We’re closing less sales/clients than ever before?

If your closing rate is going down, focus on  bringing in more people into your pipeline.

Focus on generating more leads, on the cheap. Are you making the most out of your website to bring organic search results for long term visibility to people looking for you? If you’re like most of the small business owners I’ve been helping, you know that your business dollars have to go even farther than ever before. Since you’re closing rate is going down, here are some questions to help you kick start ideas on how to bring in more raw leads into your marketing funnel with the value based web marketing.

Are you focusing on being highly relevant and available to very specific descriptive keywords?

Do you know what your customers type into the search engines to find the answers to their problems?

Are you running a relevant PPC campaign, that you test for best results?

Are you optimizing your ads and landing pages to be relevant to what your business can offer and an immediate call to action?

Does your website give the impression of trust, professional expertise and every other characteristic your business stands for?

If you’re a local business, are you working a local business strategy to come up for people searching for your services in your immediate area?

What problems are you seeing in your business because of a slowdown? What things are you doing differently than a year ago?

How can you make your landing page calls to action, like newsletter sign up or call for more information stand out even more?

Photo by Mobilestreetlife

1. Your business is your life and your passion

2. You take action then think about it

3. You don’t like people telling you what to do

4. You dream about your business

5. You always find new ways to do everything

6. You hate small talk

7. You don’t actually read fine print or long contracts

8. You expect things to happen instantly

9. You hate waiting in line

10. You don’t like meetings

11. You look forward to your workday

12. You have a ten minute attention span

13. You don’t read long emails

14. You write short emails and people think you’re blunt

15. You hate hearing that you’re wrong

Here’s How Small Businesses in this Recession can Survive and Thrive

With the slowdown in the markets, I’ve heard a lot from many business owners that they are being directly impacted by the recession. The three things I hear about often have to do with budget cuts, how long it takes to get a client and not making as many sales as they used to.
Actually, this is what I hear from them:

• We’ve got less money to work with, sales are slowing down.
• It takes longer to make a sale/get a new client.
• We’re closing less sales/clients than ever before.

There is always a way to break through, go around or over any obstacle. I’ll be tackling each one in a blog post over the next few days, since this is the kind of information all small business owners should have access to, or a kick in the pants about.

Number 1: We’ve got less money to work with, our budgets are down.

If you have less money to work with, use your smarts and think beyond what you have done in the past. Don’t focus on your smaller budget, but on reaching the people in your market most likely to receive value from your small business. Don’t think of traditional ways like the same old things you were doing before, think of new ways. Ask yourself what kind of return are you getting on those old habits? Are they actually working for you? If you can’t measure the impact they have on your business, consider stopping those techniques and focus on what you can tell is adding in more revenue to your business.

In Summer ‘08 we got see some of the best athletes come to Beijing to compete among the best of the world. Can you imagine what years of training would cost an athlete? Having access to the best coaches, the best swimming pools, the best everything right and paying a premium for it too.  But what happens when you’re coming from a less privileged place? You give it everything you’ve got from the bottom of your gut til you have nothing left.

Imagine what swimming in the Olympics is like when you’ve never practiced in an full sized pool before. Do you think you’d never be able to compete in the world games? Would you stop yourself from the chance of greatness because of lack of resources? No way. That’s what Palestinian Olympic swimmer Zakia Nassar had to do. She trained in a 12m pool because she wasn’t allowed access to full Olympic sized pools. So look at your budget cut, or smaller spending power and ask what could you do to get you to win? To grow and to succeed with every resource at your disposal — money, time, people and sweat equity.

What would dedication and an open mind do for your business in your market?

If your business could pinnacle to success under the same conditions as some of the war battered athletes to make it to the Olympics, what would you be doing differently?

Here are five reasons why your start up is going to fail.  More like a guide by scars of many previous start ups and small businesses you can use to get a reality check of what not to do and prepare for it.

Start Up Failures

1. You’re not the center of the world, no matter how great your idea, product or service is

2. You’re not going to have enough cash on hand

3. You’re going to be pushed to the edge of frustration

4. You’ll be an emotional wreck

5. You’ll be distracted by something else

3 Things Not to Worry About Ruining Your Start Up

• No one will steal your idea and make a fortune off you

• No competition will wipe you out

• No bad economy will shut you down

Flickr photo by: fireflythegreat

Leave a comment with what other failure signs have you come across in your new business or previous businesses.