made and to thank them for taking the time to meet with you. Likewise, you should always send thank you letters or small gifts to partners you find success with.

Phone call:

Use a telephone call to follow up...

Educate them.

Take the time to market and sell new products to your old customers and less time trying to sell old products to new customers and you will see a drastic change in your sales, customer quality and branding position.

Here are a couple of key elements to use to retain your current customers:

1. Stay in contact: This means by phone, email, e-newsletter, in person-by pigeon if you have too!
2. Post-Purchase Assurance: This means you need to follow up with customers. Your customers need to feel like they are being supported for their purchase and with the item they purchased. How many times have you purchased a product, then felt completely abandoned? Something as simple as a Thank You note with your contact or customer service information can go along way in retaining a great customer.
3. Deals & Guarantees: Always offer your current customers the best deals and guarantees you have. Show them you appreciate their business or even come up with a club specifically to...

Today we’ll talk about shameless self-promotion. That’s right, I said it! Shameless! After all, we are learning from Paris Hilton, the Kardashians, high profile CEO's, and politicians here.

It’s all about self-promotion! Self-promotion comes in many forms and you can use different tactics to get your name out there. Look at politicians! Talk about self-promotion and in some not so discreet ways, at that. But, seriously, consider some of the major superstars we all know. Madonna, Donald Trump, Howard Stern and Bill Clinton, just to name a few.

We all self promote. Did you raise your hand in class to show the teacher you knew the answer? Of course! That’s self-promotion. This is the kind of self-promotion we are talking about. With dignity, class and the knowledge to back it up. If you self-promote only to prove you don’t really know what you’re talking about, you’re going to lose business.

Natural self-promoters are the former and I want to...