The 2 Pillars To Every Business Success
The 2 Pillars To Every Business Success
Would you respond with …
“I’m a coach. I help people overcome their fears.”
“I’m a hairdresser. I make women feel beautiful.”
“I’m a professional organizer. I help people live simpler lives.”
“I’m a builder. I build people’s dream homes.”
Of course, this is the typical way you would answer such a question, but is it completely true?
If you honestly regard yourself in this way, you may be missing the two true pillars that are the foundation to your business success – marketing and sales.
Without these pillars you have no business, for it is on marketing and sales your business is built.
You may have the best, easiest, fastest, most long lasting product or service, but if no one knows about it or knows how to purchase it, it means nothing.
On the other hand, you may have a mediocre product or service that meets a basic need and even though it isn’t the best, has created a huge demand and following thanks to powerful, persistent marketing and the ability to secure the sale.
Think about McDonald’s. Many would agree that they do not make the best tasting or healthiest hamburger in the world, however, when asked to name a fast food chain, most people will answer with “McDonald’s” because the business’ number one focus is and has always been on marketing, not making the best burger.
Marketing is how you create top of mind awareness in your industry. More important than your product or service is the awareness that it exists.
Marketing must be your number one objective as a business owner. Here are a few ways to get known.
- newspaper ads or articles
- signs/posters (on vehicles/hydro poles/bulletin boards)
- web site
- writing articles or stories for industry publications
- door-to-door visits
- brochures
- business cards
- referrals
- mailings
- phone calls
- e-mail
- joint ventures (partnering with others)
- public speaking
- attending networking events
- TV/radio commercials or interviews
- display at trade shows
- sponsoring events
- volunteering
- joining community groups
This is where 80 percent of your time and effort must be spent if you want to create business success.
The sole purpose of marketing is to create awareness followed by action to contact you, and once you have achieved this result, you shift to pillar number two -- sales.
To succeed in sales is a matter of mindset. If you regard salespeople as pushy, unauthentic and self-serving, you will fail miserably at securing clients and customers.
Sales is about serving, understanding the wants and needs of the prospect and determining whether or not you can provide a solution. To become a master salesperson, you will require confidence, a strong belief in what you’re selling and a genuine desire to help others more than yourself.
Let’s say you purchased a new chair for your office and you absolutely love it. Your legs don’t cramp up anymore, your back pain is gone and you can sit in it for hours and feel fantastic at the end of your workday.
Would you share this with your friends and colleagues? Absolutely!
Let’s say you tell ten friends about it. You’re enthusiastic, even passionate about how great the chair is. You know your friends have sore lower backs and want to take away their pain. After sharing your results, you encourage them to get one for themselves.
Five of them follow through on your recommendation and buy a chair.
What have you done? You just sold five chairs!
When you look at sales from this perspective, it isn’t sneaky, self-serving or aggressive.
You acted out of passion, honesty and a genuine desire to help someone else and your friends responded as most prospects would – by trusting your recommendation and following through with action.
Marketing and sales are the pillars to your business success and both require skills and mindsets that you can learn.
Make the commitment to invest the majority of your time into learning and practicing these skills over any other business activity and you will be astounded by the results you create.
You are in the business of marketing your coaching, hairdressing, professional organizing and home building service not in the delivery of it.
Adopt this mindset, take the right actions and you will enjoy business success faster and with much more enjoyment than you ever thought possible.
2007 © Laurie Hayes - The HBB Source
The 2 Pillars To Every Business Success - To learn more about this author, visit Laurie Hayes's Website.
Like this article? Share it with your friends
If I were to ask you about your business and what you do, how would you answer?
Would you respond with …
“I’m a coach. I help people overcome their fears.”
“I’m a hairdresser. I make women feel beautiful.”
“I’m a professional organizer. I help people live simpler lives.”
“I’m a builder. I build people’s dream homes.”
Of course, this is the typical way you would answer such a question, but is it completely true?
If you honestly regard yourself in this way, you may be missing the two true pillars that are the foundation to your business success – marketing and sales.
Without these pillars you have no business, for it is on marketing and sales your business is built.
You may have the best, easiest, fastest, most long lasting product or service, but if no one knows about it or knows how to purchase it, it means nothing.
On the other hand, you may have a mediocre product or service that meets a basic need and even though it isn’t the best, has created a huge demand and following thanks to powerful, persistent marketing and the ability to secure the sale.
Think about McDonald’s. Many would agree that they do not make the best tasting or healthiest hamburger in the world, however, when asked to name a fast food chain, most people will answer with “McDonald’s” because the business’ number one focus is and has always been on marketing, not making the best burger.
Marketing is how you create top of mind awareness in your industry. More important than your product or service is the awareness that it exists.
Marketing must be your number one objective as a business owner. Here are a few ways to get known.
- newspaper ads or articles
- signs/posters (on vehicles/hydro poles/bulletin boards)
- web site
- writing articles or stories for industry publications
- door-to-door visits
- brochures
- business cards
- referrals
- mailings
- phone calls
- joint ventures (partnering with others)
- public speaking
- attending networking events
- TV/radio commercials or interviews
- display at trade shows
- sponsoring events
- volunteering
- joining community groups
This is where 80 percent of your time and effort must be spent if you want to create business success.
The sole purpose of marketing is to create awareness followed by action to contact you, and once you have achieved this result, you shift to pillar number two -- sales.
To succeed in sales is a matter of mindset. If you regard salespeople as pushy, unauthentic and self-serving, you will fail miserably at securing clients and customers.
Sales is about serving, understanding the wants and needs of the prospect and determining whether or not you can provide a solution. To become a master salesperson, you will require confidence, a strong belief in what you’re selling and a genuine desire to help others more than yourself.
Let’s say you purchased a new chair for your office and you absolutely love it. Your legs don’t cramp up anymore, your back pain is gone and you can sit in it for hours and feel fantastic at the end of your workday.
Would you share this with your friends and colleagues? Absolutely!
Let’s say you tell ten friends about it. You’re enthusiastic, even passionate about how great the chair is. You know your friends have sore lower backs and want to take away their pain. After sharing your results, you encourage them to get one for themselves.
Five of them follow through on your recommendation and buy a chair.
What have you done? You just sold five chairs!
When you look at sales from this perspective, it isn’t sneaky, self-serving or aggressive.
You acted out of passion, honesty and a genuine desire to help someone else and your friends responded as most prospects would – by trusting your recommendation and following through with action.
Marketing and sales are the pillars to your business success and both require skills and mindsets that you can learn.
Make the commitment to invest the majority of your time into learning and practicing these skills over any other business activity and you will be astounded by the results you create.
You are in the business of marketing your coaching, hairdressing, professional organizing and home building service not in the delivery of it.
Adopt this mindset, take the right actions and you will enjoy business success faster and with much more enjoyment than you ever thought possible.
2007 © Laurie Hayes - The HBB Source
The 2 Pillars To Every Business Success - To learn more about this author, visit Laurie Hayes's Website.
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Dianne CramptonDianne Crampton is an executive leadership coach, team culture consultant, author and president of TIGERS Success Series, Inc. Dianne has been helping CEO's and Executives connect their employees to their core values and goals for over 20 years using the trademarked TIGERS team culture process, which stands for trust, interdependence, genuineness, empathy, risk and success. To download a free white paper on behaviors that build strong teams and behaviors that will predictably tear them down go here. Dianne's contribution to the 2010 Pfeiffer Consulting Journal (an imprint of John Wiley and Sons Publishers) entitled TIGERS Hearted Teams is available in November 2009. Her new book TIGERS Among Us: 5 Winning Business Team Cultures And Why, Three Creeks Publishing will release in March 2010. To receive publishing discounts, subscribe to the free TigerTracks Newsletter here. - Visit Dianne Crampton's Website |
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Leanne Hoagland-SmithAre your sales where you want them to be? Will you be one of the few who achieves sales or business success or one of the many who have failed to change? Are you tired of being told you are like everyone else? Then you may find my first book on sales of interest. Be the Red Jacket in the Sea of Gray Suits, The Keys to Unlocking Sales available at Amazon or at http://www.processspecialist.com/red-jacket.htm. This book is a reflection of my no-nonsense approach to improving sales to overall business results. If you are truly committed to making sustainable changes, then I can help you secure a positive return on your investment because I focus on executable solutions not telling you the problems you already know you have. From training to corporate (group) coaching to executive one on one coaching, my approach is to assess, create awareness, build a goal driven action plan and then execute. The bottom line question is "Not do you or your employees know it, but do you or they want to do it?" Please call for a free strategy session at 219.759.5601. - Visit Leanne Hoagland-Smith's Website |
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Linda RichardsonLinda Richardson is the Founder and Executive Chairwoman of Richardson, a global sales training and performance improvement company. As a recognized leader in the industry, she has won the coveted Stevie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sales Excellence and she was identified by Training Industry, Inc. as one of the “Top 20 Most Influential Training Professionals.” Ms. Richardson is credited with the movement to Consultative Selling and is the author of ten books on selling and sales management, including Sales Coaching — Making the Great Leap from Sales Manager to Sales Coach, and Stop Telling, Start Selling. She teaches sales and management at the Wharton Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton Executive Development Center. Linda is a frequent speaker at industry and client conferences, has been published extensively in industry and training journals, and has been featured in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Nation’s Business, Selling Power, Success, and The Conference Board Magazine. Learn more about Richardson's sales training and performance improvement solutions at http://www.richardson.com web - Visit Linda Richardson's Website |
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David BarrDavid Barr is the President of Venture Opportunities, Inc. David has been a professional business broker/intermediary since 1980 focusing on General Business Brokerage and Mergers and Acquisitions representing client transaction value from $400,000 to $20,000,000. Mr. Barr has handled the sale of over four hundred and fifty companies. David earned a university degree from the State University of New York majoring in economics and business. David holds the Mergers and Acquisition Master Intermediary and the Certified Business Intermediary designations from the International Business Brokers Association. He is also a Senior Business Analyst and a Texas licensed Real Estate Agent. For more information about David and Venture Opportunities, visit www.bizdealmaker.com. - Visit David Barr's Website |
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Anne BarrAnne Barr has over 26 years experience in sales and marketing, six years as a franchisee. She has assisted over 367 business owners and purchasers to achieve their goals in career change, transition and exit strategy. She holds the designation of Certified Franchise Executive from the International Franchise Association, Certified Business Intermediary from the International Business Brokers Association and Board Certified Broker from the Texas Association of Business Brokers. Anne is active in professional organizations, networking groups and volunteers for non-profit entities. As owner/operator of four successful businesses, Anne has proven people skills and enjoys helping clients find the right "fit" in business ownership. Visit www.FranchiseOpportunitySpecialist.com for more information about me and my company. - Visit Anne Barr's Website |
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Casey GollanCasey Gollan, Business Coaching & Mentoring Programs. Add $1 Million to $10 Million in the next 1 to 3 years. Since 1996 Casey has to added hundreds of millions of dollars to businesses. Watch a free video see client results Business Coaching website. - Visit Casey Gollan's Website |
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Kim CastleWith nearly two decades in the advertising and design business, with clients like Domino's Pizza, General Motors, Direct TV, Pedigree, Wolfgang Puck, Higher Octave Music, Hollywood Celebrity Products, Disney, and Paramount, as well as thousands of entrepreneurs around the world define, structure, communicate, and position their business for greater profits, BrandU(R) co-creators Kim Castle and W. Vito Montone discovered that entrepreneurs could experience the same power that big brands command for a fraction of the cost with the world's only process-based results-drive Integral approach to business creation. BrandU(R) is helping entrepreneurs grow with the power of extreme clarity from idea...to brand...to market(TM) and helping one million entrepreneurs become successful and whole so that they can make a difference in the world. Are you one of them? If you want to experience clarity all the way to the bank(TM), get started now at http://www.brandu.com. - Visit Kim Castle's Website |
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Jeff FosterWebBizIdeas.com is a Minneapolis website design company founded to help people start an internet business by providing them with website, business, and internet resources that help foster the growth of successful online businesses and develop innovative Internet business ideas. We specialize in internet consulting & internet marketing. - Visit Jeff Foster's Website |
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