A small business startup is a challenging experience.  It is easy to become absorbed in one area and distracted in another.  But, to have your small business successful and to take the steps to business success, you must keep one thing in mind.  Your customer must have a great experience. 

Too often when you are creating your marketing business plan or coming up with a successful performance strategy, the customer experience gets overlooked.  For customers to want to return and for them to spread the word their experience must exceed being good.  It must be great.

Growing small business is about growing your customer base.  Your customer base, if they have that “WOW!” experience will become a part of your sales force.  Think about it. 

Different isn’t necessarily better.  But better is always different.  Are you giving them a better experience to talk about.  In an era of great competition and many product similarities how can you differentiate your customer’s experience in a positive way?

It could be something as simple as a follow up thank you note or email.  And, don’t try to send anything else in this communication.  If you do, it is another in your face sales pitch and is more likely to take your excited customer and cool him or her very quickly.

Think about a great customer experience you have had.  Think of ways to get your customers to say “WOW” not only about your product but about your organization and you.  When you do you are building a foundation to have your small business successful.

For most of us who are self-employed one of the most crucial measuring sticks for success is sales.  A good marketing business plan is a must to support consistent sales and small business growth. 

And, if you don’t address some of the other topics in the previous posts then you are more likely to have a more difficult time with sales.  A successful performance strategy in marketing is about finding prospects who are interested and keeping the pipeline full. 

In sales you must have a sound conversion strategy.  Obviously, when there are no conversions there are no sales. 

Successful sales and marketing is built first and foremost around identifying a pain or need of your market. 

After you have identified the pain or need then you want to show your market how you can be the solution.

Next, you want to show them the benefit of you as the solution. 

Then you want to add features. 

Let’s say, for example, that you are selling a particular type of car.  Benefits to this car may be safety, good acceleration and good gas mileage.  Features may be reinforced steel frame, a responsive engine type and low body weight to increase gas mileage. 

I think you get the picture.  Too often people try to sell features instead of benefits.  In the process, the customer gets disinterested.  Find out the benefits and solutions your customers want.  When you do, you will be on the way to having more sales and your small business successful.

What is marketing?  Marketing is the process that you will use to bring in prospects for your product or service.  Once you have the prospect’s attention then you can focus on sales. 

But, how do you plan to market your business to keep the pipeline full?  Before you get started in a business be sure of two things:

1. How to successfully market your business?
2. How that marketing strategy will be implemented consistently?

These two components will be part of any good marketing business plan.

Small business growth is about having a good marketing plan and executing it consistently.  Interestingly, the creation of the marketing plan is not as big a challenge as is the consistent execution. 

And, it is lack of consistent marketing that can doom a business to failure. Why does this happen?  It happens because the entrepreneur, business owner or solo professional does not have the skills to execute the marketing plan.  And, because the budget is tight they will not pay to have it executed. 

Making your own business the success you envision requires, in most instances when starting out, that you wear most, if not all the marketing hats.  It must be part of your performance strategy for success.

For example, for some businesses to be successful it may require consistent phone calling with a script from a targeted list.  If you are not good on the phone or don’t like it then it won’t happen. 

Maybe your business requires a great deal of face to face contact and networking.  If you aren’t comfortable with that then it won’t happen. 

Know what type of marketing your business needs.  Either be ready to develop the necessary skills to be successful or look for another business that caters to your strengths. 

I have observed many small businesses fail, not because the owner wasn’t a good person, but because the owner didn’t have or wouldn’t develop the marketing skills necessary to make his small business successful.

Talking about your goals should inspire you.  If your goals don’t inspire you, then don’t expect any one else to get excited, let alone support you.  Whether your goal is small business growth, losing weight or earning more money you must be inspired to increase the probability of achieving your goals.

To create a vision of the future you want, whether it be in owning your own business or your life follow these simple steps when it comes to goals setting.

1.  You must be excited and inspired by a majority of your goals.  If you aren’t then you are not headed in a good direction.

2.  Write down your goals.  This increases your chances of attaining them by 60%. 

3.  Prioritize which ones are most important and simplify your list.  If you have too many goals, your chances of overwhelm and not being successful increase.

4.  Write goals that are more attached to a process rather than an outcome.  For example, if you want to lose 10 pounds, you want to include in your goal the process of how you are going to go about doing it.

5.  Read your goals at least three times per week.  Get them fixed in your mind.  Each time visualize yourself achieving them. 

6.  Accountability.  This is the most important step.  Share your goals with someone.  It can be a friend, a coach or a trusted worker.  Regardless, when you are held accountable by others you greatly increase your odds of success.

The formula for growth and success in owning your own business is writing down your goals and then having your priorities and accountability in place to implement them.

Have you ever heard someone say or said it your self, “It’s just not a priority.”  In and of itself, this statement is not bad.  But, when it is referring to something that you know you should do either to help you or your small business, then it becomes a negative. 

Very often people set goals and somehow not much happens.  Maybe, if you own your own business you have goals for growing your small business.  Whatever your goals are, you are much more likely to achieve them if you set priorities. 

In owning your own business, there can be a great number of things coming at you to the point where you have many goals but you don’t have an order for them to be accomplished.  I know this may sound dry but it is critical to know your priorities. 

Without priorities you may accomplish a goal that could actually cause more work in accomplishing another goal.  Yes, for small business growth and personal growth, order is important. 

In owning your own business, when you establish priorities and stick to them it becomes easier on you and everyone associated with your business to perform to a higher level.  With priorities you have direction.  Direction provides focus.  And, it increases your odds of having the success you desire.

Napoleon Hill in Think And Grow Rich said, “What the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” Everything that we have today is because someone first had a vision in their mind.  Somebody had to visualize an airplane, the internet and many other things.

You have the power to create the future you want. Are you looking for small business growth?  Then visualize it.  Are you seeking a successful performance strategy, then visualize it.

The key to success is first visualizing what you want and then, and this is critical, believing you can have it.  Belief is the inspiration that is the fuel to make it happen.  Belief and the enthusiasm that goes with it makes things 1,000% better.

In owning your own business and being successful a large ingredient is inspiration.  Be inspired.  Stretch yourself to be all that you can be.  Remember, you have a choice.

You can choose to be more.  Or, you can choose to be less.  Why not strive to be all that you can be?  Only then will the possibilities for the goals you want to achieve start to become the reality you seek.

You have identified your target market.  And, you have some thoughts on how to reach them.  These are great first steps.  Now you are ready to create some brochures, fliers, an email campaign, etc.  Good!

There are other resources including many small business courses and small business books that can help.  Successful small business is not just about owning your own business.  It’s about creating accountability, a performance strategy,  to take the success actions needed.  Very often, small business coaching, because small businesses for the most part lack a board of directors, can provide the accountability and help accelerate the success process.

But before you get into the creative part you must have a powerfully crafted message.  You can have beautiful materials that don’t deliver what you want because the message is not strong.  A successful performance strategy for marketing and sales will have a message crafted with impact.

1.  Identify the customer or client’s pain, want or need.

2.  Show how your product or the service is the solution to their pain want or need.

3.  Let them know about the benefit of using your product or service as the solution.  For example, faster delivery times, fewer break downs, more personal service, saving money, etc.

A powerful message will incorporate these three points and will state, restate it and state it again.

And, a great way to do this is to tell stories.  Every one loves a story.  We can get the facts almost anywhere.  A story about your product or service marries logic and emotion and adds credibility.   Doing this is a key to small business growth.

As has been said many times, facts tell, stories sell.  Tell your story.  That is your marketing campaign.  Successful small business tells a good story.  And, when you tell it well and when you follow the formula above it can lead you to greater sales.

Owning your own business is a challenge.  And one of the greatest challenges is to have a marketing and sales performance strategy.  The biggest challenge once you have decided on what you are going to do is to execute it faithfully.

Successful small business is about executing the fundamentals.  Remember, most small businesses fail not from lack of ideas but from lack of discipline.  Lack of discipline creates a lack of action. 

Small business coaching, small business courses or small business books and small business ebooks can help create structure and accountability to take the action for success.  Or there are audio courses that can help

Not only does action cure fear.  It will bring success.  You must act on your plan.  In putting together a plan there are a couple of steps that can help you.

1.  Have a database of your existing customers and/or create one of the ones you want to have.

2.  Identify target markets within your existing customers or within the customer base you want to have.

3.  Identify their wants and needs.

4.  Identify how you are going to solve their wants and needs.

This will get you started on a successful performance strategy for marketing and sales.  In the next post we will get into the key to a successful marketing and sales performance strategy.  Start creating and working on the four areas listed and you will be on your way to having a small business running successfully.

If you are wondering where your next sale, job or client is coming from that is not a good feeling.  If it is continual it is even worse.   Owning your own business can have many challenges including the fear of not knowing or having a grasp on our sales and how to get sales.  These are a few of the things that can keep us up at nights and put our stomachs in knots.  

How do you move beyond this stage?  You must have a marketing performance strategy.  Quite simply you must have a plan for action.  Then you must execute the plan.  And, here’s the key.  You must execute it consistently.  This is where most people fall short.  They don’t execute the plan.  

1.  The first step to successful small business is having a performance strategy for  marketing.

2.  The second step to business success is then executing it.  

There is nothing fancy here.  To get off this treadmill of uncertainty you must take action.  Action cures fear.     

Put together an action plan for marketing your business.  Go out and start performing it every day. 

Start with some small things to build your confidence.  When you do you can work up to the bigger ones.  Then you will have your small business running with a plan and in turn you will have greater confidence and peace of mind.

When owning your own business one focus is more small business growth. In an earlier post I talked about the first rule of exceptional customer service, which is to have a good attitude.  A good attitude means having your customer service set up to provide for the needs of your customers, not your needs.  For many that would seem to be obvious.

Rule #2 has to do with your employees or independent contractors if they are to be involved in customer service.  One of the biggest mistakes I see in small business coaching is not giving the very people who can help you with the process of providing exceptional customer service, ownership of how to provide good customer service.

As a result, the customer service department or area bumps along and becomes your negative marketing department. Of course this doesn’t help any one’s attitude or morale.  To get others and you, the small busines owner,  truly involved in providing exceptional customer service you can start practicing with your employees or contractors.

When you do you will have a small business running well and a successful small business for you, your employees and your customers.  And, the satisfaction you will feel from a growing small business will be great.

Instruct them that when they bring you a problem that you also want them to bring three solutions.  If they have two or one, that is okay.  But, ask for three.  Listen to these solutions.  And, more importantly, look for ways to incorporate anything good you hear into the customer service process.  Not only do you start building a sense of ownership but also a sense of team.  Your employees know and feel that we are all in this together.

If you practice having them offer solutions to problems and giving them ownership in the outcome you will start building a customer service department that is on the way to being exceptional and part of your positive marketing department.  When you sow these seeds you will reap small business success and small business growth.