Aaron Hoos

Many small businesses are fueled by passion. They start because an entrepreneur has an idea (or is sick of working for a boss), they grow because their ideas solve a problem and somehow that solution is communicated to the marketplace.

Unfortunately, many small businesses fail… even ones that are seemingly successful and make profitable sales. The reason is, they’re simply existing day-by-day, sale-by-sale, without any real strategy or long-term vision to give their existence any direction.

If you’re an entrepreneur, answer these 100 small business strategy questions. The answers will help you to highlight areas of opportunity that you can exploit and areas of concern that you can mitigate. Bookmark this page and come back to it regularly to work through these questions every 3 to 6 months.

With your answers, create a list of to-dos that you can act on until you come back to these questions again.

1. What does your business do?
2. What does your business sell?
3. What does your business stand for?
4. What parts of your brand truly reflect your current business?
5. What parts of your brand do not (or no longer) reflect your current business?
6. What are the top 10 benefits your business provides?
7. Who is your perfect customer?
8. How are you adding value?
9. What are your products’ or services’ biggest flaws?
10. How do you define a lead?
11. Where are your leads coming from?
12. What demographic are your leads?
13. How are you creating leads?
14. How are your competitors creating leads?
15. How will lead creation change for your industry in the future?
16. How do you define a prospect?
17. What is your lead-to-prospect ratio?
18. What demographic are your prospects?
19. How is your prospect demographic different from your leads demographic?
20. How are you turning leads into prospects?
21. How are your competitors turning leads into prospects?
22. What objections do your prospects have?
23. What objections do you NOT have an answer for?
24. How do you define a customer?
25. What is your prospect-to-customer ratio (close rate)?
26. What demographic are your customers?
27. How is your customer demographic different from your prospect demographic?
28. How are you converting prospects into customers?
29. How are your competitors converting prospects into customers?
30. What has caused you to lose a sale?
31. How do you define an evangelist?
32. What is your customer-to-evangelist ratio?
33. What is your evangelist demographic?
34. How is your evangelist demographic different from your customer demographic?
35. How is your relationship with your customers?
36. What were your 3 most successful marketing campaigns?
37. What were your 3 least successful marketing campaigns?
38. What marketing and sales activities are you using in each stage of your sales funnel?
39. How do you measure company-wide success?
40. How do you measure personal and/or employee success?
41. How are you improving your relationship with your customers?
42. How can you improve the process for receiving and acting on feedback from customers?
43. How are you encouraging repeat sales?
44. How are you encouraging upsells?
45. Who else can use your products or services that you aren’t currently serving?
46. What is your business model?
47. What other peer-businesses use the same business model?
48. What can you learn from peer-businesses that use the same business model?
49. What other businesses (in other industries) use a similar business model?
50. What can you learn from businesses in other industries that use a similar business model?
51. Who are your top 3 competitors?
52. Who/what are your indirect competitors?
53. What does the most successful businesses in your industry do that you don’t do yet?
54. Why would someone buy from you instead of your competition?
55. When should someone buy from your competition instead of you?
56. What are your competitors doing differently?
57. What are your competitors doing better than you?
58. What are your competitors doing worse than you?
59. How are your relationships with your suppliers/vendors?
60. How can your supplier/vendor relationships be improved?
61. What does your organizational chart look like and what strengths/weaknesses are the result?
62. What are the next 3 roles you need to hire for?
63. What was the last thing you tested in your business?
64. When was the last time you tested a price change and what were the results?
65. What political changes do you see affecting your business/industry?
66. What economic changes do you see affecting your business/industry?
67. What social changes do you see affecting your business/industry?
68. What technological changes do you see affecting your business/industry?
69. What financial best practices have you implemented?
70. How have buying habits changed in your industry?
71. What trends are influencing buying habits?
72. How will buying habits change in the future?
73. How has your industry innovated in the past decade?
74. How has your business innovated in the past year?
75. Where does your business plan to innovate this coming year?
76. How are you investing in your business’ growth (i.e. innovation, new equipment, etc.)?
77. What is your plan to scale up your business?
78. If you had to get rid of 90% of your customers, what 10% would you keep?
79. If you kept 10% of your most profitable customers, what would that demographic look like?
80. How can you increase your ideal customer base?
81. How can you decrease your less-than-ideal customer base?
82. Where are people talking about your business online?
83. What are people saying about your business online?
84. What is your plan if your industry suddenly received a lot of bad press?
85. What is your plan if your business suddenly received a lot of bad press?
86. What is your plan if your marketing went viral and you suddenly had 10x the customers?
87. What contingency plans do you a have in place for natural disasters?
88. What would happen to your business if you were unable to work?
89. What has changed about your business since you started?
90. How has your income trended since you started?
91. How has your profit margin trended since you started?
92. What plans do you have to increase income next year?
93. What plans do you have to increase profits next year?
94. Where do you see your business in 1 year?
95. Where do you see your business in 5 years?
96. Where do you see your business in 10 years?
97. What strengths/assets can you leverage for growth?
98. Where are your blindspots?
99. What are the top 3 problems keeping you from advancing to the next level in business?
100. What about your business, industry, or customers keeps you awake at night?

There are 7 basic human emotions: Anger, Fear, Disgust, Contempt, Joy, Sadness, Surprise.

These are root emotions from which all other emotions spring. (Read more about them here). These 7 emotions are at the core of what drives our decision-making.

If you understand these emotions and build your sales funnel around them, you can sell more.

HOW TO USE SURPRISE IN YOUR SALES FUNNEL

I really like that surprise is one of the 7 basic human emotions. It’s so effective when used in the sales funnel. Ironically, it’s not used often enough.

There are two ways that sales funnels can use surprise and both of these ways can have a very positive or very negative result.

Surprise in marketing: When businesses use surprise in marketing, they capture the fleeting, hard-to-get attention of their target audience. Used well, surprise can rivet the attention of an audience member so they stay engaged throughout the entire marketing message.

This truth in marketing was highlighted for me when I got my PVR. I would watch my shows and just fast-forward through the commercials. But sometimes a commercial (even at a high speed) will appear funny and shocking — surprising! — and I’ll stop and watch the commercial.

Unfortunately, surprise is so rare in marketing. Too often, marketing might start out as a great idea but it is pushed through various corporate departments — each with competing agendas — and what comes out on the other side is a mediocre result.

Surprise in sales: This is another area that has huge opportunity for many businesses but they fall short. When selling, businesses barely live up to expectations. They promise all kinds of things when selling and then meet (or almost meet) those expectations. Consumers are left feeling like they got what they paid for… and nothing else. Is it any wonder that businesses can’t figure out why consumers aren’t “extremely satisfied” when polled?

When I bought my furnace/air-conditioner, I was promised all kinds of things. When the company delivered and installed it, the installers told me that what was promised during the sale couldn’t be done because the salesperson wasn’t an installer and wasn’t aware of the peculiarities of my house. We got the issue resolved after A LOT of frustrating negotiation (and after I contacted the consumer affairs ombudsman). And then I pay every year for a 5 minute inspection. Ultimately, I got what I was promised, but nothing more. So, I’ve never recommended their service to anyone else.

On the other hand, they could have surprised me by delivering what they promised… and more. Even with a little extra courteous service and some proactive follow-up.

Consumers who are surprised by the value of their purchase and the company that sold it to them creates a wow factor that people will remember and return to again and again.

If you want to surprise people in your sales funnel, surprise them in your marketing with clever, unexpected, daring, push-the-envelope marketing that they aren’t expecting. And, surprise them in your sales by delivering more than you promised and providing higher value than they were expecting.

There are 7 basic human emotions: Anger, Fear, Disgust, Contempt, Joy, Sadness, Surprise.

These are root emotions from which all other emotions spring. (Read more about them here). These 7 emotions are at the core of what drives our decision-making.

If you understand these emotions and build your sales funnel around them, you can sell more.

HOW TO USE SADNESS IN YOUR SALES FUNNEL

It’s amazing how many of the 7 basic human emotions are negative. And yet, we can still use them in our sales funnels. Sadness is one of those basic emotions and even though you don’t see it a lot in sales funnels, it is present.

I should make a disclaimer here: Selling with sadness seems callous and I don’t mean to come across that way. But there ARE situations when it is necessary to sell in a sad situation. For example, a funeral home or a fundraising campaign for a catastrophe are both selling into sadness. There’s nothing wrong with it as long as it is done ethically and sensitively and responsibly.

So, how do you sell into a sad situation? Well the first thing you need to do is highlight the emotional connection between the buyer and the victim. It might be a family connection or it might be something broader (such as: We’re all humans and are saddened to think that someone else is facing such difficulty).

In situations where it is a widespread problem, the story needs to be humanized to help establish that emotional connection. That’s what those late night World Vision commercials do: They introduce you to one child and that child stands in as a surrogate for all starving children and helps to build that emotional connection much more effectively. (It’s hard to sell into sadness when there is no human connection).

You also need to keep in mind the benefits when selling into sadness: The purchase/contribution is not going to bring happiness or even necessarily peace-of-mind to the buyer. Don’t promise that! Rather, the buyer’s benefit is a sense of relief at having made an appropriate response.

The biggest risk in selling into sadness is using guilt and it is a very fine line between appropriately selling with sadness and laying on a heavy dose of guilt. I think the difference is this: Appropriate selling into sadness says “If you contribute, you’ll help” while inappropriate selling with guilt says “If you DON’T contribute, you’ll hurt.” That’s a hard line to walk and your sales and marketing copy will need to need to be closely reviewed for guilty selling.

There are many occasions when selling into sadness is okay. When done appropriately, it’s an easy sell because people are driven by a human connection to help each other. But it’s an emotionally draining effort and it’s one that is fraught with pitfalls for the seller.

It’s St. Patrick’s Day today — it’s a day where we celebrate the luck of the Irish (even though St. Patrick himself didn’t care that much about luck).

I’m not a big believer in luck. I think chance and circumstance deal us a hand of poker and it’s up to us to play the hand, regardless of what we’re dealt. As in poker, real success comes in playing what you’re dealt rather than relying on luck to help you win. Some people call this “making your own luck”. I think luck is simply the timely use of your skills/abilities/strengths to act on an opportunity, and to receive a significant reward for it.

Here’s a 3-step plan to make your own luck.

STEP 1: BUILD A PLATFORM

To be lucky (successful) you need to have an area to be successful in. (Even lottery winners might be considered “lucky” but they are only lucky in one area — money). Do you want to gain fame in something? You need a personal brand and the infrastructure (i.e. maybe a website) to launch with. For businesses, a sales funnel is key here.

STEP 2: CREATE CRITICAL MASS

Once you have your platform in place, you need to have some substance behind it. I call this “critical mass”. Think of it this way: If you want to be a famous blogger, are you going to do it with only a week’s worth of blogs? Probably not. If you want to be a famous actor, are you going to do it with a portfolio that only lists one local production of “Little House on the Prairie”? No. You need to have a volume of experience backing you up. It doesn’t have to be a huge amount but it needs to demonstrate that you have the chops.

STEP 3: LEVERAGE

Now it’s time to take this stuff and run with it. Create a plan to start promoting yourself and leverage the critical mass you’ve developed on your platform. I think this is the biggest area where people fall short. They are willing to do some of the work but they don’t think of doing enough. You need to be relentless. Take your inspiration from the most successful people — they’ll all tell you about their many failures on their way to success. (How many times did Michael Crichton or John Grisham or J.K. Rowlings get rejected before becoming hugely successful authors?)

When developing your plan to leverage, think big: Think sustained campaigns in some areas and massive, focused blitzes in others. To use an internet marketing example, maintain a consistent social media campaign but also aim to become the most prolific guest blogger ever. Or, maintain a solid press release publishing campaign but dominate a couple of forums in your particular niche.

NOW IT’S YOUR TURN

Luck doesn’t exist. Success comes to those who take the cards that were dealt by chance and plays them to perfection. Now it’s your turn to make your own luck! In the comments below, let us know what area you want to become “lucky” in…

Long before they buy from you, you are investing time and energy into your leads and prospects to move them through your sales funnel. By the time they convert into customers, you have sunk resources (money/time/effort) into cultivating the relationship.

So companies that struggle with insufficient income or profits might not be moving prospective customers through their sales funnel fast enough. Here are some tips to solve that.

HOW TO SPEED UP YOUR SALES FUNNEL CONTACTS

• Increase the urgency in your sales funnel by highlighting some of the reasons that someone shouldn’t delay in buying from you. Rely on the 7 basic human emotions to help you push, pull, and prod your prospective buyer toward an immediate purchase.
• Offer an incentive for customers to buy now instead of later. Consider something like a reduced rate or an added bonus. Make sure that it’s an attractive offering with a lot of value or it won’t work. (You’ll also need to figure out how to respond to people who don’t buy from you but then ask you later for the free stuff anyway. It will happen!)
• Speed up your points of contact. If you have a sales call scheduled with a prospect every two weeks (14 days) until they become customers, why not try scheduling that sales call every 10 or 11 days. By doing this one simple step, you’re speeding up your funnel by 30%!
• At some point in your sales funnel you’ll have satisfied all of the buying parameters that a prospective buyer has (and if they haven’t bought by this time, they are just waiting until the time is right for them). So ask for the sale… every time you talk to them.
• Figure out the steps in each stage of your sales funnel and see if you can’t combine them together. Address two steps instead of one in a particular interaction.
• Objections are awesome! They tell you why someone isn’t buying. Handle objections as quickly as possible in your sales funnel. Don’t wait for the prospective buyer to ask you.
• Ask: Ask your prospective buyer: What is keeping you from buying today? You’ll get unanswered objections, sticking points, and probably a lot of hedging and feet-shuffling. But you’ll also find out what roadblocks you can address to get people moving through your sales funnel faster.

Your sales funnel is an engine that churns out customers (and revenue). Use these tips to put down the accelerator and get your buyers moving.