MARKET DOMINATION STRATEGY #1: The 3 Business Multipliers
When you get right down to it, everything you do to build your business, to grow your business, can be classified under one of three different areas, or categories. If you learn this one simple concept and how to apply it, believe me your competition won’t stand a chance.
The reason? Because your competition not only doesn’t understand this concept, most of them have never even heard of it.
Now, here’s the first one of the three ways to grow your business. Simply this…
When you master the ‘science’ of lead generation, anything is possible. Think about it…
The more inquiries you generate – the more customers you’ll get. The more customers you get – the more sales and profits you’ll generate. It’s that straightforward.
But as I said earlier, many people find it a real challenge to generate the right supply of inquiries to generate sufficient income, to keep the business growing and flourishing. In truth it isn’t that easy, but when you know how, the results can be absolutely staggering.
Let me give you one example that fits in perfectly with all this…
The Franchise Group became the largest franchise consultancy company in Europe in a little over two years from a standing start – actually from a blank sheet of paper.
First year sales totaled more than $3.7m. The Group dominated the franchise marketplace and literally annihilated the competition – competition that had been around for 10, 15, 20 years or longer – how could that be?
They created a number of lead generation strategies that performed like clockwork and when fully turned on would generate over 50 inquiries per WEEK. The competition were lucky to get just one inquiry a week.
You see the competition were all doing the same three things to generate their inquiries…
Members of the BFA (British Franchise Association) – where the BFA would forward leads to them.
Attend and exhibit at the franchise exhibitions.
Advertise in the franchise magazines.
The Franchise Group actually didn’t do any of these things. Instead they used the following strategies to get at the heart of the potential clients (their target market)…
Fax advertising (yes when done right this is a fabulous strategy to use – it’s a numbers game but at less than one penny a fax it’s very easy to ‘deep seed’ a market in a matter of weeks.
A lead generation website (many of the strategies listed here drove traffic to the site, and then the site spurted out the inquiries).
Internet marketing (Google AdWords, etc).
Direct Mail – one-page lead generation letters .
Joint Venture with one of the UK’s leading Accountancy Networks (the accountants would only recommend The Franchise Group to their clients for franchising).
Email marketing.
National newspaper advertising.
Now obviously there are right and wrong ways of doing all these things, but when you get it right – the results can be truly astonishing – you’ll capture market share (even if you’re a business operating in a town or village) and you’ll annihilate the competition.
One last thing to say on this…
You don’t have to spend the world to get great results. Of these strategies listed above only the national advertising was what most people would call ‘costly’.
The key, however, with all this stuff (even national advertising) is to NEVER, ever ‘go mad’ in the beginning.
For example, for the fax campaign above there were over 350,000 businesses that could be faxed to, that were the ideal target market.
Even at one penny per fax, that still equated to $3,500 – a lot of money to any business. So ‘going mad’ is to send all faxes out at once and hope it works. That’s not sensible – in fact it’s business suicide.
But sending say 50,000 at a cost of $500 will give you a good indication on how well this strategy will perform. That’s sensible. That gives you confidence to move forward with little risk and by testing it will give you the maximum return (this is what we call ‘The Minimum Risk-Maximum Return Formula).
So the key is to…
use proven marketing strategies (many of which your competition aren’t using)
create each strategy using proven formulas and approaches
test each strategy
‘roll out’ once each strategy is optimized
At TopLine, we are masters at these four disciplines. We choose from three sets of strategies …
Foundation Strategies: Strategies that underpin ALL our other strategies.
Instant Results Marketing Strategies: Strategies that can transform the fortunes of any business in as little as 24 hours
Treasure Chest Strategies: Successful strategies that take slightly longer to execute, but are still very successful in terms of growing your business
…and each of these sets of strategies are broken down into the three Business Multipliers, making it easy to choose the relevant lead generation strategies for you.
Business Multiplier 1: Lead Generation – Getting More Qualified Leads
The more inquiries or leads you generate – the more customers you’ll get (all things being equal). It sounds so obvious, but getting more inquiries using lead generation strategies is something many organizations really struggle with.
Quite simply, the more inquiries you generate the more sales you’ll make. Customers are the lifeblood of your business (every business).
Now, it’s in this one single area where most business owners (including your competition and probably you too, if you’re honest) spend most of their time, effort and money.
If you’ve been in business for any length of time, you probably realize that getting new inquiries is not always the easiest or most profitable thing you can do.
The reality is, most businesses only employ one or two main methods or strategies to attract new prospects.
Now, what about you? Think about your business for a minute.
Chances are that you and your business, like every other business, also use one or two main methods of attracting new prospects. Most likely, the method you use is the same method that nearly every other business in your industry or profession uses.
The Way You’ve Done It Before, Isn’t Always the Way It Should Be Done
It’s called the “That’s how things are done in our industry” method.
When a person (at least as regards the majority of people) first chooses to go into business…and let’s use an accountant as an example…they typically look around and see what everyone else is doing.
Then they arrange their office just like every other accountancy firm they’ve seen, they look at what everyone else is doing to market or promote their practice and then they adopt those same marketing strategies and methods to market or promote their services.
It’s not only accountants who do this…it’s nearly every business, in nearly every industry or profession.
But wait a minute. Who set up that system in the first place? And who says it’s right, or that it’s the best system to use?
The fact is, there are a number of proven methods of attracting new customers to your business and your imagination is the only limiting factor.
Look Outside Your Industry Or Profession For Ideas You Can Adapt And Adopt
Some of the best, most productive and most cost-effective methods can be adapted from what others are doing in totally unrelated businesses.
Now this brings up a few questions…
First, how observant are you? What are others who are in the same business that you’re in doing? And, how effectively are the things they’re doing working for them?
Next, look around at what other businesses…unrelated businesses in other unrelated fields, industries or professions are doing. Have you seen what’s working for them? Is there one business that just stands out, by doing something different or unusual? Or do they all pretty much use the same marketing methods?
Next question: Can you look at what some of the other businesses are doing and adapt (with a few minor changes) their methods to your business?
In other words, if you were brand new…just starting in business and had no idea of what anyone before you had done to attract new customers, what would you do? How would you go about getting new customers? Would you use the same methods you use now, or would you do something completely different?
The Worst Number In Business Is 1
There’s a real danger in having just one or two main methods of attracting new customers. In fact the worst number in business is 1!
One of our consulting ‘Client Partners’ depended almost entirely on a telemarketing team to acquire leads for their salespeople to follow up. When a well-funded competitor opened for business not far away, they hired nearly all that business’s telemarketing staff and nearly shut the business down. The business was a total disaster—almost a total loss.
When they called us in as consultants, we could see that we had to do something quick, just to save the business.
So we got to work and hired and trained a whole new telemarketing crew and got the business up and running again.
But then we looked at other marketing options and put together an effective direct-mail program, started a proactive referral-generating system and worked out some joint ventures and host-beneficiary relationships with other complementary but non-competing businesses.
Now if something happens to any one of their marketing methods, they have other strategies or other ‘pillars’ in place that can keep the business from collapsing…and keep it running smoothly.
So, what about your business? How can you apply this?
Why not start by going back and revisiting the questions we asked earlier. Then see if there are some areas that you need to improve in. Make sure you’re not dependent on only one or two main methods of attracting new customers.
New customers are important to your business. Of that there is no doubt. In fact, they’re vital…not only to the growth of your business, but to the very survival of the business.
It’s critical that you have multiple systems in place to ensure that your business continues running…and growing…uninterrupted if anything unexpected happens.
Now, as important as getting more new customers is, there are still two more methods you can use to grow your business. Furthermore, each of these methods is more profitable, more effective and can give you greater potential for leverage, than the first method.
