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Not Enough Time, Not Enough Sales!

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Published: 04Aug2007
Word count: 437
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Many small business owners think time management is a problem because they have to do everything. In the start-up years, unless you have a large start-up budget, you will probably be doing a lot of your own administrative work and spending a lot of time on marketing. This is very normal.

Where it becomes problematic is when you are spending a lot of time on these tasks and not getting enough clients to hire someone to help. At that point in time, people tell me they need help with their ‘time management'. I do not always agree.

The problem is actually much deeper, yet easier to solve. To start, every business owner needs to know the following:
- annual and monthly financial goals
- how many sales are required to achieve the goals
- how much marketing is required to get each sale

I'm sure you were with me for the first two, but the third one? That is a little trickier. I will walk you through it.

The first step is to determine where your most desirable clients come from. One way to do this is to list all your clients from the last 1-2 years, how much revenue they brought you and where they came from in a spreadsheet. Sort the list numerically by the revenues.

Study this list. Toward the bottom of the list you will find a natural break where you can draw a line, below which you don't want any more of those types of clients. Analyze those people – where did you find them? What do they have in common? How can you avoid them?!

Next, look at those clients toward the top of the list. Draw another line separating the excellent from the good. Analyze the excellent - where did you find them? What do they have in common? How can you get more of them!?

This exercise may give you the opportunity to cut out some of your marketing activities that are fruitless. You are already on your way to becoming more efficient. Once you have determined which marketing strategies bring you the most money, do more of that.

Next, examine how many sales meetings it takes to get a client, and how many people you have to meet to get a sales meeting. Once you have figured this out, you can calculate how many people you need to meet in order to meet your financial goals.

After doing the math and the customer analysis, you can do more of what works, stop doing what doesn't work, and you will know how much marketing you must do to meet your goals!

Audrey Burton, Small Business Coach, is “The Tigress”. Get her FREE Special Report, “Closing the Sale is Not Complicated!” and her FREE monthly email newsletter at http://www.TigressCoaching.com .

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