Remember in the movie Field of Dreams when Kevin Costner heard the voice whispering to him in his Iowa cornfield, “If you build it, he will come?” He built the baseball diamond against all odds, his farm teetering on foreclosure. And in the end the people all came, driven by some desire even they weren’t aware of.
Such events make for great fictional stories, but let’s face it: when you build your business, people won’t flock to it automatically by some unseen force. You have to let them know what you can do for them. In short, you have to advertise.
You need a way to bring in new customers and sell to existing ones. You’d like to have some method to reactivate former customers. You want to try different tactics and strategies and see which ones are the most profitable for you.
There’s certainly no shortage of marketing advice out there—some of it good, some of it bad, some that works for some businesses, but not others. In many cases the only way to know for sure is to try them out yourself.
Sure, you want to try the things that have the greatest likelihood of success. Perhaps you attend seminars, try the next new marketing fads, purchase products and services that promise you the world. You advertise in this publication or that newspaper. You try your hand at online marketing, email marketing. You look at successful sales letters and try to use the best elements for your own campaigns. You network with other professionals, hoping to glean some new ideas to try.
In short, you may be all over the map, trying new methods as well as time-tested ones. Keeping what works and discarding what doesn’t.
It’s a numbers game, really. Given enough time and money, you’ll eventually discover the things that work best for your business. The problem is you can really burn through a lot of that time and money before you get there.
Let me offer an example that marketing expert Jimmy D. Brown talks about.
Suppose you approach a car and start pushing it. It doesn’t seem to be moving, so you look to your right and see another car, a smaller one that looks like it weighs less and might be moved more easily. So you abandon the first car and start pushing on the second. Meanwhile, another person comes by and starts pushing on the first car you left behind.
After several moments, you realize the second car isn’t going anywhere either, and you spot a third vehicle, this one a Jeep Wrangler (those lightweight frames must surely make the Jeep weigh less). So you leave the second car behind and start pushing the Jeep.
Meanwhile, the other fellow is still pushing on the first car. At first it’s not moving, just as when you tried to push it. But slowly and gradually, it begins to inch forward. Just a little bit at first. Then it moves a foot. The fellow keeps pushing, and the momentum builds up even further. Now it’s moving even faster, covering more distance.
You stop pushing the Jeep to look at the first car moving. Now you’re even more determined to get a car of your own moving forward, so you start on a fourth car.
But the first car is really picking up speed now.
You’re beginning to get frustrated, so you look for lighter cars to push. But you’re getting tired. Eventually you decide to call it quits.
When you turn to look at the first car, you notice both the guy and the car are nowhere in sight.
That analogy can be applied to your business as well.
When you spend all your time and money chasing the next greatest thing, you’re not able to stay focused on your business and your goals. Yes, some techniques may work for you. It’s just not an efficient use of your time and resources.
When you have a plan—a system—in place, you’re positioned to grow your business both over the short term and long. That fellow pushing the one car had a plan, simple as it was. And he stuck with it.
Now if he had a tow truck, he surely could’ve moved it much more quickly and with less effort on his part. But you have to start somewhere, and without that tow truck, you have to make the most out of the resources and ingenuity at your disposal.
And even if every method you tried turned out to be a success, you still need some kind of system to tie it all together. It doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, some of the best systems are fairly straightforward. It just has to be consistent and proven.
- A system will keep day-to-day tasks from falling through the cracks.
- Each new strategy that’s successfully tested can be placed in the system with the assurance that it will function with everything else already in place and increase the ROI (return on investment) of your system even further. That means when you start pushing on that second car, your system is still pushing on the first. This way you’ll eventually get both cars moving.
- A system removes you from the time-consuming operations tasks and lets you focus on growing your business.
- A system lets your business run like clockwork, so you can spend more time with your family or doing the activities you enjoy.
- Once optimized, your system can be applied to new/other business ventures, with the same expectation of success as your original “seed” system.
- Your system can be customized to the needs of your business. The best systems are flexible. They allow you to adapt any aspect of your marketing, and any changes in your marketplace or industry trends.
Let me tell you a story.
Several years ago, copywriting legends John Carlton and Gary Halbert were strategizing about their marketing in Gary’s office. During their brainstorming session, an employee burst in the room with news that the copier was broken, and there were urgent copies to be made and mailed. Then the computer was down and the phones had been cut off. The landlord was banging on the door for some reason.
So John started folding up his briefcase, thinking they weren’t going to get any work done that day.
Well, Gary stood up, pushed the employees out, closed the door, and said, “Let’s get back to work.”
That’s “Operation Moneysuck.”
As John puts it: “If you are the guy who brings in the money into your business, then that’s your most important job. That’s your second most important job, your third most important job, and on down the line.”
If you’re the one who brings in the money, then that’s what you need to be doing. Every hour you spend fixing the phones or the copier or dealing with operations issues is an hour that robs you twice: that hour is gone, and you’ve spent an hour less bringing in the dough.
A system removes you from the time-consuming operations tasks and lets you focus on growing your business.
Stop and think for a moment about how much your time is worth. You really do need to look at your income and break it down to an hourly rate.
Here’s what each hour is worth to you now:
| ____________Annual Income | / | 52 Weeks | = | ____________Weekly Income | / | __________Avg. WeeklyHours Worked | = | ___________Hourly Worth |
Here is what you should be thinking about for Operation Moneysuck:
| ____________Desired Annual Income |
/ | 52 Weeks | = | ____________Desired Weekly Income |
/ | __________Desired Avg. WeeklyHours Worked | = | ___________Desired Hourly Worth |
…because you have to plan for your goals, not what you’re achieving now.
So any task that does not earn you your hourly rate (at a minimum) should be outsourced for cheaper. Ultimately that will eventually apply to any task that does not earn you your desired hourly rate.
By putting a system in place, you can focus on those activities that will earn you at least your desired hourly rate, while leaving other tasks to your employees or outsourced help.
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