He was absolutely hilarious, as you would expect, but the marketing was also fabulous… the website crashed so many people wanted to see him (practicing).  The Forum was full to bursting and I’m sure he could have sold another few nights as well.

At the event someone told me Lee Evans is doing the same thing – and that they’d queued from 3am to get tickets …to see him practice.

That surely is the sign of success??

I remember a great example someone shared with me a while ago about a realtor (estate agent) in the United States who attended an industry conference in the midst of the recession.  Whilst his colleagues were lamenting the terrible situation, he was telling everyone he’d had a great year and asking what they were complaining about.  The other attendees couldn’t believe it and some questioned him about how he was enjoying success when everyone else was struggling.  He told them that he was finding it tough too, but that noone wanted to know that.  People buy from successful, enthusiastic people, so that’s what he was – and it was working.

There are some estate agents who have been enjoying success even in the past twelve months, with property prices falling, whilst vast amounts of the market have been cutting staff and reeling in costs.  So, what makes the difference?  Why are some really busy and others terribly quiet?  Why are some still making lots of money, even in a downturn?  It’s not a different industry, different geographic areas, or a vastly different model.  So, if it’s not the model, is it the business owner?

We had a recent example ourselves of how great marketing, backed up with fabulous customer service can generate property sales.  A few months ago, a property developer customer of ours launched the first phase of their development; just nine properties.  Because of the way it was marketed, over 300 people attended the launch weekend.  Two people turned up with cash deposits and fought over one of the plots and, a few months down the line, eight of those nine properties are sold and seven more have been sold off plan for the next phase of the development.

(I should add that this company has three local competitors, all offering lower priced new properties within a few miles.)  So why were they so successful?

Of course, I can’t tell you exactly what we did, because they paid a lot of money for that strategic help, but it shows it can be done.  The top tips were:

• Focus on your audience – understand who you want and target them specifically
• Do something different – every estate agent advertises in the property pages and on Right Move.  How can you make people stop and think, and take notice of you?
• Offer people something for free – the power of free champagne cannot be understated!  (In fact, the competitor up the road announced a champagne open weekend the day before this particular launch – I love it when competitors copy you – it shows you’ve had a great idea!)
• Create a fear of loss – with so many people at the launch, prospects wanted to make sure they got the property they wanted, so they committed on the day and put down sizeable deposits to reassure the developer of their serious intent.
• Have some fun – I cannot tell you how much fun this project was.  We worked alongside a graphic designer, a web designer and a copywriter.  To have the luxury of a creative team meant the customer benefited from four creative brains – and it definitely paid off.

Give it a go – what have you got to lose?

The majority of business owners we meet have never asked themselves what it is they really want, or why they’re in business in the first place.  But, once you have a purpose and a focus, you can have anything you want.

A great exercise  to help with your long-term planning is to brainstorm ideas – and just write down the first things that come to mind.  Jim Rohn has a framework to help you, which is just there to get you started (I’ve added one of my own, which I’m hopeful Jim would agree with, as it matches his own business philosophy.)  Just keep writing – you don’t only have to have one idea in each box – the more you have the better.  Perhaps just set yourself a time limit of 10 minutes and see what you come up with…

Once you’ve created a list of goals, you then need to make a plan to achieve them.  But first, we’ll take a look at how badly you want the things you’ve written down tomorrow – it’s a great way to prioritise them.

The key is having a number of strategies that are implemented consistently and the results measured so you can make continual improvements.  (The words in italics are the important ones.)  Marketing is like a recipe you follow – but it’s a different recipe for every business.  Because I don’t know your business, I can’t second-guess which strategies will be the right ones for your success, but I do know that you need a number of strategies, being implemented consistently.  You also need to measure your results, so you can keep improving your return on investment.

So… how many strategies do you have for maximising profit?

For example:

• When was the last time you put your prices up?
• How many strategies do you have for increasing the number of leads you generate?
• What strategies do you have for measuring and improving your conversion rate?
• Do you have strategies in place for maximising customer spend?
• How do you go about increasing the frequency with which your customers order?

If you could improve each area listed above by just 10%, how would that impact your bottom line?  Successful companies make these changes all the time, so they keep increasing their net profit.  You need to do the same if you want to increase your profits – and make the same amount of money in less time .