In a panic they rush in to figure out what to do.
Having worked with so many business coaching clients has taught me that the first place to examine is what I call your “marketing basics.” Your marketing basics are those simple business development and lead conversion activities that you’ve developed over time and proven to be simple winners.
Have you stopped consistently doing these things which for so long produced a stable stream of business growth?
For example, one environmental engineering company we work with had stopped the regular business development breakfast and lunches that the principles used to have each week with key clients and market influencers. When they restarted this simple strategy they brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars of new projects over the following six months.
Another business coaching client who owned a retail service company had strayed from his proven sales process as he scaled his sales team. When he looked close, he realized that not only had their conversion rate dropped by over 60 percent, but their average unit of sale had also dropped from $8,000 per sale to under $4,000 per sale. When he went back to basics, he more than doubled his sales team’s closing rate and brought their average unit of sale back to $8,000 per sale.
A medical group we coach got seduced by the allure of digital marketing and invested tens of thousands of dollars to generate patient volume, only to discover that they stopped consistently doing the formal referral strategies they used to do and to which they derived over 80 percent of their past patient volume from! Within 90 days of refocusing their efforts back on their proven winners they had generated 200 extra patient visits per month.
Your turn. Here are a series of questions I want you to answer to help you see if your marketing basics might just be the root cause of your diminishing business volume.
What was your main source of clients back in the early years when you had little money to spend on marketing?
Did you discover any consistent winners that for whatever reason you’ve strayed away from doing?
Over the past few years, what has been your most reliable tactic to generate business?
Are you still doing that with the same focus and consistency as you originally did when it was producing so well for your business? If not, why not? And could you profitably “get back to basics”?
As the head of a large business coaching company I see this happening every day. Business leaders get bored with the same old-same old. They get drawn towards sexy new mechanisms to generate leads. They say, “Our market has changed,” but has it really? If not, get back to basics and watch your business grow.