Up your conversion rate!

Well, now that we've worked on measuring our sales, which is a bit like tinkering under the hood of your car, we are going to add a turbo! Would you believe that one simple phrase can increase your business turnover by up to 60%? It did for me. I learned it from a book written by Tom Hopkins. You have to love the man's style, there just isn't a better guy out there when it comes to selling. Selling is what your business is about, it's why your company exists and it's why customers come to you. They have a problem, or a need and you have the solution. For goodness sake, please don't tell me you have been selling coal to Newcastle! Who needs that? This is where the fine tuning of your sales engine gets a little more interesting. The last post I made, about measuring the source of your leads was just plain dead boring. I am sure you nearly fell asleep counting your sheep! I mean, while counting your sales. Well, now, we are going to add a single phrase to your sales vocabulary. This must become part of your daily speech, very time you answer your business phone, it's going to pop out of your mouth like a horse that was slapped on the rump! So, now, when you answer the phone, before you say goodbye to your client, just ask "Is there anything else I may provide you service with?".

When I discovered this trick, I added it to my sales pitch. Every time I spoke with a client, I ended off with this phrase. Within two weeks it caused a really big problem for me. I had so much business coming in I was booked for the next 2 weeks, it was the first time my schedule was full so far in advance. Now I had guaranteed work for the next two weeks! This was fantastic!

My bank statement started looking much better too. I now had almost too much work to cope with. This sales trick had now brought me 60% new turnover. My business was limited really to just a single product line, but the feedback from customers from this sales trick made it clear there were products missing from our offering. We quickly added these, they were closely related to our main product and our customers were asking for it!

So, I had now got a clear idea on where my main business was coming from and had grown the turnover by 60%. I still had one thing to sort out on my marketing. That was how to correct the adverts I was paying for that didn't generate any sales. I was pouring money down the drain and didn't know it. Worse still, my wasted advert expenditure was only serving to build my competition's brand!

So in my next blog, I will show you quickly how to increase your market presence without spending more money, because if you are like most of us other small business owners out here, then you haven't got any extra money to waste! There are only three variables that one needs to work on in order to improve the cash in the bank. We will get to those later. Right now, we are making sure the business has got sales in the first place.

is it possible?

If you are anything like me, you don't want to waste time with irrelevant info. I want to share with you some hard earned experience, you choose whether or not to apply it.

Most small business owners have landed in a job due to circumstance and are really just going from day to day without a thought about the distant future. That's why most of us fall into the horrid statistics we all hear about, with so many small ventures ending up in file 13 (the trash can).

My first post here will hopefully get you on the road to making more money. This is not a get rich quick thing, its boring hard work. Here we go then:

You know the old 80/20 rule? That 20% of your sales actually makes 80% of your profits? Well here is a simple means to increase the profits quickly, but let me warn you, its as boring as heck. It feels like you are counting sand grains! But the results from this simple exercise can be amazing if you stick with the program!

Here it is then:

For a full month, record all incoming sales inquiries. Log the "source" which generated the lead. You'll be surprised at the results. Many business spend money on advertising that does nothing, even worse - it often just serves to build their competition's brand!

You'll need a spreadsheet something like this: