Not Enough Time, Not Enough Sales

Many small business owners think time management
is a problem because they have to do everything.
In the start-up years, unless you have a large
start-up budget, you will probably be doing a lot
of your own administrative work and spending a
lot of time on marketing. This is very normal.

Where it becomes problematic is when you are
spending a lot of time on these tasks and not
getting enough clients to hire someone to help.
At that point in time, people tell me they need
help with their `time management'. I do not
always agree.

The problem is actually much deeper, yet easier
to solve. To start, every business owner needs to
know the following:

- annual and monthly financial goals
- how many sales are required to achieve the goals
- how much marketing is required to get each sale

I'm sure you were with me for the first two, but
the third one? That is a little trickier. I will
walk you through it.

The first step is to determine where your most desirable
clients come from. One way to do this is to list all your
clients from the last 1-2 years, how much revenue they
brought you and where they came from in a spreadsheet.
Sort the list numerically by the revenues.

Study this list. Toward the bottom of the list you will
find a natural break where you can draw a line, below which
you don't want any more of those types of clients. Analyze
those people – where did you find them? What do they have
in common? How can you avoid them?!

Next, look at those clients toward the top of the list.
Draw another line separating the excellent from the good.
Analyze the excellent - where did you find them? What do
they have in common? How can you get more of them!?

This exercise may give you the opportunity to cut out some
of your marketing activities that are fruitless. You are
already on your way to becoming more efficient. Once you
have determined which marketing strategies bring you the
most money, do more of that.

Next, examine how many sales meetings it takes to get a
client, and how many people you have to meet to get a sales
meeting. Once you have figured this out, you can calculate
how many people you need to meet in order to meet your
financial goals.

After doing the math and the customer analysis, you can do
more of what works, stop doing what doesn't work, and you
will know how much marketing you must do to meet your goals!

About the Author:

Audrey Burton, Small Business Coach, is "The Tigress". Get
her FREE Special Report, "Closing the Sale is Not
Complicated!" and her FREE monthly email newsletter at
http://www.TigressCoaching.com .