This is the second in a series of posts on how to increase your business profits by using this 7 step framework. (Check out the first post here)
Before you rush off and start working to get more traffic or improve your conversions you need to think like an Olympic athlete.
A quick story so please stay with me…
When I was younger and training regularly to compete in triathlons I had the race of my life. I felt great and raced really well running as fast as I had ever done and finishing strong. I just couldn’t believe how well it all came together.
I had a brief taste of what it must feel like to be an Olympian and have the long hard hours pay off by winning a big race
Obviously something I had done of the previous weeks and months in training was working and working well.
Now I thought how can I do this again and get to the same point or improve even more.
The big let down was I hadn’t written my training schedule down, recorded my details, or really had much basis to accurately replicate the whole thing again. So I wasn’t really sure how to replicate this fantastic result
Why am I telling you this story?
Carefully monitor everything so when something works you can do more of it, or on the other side is if it’s not working then stop it.
For a business it is not much different to a finally tuned Olympic athlete or the analogy I like is a Formula One race team. Lots of components go into a large “machine” to get to that ultimate goal. Tweaking each little part of that machine can reap phenomenal results
Go to your accounts system (NOW) and check how many sales you made over a period, say 3 months, write down the number of sales, the total revenue, the gross profit of those sales. If you have a CRM system you should also be able to determine how many prospects and customers during the same period.
Once you have a benchmark you can then start trying new things to test a change.
Forget making a change before you have this important benchmark
The trouble with a lot of small business marketing I‘ve seen is that there is no way of knowing if it works or not
Can you tell how many leads came from your last bit of advertising?
It can be as simple as including a different phone number so you can register how many enquiries came in.
Or include a coupon code for a free gift so when customers provide the code you can tally up how that advertising performed