Even if you’re charging ‘enough’, are you charging the best way to support your business model and goals? Let’s consider some creative and profitable options.

Have you ever played Whack-a-Mole? It’s an old but simple game where players take a mallet and try to strike toy moles as they pop up from underneath the board. As soon as the player has successfully “whacked” a mole, it disappears and another pops up somewhere else on the board.

It can often be a frustrating and monotonous game.

People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway.

Imagine you’re standing at the top of the hill in front of the marketing well. With a final turn of the winch the bucket comes up. You take hold of it and find it full to the brim with great marketing ideas. With your bucket in hand you carefully go back down the hill to where your clients are waiting. 

Halfway down the hill you notice the bucket seems a lot lighter. You glance down and find it already half empty. Looking back to the well you see a trail of marketing ideas splashed over the ground. What happened?  There might be some holes in your marketing bucket.

When you think of your perfect customer, who comes to mind? Is it that steely-eyed executive with the pin-striped suit and the V-8 sports car? Or maybe the friendly neighbor a few houses down who loves her cats and her knitting? It could be the eager college student with her trusty tablet, the cynical stock broker who’s had a run of bad luck or your sister-in-law getting ready to start her first business.

So who is it? Your avatar is your perfect customer, and defining that person is one of the first steps in starting a successful business. You may have begun your business for personal reasons, perhaps carrying on a family tradition or fulfilling a life-long dream, but sooner or later (probably sooner rather than later) you’re going to need to sell something. That’s where the avatar comes in.

Featured Resource this week -

Change the RULES of Mobile Marketing.

Before now, mobile marketing was severely limited. You could only send a single text in response to a single incoming text message. This caused people using mobile marketing to settle for less than effective marketing strategies.

Try Automated SMS for Only $1!

Check out others who we recommend - solid vendors and products that could benefit your business today.

Featured Resource this week -

Sherrie at SLS Event Planning and Consulting LLC, organizes, sets up, and manages various corporate, public, and private events and meetings.

We’ve known Sherrie a long time and have confidence and respect for her amazing event planning skills, so please give her our regards when you call.

Check out others who we recommend - solid vendors and products that could benefit your business today.

Building rapport is the single most important thing you can do to sell your products or services, and to sell them at higher prices.

What’s the secret?

It’s not rocket science.

Featured Resource this week - Copy Doodles

Handwriting and hand-drawn enhancements have been used for years in advertising and marketing because they are a proven way to grab attention and increase response and readability. There is NOTHING out there that matches the quality, expertise and level of support you get when you become a CopyDoodles member.  Their extensive library of direct-response marketing graphics features thousands of hand-drawn CopyDoodles, which can be easily downloaded to your computer and placed on any of the online or offline marketing pieces you are working on in a snap.

Check out others who we recommend - solid vendors and products that could benefit your business today.

The workload really isn’t that big. It just seems that way at the moment. Your clients really aren’t that demanding. It just feels that way right now. The stack of projects at your desk isn’t that huge. It just seems like Mount Everest this morning.

Maybe what you need isn’t necessarily a way to squeeze a few more productive minutes out of your day. Maybe what you need is a vacation.

Featured Resource this week -

 One Click Upsell

If you sell products, services or entry to events, using Infusionsoft's order forms, and you are not leading the new buyer to an immediate up sell, YOU ARE LEAVING MONEY ON THE TABLE!!!

Check out others who we recommend - solid vendors and products that could benefit your business today.

Featured Resource this week -

Change the RULES of Mobile Marketing.

Before now, mobile marketing was severely limited. You could only send a single text in response to a single incoming text message. This caused people using mobile marketing to settle for less than effective marketing strategies.

Check out others who we recommend - solid vendors and products that could benefit your business today.

I wanted to give you some neat little (or not so little) Infusionsoft tips and thoughts about some complex ideas like using fulfillment lists or looping campaigns, or ???.

But instead I decided to talk about extending Infusionsoft.

There’s a strange human phenomena that has puzzled scientists for years. Why do so many people trust their friends instead of the experts? You’ve probably seen it in action, even with something simple. Maybe you’ve done it yourself. 

Let’s say Jane is trying to decide whether or not to go see a movie. The film is hailed by critics—experts in narrative and dramatic interpretation who’ve spent years honing their craft and have critiqued literally thousands of movies. Yet when making the decision to view the film, Jane asks her friend, Tom, who says the movie is terrible. 

As you may have noticed, the world is full of people. That means you’re in the people business, regardless of what you do. Anything we do— no matter how obscure and far removed from the public it may seem— ultimately involves people in some fashion or form. Your relationships with these people will go a long way in determining your business success.

Relationships matter in business, now more than ever.