You are echoing the words of many other business people; “Business is not doing well right now” until you have convinced yourself that it is actually true. You have allowed yourself to believe that statement so you are not doing what you should be doing to bring in new clients. After all, business is down for everyone and not just you.
How does that consolation help you? Does the landlord still expect to collect rent from you at the end of the month? Do your children’s school heads understand that business is down right now so they are going slow on demanding for school fees payments?
Is business down for the school heads, for the landlord, for the owners of public vehicles, for owners of supermarkets? Are clients paying them or is business down for their clients? If there are business people who are being paid in this same economy, it means that business is not really down but there are some things that you are not doing right and that is exactly why your business is not getting enough clients.
You have not demonstrated enough value
Why are people still paying rent and school fees for their children yet the economy is doing badly right now and business is down? Because the pain of missing out on what they are paying for is much bigger than the price they are paying.
When value exceeds price, people will give money. If people are not paying you because the economy is doing badly, it simply means that you have not spoken to their toothache, the problem that your services or products solve.
You are not visible to enough people
In business, it is out of sight, out of mind. If people don’t hear about you, then they stop thinking about you and the competition starts to gain ground. Your business might be struggling financially but one thing you cannot afford to do, is to slow down on marketing.
Cut down on some non essential expenditure and free some money for marketing. Get out there on social media and be visible. Use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+ and Quora. Just get your message before your target market.
Every successful company in the world spends a lot of money on advertising. You have to reach enough people with your marketing message or your business will not achieve any success to write home about. Post content that your target market finds useful and promote your page. You’ve got to reach those numbers. When it comes to business, you either go big or go home; you can’t afford to play small.
Your message is not effective
People are always trying to gain pleasure or lose pain. Is your marketing message speaking to their emotions? Does it touch a soft spot in them? Or do you just go on and on about how great your product or service is?
People are not interested in stories. They only want to know how the pain they are experiencing will go away or how they will gain pleasure. Turn the spotlight on your marketing message and find out if you are speaking to the hearts of your target market.
You don’t know how to sell
I remember when I started my career in sales. I was selling nutritional supplements. If there was something I hated, it was selling. I could spend my time doing anything else as long as I did not have to go out there, show my products to people and face rejection.
The fear of selling is a major cause of not getting enough clients. You approach the market crippled by fear and end up sabotaging yourself. From the moment I discovered that every experience comes loaded with valuable lessons, I no longer fear selling. Even if someone tells me ‘no’, I learn some valuable lessons that help me to get better. The more I am told ‘no’, the more I learn. ‘No’ is not a bad word in sales. It is part of the learning process.
You are wasting time on the wrong people
I know that there are many people out there who have problems and you are in a position to help them. That is very good. There is just one problem however. You are building a business, not a charity. Your business needs to make profit otherwise you will close shop and go home.
Learn to be selective about who to spend your time and efforts on. Every time you say ‘yes’ to someone who is not a suitable client for you, you are actually saying ‘no’ to someone else who is your ideal client.
Yes, you are helping people in one way or another but if that is taking away time that you should be helping your ideal clients to solve their problems and pay you for it, then you are sabotaging yourself. You need to be selective about where you focus your efforts.
The next time your landlord knocks on the door or your children come home with a slip reminding you about school fees balances, those who will be demanding payment from you will not be interested in knowing about how many people you helped but they did not pay you.
No matter how poorly the economy is doing, you can still get your ideal clients to buy from you. Find out what you are doing wrong and make modifications and you will completely forget the song about the economy doing poorly and business being down.
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