Chris Davidson

What do you do wrong (Part 2)?

Last week I looked at three mistakes you might be making on the road to success and this week I'm going to look at three more.

In summary, this week's entries are:

• Not charging enough
• Ignoring leads you already have
• Actually getting off your backside and taking action

In summary last week's entries were:

• Assuming that the highest quality product wins
• Using only one method for recruiting new customers
• Not having a big enough catalogue of stuff to sell

You can find the full article in the archive, which you can access by clicking on the link in the banner above.

Here goes for this week:

1. Not charging enough
This is the biggest fault of most small companies - me included - nobody's perfect. Do you think that raising your prices by 2% would cause you to loose many (any?) clients? I doubt it. What about 5% or 10%? So why don't you do it? What's wrong with being the most expensive in your market? Somebody has to be and if you believe in your product and service enough, why aren't you charging that premium price?

2. Ignoring existing leads
"Sell, sell, sell" that's the mantra. So off you go, charging through the city undergrowth, digging up new clients here, there and everywhere. "Sell, sell, sell. Find new prospects, that's what I must do."

What about all those unconverted leads sitting on your desk, in your business card folder, in your Outlook address book, or even worse, in your e-mail in-box?

I'll bet you right now you're ignoring money that's sitting on your office desk.

Pick it up, before it goes into someone else's pocket.

3. Not taking big enough action
Generating business is all about taking big action, simply because not everyone is going to buy. Shop keepers intuitively know this. The bigger the "foot-fall" in their shop, the more they sell. A friend of mine has just opened a new, city centre store. She has a discrete counter above the door which counts all the people who enter and leave her store. OK, it's not perfect, as it can't differentiate between staff and potential customers, but if there are enough potential customers the staff traffic becomes statistically insignificant.

It's a numbers game and the bigger the numbers the better. Don't contact 10 people, contact 100, or 1,000.

Take huge, big, massive action.

Remember, remember, if you decide to do something different as a result of reading this, then

...take action within three days!

...or you never will.

That's it folks for this week - as usual, your comments welcomed and appreciated, particularly with reference as to what you'd like to hear about. I do get quite a few e-mails by the way, and I read them all, so please don't feel shy about getting in contact.

Best wishes for the coming week.

Chris Davidson
Editor, Professional Speakers Journal
editor@professionalspeakersjournal.com