You need a good business plan. Yes, sales are important, but 8 out of 10 businesses fail after 18 months because they don’t have a plan—and a lot of them have plenty of sales. You should also have a good marketing strategy that identifies your ideal client (it’s not everyone), what their pain is, and position your message so your ideal client feels like you are talking to him/her.
A business needs leads and sales. In today's times, having a strong online presence can help drive that. A business should have a user friendly website with a sales funnel, a strong social media presence, and a good digital marketing strategy. There are many other marketing initiatives online and offline that businesses can use to grow leads and sales but the bottom line is, a business needs leads and the internet is a GREAT place to generate them.
We constructed our business model to support the one thing that every business needs: PROFIT. I recently went into a restaurant and an owner told me they bring in $60K a month, but at the end of the month, they just squeak by. Within 5 minutes we found $100K in specialized tax incentives they were not taking advantage of. Within an hour, we implemented a program that fixed that at a cost of under $100 a month.
So what we do is aid that profit margin by 1) FIND MORE MONEY - Doing cost remediation - cut costs and get cashback from vendors that make errors 2) FIND MORE MONEY - Bring in every dollar from Specialized Tax Incentives 3) FIND MORE MONEY - Redo their loan package-we have an inhouse program 4) KEEP MORE MONEY - Work on a business exit strategy to provide a tax free income for life, accelerate their retirement plan with commercial loans, migrate their taxable retirement plan to tax free, provide a loan collateral assignment vehicle so they can finance a buyer, so they can focus on how to get the business profitable enough to sell and keep more of the Sales price due to a tax efficient sale 5) Aid their sales development by providing them with a sales differentiator that NONE of their competitors have - we ask them to nominate clients they are a) Trying to retain and cross-sell more product - we provide the same 5 services to those clients and we find $250,000 on average for their clients. If you are able to put $250,000 in the hands of your clients, through a service that has NO UPFRONT FEE and pays itself through contingency, then you have a client that looks at you VERY DIFFERENTLY. If you have a prospect, thats on the fence, looking around, and you show them via us how to execute 1) - 5) above, then you have a major edge in converting that client.
We dont sell our intellectual capital...we have PROPRIETARY Services and PATENTED aspects to what we do. This is another KEY driver of PROFITS. Many customers try and commoditize your services, forcing pricing discounts. If you are the ONLY company in the country doing what you do,or have the ability to say NO, then you do NOT have that issue.
So our key differentiators are and many businesses can take a Sales lesson from this because so many business cannot CLEARLY ARTICULATE why they are different and why clients should buy from them:
1) We bring MONEY to the table FIRST not INVOICES - The transaction is logical, not faith-based. We bring no-brainer deals to the table. Example, Mr client, we identified $250,000 in immediate savings,you can use today. Your cost is $25K and we are the only people that do this. Here is a list of who looks like they compete with us but here is why they are not a great option for you. Do you want this deal? Its logical, not FAITH-BASED - Faith-Based is - Mr client, pay me $X, then 5 years down the road, lets see if it was smart to engage me! 2) We have a team of 11 programmers - we look at our industry and aim to be thought-leaders in generating PROFIT and look for what NOBODY else is doing and bring that to the table as a NO Brainer proposition for clients 3) We eliminate any competitors by asking for NO UPFRONT money and NO PAYMENT DUE if we dont realize any savings. NO DISRUPTION to the business, NO CHANGING of vendors 4) We DO NOT ADVERTIZE in Mainstream media - we work by mining relationships and creating a distributor network by solving other professionals marketing issues and give them an agency. This makes us a very powerful STEALTHY and DISRUPTIVE company, because we have 13000 agents in 50 states coming in with NO BRAINER propositions and nobody has heard of us and 10,000 more by the end of the year 5) We compensate the SALES team on the Customer, not the transaction. We have 16 services and an agency model, and a Home Office closing team that does all the selling and all the fulfilment, allowing the sales rep an easy client acquisition model 6) We are DISRUPTIVE and INCLUSIVE at the same time. We show business owners what their CPAs, Insurance Agents, Financial Advisors, Commercial Realtors, Business Brokers, Business Consultants are not doing for them. We purposely go for a "Too Good To Be True" experience, so that customers pay attention and stir up their financial team. We then INCLUDE the financial team, raise their level of expertise and offer them an Agency that allows them to solve their "lack of PROFIT competitiveness" issue by joining our team for under a $100 a month, give them turn key websites in an hour, up and running in 4 hours with a sales message that has built in DIFFERENTIATION and which helps them sell more of their own products and services.
7) We have a NETWORK OF EXPERTS AND LEADERS IN THEIR FIELD, we have employees who do not need a lot of training to stay efficient. Our customers then have the BEST IN CLASS available to work for them. We keep these EXPERTS busy, because they are great at being NERDS in their field, not marketers. We also engage them in our Product Development Process, to create solutions that noone else has.
Hope this deep dive into www.StrydeSavings.com modus operandi, can inspire others to focus on Giving value first,creating special software to make buying and choosing solutions that are time efficient, thought leadership, differentiation, disrupt the status/quo, inclusiveness, build distribution network, employee/expert strategy, closing strategy, (headquarters or the field) and fight commoditization that devalues what you do.
It depends on who you ask, it depends on your own business needs. Not one size fits all. Foundation is important, to include financial, personal/professional values to match your business, human resources and advisers. But that's just me with a very short list.
1) I read somewhere that on the wall in Arnold Palmer's office is a placue with the following:
If you think you are beaten, you are.
If you think you dare not, you don't.
If you like win, but think you can't,
It's almost certain that you won't.
Life's battles do not always go
To the strong woman or man.
But, sooner or later, those who win
Are those who think they can.
2) Henry Ford said the same thing: "If you think you can, you can. If you think you can't, you can't."
3) From me: Multitasking is wasteful. Choose your focus and deepen it. Find help to complement you, as you need. Most important: Learn from your mistakes and keep going.
Most businesses fail in the first couple of years due to poor marketing, poor accounting, or both. These are two things you must include in your business plan and can not afford to go cheap on.
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You need a good business plan. Yes, sales are important, but 8 out of 10 businesses fail after 18 months because they don’t have a plan—and a lot of them have plenty of sales. You should also have a good marketing strategy that identifies your ideal client (it’s not everyone), what their pain is, and position your message so your ideal client feels like you are talking to him/her.
A positive cash flow!
We constructed our business model to support the one thing that every business needs: PROFIT. I recently went into a restaurant and an owner told me they bring in $60K a month, but at the end of the month, they just squeak by. Within 5 minutes we found $100K in specialized tax incentives they were not taking advantage of. Within an hour, we implemented a program that fixed that at a cost of under $100 a month.
So what we do is aid that profit margin by 1) FIND MORE MONEY - Doing cost remediation - cut costs and get cashback from vendors that make errors 2) FIND MORE MONEY - Bring in every dollar from Specialized Tax Incentives 3) FIND MORE MONEY - Redo their loan package-we have an inhouse program 4) KEEP MORE MONEY - Work on a business exit strategy to provide a tax free income for life, accelerate their retirement plan with commercial loans, migrate their taxable retirement plan to tax free, provide a loan collateral assignment vehicle so they can finance a buyer, so they can focus on how to get the business profitable enough to sell and keep more of the Sales price due to a tax efficient sale 5) Aid their sales development by providing them with a sales differentiator that NONE of their competitors have - we ask them to nominate clients they are a) Trying to retain and cross-sell more product - we provide the same 5 services to those clients and we find $250,000 on average for their clients. If you are able to put $250,000 in the hands of your clients, through a service that has NO UPFRONT FEE and pays itself through contingency, then you have a client that looks at you VERY DIFFERENTLY. If you have a prospect, thats on the fence, looking around, and you show them via us how to execute 1) - 5) above, then you have a major edge in converting that client.
We dont sell our intellectual capital...we have PROPRIETARY Services and PATENTED aspects to what we do. This is another KEY driver of PROFITS. Many customers try and commoditize your services, forcing pricing discounts. If you are the ONLY company in the country doing what you do,or have the ability to say NO, then you do NOT have that issue.
So our key differentiators are and many businesses can take a Sales lesson from this because so many business cannot CLEARLY ARTICULATE why they are different and why clients should buy from them:
1) We bring MONEY to the table FIRST not INVOICES - The transaction is logical, not faith-based. We bring no-brainer deals to the table. Example, Mr client, we identified $250,000 in immediate savings,you can use today. Your cost is $25K and we are the only people that do this. Here is a list of who looks like they compete with us but here is why they are not a great option for you. Do you want this deal? Its logical, not FAITH-BASED - Faith-Based is - Mr client, pay me $X, then 5 years down the road, lets see if it was smart to engage me!
2) We have a team of 11 programmers - we look at our industry and aim to be thought-leaders in generating PROFIT and look for what NOBODY else is doing and bring that to the table as a NO Brainer proposition for clients
3) We eliminate any competitors by asking for NO UPFRONT money and NO PAYMENT DUE if we dont realize any savings. NO DISRUPTION to the business, NO CHANGING of vendors
4) We DO NOT ADVERTIZE in Mainstream media - we work by mining relationships and creating a distributor network by solving other professionals marketing issues and give them an agency. This makes us a very powerful STEALTHY and DISRUPTIVE company, because we have 13000 agents in 50 states coming in with NO BRAINER propositions and nobody has heard of us and 10,000 more by the end of the year
5) We compensate the SALES team on the Customer, not the transaction. We have 16 services and an agency model, and a Home Office closing team that does all the selling and all the fulfilment, allowing the sales rep an easy client acquisition model
6) We are DISRUPTIVE and INCLUSIVE at the same time. We show business owners what their CPAs, Insurance Agents, Financial Advisors, Commercial Realtors, Business Brokers, Business Consultants are not doing for them. We purposely go for a "Too Good To Be True" experience, so that customers pay attention and stir up their financial team. We then INCLUDE the financial team, raise their level of expertise and offer them an Agency that allows them to solve their "lack of PROFIT competitiveness" issue by joining our team for under a $100 a month, give them turn key websites in an hour, up and running in 4 hours with a sales message that has built in DIFFERENTIATION and which helps them sell more of their own products and services.
7) We have a NETWORK OF EXPERTS AND LEADERS IN THEIR FIELD, we have employees who do not need a lot of training to stay efficient. Our customers then have the BEST IN CLASS available to work for them. We keep these EXPERTS busy, because they are great at being NERDS in their field, not marketers. We also engage them in our Product Development Process, to create solutions that noone else has.
Hope this deep dive into www.StrydeSavings.com modus operandi, can inspire others to focus on Giving value first,creating special software to make buying and choosing solutions that are time efficient, thought leadership, differentiation, disrupt the status/quo, inclusiveness, build distribution network, employee/expert strategy, closing strategy, (headquarters or the field) and fight commoditization that devalues what you do.
It depends on who you ask, it depends on your own business needs. Not one size fits all. Foundation is important, to include financial, personal/professional values to match your business, human resources and advisers. But that's just me with a very short list.
1) I read somewhere that on the wall in Arnold Palmer's office is a placue with the following:
If you think you are beaten, you are.
If you think you dare not, you don't.
If you like win, but think you can't,
It's almost certain that you won't.
Life's battles do not always go
To the strong woman or man.
But, sooner or later, those who win
Are those who think they can.
2) Henry Ford said the same thing: "If you think you can, you can. If you think you can't, you can't."
3) From me: Multitasking is wasteful. Choose your focus and deepen it. Find help to complement you, as you need. Most important: Learn from your mistakes and keep going.
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Most businesses fail in the first couple of years due to poor marketing, poor accounting, or both. These are two things you must include in your business plan and can not afford to go cheap on.