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.

In owning your own business one of the most important things to help you grow is to provide exceptional customer service.  Yet, we get engrossed in delivering the product or service and do a poor job of handling problems and questions. 

Ultimately, this will kill most small businesses.  Small business growth and running small business successfully is not something you do by chance but by design.

How often have we heard about or had direct experience with a company where we paid our money and then there was a problem.  I am sure all of you have had this happen to you at one time or another.  And, when we have a problem the worst part is not be able to reach someone who can give us some immediate direction to resolve our problem. 

Too often, companies today and many small businesses look at customer service as an expense.  When done right, customer service can become a profit center.  There are many components to having successful customer service.  More than we can discuss here.  In fact there are small business books, small business ebooks and small business courses that address customer service.

Let’s take a look at one component.  Successful small business is in larger part about having a good attitude.  A good attitude in this instance means validating the customers thoughts and feelings.  Rule number one to exceptional customer service and having a successful small business is that it is all about them and their perception.  That is a good attitude.  It is not about you. 

In working with small business and small business coaching some of the deadly phrases I hear go along these lines….”I’m sorry but I got busy or I would have called you back.”  Another is: ” I had a crisis or the employee was sick and that’s why no one got back to you.”  I could go on and on but you get the point. 

All of these responses are deadly because it becomes all about you and not about them.  What you are saying to them is that you don’t run your business well enough to take care of them.  In essence when they are calling you with a problem and you don’t respond properly or in a reasonable amount of time you are subconsciously telling them that they now have to run this part of your business since you aren’t capable of it. 

Think about it.  When you have to call someone more than once to get a response then you are having to solve the problem you have but now you are having to solve another problem which is poor customer service. Now you are asking or telling the customer by your actions to manage this part of your business since you can’t.  This will kill a small business if the customers start having to manage your customer service department. 

Rule number one is to have a good attitude where you put yourself in your customer’s position.  Then, and this is the key, design your customer service to meet the customer’s needs.  When you do, you will be amazed at the growth your business will experience when you handle problems well.

Think about this.  The four or five most dangerous words in the English language are:

• “It’s different here.”

• “It’s different this time.”

Somehow when we see or hear these words we are moved, without even realizing it, to thinking that the information, product or service that is being discussed is somehow better.

Those few words can move us to make a decision to be involved with something that is different.  And, we don’t take the time to pause and reflect on whether or not different is truly better.  As a business and life coach I work at being better because that makes me different.  And, it makes me different in a positive way.

For all of us we should be striving to be better.  Growing small business and small business growth is about being better.  But to make our businesses better the first step to business success we must take is to grow ourselves.  To be better we must grow.  How do we grow?  We must develop new disciplines.  After all, if we keep doing things the same way over and over again nothing is going to change.

You may say that’s obvious and you are right.  What is not obvious is how to go about affecting the change you desire.  Personally, I have faced this challenge myself.  And, the good news is that I have overcome it.  I have made myself better.  And that is what makes me different.  I am a firm believer in small business books, small business ebooks and small business courses.

They have helped me greatly.  Yet, for the most part, they did not specifically address the challenges of owning your own business.  After 30 years of owning several businesses and coaching hundreds of business owners, I have put together an ebook and home study course to help you create pathways to upgrade your business and your life

If you are committed to being better in your business and your life I have a couple of suggestions as to where to start.  For the self-employed there is the Progress Set Free Ebook.  The little acknowledged truth about self-employment is that we seek greater freedom and abundance yet we very often end up putting ourselves in bondage to our own creation.  The Progress Set Free Ebook will start you on the road to creating pathways to upgrade your business and your life.

And, if you really wish to have the business, life, freedom and abundance you desire then the Progress Set Free Home Study Course .  It can help accelerate moving you to becoming more and having the business and life you desire.

Unfortunately, most people wait for something to happen to them.  In coaching success, it reminds me of a story back in another time when homes were heated by wood stoves.  There was a man who was freezing and very unhappy with his life.  He started having an arguement with his stove because it wasn’t giving him any heat.  He said, “Give me the heat.  Then I’ll give you the wood.”

And that’s the challenge for many people.  They want something yet they won’t commit to putting something in.  As a result, you have the perfect formula for the result “nothing much happens here.” For the few who choose to be better we are willing to first put something in.  And that’s what makes them different.

Check out and get involved in the Progress Set Free Ebook or the Progress Set Free Home Study Course.  When you do you will committing yourself to being better, being different and having your Progress Set Free.