Aaron Hoos

Next week, a company will be working in my basement to chip away part of the concrete and to replumb our downstairs bathroom (we’re moving the toilet and adding a shower) and to add a sump pit.

So to get ready for the plumbing contractors, I tore down my basement bathroom: The sink and toilet came out, the walls came down, etc. Unfortunately, in the process, I was cutting away drywall and the drywall knife slipped and sliced across my wrist. There was blood. Fortunately, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been (a quick-thinking, first-aid-trained wife and some bandages did the trick) but I came SO close to a very serious injury… or perhaps worse.

KNIFE IN. IDEA OUT.

I get a lot of business ideas from the things that happen in my life (like when a freak downpour flooded my basement last year), and this is no different: I started to think about being out of commission for a while (or permanently) and how that would affect my clients. It made me think about succession planning and contingency planning. If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you know that I’m a big believer in contingency plans.

As a business owner, I want my clients to rely entirely on me and to find me so invaluable that they couldn’t imagine anyone else helping them — it’s in my business’ best interest to be perceived that way by my clients. But if I want to be truly helpful, I would be wise to have a contingency plan in place for each client.

As well, my clients would be wise to have a back-up plan, just in case. The back-up plan doesn’t have to include having someone else on retainer just in case I can’t help out. That’s expensive for the client. But the back-up plan should include knowing where to find the right solution provider should the need arise.

If the knife had cut deeper today, what would my clients do to replace me? Would they feel like they were starting from scratch to find another service provider or would they be able to move forward quickly and easily? (Selfishly, I want to be missed. As a professional, I want them to be able to pick up where I left off with very little impact to them.)

HERE’S WHY YOU SHOULD BE WORRIED

What happens if one of your service providers or vendors suddenly disappeared? How long would it take you to replace them? At what cost?

Make a list of all of your service providers and vendors. Then list either a couple of replacements or a place to find more service providers. Don’t get lazy and write “the phone book” or “the internet”. Do some legwork and find a few qualified service providers and vendors who can meet your needs.

Once you’ve done that, think about what information you need to provide those professionals in order to seamlessly switch over to them should the need arise. If possible, collect that information altogether and keep it in a safe place… sort of a “in case of emergency, break glass” kind of place. Schedule time regularly (quarterly? Maybe every 6 months?) to check this information and ensure that it is up to date.

REALITY CHECK

There are some risks to this: It does take time; and if you have a great relationship with your current service provider, it can seem a little unfaithful. But it’s the right thing to do for your business so they should appreciate that.

Schedule time to get prepared!

OTHER BUSINESS LESSONS FROM LIFE

I occasionally encounter other situations in life that teach me business lessons. You might want to read about business lessons learned from when I vacationed in London England, when I travelled to Minneapolis recently with my wife, when I got terrible service from a local furnace and air conditioning company, and when I witnessed a car accident.

This week, I challenged you to find some numbers that will indicate your sales funnel’s success at each stage.

I’ll give you a couple of examples from my business: For my Leads stage, blog traffic is a pretty important number to me. For my Prospect stage, email and phone calls from new contacts is a good number. A couple of years ago, when I was bidding on projects, the number of proposals sent out each week was a significant measure of my business.

The Weekly Sales Funnel Challenge is a week-long challenge for business owners to focus on a specific aspect of their sales funnel for one week. It’s a fun way to keep you focused on one of the most important parts of your business. A new Weekly Sales Funnel Challenge is published every Monday and a wrap-up post is published every Friday.

Growing your sales funnel successfully will naturally lead to business growth. It’s inevitable.
But how do you know if your sales funnel is growing? To run a successful sales funnel, you need metrics. So what are you using for metrics?

There are a lot of potential metrics, and they’re not all easy to calculate: If you have two Twitter followers but one is also a Facebook fan, your numbers will be confused: Simple addition will say you have 3 Audience members, but a closer look will reveal that it is really only two, and one of them is just engaged further.

For this week’s challenge, I want you to give some thought to how you will measure each stage. What are the primary ways to know if you are successful in that stage? Some numbers will be easier to figure out than others! And keep in mind that some stages in your sales funnel have multiple steps and you can measure each step independently!

In a previous blog post, I listed 99 ways to optimize your sales funnel and grow your business. One of the tips I gave was to “Look at businesses you’ve bought from who share a similar business model. Map out their business plan to see how it compares to yours.”

Here’s how to do that:

STEP 1: KNOW YOUR BUSINESS MODEL
First, you need to know what kind of business model you have. If you already know your business model, you can skip this step. However, it might be useful to do it anyway. Although there are different ways to define a business model, here’s a few ways that you can narrow down the search:

• Do you sell products and or services?
• Do you sell something you, yourself, provide or are you a broker/agent/affiliate?
• Do you sell a one-time purchase (i.e. an ebook) or an on-going purchase (i.e. a subscription)?
• Do you sell primarily to consumers or businesses?
• What problems does your product/service solve or what needs does your product/service fulfill?
• What does your target market look like? What does it NOT look like? (i.e. who do you sell to versus who don’t you sell to?)

STEP 2: FIND OTHER COMPANIES THAT YOU’VE BOUGHT FROM
Now that you have some notes about your business model, think about other companies you’ve bought from in the past that are similar. You’ve defined a sort-of “mosaic” and you probably won’t find a company that is exactly the same. Try to find a company that fits parts of this model. In fact, try to find a few companies like this.

And, I’m advising that these be companies you’ve bought from, simply because you’ll have gained a great view into their sales funnel – you’ll have seen every step of their sales funnel from the “inside” of their sales funnel!

STEP 3: COMPARE SALES FUNNELS AND TAKE NOTES
Now, compare their sales funnel with yours and take notes. Use the Sales Funnel Worksheet to track how you entered their sales funnel as an Audience member, how you moved through the Lead and Prospect stage, and finally how you became a Customer. And, if you became one of their Evangelists, track that, too. In particular, take note of:

• How you entered their sales funnel as an Audience member.
• What they said or did that convinced you to listen to them as a Lead.
• What sales techniques and marketing collateral they used to sell you as a Prospect.
• What objections you had and how they overcame those objections.
• How long it took you to go through each stage.
• What actions (“triggers”) you performed to move from one stage to the next.
• How you responded to the product/service when it was delivered. (Was it quick? Did you sense the value you hoped would be present?)

STEP 4: MODIFY YOUR SALES FUNNEL
Draw inspiration from the successful ideas that worked on you – the techniques that moved you through their sales funnel from their Audience stage to their Customer stage – and apply them to your own sales funnel.

If your sales funnel is completely different, consider setting up and testing a sales funnel that is very similar to theirs to test against your existing sales funnel.

Or, start smaller by integrating some of the more successful tactics on a regular basis.

STEP 5: REPEAT
This is one of those exercises where it doesn’t hurt to do it again from time to time. Depending on how often you buy, consider doing this at least once a quarter or even as often as once a month. You’ll progressively improve your sales funnel!

I’ve just created a new resource for you — the Sales Funnel Worksheet. It’s a free, downloadable resource you can download, print, and fill out to…

• Create a new sales funnel
• Optimize your existing sales funnel
• Analyze a competitor’s sales funnel
• Develop sales funnel strategy
• Participate in our Weekly Sales Funnel Challenges
• Set goals to profitably grow your business
• … and more!

Feel free to use it as often as you need to in order to grow your business!

Download the Sales Funnel Worksheet.