What Do You Need To Know In Order To Have A Happy Sustainable Profitable Business?
After consulting and coaching small businesses for over 20 years, I’ve determined that these are the 4 essential questions to be answered in order to have a sustainable business that fuels your heart, soul AND bank account!
- What do you LOVE to do?
- WHO do you love to do it with?
- What do you want to CHARGE them?
- What is their ROI?
1. What do you love to do?
What would you do even if you did not get paid? What are your passions or your hobbies? What gets you glowing and excited to do?
For me, it’s any sales and marketing challenge. I’m full of “wacky ideas that work!” For example, I once opened up my garden centre on a Friday at 5pm for the season. It was my 5th anniversary and I thought 5 x 5 would be lucky for me.
So it was the 5th day of the 5th month at 5pm for my 5th Anniversary and I’d have $5 specials. Normally I’d open up on a Saturday but thought, what the heck ,this makes it easy to remember and a bit special. I emailed my email list of customers and did not expect more than a few friends to show up.
The 50 people added another ‘5’ to the mix! And the almost $5,000 in sales – bonus! Who knew that in two hours there would be such a sales boom on a Friday night!?
2. WHO do you love to do it with?
I call it the marketing “F” word FOCUS. You must choose a target audience to focus on as you are unable to market to everyone. Everyone is not a target market, it’s the world. Got it?
Figure out the people who you serve the best. Who do you add value to the most?
For me, it’s non-sales professionals, mainly entrepreneurs. The ones who have had little to no sales training. To them – I’m a genius. I help them get started so quickly that it makes me look like a super star even though it really is Sales 101 basics.
However, if you’ve never had any basic sales training – wow, I give you a crash course that takes my 30+ years of selling millions of $$ worth of ‘stuff’ and gives you the insider tips that will help you close more business faster and at great profit. It’s a fast and huge ROI that lasts a lifetime!
3. What do you want to CHARGE them?
This is not a formula like ‘how much you want to make divided by the # of days you want to work”. Business doesn’t work that way. Your fee must be based on actual value that someone else is willing to pay. To you – it has to be what you feel you are worth. Generally, we tend to underestimate our worth at the beginning of our businesses.
I always say – if they don’t negotiate with you, you might be leaving money on the table. It doesn’t mean that you should over-charge in any case. There is a fair value to what you do and you’ll figure it out either by being totally over booked – which means you’re too cheap OR not being booked enough which means you’re overpriced.
4. What is their ROI?
Tightly tied in with your fee is their ROI. People buy value. They will find the money IF they see the value. It means – if I spend a $1, I want at least $1.10 back but better still, I want $2 or $5 or even $10 in return. Why spend money IF you’re not going to make more money.
A number of prospects I talk to, who have had other coaches, when I ask “So, how much MORE did you earn through your coach?” can only stutter and look embarrassed. They didn’t make more money, they only lost. To me – that is not a sustainable business for those other coaches and they are who give coaching a bad rep.
I’m proud to show off my clients’ successes as this their ROI on our coaching. Making $20,000 MORE for one contract – hmmm, that’s a pretty good ROI as I didn’t charge anywhere close to that.