Folks, I have met lots of nice, honest people who are very, very good at what they do. Yet time and time again, before I’ve had a chance to realize it and intervene or help, they’ve gone out of business for lack of clients. Why the heck does this happen?

For the average business start-up they spend 60% of their time doing admin work, 30% of their time making good on their business promise and only 10% on marketing. This is upside-down. Most businesses and business owners should spend over 50% of their time rainmaking and have delegation and management systems to download to.

It starts with marketing. I don’t know what it is, but I suspect not knowing how to pull it all together or what to do next has something to do with it.

Do you consider marketing your business’ weak point? Do you say to yourself “I am not a marketer”? I will tell you right now, this is hogwash and you should stop telling yourself that immediately, before you start to believe it. Small business marketing isn’t voodoo. It is a LEARNABLE skill that, like any other, you can teach yourself, practice and develop. The only constraint is time and effort to gain the knowledge in an efficient and effective manner.

This is where everyone gets tripped up. It takes a lot of work for the average small business owner to to sift through he
NUMEROUS sources of marketing information, make sense of it all and apply it to their businesses.

So, I’ve been hard at work making this super simple for you. I want to help you become a small business marketing master and I am willing to show you how.

In just 12 sessions with my new LIVE training program “The Marketing for Real Results Fundamentals Bootcamp”, you will LEARN the marketing skill in the most efficient and effective way possible. I’ll show you how to confidently market your business so that you can always feel in control. When you are done, never again will you think “marketing” and feel that lump in your throat.

Here are some of the things we will learn:

• How to create a powerful marketing message that makes people WANT do business with you
• How to identify and focus on your natural market – those who REALLY want what you’ve got
• How to communicate what makes you awesome, so your clients only want to do business with YOU
• What you MUST know about your competition to make intelligent strategic marketing decisions
• How to use positioning and branding to increase customer confidence
• What NOT to say in an elevator speech, and what to INCLUDE so that it brings in MORE leads
• What you MUST include for your marketing for your customers to BUY
• How to track results so your can SPEND LESS and GET MORE out of your marketing dollar
• Which are The RIGHT technology tools to make life easier
• How to use Direct Marketing to DRAMATICALLY increase your business
• How to Educate your Leads and Turn them into Clients with less EFFORT
• How to Advertise like a PRO
• How to create a simple, don’t-bog-me-down, Marketing Plan, so you ALWAYS know what to do next

Best of all, when you sign up, you get my Special “Recover your Money” Bonus: ‘Business Generator Email/Letter Template’ (a $99.95 value). for FREE.Why? Because I want you to recover your tuition quickly, I will give all participants my surefire, business generation email/letter template in the very FIRST session. This template is something I use with small business owners to create QUICK results with LITTLE effort. This template has brought in $830, $1670, $2140 and in some cases over $4000 worth of business within a few days. This will be yours, FREE, when you attend your first session.

The workshops start on November 4th and there are limited seats to ensure you all get the attention you need.

Get all the details here >>>
http://m4rr.com/fundamentals

P.S. Hurry, because seats are limited to 15, no more!

Based on the book “Jumpstart your Business Brain” by Doug Hall, a business growth expert, this seminar explains the Three Laws of Marketing Physics. When applied correctly, these three Laws can make your sales, marketing and
business development measurably more effective. What makes these Laws unique is that the methods detailed are grounded in statistical analysis and backed up with hard data. Applying these Laws, you can measurably increase
effectiveness in today’s super-competitive, saturated marketplace.

Date: Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Time: 7:00am
Where: Restaurant Les Pyramides d’Or, 1375 TransCanada, 1st floor.
Driving from Montreal: Take the 40 westbound service road just past the
Henri-Bourassa overpass Look for gold, pyramid shaped office towers.

NOTE: If you are planning to attend, you are encouraged to drop Pat Snow
(patsnow@gmail.com) a note.

Learn more here:

http://www.networkingplus.ca/

When an overly enthusiastic real estate agent gets trapped by answering a question, the Real Results Guy can’t help but give feedback.

Last Sunday afternoon my wife and I were looking at open houses. We are looking to move soon and decided it would be a good idea if we started scoping out the neighbourhoods we want to live in to get a feel for what’s expensive, what’s a deal, etc.

One home was being shown by a *very* nice real estate agent. She was polite, friendly and helpful. Her only flaw — she talked too much. While not a deadly sin, talking too much if you are in the sales role is NOT helpful. In my training session I call it the sign of the inexperienced sales person.

The exchange below illustrated how you can get caught by talking too much:

My wife: “Are we far from the highway?”

Real estate agent: “Oh don’t worry, you are not that close.”

My wife: “Erm.. okay… But I *need* to be close, I work downtown. How many minutes away are we?”

Real estate agent (backpedalling): “Oh! It’s super fast,  I could show you shortcuts!”

You see how making an assumption trapped the agent into a corner? How she was forced to backpedal  and recover?  She was so anxious to promote the house, she was in full-on “deal-with-objections” mode.  This happens when you are under pressure to make the sale.

Instead, she should have spent more time clarifying the objection to get to the real desire, in this case, that we have easy access to a highway.

Here is how the exchange could have gone:

My wife: “Are we far from the highway?”

Real estate agent: “Interesting question. Why do you ask?”

My wife: “Well, I work downtown and need access to a highway”

Real estate agent: “I understand. Actually, you are only 8 minutes away.”

Once the real problem has been identified, dealing with it is child’s play.

Sales lesson: Get to the bottom of the objection before rushing to deal with it.

Question:

“I am a financial advisor. When I introduce myself using my elevator speech, I mention that I will help them achieve their financial goals, but sometimes that may not be possible. Their situation may be complicated or they may have a lot of debt, or they just are not saving enough to make their goals a reality. I almost feel like I should qualify my promise in my elevator speech because I feel guilty. Is this false advertising? Am I misleading people?”

Peter Answers:

Before I respond, let me remind you that the purpose of your elevator speech is NOT to make a sale. It is to ask them to take the next step with you.

Given this, the only job of your elevator speech is to attract interest. They’ll only be interested if you are selling something they want, usually some happy result, or “end-state”. If you are a personal trainer, your end-state might be a healthy body. If you sell parts for a manufacturing process, it may be a headache-free supply chain. In your case, as a financial advisor, that may be peace of mind that loved will be taken care of, should something bad happen. Either way, your elevator speech is meant encourage the right people to take the next step with you.

So, the elevator speech is NOT the time to qualify anything. You can take as much time as you need to qualify your
client in the next step of the sales process. This is usually your first meeting. If unusual situations exist that prevent the typical results from occurring, it is at this meeting when you would identify and discuss them. You are NOT misleading anyone if you don’t bring up every contingency within your first 30 seconds or meeting them.
In fact, you are shooting yourself in the marketing foot, if you do.

When a personal trainer promises she’ll whip you into shape, she doesn’t need to qualify that it won’t work as effectively for the lazy, the injured, or those with bad backs, in her elevator speech (unless, of course, her speciality is working with the lazy, the injured, or people with bad backs).  She is simply reporting the typical results of her service.

After all, she can provide the process, the know-how, the gentle (or not-so-gentle) motivation — in short, all the ingredients for success — but she can’t foresee every unusual situation because you control the most important ingredient of all. You and your choices. You still have to choose to eat right and get yourself out of bed and go train.
If you don’t and wonder why you are not getting results, it ain’t her process, skippy. It’s you. Similarly, if people don’t save or are spending themselves into debt, no amount of financial advising pixie dust is going to help them. But don’t feel like you have to warn them of this, you don’t.

Agreed, there are sometimes unusual circumstances. But these are exceptions and once again, you are not responsible for listing all contingencies in your elevator speech. For example, if a financial advising client is trying to come out of a financial hole and there is simply no way to reach their their goals before they retire, it’s okay
to tell them once you’ve assessed their situation and figure out what *is* possible.  As long as you haven’t strung them along with promises that won’t become reality just to make the sale, you are not acting inappropriately.

To recap, there is no need to qualify in your elevator speech that people with unusual circumstances may not see all the intended results. You must however, be honest and truthful early in your sales process if you don’t think you can help them as much as they hope.

Now, there is another dimension to your question that the coach in me found intriguing. You mentioned “I feel guilty”. Please ask yourself why? Is your message truthful? If so, then you have nothing to feel guilty about.
If you still do, then this is worth exploring with a good coach.

Wishing you all the success,
Peter Vogopoulos

Have a marketing question?  Ask me at http://www.AskPeterNow.com

For many small businesses, it may seem futile to try and compete against heavy-hitting corporations with seemingly bottomless marketing budgets. So how do you resonate with your target market without shelling out big bucks? Guerrilla marketers know that instead of money, we can invest time, energy and creativity and beat out the big boys and their budgets.

Here is a 5-step easy, economical way to get the word out that won’t break your small business marketing budget:

•    Go grassroots. Hitting the pavement and making personal connections can go a long way toward establishing a name for yourself and getting word-of-mouth flowing. The key here is to identify who you will be spending your time on. Who is an influencer of what you sell? Who recommends or nixes its purchase? A wedding cake business better be spending its time on brides-to-be because they are usually the key decision-maker of this purchase. An innovative baby-carrier should be speaking straight to new moms.

•    Go where your market is, front and center. If you’re trying to drum up clients for your wedding cake business, visit the shops of the local bridal district, distributing fliers to sellers of formal wear, stationery, flowers, and more. Heralding the benefits of an innovative new baby carrier? Approach moms at the mall who appear frazzled by the squirming infant in their arms.

•    Fine-tune your message. For effective marketing collateral, content is key. Take the time to craft an attention-getting, value-adding message that will resonate with your target audience. A tepid or passive message is uninspiring and won’t be remembered and your results will reflect this. Create a marketing piece that delivers all the right messages and get it into the hands of the right people.

•    Let them experience it. If you’ve got something good, giving it away can lead to a huge boon for your business. When a wedding cake business took out a table at the mall on Saturday, it brought in its biggest, most beautiful cake with a big clock that said the cake will be cut and served at precisely 1:30pm. Hordes of people stuck around or came back to eat some cake and take away a brochure (which naturally included the picture of the cake). The baby carrier company let women try their product for an hour while shopping. Many cam back after an hour to buy it. Both companies earned back their investment that day. A strategic giveaway can often cost less than an expensive marketing campaign and yield just as positive results.

•    Follow-up. People don’t necessary act on their own. You have to remind them you exist. The tables surrounding the cake had lots of “return slips” and pencils. To get a marketing kit, you had to fill out a paper. If you did, you are probably more interested that just getting a free piece of cake. The company assiduously followed up on these prospects and found them to be very qualified and closed a lot of business.

What is your best tip for competing with the big boys? Let me know below!

Reactivating a lapsed customer is one of the best return on investments you can make. But when this business lets the opportunity slip through their fingers, it gets the attention of the Real Results Guy.

One early evening my spouse answered her mobile phone. It was a spa/esthetician that she used to frequent, but doesn’t really visit much anymore. They were on the phone for less than a minute.

Me: “What was that about?”

My wife: “They called to ask if they can close my file.”

Me: “That’s it? Nothing else?”

My wife: (with a twinkle in her eye, because she knows me so well) “That’s it. No special offer to win me back, no survey to find out why I don’t go much anymore, nothing.”

I smiled. My wife is becoming a Marketing Coach by osmosis.

What an opportunity missed! The business is obviously investing the time to have someone call to “close” files. It could just as easily, with a little bit of preparation, be winning back the customer or at least gathering valuable marketing intelligence.

Re-activating lapsed customers is a quick way to get some sales. Put an offer together and start calling them or send them a letter. In this case, it could have looked like this:

Good evening Ms. Jones, we have noticed that you have not visited us within the past year and we just wanted to be in touch to find out if it was something we did or could do better? (gather info here)

We appreciate your feedback, Ms. Jones, we always strive to offer the best service to our customers. To thank you for your time, we would like to offer you an opportunity to enjoy a 3-massage package at a promotional price of $249  and I’ll upgrade you to a massage-facial package at no extra cost. So you get three massage-facial packages for only $249.

They could have even structured a few offers and presented the one that matched most closely to previous purchases.

You may think that this is quite the deal. It is supposed to be. Even if you don’t make a lot of profit on the package, the idea is to win-back the customer for the future business. If you’re keeping track of your marketing metrics, you know how much it costs you to acquire a new customer and how much each customer is worth to you. Based on these numbers you can decide how to structure your offer to make it worth your while.

Sales lesson: If you going to be calling anyway, you might as well try to win back the business or at least find out why they left.

Not sure how to do this? Upgrading your small business marketing skills could give your business a boost. And, the Marketing For Real Results Fundamentals Bootcamp is just what you need. Click here to learn how to master your small business marketing.

Edge Networking is a pretty dynamic networking group for Montreal-based entrepreneurs. On October 6th, I’ll be their guest speaker, talking about “The Entrepreneurial Trap” and what to do about it.

The numbers are pretty alarming: only 50% of startups survive their first 5 years of operations. The truth is that most business owners don’t succeed and it’s not because they’re not working hard. Rather, they are doing the wrong kind of work. This “trap” threatens the well being of the majority of entrepreneurs.

In this presentation, I’ll cover:

• The 3 roles of the entrepreneur and how every business owner must perform these roles in order to succeed;
• The flawed business structure that most entrepreneurs embrace and how it ultimately fails them;
• The underlying reason why people fall into the Entrepreneurial Trap and how to overcome it.

The event will take place at Newtown, on the corner of Crescent and de Maisonneuve, at 6:00pm. Come say hello and enjoy some great networking!

For more information: http://edgenetworking.ca/
or at: http://www.meetup.com/edgenetworking/calendar/11343270/

The question below was posed verbally to a bunch of us on a conference call, but it is SO COMMON among entrepreneurs looking to leverage the Internet, I decided to repeat my answer here.

Q:
I am a new coach and I am NOT up on all this web and social media stuff. I have a website that needs to be redone, but I don’t do, or know anything, about “pay-per-click”, Facebook, Twitter and all this other nonsense that seems to be the way of the future.  Should I be doing any of this?

Anne, Executive Coach

A:
Thanks for your question and for being so blunt about the “nonsense”! Yes, keeping up with Facebook, Twitter, and
the like can be incredibly time-consuming, if you are not careful.

It is too bad that you did not mention your URL so that I can have a look, but to answer your question, let me start with a little something about the “marketing funnel”. The first three  parts of the Marketing for Real Results funnel are:

(1) Attraction — you have to get a stream of leads to come to you
(2) Engagement — you must have “sticky” content so that they stay and continue to interact with you
(3) Conversion — you must do things to convert them into “Tryers” or “Buyers”

Engagement is particularly important with web pages. Unless you catch people EXACTLY at the moment when they are looking to make a buying decision, then most of them will just surf and leave. Without an “engagement” strategy, you’re HOPING they’ll remember you when they need you. Be prepared to hope an awful lot.

A better strategy is to embrace the fact people need multiple touch points before they buy. Therefore, your site has to be engaging (i.e. contain articles, information, useful and valuable stuff) to entice people to sign-up for something, come back and visit again, etc. Which brings me to my point:

Unless you are confident that your site *engages* your audience and your marketing machine *converts* well, then spending money  on pay-per-click, or investing time in social media is NOT your priority.  What is the point of putting leads into the mouth of the funnel, if the funnel is leaky? Given that you mention your site needs to be re-done, and assuming and assuming you are right when you say it needs it, that pretty much cements it for me — you have a few steps to do first.

Start by figuring out your identity and branding. Then, make a simple site that will scale well as you add more and more content. It doesn’t have to be expensive, about $500-$1000 is about right for a starter website, if you are having it done for you.

If your concern is attracting new clients, then I’d ask you whether you have really leveraged your network to its fullest. I find that most of my clients have not.

Finally, I’d like to ask you something difficult and I wouldn’t be a good coach if I didn’t. Please take the time to reflect on what I am about to say.

Make sure that your desire to have a website or to do pay-per-click etc. is not “hiding” something else. If you catch yourself saying to yourself you need some fantastic site to do business, then ask yourself if that is true, or if it’s just a belief that you have accepted. Likewise, ask yourself if you are looking at pay-per-click or other
“anonymous” strategies as a substitute because of an underlying resistance to more personal strategies.

This is not absurd, but very real. Fear of rejection is a common example. Some clients of mine refuse to do direct sales or ask for referrals for fear of being rejected. Marketing and sales is just as much about the junk between our ears as it is about the strategies. I am not saying any of these scenarios hold true for you, but I’d do the introspection, anyway. Give my office a call if you need help.

Wishing you all the success,
Peter Vogopoulos

Have a marketing question?  Ask me at http://www.AskPeterNow.com

Set your alarm clocks early for this one and prepare to have your marketing beliefs shaken. I’ll reveal the 14 Marketing Mistakes almost all businesses are making and which can sabotage your success. Among other things, I’ll explain why you should NOT run “Big Boy” or Institutional Marketing, and the real reason why customers will buy from you (hint: it is NOT “price”). If you have ever wondered what it would take to get more clients or see more
results then this seminar is for you.

Date: Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Time: 7:00am
Place: A Temps Perdu, 76 Cameron, Hudson, QC 514-688-3535
Map: http://bit.ly/ATempsPerdu
Driving from Montreal: Take the 40 west towards Vaudreuil. Stay
on 40 West after it splits (stay on the right). Take exit 26 and stay
right onto Harwood. Stay on Harwood until Cameron. Turn right
on Cameron.

NOTE: If you are planning to attend, drop Bob Coley
(robertcoley@sympatico.ca) a note so that he can plan the
breakfast properly.

Learn more here:
http://www.evite.com/pages/invite/viewInvite.jsp?inviteId=XOROJBINVLERQMIVTDBR&li=iq&src=email&trk=aei6

Five years ago, every business had a website. These days, it seems every business has a blog. Typically written in a journal-style format, these interactive articles are popping up all over the Internet, with more than 40 million blogs currently in existence. No industry is exempt—from lawyers debating the latest intellectual property laws to candle merchants raving about the benefits of aromatherapy,we’ve got ‘em all. In fact, you are likely reading this on my my small business marketing blog, right now.

Why are blogs so popular?

The answer is content, content, and more content. People love finding the exact information they are looking for and blogs, especially well-targeted blogs, provide it.

When they’re done right, blogs offer a valuable benefit to the reader. A well-researched, well-written blog article should provide your readers with informative, relevant, and entertaining content that helps them make more confident buying decisions. But what can it do for you and your business?

• Creates a sense of community. Many blogs offer readers the option to comment on the content presented, encouraging interaction and increasing the reader’s emotional investment in the website. This ongoing dialogue increases the chances of repeat visits to your site.
• Gives your business a personality. Any website can peddle pet care products. But when you supplement them with useful articles on grooming, bathing, and personal anecdotes about your own animals, you’ll be more likely to create a connection with customers and gain an edge over the competition.
• Boosts organic search traffic. By its very nature, a blog is a dynamic and constantly changing entity, making your site more appealing to the Yahoos and Googles of the world. By including strategic keywords and internal and external linking, you’ll increase the odds that your site will earn higher rankings in search engine results, increasing your flow of web traffic.
• Requires a very low cost investment. With the plethora of free blogging tools, such as WordPress and BlogSpot, getting a blog engine up and running is as easy as a few clicks. Publishing articles won’t cost you a dime, although you will have to invest the time required to write the content. (Avoid copying text verbatim from other sites, as this can potentially cause your site to be flagged and delisted by search engines.)

If you’ve got the time and the inclination, adding a blog to your website can be a great way to engage your customers, establish a public face and personality for your business, and provide a platform for promoting featured products and services that are very relevant to your readers. And you don’t have to be a techie to take part—with today’s user-friendly applications, anyone can become a blogging expert within minutes.

How do I start blogging?

Interested in blogging? I recommend Wordpress as a blogging platform. This is what I use for my blogs. It is incredibly flexible and has a very large community of users who are constantly making it better. Speak to your web designer about integrating a blog into your existing website. Or, contact us and we’ll recommend one of our “M4RR Approved” partners, who are carefully selected for the quality of their work, their professionalism, and their marketing chops (the latter is surprisingly hard to find in a provider sometimes).

Blogging is big commitment. At least one a week, or more, you have to add fresh content. If you have never blogged before, it can be hard to get yourself going and into the habit. It’s kind of like exercise. The good news is that it does get easier as time goes on! If you have any doubts about your ability to keep blogging on a consistent basis, then I recommend you start working with the simple, free, hosted version of Wordpress found at Wordpress.com. Unlike its brother Wordpress.org, which you would install and integrate into your current hosting service, Wordpress.com is hosted by the good folks over at Wordpress and you don’t need a hosting account or any techie knowledge to start. You can be up an running within minutes.

The downside to all this convenience is that you won’t enjoy the same flexibility and benefits of a self-hosted version. For one, you won’t have complete control of its look and feel — you will have to choose one of the preset “themes” from the library. Also, the day you decide to move to your own blog (and trust me, that day will come), you will probably sacrifice some of the organic search traffic you developed with your Wordpress.com site. Speak to a really sharp web professional, or even better an SEO specialist, to help you minimize this impact.

As with most marketing tactics, the key now is to understand how it fits with your overall marketing stategy and then take action! If you are motivated to begin, talk about it or ask us a question below. If you have a blog, share it below. Happy blogging!