Lesson 1 – The Numbers Game

As a business owner or the person responsible for the growth and sustainability or an organisation there is so much to be considered. And increasingly you can feel like you need to replicate yourself and be in half a dozen places at once. How can you deliver the products and services to your customers AND ensure you are bringing in new leads, sales and opportunities and engaging with your existing customers? It’s a lot to do, and with the ever changing face of marketing what is the best course of action for your business?

How can you be busy running your business AND make this happen?

With my marketing production line I’ve helped businesses from sole traders and SME’s through to large organisations in a diverse range of industries and sectors to do just that;

• Gain new business.
• Engage effectively with existing customers (So they buy more, more often!)
• Keep on people’s radar
• Get known as the thought leader in their industry
• Get in the media
• Gain new opportunities
• Sell new products and break into new industries.

To say the possibilities are quite endless is an understatement. For myself included I’ve been able to utilise an effective marketing strategy to;

• Grow my business
• Gain New customers
• Ensure customers come back – Upselling and Side selling too without doing any selling!
• Gain new opportunities
• Get on TV, on Radio and in the national press,
• Visit the Home Office and pose a question to the Home Secretary
• And even have Stephen Fry say I’m a good Writer.

And half of the time I was able to be busy elsewhere either looking after my clients or on holiday or busy elsewhere. How cool is that? And better still is that with the Marketing Production Line I would like to help you achieve similarly. It’s about helping you get the results in your business. I can’t guarantee media attention and a Stephen Fry mention, however with the proven tools in this strategy you could be growing your business too in the ways you want to.

This course is broken down into 5 modules, ideally, you will work through each module in order, however, if you are up against the clock and need an injection of ideas now then jump in when and where you wish to. However, please do head back to the start to work on each module to really get the true benefits of the Marketing Production Line. Let’s get started.

1. To grow your business it may seem an obvious given however what are your current sales? To grow your business, you need to know what you are currently selling, and not just this month, every month, and not just this year, month on month, year on year. What trends are you spotting? Is there a correlation between December this year and December last year? Knowledge like this means that when it comes to your marketing strategy if you know you are coming up to a slump in your business year you are able to power up your marketing. So get to grips with your numbers. New to business? Then this is a good time to start creating good practices. Good foundations from day one will put your business in good stead for the future. If you love a list, an Excel spreadsheet then is going to feel natural for you. If not find a way to make this feel like a natural thing to do in your business. If you don’t you are agreeing to damaging your success rate. Numbers may be a leftover hate from school, however without knowing your numbers you could be seriously damaging your success rate. So know your numbers!
2. When you know where you are, you can then start to do the maths on what you want to achieve. Be realistic but be adventurous. So if you set the goal to double your sales in the next month, are they realistic figures? Can you actually deliver on them? If you can’t in my experience when the marketing outstrips the company’s abilities, then the marketing stops as the company fights to stay on top of the workload and then they run out of work when they realise they’ve stopped marketing. It creates an all or nothing approach and it’s a tough way to run a business and definitely unsustainable. So be realistic with your numbers.
3. How are you going to track your numbers? If you are looking to increase sales being able to visualise the growth is a great way to make it happen. Clients that actually get the growth on the wall in the office make it happen. 1 client did this and reached the goal we set for the first month of working together in 4 days. And the big 6 month goal they achieved in 3 weeks. Getting visual really works! Therefore we aren’t talking about a vague;

“We want to increase sales in the next month” Kind of goal.

We are talking about a;

“We want to increase sales by 25% within 4 weeks to x” Clear goals help you create clear actions and remain focused. So the numbers game is an important place to start in the Marketing Production Line. So do take the time to know your numbers.

Take the time to actually process the 3 steps to Know your numbers and make yourself a visual reminder to the goals you are going to set. These are the foundations to your sales growth.

Before you get all excited and rush on past the next lesson where there is my “like Magic 1 page document” that clients ADORE and start adding more things to your marketing strategy you really need to ensure you do the next lessons. They are very important to sustainable long-term growth through a productive and effective marketing strategy.

In the next lesson, I want to help you feel good about your business, because so often when you think about the things your business is lacking it drags you down. So I want to draw your mind to what you are really good at. Ready?