4 Critical Business Development Steps to Create Profits from Scratch!

If you actually take a proven strategy and apply it, you'll be guaranteed success, would you agree? The tips you're about to read about, when acted upon will do this for you, but first you need to correctly adapt and implement them, and stick with it by putting in the effort required to gain the results you want, that's your guarantee to your businesses success, and your failsafe mechnism to failing in business.

1 Targetted Database

No business can succeed without a database, as targeted as possible. If a targeted database can be purchased, this is best, but most SME's don't have that luxury. Some excellent database sources that can be targeted even on a minimal level are: white pages on-line, yellow pages on-line, Department of Commerce Business Directory. Your own referrals and contacts should be added to this database. Most business people can readily manage a database of 800-1600, which will take no longer than 30 minutes to 1 hour daily to "farm" correctly.

Obviously, if you don't have a database, or it is a poor database, this strategy can't even get off the ground. What database do you have? What help do you need, if any, to develop it?

2 Plan, Schedule, Track, Analyse and Refine Your Database Communication

If any of these steps are missing, you will certainly fail. If you already have a database and are not doing these things in a regular, disciplined, and strategic way, you are wasting a vital resource. If you have staff who are supposed to be making calls, but you don't have written evidence, KPI's or analysis of the activity, then you are certainly losing a great deal of money. A lot of businesses (too many) operate around trust only, when telemarketing is in place (of possibly any function!), and we are yet to see that trust justified in even one instance. After the first call, these calls are no longer cold calls. By calling within a 90-day cycle, using appropriate scripting, you ensure that calls remain warm and that they build relationships, not burn them.

How often are you contacting your database? What information are you keeping? What analysis do you do? How have you been able to refine this part of database massage in order to get continuously improved results?

3 Ensure that What You Offer to Your Database is Actually Relevant to it

Your script should be something the listener actually wants to hear. If you haven't got something they want to hear, then you wouldn't have a market! A lot of people come unstuck here but would be surprised how easy it is to come up with a great script if they get together with their business friends to construct one.

What script are you using? Did you test it properly and compare it with others, or did you take a guess? Do you have a series of different offers so that your clients hear something fresh and interesting each time you contact them?

Tip: If you're not getting an absolute minimum of 1 appointment per 20 calls on the "cold" (first) call, approximately 2 appointments per 20 calls on cycle 2, and at least 10 appointments per 20 calls by cycle 4, then something is very wrong! Speed Business Networking member Petrese McGurdy, MD of True North Financial Solutions, refined her script and got 1 appointment per 14 cold calls, and 100% of her warm referred calls!

4 Have Impactful Marketing Material to Leave with the Client or Potential Client

Use your business friends to critique your marketing material and help develop a simple package which compels people to take action. (Check out our Member Showcase to see Leonie Davis' before and after of her marketing flyer for Imagine.)

What do you actually show potential clients when you visit them? What is the quality of this material compared to the best you've seen? What do you actually leave with clients? How does your marketing material captivate your prospects and clients attention to keep them warm or even hot as a lead who's likely to "act" on your marketing message. How does that material compare with the best you've seen?

How does your target market follow the marketing funnel of AIDA? (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action)?

There is much more to business success than this, but these 4 steps are the most crucial things you can do to build your business. This is a major strategy of highly successful businesses and yet it is almost free. Why would you not use it? (Scared of the phone? Find out an easy, permanent solution!)


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Adam Price is an expert business networker, who focusses on challenging business owners to exponentially grow their business fast. Adam is also the co-founder of SynergyBizNet. To learn more visit: http://www.SynergyBizNet.com