“You will be judged by your results and how well you bring things to an end…therefore always finish strong!” No matter what goals you’re pursuing this year…achieving them will involve a number of universal truths and the enclosed analysis. Take it now!
[1]: The Impact of COVID-19 on Small Businesses
Many small businesses will fail in the coming months. The current COVID-19 pandemic is causing a deep recession that will go on for months and although many recessions come about for many different reasons. This recession will be like all the others in at least this one regard: The fittest small businesses will survive, and the weakest ones will die. You will know who the victims. You’ll walk around and see their boarded up shops and restaurants. You’ll hear the sad stories from friends or read about them in the news
According to the latest information on small business failure rate published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: Roughly 20% of small businesses fail within the first year. 21.6% of small businesses founded in March 2017 were closed by March 2018. Roughly 33% of small businesses fail within two years. More than 500,000+ small businesses have closed forever as the nation’s pandemic toll escalates.
2021 is going to be a “watershed year” for business failures insolvency experts are predicting, unless companies can come up with a plan now to get out of debt and survive.
- Millions of small businesses will be at great risk of closing permanently if the crisis continues for several months. Of the nation’s approximately 30 million small businesses, nearly 7.5 million small businesses may be at risk of closing permanently over the coming five months, and 3.5 million are at risk of closure in the next two months.
- COVID-19 has had a devastating impact on small businesses’ revenue, and millions of Americans employed by our nation’s smallest businesses are at risk of unemployment as a result. Approximately 35.7 million Americans employed by small businesses are at risk of unemployment as result of the COVID-19 crisis.
- Our survey finds that business owners primarily need financial assistance and penalty-free extensions on expenses.
[2]: Assessment to Overcome the Impact of COVID-19 on Your Small Businesses
A FREE 87 Question Business Assessment and Free One/TwoCoaching session may help you if you believe you need to know the Truth about your business.
Truth #1 — You Can’t Finish, What You Don’t Start.
Truth #2 — You Should Never Start What You’re Not Committed to Finish.
In the spirit of telling it like it is…
A lot of people fixate on the abstract concept of trying to work “on” their business, instead of “in” it. We are more direct and logical thinkers.
We’ve always tried to figure out how to get a business to work harder for its owner than he or she worked for it.
A simple difference perhaps. But a major difference, nonetheless. How many ways are you growing your business?
The Only Three Ways To Grow Any Business is to Increase the number of clients, get more new prospects into paying customers; Increase the average transaction.
The Three Ways to Grow A Business Model is one of the most useful ways for thinking through the options you have to increase the sales value and profitability of your business.
Look, by simply increasing each of these 3 areas by 10%, you’ll grow your total revenue by 33.1%.
This is a tremendous boost in income.
If we said you should grow your business by 33.1%, you might feel overwhelmed, but if we said increase just these 3 areas by only 10% each you would believe it’s possible to achieve.
Do any one of the three ways and you can grow in a linear manner. Do any combination of the three and you grow your business exponentially.
Let us show you the 3 Ways to grow a business and 30+ affordable strategies that shows you how to geometrically grow your business. But first complete the assessment below.
The truth is, while there are hundreds of tactics and strategies you can try, they’re only going help grow your business if they can successfully do one of three things: Increase the number of customers. Increase the transaction size. Increase the purchasing frequency. That’s it. There’s no 4th or 5th option.
It would be nice for me to give examples of each category but I think it’s much more powerful for you to take a FREE hour/two and brainstorm ways to increase your business and then to see in which of these three your ideas fall into.
With our driving thought always being how many ways can we help get your business working harder and better for you — take your FREE are 87-questions, diagnostic assessment test called “How Do You And Your Business Stack Up in 2021?”
It asks some very straightforward, (yet highly revealing) questions designed to instantly detect whether or not your business could — and should — be working harder and more profitably for you — And if so, precisely where you have the most room for improvement.
It’s the perfect grounding and preparatory orientation to help you gain maximum insight, benefit and value out of the FREE coaching and mentoring session we’ll be spending together on a teleconference call or Zoom.
We invite you to sit down right now and go through the following 87 questions on this test — the answers and their business/financial implications to you will be self-evident. Once you’ve completed all 87 questions, call me at 415-678-9965 to see where you stand in your business today.
[3]: Overcome The Impact of COVID-19 on Your Small Businesses with this Three Ways to Grow Your Business Assessment
1.) How many different selling methods do you currently do/use?
2.) How many new potential selling methods have you tested in the last 12 months?
3.) Do you have a keen handle on all you marginal net worth factors for all three ways to grow clients and for each segment of separate product line you market?
4.) How many formalized, referral generating systems do you have working right now that everyone in your enterprise with Buyer Contacts uses and follows?
5.) Is your business being marketed tactically or strategically?
6.) Do you have a powerful USP that comes across to the market you target as being the only viable solution to a problem they have that you alone verbalized for them or an opportunity you alone identified?
7.) Do you know what your attrition rate is and why they stop buying from you?
8.) Do you have attrition reduction or client conservation programs in place to minimize inactive buyers?
9.) Do you have comprehensive databases of your prospects and buyers that identifies everything from names, contact numbers, type of buying, what they buy, what they didn’t buy, where they originated from, quantities of past purchases, etc.
10.) Do you actively use all the data above to target different categories of prospects/buyers in different ways for different products or services?
11.) Do you know exactly where all (or at least most) of your business is coming from and how to stimulate more people from those specific sources to purchase from you?
12.) Do you know where your biggest source of untapped new business is and how to ultimately mine it?
13.) Does at least 25 of your business currently come from referrals?
14.) Is the average number of referrals you get every month going up or down? Growing or dropping?
15.) Do you have a reliable system of collecting and creating client testimonials and success stories?
16.) If “yes,” how many client testimonials and success stories do you have? 1-5 (1) 6-10 (2) ______11-20 (3) ______21 & over (4)
17.) Do you effectively and powerfully use your testimonials in all the marketing, advertising and sales efforts you do? No (0) Sometimes (1) ______Yes, always (3)
18.) Do you have respected people in your field, market, industry who unheedingly endorse you and your company? No (0) Yes (2)
19.) How many endorsements do you have? None (0) 1-3 (1) ______4-9 (2) ______10 or above (3)
20.) Do you have a continuous system/approach program actively in place to continually secure more prominent endorsements? No (0) Yes (2)
21.) Do you have any strategic alliances host beneficiary relationships actively in place right now?
22.) If “yes,” how many strategic alliances/host beneficiary relationships are you currently doing promotions with right now? One (1) 2-5 (2) ______6-10 (3) ______10 or more (4)
23.) Are you adding host beneficiary endorsements (i.e., complementary businesses, publications, associations) to your marketing mix every quarter?
24.) If “yes,” how many (on average) are you adding to your marketing mix every quarter? 1 (1) 2-3 (2) _____4-9 (3) ______10 or more (4)
25.) Do you repeatedly test headlines or their equivalent (i.e., opening sentence of your presentations, phone-in sales calls, telemarketing scripts, greeting at trade shows, etc.)
26.) If “yes,” how many different headlines or equivalent have you successfully tested in the last 12 months? _ 1 (1) ______2-9 (2) ______10-20 (3) ______21 or more (4)
27.) Do you have a systematic, ongoing follow-up system you follow and put into action for every prospect and first time buyer you acquire?
28.) How often do you follow up to past buyers/clients by phone, mail, e-mail or inperson? Never (0) _ Once Every Six Months (1) Once A Quarter (2)
More Often (3)
29.) Do you know your allowable cost of acquiring a new prospect and/or clients and if “yes,” do you invest up to that amount in your marketing efforts to acquire new buyers?
30.) Do you have a progressive backend; meaning, you keep logically either reselling clients ongoing quantities of your basic products/services or you keep adding new additional backend products or services to the sales cycle.
31.) If yes, how many different progressive, backend products do you offer? 1-2 (1) 3-9 (2) ______10 or More (3)
32.) Do you spend more of your time on marketing or managing? Never (0) _ Once Every ‘Six Months (1) Once A Quarter (2) More (3)
33.) Do you believe Peter Drucker’s quote that marketing and innovation are the two things that create customers and profits; everything else is an expense?
34.) Do you use risk reversal to close sales and differentiate your business from your competitors?
35.) If yes, how many different ways have you tested reversing the risk? None (0) 1 (1) ______2-4 (2) ______5 or More (3)
36.) How many of these key, marketing factors do you regularly test? Nothing (0) Just Headlines (1) ______Headlines, Offers (2) Headlines, Offers and Guaranteed Risk Reversals (3)
37.) Do you offer bonuses (either tangible or intangible) as an incentive to purchase your product or service now?
38.) How much of a difference have your tests made on either your
results/response/profit?_ Less than 10% Improvement (1) _____11-30 (2) ______31-50 (3) 51-99 (4) 00 (double) or Higher (5)
39.) Do you do PR/media relationships/radio/newspaper/magazine interviews?
40.) Do you use the results of these activities in excerpts or reproductions as part of your marketing?
41.) Do you write articles, special reports or a book(s) you use for promotional positioning?
42.) Do you have a prime prospect list or lists you market to by either direct mail, email, telemarketing, catalog or sales personnel?
43.) Do you know what your return on investment is for Lead/Prospect Generating, Lead Generating and Sales Conversion and/or Reselling Buyers?
44.) Do you have a continuous way to build a growing prospect/client e-mail list?
45.) How often do you send quality e-mails out that provide a benefit to your clients and/or prospects? Never (0) Infrequently (1) ______Quarterly (2) Monthly or More (3)
46.) Are your e-mails, educational/contact-based and not merely self-serving?
47.) Do you have a direct response-formatted website that is built around my marketing principles?
48.) Do you do effective (meaning successful at both attracting and then converting) search engine optimization that builds more prospects, buyers, business?
49.) Do you have a Power Parthenon of different marketing activities in place where prospects/clients/revenue flow in from multiple profit pillars/streams? If yes, how many pillars in your Power Parthenon? 2 (1) ______3-5 (2) ______6-8 (3) ______9 or More (4)
50.) Do you have a target prospect list of strategic partners – i.e., companies that either already have a strong relationship with the same people you want to sell– or new, competitive organizations that have more to gain then even you do by seeing you sell your product/service to more people/companies.
51.) If “yes,” how many prospective, new “strategic partner” companies (with complete contact data) are there on that list? 1-5 (1) 6-10 (2) ______11-20 (3) ______21-50 (4) ______51 and Over (5)
52.) Have you and all your people who have contact with your prospects/buyers had formalized strategic consultative/advisory sales training?
53.) If yes, how often do you retrain and advance their skills in this all-important revenue-generating factor? Never Again (0) Yearly or Longer (1) ______Every Six Months (2) Monthly (3)
54.) How many competitive advantages have you created for your business?
_ None (0) _____One (1) ______2-5 (2) ______6 or More (3)
55.) Do you have successful ways to acquire new clients/buyers at a breakeven and that makes your real profit on the backend?
56.) If “yes,” how many different approaches do you use? One (1) 2-3 (2) ______4.or More (3)
57.) Do you regularly-educate and update your prospects and clients?
58.) How many prospect lists have you located and use that better target your best defined prospects? None (0) One (1) ______2-5 (2) ______6-10 (3) ______11 or More (4)
59.) Do you really think your marketing makes irresistible offers to your prospects?
60.) If “no,” how many ways can you come up with right now to strengthen the appeal, attractiveness, effectiveness of your sales, advertising, promotional offers and propositions? One (1) 2-5 (2) ______6-10 (3) ______More than 10 (4)
61.) How may more complementary (up-sell/cross-sell) products/services do you currently add to your sales proposition? None (0) ______One (1) ______2-5 (2) ______6 or More (3)
62.) Do you offer buyers greater/larger units/quality product to increase the size of each sale?
63.) If “no,” how many possibilities can you come up with right now for doing this? _ None (0) One (1) ______2-5 (2) ______6 or More (3)
64.) Do you endorse or do joint ventures with other companies to sell THEIR products/service to YOUR buyers and prospects?
65.) Do you hold, run, or do special events such as seminars, new product introductions, end of year promotions, close out promotion, private sales, meet the management events, meet the manufacturer events, meet the creator-type events, etc.?
66.) Do you ethically (but effectively) prepare buyers from their very first purchasing experience with you to keep coming back to purchase over and over again?
67.) Do YOU personally talk to your buyers, prospects, and clients regularly to learn what they want and then build a relationship with them?
68.) Do you regularly shop/buy from your competitors to see what they do differently or are doing that your company doesn’t do?
69.) There are between 15 and 30 key impact or leverage points that can positively increase your business’ sales/profit performance. How many have you . identified? None (0) 1-5(1) ______6-10(2) ______11-20(3) ______Over 20 (4)
70.) Do you have a written marketing strategy and tactical implementation plan you continuously apply and follow?
71.) If “yes,” do you regularly monitor and measure results and performance of every element of that plan and adjust, replace, improve areas or activities whenever performance drops or does not exceed specific targeted benchmarks you’ve established? No (0) Sometimes (1) ______Yes, Always (2)
72.) Do you have a complete e-mail marketing strategy you constantly adhere to, implement and follow?
73.) Do you study the success approaches other companies use that can be adapted and adopted by you?
74.) If “yes,” do you regularly (at least once a quarter or more) pick approaches you want to tryout and then actually test them to see if they perform better than the approach(es) you are currently using?
75.) Does your marketing, sales approaches and advertising activities focus on benefits or features? Features (1) Benefits (2)
76.) Do you know the top five reasons why prospects don’t buy from you?
77.) Do you have a compelling and persuasive way to overcome each of those five objections or resistance points?
78.) Do you really know what your business ideology is and can you explain it in a paragraph or less?
79.) Do you know all of the marketing assets (both tangible and intangible) your business has available to it?
80.) Have you identified all the different revenue-generating activities your business is engaged in doing so you can start improving and maximizing each one?
81.) How often do you invest time, effort and committed focus to learn better ways to improve the sales, marketing, profit and/or competitive performance of your business? Never (0) Once a year (1) ______Twice a year (2) _____Constantly (3)
82.) How much of my three ways to grow a business model and its 32 key revenue drivers are you currently applying? None (0) Very Little (1) ______About One-Third (2) ______Most (3)
83.) Are you effectively applying the strategy of Pre-Eminence to all your sales, marketing, promotional and prospect/client communication? No (0) Sometimes (1) _______Yes, Always (2)
84.) Do you really know and can you clearly verbalize what your business’ biggest marketing problem is? No (0) ______Unsure (1) ______Yes, Absolutely (2)
85.) Do you know what the biggest untapped sales or marketing opportunity your business has available to it and can you state it clearly?
86.) Do you know what areas of your marketing your business is weak, poor or ineffectual at doing, i.e., prospecting follow-up, converting, re-selling, referrals, etc?
87.) Do you know where your business’ biggest growth or profit opportunity lies?
[4]: How did you do on your business assesment?
It’s a shame to see promising businesses under-perform their capability to deliver more income, certainty, profits and wealth to their owners — if it’s easily doable.
Frequently, merely shifting the marketing you do, the strategy you follow and/or the money-making system you implement can double, re-double and even re-double — again — the income and profits your business delivers to you. We created this self-diagnostic assessment test to ‘see whether or not your business could be — and should be — delivering more pay-off for you. In conclusion, I look forward to spending quality time with you on your business building.
Be candid with yourself; since you alone will know the exact answers.
Here’s a short list of things which are never going to happen in your life.
The sale will not close without asking for the order.
You will never get a contract to which you do not apply.
No one will ever pay you if you do not do the work.
Money will never compound by sitting in someonw elses wallet.
The moral?
You can’t finish what you don’t start, and you should never start what you’re not committed to finish. To crush your business goals and unleash your greatness on the world…
Embrace Universal Truth #3…
Remember, you can’t finish what you don’t start, and you should never start what you’re not committed to finish.
[5]: I’ll close with a promise…
If you have the courage and commitment to start focusing more on your business, you will find the strength to finish your financial and profitability goals in 2021 and beyond.
Now, we want to hear from you for your FREE 2 hour consultation! Ready? We would love to hear more from you. Contact us.
Michael Kissinger
Phone 415-678-9965
Email: mjkkissinger@yahoo.com
REACH YOUR PEAK PERFORMANCE TODAY with the World's #1 Consulting Firm. The Reitenbach-Kissinger Institute and the MKS Master Key Consulting-Law-Engineering Systems. You are committed to achieving your goals. Do not compete without proven consultants. FREE 30-Minute Win the Game of Life or Business Consulting Session Call: 650-515-7545 