Tools, Tips & Techniques Part 1

Michael Loewenthal
Tools, Tips & Techniques-Part 1

* Posted by Michael Loewenthal on April 8, 2009


I recently gave a presentation to a group small business owners on Tools, Tips & Techniques for running their business. I thought I would share some of that here. I hope you find it helpful, and may it bring you new or renewed inspiration about your business.

If you own your own business, then you are in sales. You may disagree, but if you are not selling your business product or service, then you have no sales, no revenue, that means you have a hobby.

The primary responsibility of any business owner is to generate revenue for the business. This can be accomplished in many ways but it all boils down to selling. In order to sell, one must understand the core elements of prospecting, starting with who is your prospect. Define who your prospect is, understand you prospect and be sure that they are able to afford your product. If they truly can not afford your produce, change your prospect group.

A prospect must be a group that, wants, needs & is willing to pay for your product or service. Sell what people want at a price point they are willing to pay for it, don't sell them what you want to sell them just because you like it. You may like it, love it and your friends love it too, but if the market dosen't like it or love it, you have nothing to sell.

It is VERY important to define your prospect down to the smallest particle possible, Business owners can not afford to be general in terms as to who the prospect is. The more narrowly you define who it is the more likely you will develop a marketing strategy and sales presentation geared to them. Remember, make sales makes you happy, not making sales makes you sad; sad or happy, you decide.

Surprisingly, many people use very general terms as to who their prospect is. As an example, an insurance salesperson that sells life insurance. They may consider all the names in the telephone book as prospects.
I say that in order to find the prospect you have to define who you want to sell to. Granted, everyone may need life insurance but everyone is not a prospect Let's for a moment look at the "everyone" belief against a determined group of people that will become the prospects. A good agent will determine what characteristics they want in their prospect, such as, what age group of people, marital status, do they have kids, are they homeowners, are they recent homeowners, how much money do they make, what is their net worth, what motivators are there for them to spend money on life insurance. Knowing this makes it a lot easier to convert them from prospect to client.

As you can see, being able to develop your criterion for a prospect gives you a more focused group and a focused approach to marketing to them This leads to developing your Target Market (TM). Yes, you can have any number of target markets, but most likely you will market to each differently.

Learn to be specific, as specific as you can. You can be a retailer or service provider, it really doesn't matter. To make more sales, develop more clients/customers focus directly on the people you want. It is only the very large companies that can afford to market with a broad brush.

I hope this piece of my presentation was helpful. I hope so, I hope you now bring in more sales since you may have more clarity about who to sell to.

Remember, focus, be specific, very specific.

This document is copywrited. It may be used in its entirety or in part providing the complete signature is used

The Business Coach
Michael Loewenthal
www.TheBusinessCoachABQ.com
coach_michael@comcast.net