Have you ever said these words over the last few months:

It takes longer to make a sale/get a new client.

or

The market is no longer as hot as it once used to be and you got used to the easy stream of clients coming your way.

These are the complaints and frustrations I hear from small business owners who are asking what can I do, things are not happening as fast as they used to be, even then it wasn’t easy now it’s even harder.

What I can recommend every business that noticed that their sales cycle is taking longer to complete is to build systems that make it cheaper to move one step closer to getting a new client.

This could mean more touch points, like scheduling in phone calls to share some valuable content or breaking news that would benefit your prospective client or video case study of someone doing something like they were considering.

Think about what ways can you move leads through your pipeline cheaper? If you’re not making the most of email as a marketing follow up tool, you have a great chance to interact more often with your prospects more effectively than print mail.
Things you can do with email to help move prospects through the sales cycle:

• Have you set up a email campaign/newsletter that walks through issues and obstacles of your best customers?
• Are you working on making a free regular update on how to make their lives or their work better?
• Are you giving them the information to reach you and give them an easy way to pass on your email to their peers with a send to friend link?
• Do you have a genuine, heart-felt  welcome letter once a lead gives you their information that is sent out right away?
• Are you using some kind of CRM, customer relationship management tool, to track your interactions between your clients and prospects?

In a slowing economy, keeping in regular contact with your soon to be new clients is more critical than ever. You want to be top of mind when they are ready to buy or sign a contract. What other ways can you think of reaching out more frequently to your prospects? What kinds of obstacles is your business having implementing this kind of email campaign? Leave a comment for suggestions and feedback.

Snail photo by Martin LaBar

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

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?