May the force be with you Leverage is everywhere you look
May the force be with you Leverage is everywhere you look
Rick Spence, former editor of Profit Magazine and now a consultant to business owners wrote those words in an e-mail to me after receiving the last issue of Street-Smart Marketer.
Rick is right, we don’t recognize it, but it is what successful entrepreneurs do. Almost every time they do something, they find ways to turn a small amount of input into a large output. They find opportunities where most people don’t think to look.
So where do we begin to look for leverage opportunities?
Every asset we have is leverageable. In the last issue of Street-Smart Marketer, I mentioned time as being the scarcest and most important for entrepreneurs to master. But what else can we leverage?
Under-utilized assets like intellectual property. What are all the ways you can re-use or re-purpose your intellectual property? Re-purposing your intellectual property so that you can offer it as educational material for prospects or products for sales are examples.
Richard Branson has leveraged the Virgin brand to the point where he literally has hundreds of businesses using the Virgin name and every one of them generates cash for him, whenever a Virgin branded product is sold.
How about trade secrets? If you own some unique know how, can you license it to people who don’t compete with you?
What about your client base? Are you only selling customers one thing, or only selling them what you can make? What else can you sell them that is complimentary to what you do? Are there people who would like to sell products to your customer base?
Referrals are also a way of leveraging your client base and the good will of your customers.
If you have unconverted leads that you know you will not buy what you sell, why not sell them to someone else who might be able to close them? Or you might consider a joint venture and do it on a profit sharing basis.
Your marketing is highly leverageable. It often costs nothing to take a modestly performing marketing activity and turn it into a winner. Most of us accept whatever result we get, but the key to success is to constantly ratchet up performance with continuous testing of small incremental improvements.
What about other people’s assets, how can you leverage those? One of the easiest is the investment they have in their customer base. How many thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars have they spent in building their client base? If you can do a joint venture with people who are successful in your target market, you can tap into that investment immediately without anything like the expense it would take to build it on your own. What’s more you are tapping into a customer base that is pre-disposed to buying, as they are already buying from your joint venture partner.
Many businesses have intellectual property they don’t sell, but would be happy to give away in order to promote themselves. How can you access this information to provide something of value to your own customers?
As you see the list is endless.
Begin to look around for opportunities to multiply the effect of what you do. Don’t settle for anything just because most of the people in your industry do it that way. Find a new way to do it that provides you with leverage.
May the force be with you Leverage is everywhere you look - To learn more about this author, visit Michael Hepworth's Website.
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Leverage is like Star Wars' ‘The Force’: It's what entrepreneurs do to become successful, it's all around us, but we don't recognize it as such. But if you understand it and learn its power, then you are able to make much more consistent, strategic and proactive use of it.”
Rick Spence, former editor of Profit Magazine and now a consultant to business owners wrote those words in an e-mail to me after receiving the last issue of Street-Smart Marketer.
Rick is right, we don’t recognize it, but it is what successful entrepreneurs do. Almost every time they do something, they find ways to turn a small amount of input into a large output. They find opportunities where most people don’t think to look.
So where do we begin to look for leverage opportunities?
Every asset we have is leverageable. In the last issue of Street-Smart Marketer, I mentioned time as being the scarcest and most important for entrepreneurs to master. But what else can we leverage?
Under-utilized assets like intellectual property. What are all the ways you can re-use or re-purpose your intellectual property? Re-purposing your intellectual property so that you can offer it as educational material for prospects or products for sales are examples.
Richard Branson has leveraged the Virgin brand to the point where he literally has hundreds of businesses using the Virgin name and every one of them generates cash for him, whenever a Virgin branded product is sold.
How about trade secrets? If you own some unique know how, can you license it to people who don’t compete with you?
What about your client base? Are you only selling customers one thing, or only selling them what you can make? What else can you sell them that is complimentary to what you do? Are there people who would like to sell products to your customer base?
Referrals are also a way of leveraging your client base and the good will of your customers.
If you have unconverted leads that you know you will not buy what you sell, why not sell them to someone else who might be able to close them? Or you might consider a joint venture and do it on a profit sharing basis.
Your marketing is highly leverageable. It often costs nothing to take a modestly performing marketing activity and turn it into a winner. Most of us accept whatever result we get, but the key to success is to constantly ratchet up performance with continuous testing of small incremental improvements.
What about other people’s assets, how can you leverage those? One of the easiest is the investment they have in their customer base. How many thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars have they spent in building their client base? If you can do a joint venture with people who are successful in your target market, you can tap into that investment immediately without anything like the expense it would take to build it on your own. What’s more you are tapping into a customer base that is pre-disposed to buying, as they are already buying from your joint venture partner.
Many businesses have intellectual property they don’t sell, but would be happy to give away in order to promote themselves. How can you access this information to provide something of value to your own customers?
As you see the list is endless.
Begin to look around for opportunities to multiply the effect of what you do. Don’t settle for anything just because most of the people in your industry do it that way. Find a new way to do it that provides you with leverage.
May the force be with you Leverage is everywhere you look - To learn more about this author, visit Michael Hepworth's Website.
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Dave KurlanDave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website |
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George LudwigGeorge Ludwig is a recognized authority on sales strategy and peak performance psychology. An international speaker, trainer, and corporate consultant, he helps clients like Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, Northwestern Mutual, CIGNA, and numerous others improve sales force effectiveness and performance. Though it's George's strategies and processes that help corporations increase productivity and performance, it's his tremendous energy and dynamism that spark the transformation. Again and again, clients remark on his amazing ability to unleash human capacity and inspire men and women to break out of their comfort zones. The result is a whole new type of salesperson. His customized presentations teach achievers to make stunning advances in their lives. From helping salespeople realize cherished dreams to helping corporations exponentially accelerate revenue streams, George Ludwig leaves audiences and individuals empowered, emboldened, and clamoring for more. George is the best-selling author of Power Selling: Seven Strategies for Cracking the Sales Code and Wise Moves: 60 Quick Tips to Improve Your Position in Life & Business. - Visit George Ludwig's Website |
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