“And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful,
and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it:” Gen 1:28

Four things. Simple, yet profoundly important for succeeding
in business. Rule number one was to be fruitful. Create
something of excellence, worthy of duplication. Create
something others would want. The better you are at step one,
the more important step two becomes.

Step two is multiply. Don’t try to multiply the franchise,
the product, the service until it is first of all proven to
be fruitful as a stand alone. Once it is proven, you are
ready to multiply. The secret to multiplication is systems.
The better the system, the faster you can multiply. Go back
about 100 years ago when there were hundreds of car
manufacturers in America. They would work hard all day
crafting an original masterpiece of a car. The next day they
would do it all over again. They weren’t multiplying – they
were adding!

Along comes Henry what’s his name and he streamlined the
manufacturing process based on Adam Smith’s economic
philosophy outlined in The Wealth of Nations, where men
focused on one aspect of the production and left the rest to
others. The work was terribly mundane but the pay was the
best in the country and the Ford motor car became the best
selling automobile in the country.

If you have been fruitful with an idea and it is working for
you, it may be time to multiply. If it is, you will need to
set up systems for sales, marketing, accounting,
communication, etc that integrate with each other. If you
need a little help transitioning to the multiplication
phase, drop me a line. I am introducing a coaching program
in a few weeks aimed at helping people do just that and a
lot more.

Speaking of multiplying… last week in Austin, I met a couple
of kingdom minded internet entrepreneurs who are widely
respected for their accomplishments and their walk with God.
One of them, Matt Gillogly has been very successful in
coaching people and shared with me that he is having a three
day event for a small group of folks interested in learning
how to do what he does. I believe the attendance is limited
to about 25 because he will be recording this entire
program.

There will be no pitches for product or upsell to additional
services. Just three days of training on how to run a
successful coaching business. I plan to attend because I
want to know the best methods, systems and technologies
available to help me provide coaching to many of you
beginning in October. If you are a coach or considering that
as a career, you might want to check it out. Maybe I will
see you there. It’s October 2 – 4 in Charlotte, NC.

Good morning friends… One of the ways we’ve been getting practical and helping folks grow their business revenue is through the internet. I’ve been relying on David Johnson of Epiphany Marketing for our internet marketing expertise for the last year and the difference has been quite substantial. Our site use to get a few hundred unique visits per week. Now we are in the five figure range each week, and we’re ramping up for quite a bit more in the near future. I’ve asked David to share a few posts with you to give you some practical help. Hope you enjoy!

How to Drive Off Your Customers

Too busy at work?  More than enough revenue?  Here are some ways you can keep those pesky customers and prospects away…

 

#1: Make Sure Your Marketing is All About You
After all… people who want to spend money with you want to understand how your products & services benefit them, so if you focus on you, your company’s history, your features, etc., you’ll be sure to keep people from bugging you.  Whatever you do, don’t use pictures of the people most likely to actually buy from you, and avoid connecting their needs and wants to aspects of your business most likely to appeal to them.  Instead, just subtly communicate the notion that you’re in business for your own benefit and that you really aren’t interested in customers.  They’ll smell this a mile away and bug someone else instead.

#2: Ignore the Web
If your website hasn’t changed since the Clinton Administration, you’re on the right track here.  Even better: no web presence at all!  If you must have a website, make sure it doesn’t show up in any search engines… and whatever you do: don’t add fresh new content on a regular basis!  You should convey to visitors that you might already be out of business just by the aged look of your site.  To support this notion, hire a neighbor’s kid to build it — especially if he/she has no design experience whatsoever.  Websites that have that “we don’t care” feel do wonders at keeping people away.  If you’re still having response from your site, just bury the information that your customers want to find and add some contact forms to your site that do nothing and go nowhere.  If you can get them to generate an error message, it’s even more fun!

#3:  Keep Your Marketing Efforts Unfocused
If people have a clear idea of who you are and what you’re all about, they’re much more likely to pester you.  So, make sure that there’s no unifying theme to your marketing.  Buy ads at random, and always let whoever who sold you the ad design it for you.  This way, all of your ads will come out looking different from each other.  Make sure that your marketing doesn’t target any one type of customer, and stick with the “shotgun” approach.  Otherwise, your marketing might actually connect with someone, and then they’ll show up or call, expecting service from you.

I hope these tips are helpful for you.  We’ll continue this on another blog entry soon.  And… Michael and I will be holding another marketing teleseminar next week!  If you’re already busy enough and don’t want any new customers, don’t join us!  It could be dangerous!!

Michael here… watch your inbox on Monday morning for dates/times for next week’s event!

Have you signed up for one of the conference calls yet? Details will follow today’s guest content from David G. Johnson of Epiphany Marketing…

So far this week, we’ve focused on you and your identity as a business. Now it’s time to do something every bit as critical and just as important, if not more so: focus on your customer.

Something that continues to amaze me is how easy (and common) it is for businesses to lose touch with their customers and clients. Just as you must know your own identity, you must also get clear on the identity of your customer. This is both harder and easier than it sounds. Customers are diverse, which is why it seems to be a daunting task to keep in touch with who they are. That being said, it is critical to look for and discover the common factors in your customers that are keys to the big question: why are they buying from you?

One of the easiest - and most often overlooked - means of getting to that answer is to very simply ask the question. When was the last time you got a list of some of your best customers and called to ask them, out of the clear blue sky, “Why did you buy?”

Let me guarantee you something. If it’s been a while since you’ve done something like this, you may have some ideas about what they’ll say, but the answers will surprise you. You will learn something. And what you learn will be important.

The fact is, we tend to give lip service to the idea of listening to our customers. Listening to and getting to know them is something that occurs only deliberately and with focused, intentional effort. It’s a lot like a marriage. If it’s going to last, it’s going to take work. Sometimes it’s easier to let customers slip away due to neglect than it is to face the painful fact that they may tell you something that you don’t want to hear. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather hear that thing I don’t want to hear because I asked than by letting them speak with their dollars.

I may have to give up my pet project that is missing the mark. But, when there’s a good match between my identity (which I’m hopefully now clear on) and what the customers are begging for, shouldn’t that be my pet project anyway?

More on this subject tomorrow…

In case you missed my invitation, please join David and me for one of our conference calls tomorrow and Friday. Some of them are already nearly full, so you need to choose your best time slot right away!