A juicy worm to tempt the "fish" you want to catch

In the first article about writing your marketing plan for small business, you were introduced to the idea of marketing being like fishing.  That first step was all about choosing the kind of customers (fish) you want to land.

In Step 2, we're going to make sure you offer them the tastiest bait in the water, so they can't resist your advertising.

Remember, we want outstanding results, not just average, if we're going to double your business…

We'll start by looking at some reasons for the poor response to adverts.  Why don't people respond by the thousand to your advertising?  There are a bunch of common sense reasons…

1. We live in a time of information overload.  We don't even notice 90% of the adverts we see – we simply don't register that we've seen them.  Wherever you look, watch or listen (newspapers, TV, Internet, commercial radio, cinemas, magazines), you are overwhelmed by information and adverts for every product imaginable.
2. Your customers are so busy just living their lives and trying to keep up, that reading and responding to your advert will fail unless it's obvious, really obvious, that it will make their life better in some way.  Does your advertising do that, honestly?
3. People think you're lying.  We've all been conned by promises of amazing deals that crumbled into dust in our hands, making you a bit cynical about ads.  Nobody trusts the snake-oil salesmen in the adverts any more.  And if you're in business, that means they don't trust you!
4. Your advert is all about the wrong people – it's about you.  If you stand at a party and talk all about yourself, giving it the "me, me, me", you'll end up with a clear gap around you and people desperate to get away from you!  You're the only person who's got a real interest in hearing about you, you, you all the time.  So why does 99% of adverting do this?
5. You're following the wrong rules for advertising – Coca Cola don't need to increase sales, but they sure as hell want to protect their brand because they own 50% of Cola drink sales.  Yet 99.9% of all adverts follow Coca Cola's lead – if your ads have your business name or logo at the top in big letters, then it's an ad for people who already know you, not for a new customer.  In your business you need to get people to respond for the first time, to make contact with you.  You need to employ direct response marketing.

Imagine a fish swimming in the see with hundreds and hundreds of fishing lines dangling in front of them.  They're going to take a bite eventually, but with so much choice, how do you think they'll choose?

That's right – they'll go for the tastiest looking worm of the lot – and ignore all the rest completely.

So you need to be a little cunning, like the smart fisherman who's invented his own secret sauce to pour on his worms into before putting them on his hook.  A secret sauce that makes the fish hunt down his hook and tell their friends about it.

What you need is a big, fat, juicy worm of an offer to dangle on your hook, liberally soaked in your own secret sauce.   And to keep customers, you'll need to make sure that your business satisfies your customers, too, so they'll come back for more.

So, let's build part 2 of your marketing plan – your differentiator – this is what makes your business, products and service simply the best for the customers you want to catch.

Core Marketing Plan Part 2 – Tasty Bait

So marketing is like a big fishing competition with lots of people all dangling their bait into the water and hoping to get the most bites.  We need to figure out, based on what your "fish" are hungry to eat, two key ingredients that together will make your marketing irresistable to the customers you want…

1 – Your Tasty Worm – Your Differentiator

Your business is the "main meal" and it needs to be something that makes it stand out, in some good way, from your competition.  To do this, your business can be one of three things – the cheapest, the best, or somehow different from your competition.

Forget being cheapest or best, because you can always be beaten on them by the big companies with money behind them.  Focus on being different (in a good way!).

If you offer the same products and don't do anything different, your business will struggle to stand out in any way.  So you need to find some way of being different and standing out, so that you have something unique and worthwhile to offer.  This is often called the Unique Selling Proposition, but this is complicated marketing jargon for being a great company for your customers.

So, putting the customer to the front of our minds, what are the things that they would really value from you?  Don't get caught up by saying "good service", because that's a cop-out.  Think through what an exceptional service experience would be and then figure out how much you can do to bring this to life.

Beyond this, you've also got the secrets of developing a brand identity.  This is a whole load cheaper and easier to do than you can imagine – in fact, I strongly recommend you don't spend anything just to "get your name out there" or to "build the brand".  People don't buy from small businesses just by the name alone (not without a recommendation, anyway).

However, over time, if you've got advertising that's bringing in customers, it should also be creating a sense of identity for your brand.  That's why it's really important to consciously create a Brand Essence.  You'll use this to help put muscles on your marketing and make it perform even better over time.

The other thing you've got to think about is overcoming the fear of being ripped off.  This is what stops most people from buying from you – the fear that you're a dodgy firm that'll take their money and run.   How do you get past that?  Offer a guarantee – the best kind are 100% money back guarantees.  This puts all the risk on you, the firm, rather than the customer.  Fill your heart with dread?  Get over it!  People are generally honest and decent – only a tiny minority will claim their money back if you give the service you promise – perhaps 1-3% in total.

So, a quick recap – three things we need to work on for the "tasty worm" part of your marketing plan…

1. Be different and special for your customers
2. Identify your Brand Essence and cleverly garnish all of your marketing with it
3. Offer a strong guarantee to take away their fear of buying from you

With these in place, we just need to liberally pour over your secret sauce in any adverts you do…

2 – Your Secret Sauce – A Powerful Offer

The thing with adverts is making them catch the attention of your customers.  You've got to give them what THEY want, not talk about yourself.  Why do you think that DFS, the furniture people, keep advertising with 50% off sales?  It's because it's so powerful as an offer that people can't resist it.

Your marketing pieces need to have a drop of secret sauce – a powerful, compelling offer that you can imagine the Godfather saying, "I'm going to make you an offer you can't refuse".  Make it so exciting and easy for them to say "yes", that they'd be mad not to take you up on it.

Here's a few kinds of offers you can make that are exciting and compelling…

Free Gifts – my young daughter can't resist the comic with the best gifts on front, even if she knows the only one that she wants to read is Hannah Montana…

Coupons – used extensively in the food industry, I know that we'll always buy Dominoes pizza when their coupons come through the door with 2 for 1 offers and all sorts of other giveaways…

Free Information – used a lot on the Internet, you can produce a free guide to something that matters to your ideal customers, in exchange for their email addresses.  This way you can keep in touch with them (but more on this in step 4 of how to write your marketing plan).

In the next installment, we're going to move into the next stage – 132 ways to get in front of the customers you want.  That's what we call your Marketing Channels, and it's part 3 of how to writing a marketing plan for small business.

Marketing Is Like Fishing...

If you struggle with marketing your business, you're not alone.  I would guess that a full 97% of companies have no marketing that they have any sense of control over.

The very idea of writing a marketing plan is enough to make your eyes roll and wonder how many pages it will take.   If I told you that you can do it on just 1 page, would that feel better?  In this post, you're going to get a whole new way of thinking about marketing.

By the time you've read every word on this page, a few pennies will start to drop for you.  Do the exercise at the bottom and you'll have started your marketing plan.   Follow the next 4 posts as well and you'll have a complete marketing plan for your business that could transform things.

Like the client whose business doubled from £200,000 per month to £400,000 per month, within 12 months, for example.  This is powerful stuff, so pay attention!

Let's start by giving you a new and easy way to think about marketing…

It turns out that marketing has a lot in common with fishing…

If you fancy a bit of angling, the smart fisherman goes out to catch a specific kind of fish, because he knows that will make his life a lot easier.

With that fish in mind, you need to think about where you'll find them: in shoals at sea, or in particular pools and lakes, for example.  You'll also want to know what they're hungry for – there's no point trying to catch a white shark with a little worm from your garden!

Next, you want your bait to be the most enticing, mouth-watering tidbit in the water, so that the fish chooses your line and hook, not somebody elses.

Finally, if you really want to catch fish, you'll put half a dozen lines into the water so that you give yourself an unfair advantage over your competition.

So let's start writing your marketing plan now, …

Core Marketing Plan Section 1 – Niche

This is the fish you choose to catch for your business, as customers.  The more clearly you target a specific group, the more able you are to talk in their language, about their problems.  This makes it far easier for them to understand you, to relate to your solutions and products.

If you're a restaurant, are you trying to get people in your local town, or tourists?  Are you after younger people, or the grey pound?  Do you want high income, or students?  All of these factors come into play when you're thinking about a clear target market.

Remember that for your niche to be worthwhile, you've got to be able to find them in worthwhile numbers to make it pay.  There's no point going after a tiny group of customers with no spending power, for example.

You've also got to be sure that there is space for you in the market, too.  The whole point of finding a niche is that you want to specialise and focus on a group that have been a bit neglected.

So for example, if you're a chiropractor you could specialise in office workers.  Your marketing could talk about the problems of spending so many hours sitting in an uncomfortable chair, using a computer screen.  You could start a blog with tips for being more comfortable around the office.

For the group of people with back pain who work in offices, your marketing would really hit the spot, which is precisely the point.  If they decide they need some help with their back, who will they call?  The specialist for office worker back pain, or the generalist chiropractor?

To complete this section properly, you've got to make sure you've found a "hungry crowd".  Here are the four key questions to answer in this part of your plan…

1. Who are your niche or "chosen fish"?
2. Where can you find them?
3. What are they hungry for – what's their problem or need?
4. Is there space in the market for you to compete for their business?

Answer these 4 questions clearly and in depth, and you've got a powerful start to your marketing plan.  In Part 2 of writing your small business marketing plan, you'll learn about baiting your hook – that is, how to make your bait the most enticing, tasty meal for the fish you want to catch.  At the end of the series I'll also be posting a template for your 1 page simple marketing plan.

Oh, and as always, if you'd like some help to get your business on the fast-track, call the number at the top of the page…

This made it all the more exciting when the guys at Airworld Tours, a tour operator in London, that they had achieved double sales in January 2010 compared with January 2009.

This is really exciting news and suggests we're on the way to doubling their business overall. I'll be giving a bit more information out about what we've done (without revealing too many secrets, of course!) in the coming weeks.

Until then, if your business is going strong and you deserve a luxury holiday, Airworld Tours are your first choice!

On the other hand, if business isn't going so well, give me a call so that we can get you on the growth path, too.

The trouble is, it's easy for you to get stuck on the idea that "there's nothing I can do that's different to my competitors".  So in this blog post, you'll discover how a true commodity business – the dairy industry – has lots of differentiation.

The idea here isn't to turn you into a cheesemaker (even though "blessed are the cheesemakers!"),  but to inspire you to stand out from the crowd in your line of business.

I can think of no more challenging business to be in than milk production.  The supermarkets have you by the throat and buy from you at pretty much cost price.  You only make something because of the huge volumes you sell.  What to do?

Well, some diaries came up with the idea of flavoured milks and shakes many years ago.  But far more interesting is the brilliant mainstream milk company Cravendale.  They've innovated to make a better milk, rather than going after a tiny niche.

So now you can drink normal milk, or Cravendale's pure filtered milk that lasts longer.

I don't know about you, but if I can get "pure", that suggests that what I was drinking before wasn't pure.  Seeps into my brain after enough repetition and gradually starts to become the normal milk you buy.

The real crunch though, is that your price is no longer directly compared to ordinary milk, the commodity stuff.  You've carved out a whole new niche within the vast milk market of pure milk.

In the Cravendale ad they make the point about their differentiation – on the fridge door they tell you it's filtered so it lasts longer.  And they're all fighting for the last glass.  How many times do we throw away the last glass of milk because it's going off?

Clever, witty, engaging.  Perhaps a little irritating.  But they're selling a lot of filtered milk now, to an audience that had never seen it just a couple or so years ago.

Now take a look across the rest of the dairy industry and you'll find lots of similar examples.  Anchor Butter have differentiated themselves by claiming the free-range credentials.

Who ever heard of free range cows?  I haven't – never thought of cows being anything but free range, wandering in the fields eating grass.  But Anchor have brilliantly captured the eco-mood and transferred the free-range idea from chickens…

Interestingly, a search on Google for other butter advertising shows that Country Life gave a money-back guarantee that their butter tastes best a few years ago.

Can't find a video on it, but apparently they printed 5 million packs with the offer on it.  The idea being that you'll try the butter out because if you don't like it, you can get your money back. What's the chance of you not liking a quality pat of butter?  Pretty low risk strategy, it seems to me.

Going back to the blessed cheesemakers, how do you make an ordinary cheese into something special?  Packaging does it very nicely for Mini Babybel, who put a twist in their adverts by showing tiny cheesemakers putting it together…

As you start to get into the differentiation groove, you'll find lots of interesting options – Cheestrings are the modern replacement for Dairylee cheese triangles, it seems to me, becoming one of the defacto kids' choices for their lunchbox.

You may be wondering just how you can use these cheesy examples in your own business…

Bottom line is you've got to come up with some great ways to differentiate your business, products or services from your competitors.  So many people in small business tell me they can't.  You can, once you decide to give it the attention it deserves.

There are a host of ways you can be different in business – including changing your…

• Product (filtering the milk)
• Packaging (little wax jackets on your cheese)
• Positioning ("The Free-Range Butter Company")
• Guarantees (Best tasting butter or your money back)
• Service (the good ol' milkman)

If you'd like more inspiration on ways to differentiate your products and services, I can highly recommend both Purple Cow by Seth Godin and Raving Fans by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles.  Both are available from Amazon for around £5 each and are inspirational.

Differentiation is one of 5 parts of my Core Marketing approach to developing an effective marketing plan for your small business.   Over the next few articles  I'll be posting about the remaining 4 main concepts behind Core Marketing to help you put them into place in your business.  Next up will be choosing a nice niche…

In truth, I'm not happy with it as I was so tense I think it sounded like I'd just run a marathon!  I'm always comfortable talking to an audience and so this came as a bit of a surprise to me, even though I'd done a few dry runs!

Talking into a phone that says nothing back is a very strange experience.  While I often mutter to myself, talking to a phone for an hour is a bit tougher!

However, that's the truth of doing something new for all of us.  The first time is tough and we have to feel the fear and do it anyway.  If we didn't face up to fears and discomfort, we'd never do anything new or different.

In this teleconference, I introduced my key Core Marketing concepts.  Your small business marketing plan needs to address 5 areas to maximise the return on your marketing investment…

Differentiation – Standing Out From Your Competition

It's not enough to just advertise, you have to demonstrate how you are different to your competition.  Think of it as the bait on your fishing hook

Niche – Who Will You Sell To?

Just dangling a hook with a worm over the side of your boat does not target any customers at all – you've got to decide what kind of "fish" you want to catch.

Product Ladder – A Range Of Products To Buy

Your customers need to get to know you steadily and slowly, not all at once.  Offer them a range of products, starting with a free giveaway or information pack in exchange for their name and email, so you can open up a…

Communications Loop – Keeping In Touch

People buy when they are ready, and most are not ready when they first come across your business.  Nurture a relationship slowly with them by keeping in touch regularly with newsletters etc until they are ready to buy.

Marketing Channels – The Campaigns & Strategies

Have a range of different sources for attracting leads and enquiries.  Don't depend on just one strong source, but build a range of different marketing campaigns that each bring in a dependable volume of leads for you.

If you were on the call, I hope you got something new out of it and are now going to take action.  Next time I'll be a bit more relaxed I hope!

UPDATE

Due to the timing so close to Christmas, I will be delivering the teleseminar in the New Year.

Fast-forward to this week and there's a great book that describes exactly why this happens.  Once you get over the rather strange name – it's called The New Psycho-Cybernetics – you realise that it's written by a successful plastic surgeon called Maxwell Maltz, who died some time ago.  However, it's been edited and brought bang up to date by Dan Kennedy, probably the biggest name in training for direct marketing for small businesses and somebody who Chris Cardell brought to the UK for his London seminar a couple of years ago.

What distinguishes this from so many "self help" books is that it's based on his observations of people before and after plastic surgery.

Maltz noticed that when talking to his clients before and after their operations, there was often a transformation in self-confidence, self-esteem and their whole approach to life.  Many became more successful after getting rid of ugly scars from accidents and similar physical issues with their appearance.

But sometimes after surgery had transformed them from ugly duckling to beautiful swan, his patient would still complain about being ugly, despite the evidence to the contrary.

It was from watching and documenting similar cases that led Maltz to the conclusion that what really controls us is our self image, which is imagined in our heads, rather than the real world.  This is best summed up by a quote from the book,

Human beings always act and feel and perform in accordance with what they imagine to be true about themselves and their environment.

Did you notice that the always and imagine are underlined in that sentence, because we do not act completely out of character – we always act consistent with the way we think we are.

So the person who has a self-image of being reserved will be shy at parties, until the alcohol kicks in and lets the hidden extrovert see the light of day.  The person who was told they're a slow reader as a child will read slowly as an adult, even though they've got the same reading apparatus as the rest of us.  The person who thinks advertising never works won't spend the time to understand the art of sales copywriting, because it goes against what they believe, and so on.

The truth is that all of us have some beliefs that limit our potential in one way or another.  Many people feel they're not good enough.  Others feel they don't deserve success.  Another may think that earning more money would be immoral.  All these things are just concepts inside our heads.  If you believe, then in your world, it's true.

A few years ago I ran a 2 day workshop to help  therapists make more money.  It was called The Profitable Therapist and the single biggest thing it exposed was the reason that most of the people didn't make more money was simply what they believed about themselves, their services or money.

One therapist in particular I remember clearly saying that it would be immoral to charge more for what he does.  Others felt it was key that they should always have time to give to the needy.  When asked "how much time do you want to devote to the needy?", he replied, "as much as it takes".

That's not a business, that's a charity.  Yet he had paid good money to learn how to become more profitable.  Despite this, his beliefs about money meant that he spent the whole event doing one of two things – (1) defending his right to treat poor people for free and (2) justifying why it was immoral to charge more than £40 for a session.  This was despite his desire to double his income without increasing his hours.

He became quite angry when I pointed out the flaw in his logic, that to earn more without increasing his hours would require him to charge more.  The crazy thing was that he was working flat out and most of his customers would have gladly paid an extra £5 or £10 per session.  But that's the power of a limiting belief.

This is not something that's limited to just one or two people.  Most of us have some form of limited beliefs, we just don't know what they are.

If you think you may be holding back your business with limiting beliefs, get yourself a copy of Maxwell Maltz's New Psycho-Cybernetics book, a snip for under £10 at Amazon.

On the other hand, if it's time to really get things moving, why not call now for a chat about my business coaching services.

Here's the background.  In the USA, there have been around a dozen or so small children injured when their fingers were caught in hinges of folding pushchairs and/or buggies.  Maclaren have responded by voluntarily issuing a safety kit – which looks like a fabric cover to enclose the hinges and simply prevent little fingers from getting where they could be hurt.

So far so good.  A company that makes pushchairs that cuts off children's fingertips has to respond quickly or their reputation will be ruined.

Now, while it may seem irresponsible to let your children get anywhere near the pushchair as it's folded, as a parent myself I can honestly say that stuff does happen sometimes that isn't your fault as a parent.  My son climbed on a bollard when he was 5, for example, then promptly fell right onto his head from about 3 feet up, fractured his skull and scared the living daylights out of us.

Because children do these mad things, it's important that we can trust in the toys and equipment we buy for them.  So as a responsible parent, I've always tried to find the things that are safest – a cot with sides that can't trap fingers, dummy plugs to prevent the little darlings electrocuting themselves, and so on.

So it was a relief to hear that Maclaren responded quickly in the US to consumer concerns.  But then they said they're not going to give parents in Europe (apparently that includes their home country the UK) the same quality of service.

I've just seen the story on the BBC news and they have decided to simply issue a safety warning in the UK.  They are just telling you to keep your child away from the folding pram's hinges.  Personally I'd vote with my feet and buy another brand.  I bet that's what all the chatter will be about, now, on the European mom's internet sites.

My children are thankfully beyond riding in buggies.  But from where I'm sitting, this looks like a cynical attempt to look after the American market more carefully than their home turf, the British market.

It's not good enough for customers in Britain and it's a complete failure of their marketing department.  Whoever took this decision should be sacked.  It will deeply harm the company.  And I don't want to see that happen.

Maclaren is a firm with a great reputation.  That great reputation is being hung out to dry by this crass decision.  And now the press is giving them a tough time and they are, I quote from the BBC, "defending their decision".  They are defending the frankly indefensible.  Did nobody tell them that when you're in a hole you should stop digging?

Really – are they completely out of their minds?  Do they live in some kind of timewarp, a time before Internet sites and blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and email?  A quick UK google just showed me that currently in 5th place is this article with the shocking headline Maclaren Stroller Recall: Children's Fingertips Amputated.

I know that if I was the marketing director there, I'd be feeling sick to my stomach and desperate to make this problem go away really quickly.  And to show just how much the company cares about your babies.  I certainly would not be defending their decision.

But even worse, it suggests that the company has lost touch with the people they serve.  Proud, loving mums and dads.  It screams, "we don't care about  your kids, we're in compliance with EU regulations".  Whoop-de-doo.

If they did care, they'd have already issued these kits to every owner of a Maclaren buggy or pram that has the finger-chopping hinges, not just Americans.  This problem can only snowball from here.  I hope they survive the fallout.

By deciding not to issue the safety kits in the UK, they've shown that their corporate goal is not primarily about great, safe transport for your children.

So how does this relate to your business?  Simple.  Whatever you do, you must demonstrate that you care about your customers.  They put you where you are, and they can choose to walk away.  Look after them.  Fix problems quickly and treat them fairly.

I'm a business blogger and am writing this from the perspective of PR.  I'm also a parent and so I care, although that's not the purpose of this blog entry.  Imagine the posts and comments about Maclaren on the new and expectant mums blogs and forums.

I hope that Maclaren quickly wake up, issue an apology and send out hinge covers to all of their customers. Better that they pay the cost now, so they can recover quickly from a potentially business-threatening PR disaster.  Remember Ratner's jewellery chain?  At Maclaren, heads should roll, and soon.

So how have you changed your marketing to reflect this?  Do you mainly sell by the traditional word of mouth locally, or have you branched out to reach customers in far-flung places like Brighton, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Birmingham, too?

I had a marketing "road to Damascus" moment a few years ago when I realised that with the Internet, trading with countries across the globe is now possible, let alone trading in other cities of the UK.  In fact, many companies in a small niche manage to make big bucks by trading nationally or even internationally in a very narrow line of trade.  We call this niche marketing and it's a huge, yet fundamentally simple, topic.

In my last blog post, I talked about Gill's Cruises.  Let's look at what they've achieved in a bit more depth.

Traditional travel agents have been screaming about the big travel companies selling directly and cutting out the middle man for years.  When they sell flights, the airlines often give them next to nothing, making it an increasingly tough trade to be in.

So that's what makes Gill's so interesting; while most have been complaining (and gradually dying out, too), Gill's switched from being a general travel agent with a local Cardiff clientele, to become a specialist in cruises.

Just think about this for a moment.  Holidays in general, encompassing cruises, is a huge market place.  Before specialising, Gill's could sell all types of holidays – beach, long-haul luxury, family holidays in Europe, Spa holidays, adventure touring in the Andes, etc.  You get the drift.

So what kind of madness would lead you to specialise in just a tiny part of it?

Well, somebody who's looking to buy a cruise isn't looking for any old holiday.  They're looking for a cruise.  And if they see a page full of adverts, mostly from generalist, jack-of-all-trades agents, the one or two from specialist "cruise-only" agents will stand out massively.  When they phone, they'll speak to experts with in-depth knowledge of what they want to buy, rather than a thin skim across a whole range of holiday types.  Which is the whole point.

This thinking has allowed Gill's to grow from a small general family business selling all kinds of holidays back in 1994 to being a huge player in the cruise market today, employing a team of over 100 people to sell millions upon millions of pounds worth of cruises every month.

If you're a generalist, you'll appeal modestly to everybody.  If you're a specialist, you'll appeal strongly to the specific customers who want to buy what you sell.  Who wouldn't prefer to buy from a specialist, rather than a general business?

You'll also enjoy preferential rates for buying the products you sell, too, as your sales are likely to concentrate on a more concentrated group of suppliers.

Think about it – how many customers are attracted to McDonalds and Kentucky Fried Chicken, the specialists, in comparison to the local fish and chip shop that also sells burgers and deep friend chicken?  People travel for miles to reach the franchises.  Turnover from the franchise stores is in the millions, whereas the chippy does a few hundred thousand.

Or think about Ryan Air versus British Airways. If you want a cheap flight, you won't call BA.  A budget specialist that's very profitable versus a general airway that's stuck in its very own time warp of high prices and three classes of travel.  Specialise or be marginalised.

Another client, The Mortgage Broker Ltd, became very successful on the back of a niche strategy, targetting specific kinds of mortgages rather than being every-man's mortgage broker.  The result?  Growth from 30 mortgages/month to 200+ prior to the collapse of bank lending.

Every general market has thousands of niches just waiting to be claimed.  Going back to travel, you've got…

Saga – over 50's
Gill's – Cruises
Mark Warner – quality family holidays (sun & winter, giving them 2 niches)
Sunsail – sailing holidays

and the list goes on.

It may seem insane to ignore the bulk of your market.  But you can rapidly become a big player in a smaller niche, rather than just another also-ran in your overall market.  Which would you rather be – if you want to increase turnover, a narrow focus might be just what's needed.

First, The Riverside Restaurant in Barnard Castle have now officially grown to twice their original sales, with profits to match!  When I said to Andrew what had made the biggest impact, he said no single thing, but a combination of lots of changes each building on the other to create a whole new level of business.

Secondly, I spent the day yesterday with a new client, Gill's Cruises in Baker Street, London.  A Cardiff based holiday sales company that specialises in cruises, they have grown at an astonishing rate, doubling their total sales revenues over the last 12 months (yes, that's right, a travel agent that's doubled in a recession).  What makes this extra special is their size – they've added 70 or more staff in just 18 months, all in sales.

So what can we learn from this mix of a small restaurant that's doubled and a big holiday company that's doubled?  Here's my take…

1. Vision, confidence and self-belief.  The owners of both businesses (Andrew Rowbotham and Alistair Gill respectively) have a phenomenal level of self belief and the conviction that they will succeed.
2. Taking decisive action.  Both have put into practice the key things they know about business and thrived as a result.  Ideas and innovation are no good unless you put them into practice.
3. Build A Strong Marketing Funnel.  Both businesses generate lots of enquiries via a range of different marketing methods.  This source of new leads is the lifeblood of the business.
4. Keep a database of customers.  While in completely different lines of work, they have both built a database of customers and keep in touch with them regularly.
5. Attentive customer service.  Without looking after your customers, you can't keep them.  Both these firms experience high levels of customer satisfaction and therefore have lots of repeat sales.
6. Great staff.  Hire slow, fire fast and don't tolerate incompetence or poor quality staff.  Demand the best from your people every day – the best people enjoy working to the highest standards and will produce top quality service for your customers.
7. Control.  Great financial control and metrics to cover every aspect of your business are crucial to success.  Which sales people are making you money, who is losing you money, which marketing strategies are working, which are just a cash sump?
8. Stretch yourself.  No matter what you've already achieved and what you already know, if you don't push yourself out of your comfort zone you'll keep repeating the same levels of success forever.  Have the courage to face your fears head on and do it anyway.

So in the past year, with all the depressing talk of recession, that's two great businesses that have doubled in size.

What else do you think makes the difference for businesses that grow so successfully?