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?

In your business, it can be hard to sell something to a prospect that is reluctant to buy. It feels like you are trying to move an immovable object!

On the other hand, if the prospect wants to own your product or service, almost nothing will stand in their way of buying it from you.

Wouldn’t it be great if more of your prospects WANTED to buy your product or service from you?

It’s possible to increase sales from motivated prospects with this one simple trick (which you can use in face-to-face selling, over the phone selling, or marketing and web copy)…

Convince your prospect that they already own your product

Okay, that might sound silly but it works. Here’s what I mean: Get the prospect thinking about what life would be like when they own your product or service. Get specific. Get tangible. Get real.

If possible, get your prospect using the product or service first — before they buy — so they can see just how invaluable it is. Get them involved with the product or service and interacting with it. Make it part of their life. Most important, get them imagining how they would use your product or service.

The best salespeople who use this technique are car salespeople and real estate agents. In both cases, they have the prospect driving the car or walking around the house and while they are doing that, they are getting the prospect thinking about using the car/house in their life. For example: “The car has a big trunk. What would you put into it?” or “This house has a big yard. How would you use it?” or “The car is small and is great for parking. Where do you park your car?” or “This is a great living room. What color would you paint it?”

Notice how these simple questions don’t just have the prospect thinking about the product itself; instead, they’re thinking about what they would do if they owned the product because they are being asked questions as if they practically owned the product right now.

Your products and services need to be sold, too. And you can sell more of them by helping your prospects see themselves using your products and services.

Running a business means managing a sales funnel. Sometimes you need to roll up your sleeves and do some serious work in your sales funnel to fix things that are broken or to optimize it for more profit. But other times, you just need to make minor tweaks to get a quick “pop” in you business.

Here are six quick ideas to get more money out of your sales funnel today

1. Draw out your sales funnel

You’ll gain such a clear understanding of how essential your sales funnel is to your business, plus I usually find that just drawing it out reveals some great opportunities.

2. Create just one clear call to action in your site

It’s easy and tempting to put in all kinds of calls to action — “Contact us” or “download this” or “subscribe here” — but if you have one offering, make it the front-and-center action that website visitors should take.

(Disclaimer: I’m not saying that you should take the other stuff off of your site. Just make one of those things the primary action).

3. Offer a dramatic one-day bonus

Create some short-term urgency by releasing a huge bonus product or service with the purchase of a a popular product or service you already have. Keep it short-term (a 24 hour period is good). See what kind of response you get. Find out if more people are being because they want the free bonus or because it’s a great deal.

4. Announce that you are about to raise your prices

Hey, we all need to raise our prices at some point and most business owners silently raise their prices and hope that there isn’t a lot of backlash. Work this to your advantage by announcing — via press releases and social media — that prices are going to rise on a specific date. (If you sell services, make sure you let people know that they can buy now at the lower rate but receive the service after the price increase).

5. Get back in touch with old buyers

Confession: I find it pretty easy and fun to go after new business so it’s really easy for me to finish a project and then not get back in touch with previous clients. I know I’m not alone here. Lots of entrepreneurs let old customers dry up. Spend some time today combing through your past few years of business and getting in touch with your top ten customers from there. Let them know that you have some availability or extra products and would love the chance to serve them again.

6. Double your lead-generation efforts today

The more leads we generate, the more prospects we end up with and the more customers we can convert those prospects into. But sometimes, lead generation becomes a big strategic endeavor when really just a few extra minutes or hours of effort can have a dramatic, positive impact. Don’t think long-term, just go out and try to double the amount of leads TODAY.

In this business, your success is entirely dependent on leads. The more leads you have, the better. So where do you find these leads?

HOW TO FIND LEADS

First, start with you.
List you all the different places in life where you interact with other people. These are called your “spheres of influence“. List as many spheres of influence that you have. (By the way, you probably have more than you realize).

Some common spheres of influence include:

• Immediate family
• Extended family (don’t ignore family who may not live nearby!)
• Close friends
• Friends
• Acquaintances
• Current co-workers
• Previous co-workers (list all of your previous jobs)
• Alumni (college and high school)
• Church (past and present religious affiliations)
• Charity connections
• Other organizations (Toastmasters, etc.)
• Online connections (Twitter followers, Facebook friends, people you frequently talk to in forums)
• People you do business with (accountant, dry cleaner, mechanic, dentist, etc.)
• Current clients
• Past clients (past clients at your current job and past clients at your previous job… Just make sure that you are complying with any non-compete clauses if your are still in the same industry)

Second, list names
List all of the people by name in each sphere. Yes it will take a long time but the more time you spend being thorough right now, the more successful you will be later.

Third, gather contact information
Figure out how to get in touch with the people. If you know their number or email address or postal address, great! Collect it all into one place. I suggest a database of some kind.

Fourth, identify how you can help them
This step is optional but I think it helpful. Figure out how you can help them. If you’re a real estate professional and they are renters, you’ll likely be able to help them buy their first home. If you’re a financial advisor and they are near to retirement, you’ll likely be able to help them transition their portfolio into safer, income-producing investments while minimizing tax consequences.

If you really want to improve your odds, check out this blog post: 6 sales funnel tips for real estate professionals (it applies to financial professionals, too!)

Fifth, get in touch with them
Using whatever method you have identified (face-to-face, phone, email, or postal mail), get in touch with your contact and let them know what you do and make a recommendation about how you’d like to help them.

Chances are, one of the following things will happen:

• They will become your client
• They will hedge a little; they won’t commit, and they’ll tell you that they’ll think about it
• They will tell you no
• You won’t reach them or they won’t respond

If they become your client, that’s great. Congratulations! However, most people will fall into the second category and some people will fall into the third category. In those situations, thank them and let them know that if anything changes, you’d love to help them. Ask them for permission to stay in touch and collect any contact information you don’t have (so you can email or mail them something). Don’t delete the ones who never responded; just keep them on file and from time to time reach out to them.

GET EVEN MORE LEADS

Now that you have this list started, it’s time to generate even more leads. Here are three ways:

• Add another sphere of influence. Join a group, join the gym, get involved in a new organization, volunteer for a charity, etc.
• For each of your leads (yes, that big list you just created earlier in this blog post), do the same exercise and write down THEIR spheres of influence. Sure, you might not know their names but just get down the spheres of influence first. Then create a strategy to approach those people and make a request like: “Can you put up my business card on the bulletin board at your work?” or “can I put on a presentation about insurance in the lunch room at your office?” Make sure to keep the request easy for them to do. Remember: They won’t agree to anything that makes them uncomfortable!
• You probably already have a website that is geared to people who are ready to become clients. (Most real estate and financial professionals have a site like this). Move up your sales funnel and create content that is geared toward lead generation instead of prospect conversion. For example, a real estate professional might want to create content that answers some earlier stage questions like “should I buy a home right now?”. You can do this on your own site, or start another site, or use internet marketing (like articles and press releases and social media) to help you drive traffic to your website.

Did you annoy your siblings when you were a kid? Maybe you poked them or you drew a line across the back seat and staked your claim on one side and forbid them to cross over or you stole something of theirs. And then they’d run off and tell mom and dad. And there were days when they annoyed us. It’s the timeless reality of being a sibling.

As a business owner, you want to provide a great solution to your customers when they have problems… that’s the mark of any great business. But…

PROSPECTS WON’T MOVE FORWARD IN YOUR SALES FUNNEL IF THERE’S NO PAIN

Prospects will buy when they feel the pain of their problem. The more acute their pain, the sooner they buy and the more money they’re willing to spend. (For an example of when that happened in my own life, check out my blog post Rubber boots and sales copy).

When your prospects don’t feel pain, they they’re not willing to buy. They simply don’t perceive the value of the solution at that time. Instead, they give you objections like “it’s too expensive” or “I’m still shopping around”… because your solution IS too expensive (for the level of pain that they feel) and they ARE still shopping around (because they have no reason to move forward).

It’s only when they feel more pain that they are willing to spend the money to solve it. Therefore…

ANNOY YOUR PROSPECTS TO GROW YOUR SALES FUNNEL

Prospects will buy when they feel pain so you can help them feel pain. And you can do this by remembering back to when you were a kid and you used to bug your siblings. What did you do then? You found out what bothered them and then you highlighted it. You brought it to their attention. And you did it over and over until they took action (and tattled).

The same thing applies in your business (but obviously in a more professional way!!!). You find out what bothers your prospects — what pain they feel because of their problem — and then you highlight it. You build content into all parts of your sales funnel marketing that doesn’t just highlight your solution but ALSO highlights the pain of the problem your prospects face.

Create turmoil in their lives. Keep them from sleeping at night by revealing to them just how painful their current situation is. Do this over and over and over (just like you used to do when you were a kid).

And, as you do this, always present your solution as they way to solve the pain.

[Image credit: Catlin82]