Top 5 Business Mistakes - Pt 3
This week I started to share with you the Top 5 Mistakes most self-employed people and business make, when trying to make money?
What were those Top 5 Mistakes?
1. We are unclear about what we offer
2. We are unclear about who we are offering it to
3. We keep ourselves a secret!
4. We imagine we are doing things when we are actually just thinking about it
5. We don’t believe we are worth it (and often undercharge!)
Let me elaborate a bit…..today I’ll cover Mistake #3.
1. We keep ourselves a secret!
Many times, when talking to Money Gym clients about why they are not achieving the ezine signups and sales they would like, whether it be their own products or affiliate sales (where you recommend other people’s stuff and earn commission), I am shocked to hear that they expect to make sales from tiny trickles of traffic.
I tell them, over and over again, something that I was taught by my first business coach Chris Barrow, it takes getting in front of 1000 people to make a sale.
This formula comes from Chris’ background in financial services sales - a tough environment - where he reckoned that you had to call 1000 people to get 100 to talk to you.
You have to talk to 100 people to get 10 appointments.
You have to get 10 appointments to make one sale.
Let me qualify this as I think the word “sale” is misleading. It suggests that if you are a “better” or more aggressive sales person, you can convert more appointments to sales.
I prefer to say that, if you can get 10 appointments to discuss whether your product or service is a fit, for that potential client or customers problem or pain, then one person will BUY.
See the subtle difference? They will buy, rather than you will sell. Takes all the pressure off you actually.
So, following this through, assuming that you get in front of enough of the right kind of people, with a great solution for their problem, then they will buy your solution.
He went on to say that you need to build a reservoir of potential future customers who know who you are and what you do, and more importantly what you can DO FOR THEM.
Filling the reservoir in the early days is hard work. Imagine a little stream running along the ground till it meets a big hole, and starts, very slowly to fill that hole up with water. Eventually it will, and then, for every new drop that goes in, a drop will spill out and those are your customers.
That reservoir is filled up out of the 100 people you talk to, out of the 1000 calls. The 10 people are the ones that express at interest in your product or service. The one person out of the 10 is the one that buys.
Tranlating that for a second to the online world, we say that you need 1000 unique visitors coming to your website, to be able to attract 100 potential future customers into your reservoir of people who know who you are and what you do, and how your solution can help them.
You need to ask yourself this burning question!
If I need to get in front of 1000 people to make a sale, how many sales do I want, and how quickly can I get in front of the required number
But what do we do, when we are new in business?
We keep ourselves a secret!
We take tiny marketing actions rather than huge marketing actions.
We put notices on boards in supermarkets and health clubs. We give a few cards to our hairdressers, our garage, our friends.
In short, we do everything we can to avoid exposing ourselves to the large numbers of people that we need to expose ourselves to, in order to build our reservoir and make the sales.
So now you know that, what can you do differently?
Think about the billion people online, on broadband, right now.
Think about the huge overseas markets coming online and getting access to Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL and the other big search engines.
Think about the easiest, fastest, cheapest ways to get in front of thousands, hundreds of thousands if not millions of potential future customers.
Start with a blog, even if you haven’t thought of a product or service yet.
Tell your story, your story of discovery, your tale of venturing out into the big wide online world.
I’d love to read it!
YOUR 3 ACTION STEPS:
1. Read the rest of my emails this week
2. Listen to Richard White and Daniel Wagner’s webinars on www.MoneyGymRadio.com - they were great!
3. Join Money Gym Silver or come along to one of our “Money Gym Presents…..” workshops in Central London.
THEN WE CAN HELP YOU TO:
1. Start a blog right now even if you don’t know what to sell - tell your story of discovery. The search engines will come and then so will the visitors.
2. Look for good products or services, sign up to their affiliate schemes and recommend them to your visitors.
3. Think about your expertise, skills, knowledge, experiences and wonder if any of the billion people online could learn anything from you. Create ebooks, how to manuals, camtasia videos, memberships sites. Then go out there and find the people who need you and want to buy from you.
Sound good?
Great!
See you there!
Nicola
It’s official - Brett McFall and I are …………in total agreement! 
that I use all the time, to make videos as wide ranging as the 
