There’s a lot that can get in your way as a business owner. You need office supplies, your employees have HR questions, your email is blowing up, and on and on. Distractions are around every corner, behind every phone call, and inside every nook & cranny of your business. That’s why it’s so critical to keep your guard up and your focus clear.
Your #1 most important job as a business owner is to grow the business. And growing your business means you need more sales coming through the door every day. As the saying goes, “If you’re not growing, you’re dying.” That pretty much sums it up.
So forget about the office supplies, forget about the employees’ burning questions about time off, and start focusing on what really counts. It all boils down to 3 key marketing questions:
2. How can I turn more leads into buyers?
3. How can I turn more buyers into lifetime customers?
Let’s tackle each of these for a bit more clarity:
How Can I Get More Leads?
The beginning is always the best place to start. And this is the very beginning of your sales funnel. You’ve got to put leads into the hopper to nurture them into sales. In order to answer this question, you’re going to need a little bit “art” and a little bit “science.”
The science of this process is knowing where you already get your best leads now and then doing everything you can to ramp up those lead sources. The art of this process is trying new things and heading into uncharted waters so you can continue diversifying your lead sources.
Offline, online, referrals, affiliates, paid advertising, PR, business cards, networking, social media, direct mail, email marketing, webinars — there are TONS of ways to get new leads. You should be constantly exploring as many of these avenues as you possibly can. You should also be tracking this process as much as you can with Infusionsoft or some other lead source tracking software.
How Can I Turn More Leads Into Buyers?
The next stage after acquisition is nurturing. You need to build a relationship with your customer or client and nurture him or her from that “first date” new lead moment all the way to the first purchase. This courting process is so critical to your success, and it’s the place you should be spending the bulk of your marketing energy and resources.
Of course, the type of lead nurturing you do will depend on the type of business you’re running. As Zig Ziglar was famous for saying: the longer you nurture your prospect, the more you can charge for the sale.
How Can I Turn More Buyers Into Lifetime Customers?
This final question is the secret sauce for transforming an “average business” into a massively successfully business. Lifetime Customer Value is a term you should become immensely familiar with because it can be the single most important key to unlocking greater success for your business.
It’s expensive to acquire a prospect and even more expensive to acquire an actual paying customer. So once you build that relationship and clinch the first sale, you’ve got to set your sights on increasing the lifetime value of each customer.
The key here is about much more than just new products and services, though that’s important. If you really want to build Lifetime Customer Value, you need to start thinking of your customer as the prized possession (not the sale). You need to nurture, engage, and build a lasting relationship. You need to move past the “one night stand” approach to selling and start thinking long-term.
The 3 Most Important Questions In Business
That’s it. That’s the holy grail of running a better business and getting more results. Just three questions.
It’s a simple concept, but implementation is the key. You’ve got to keep testing, keep trying, and keep analyzing every single part of this process to get it right. As your business continues to move through the stages of growth, you’ll find yourself grappling with 1 question more than the other at any given time.
Just be sure you continue to revisit all three questions and keep all three in mind when every day.
Which of these 3 questions is the most important to you in your business right now? Leave your comment below.
