Ten-Step Plan for Your Three-Year Anniversary!

By Jim Marshall

Hearty congratulations to Bay Area Business Magazine on their third-year anniversary!  You may have read the studies that show 80% of small businesses do not succeed past three years (and 90% never make it to five).  For that, BABM should be proud.

Think where you were in your business career three years ago.  Better yet, where will you be three years from now?  Have you started a business that, you hope, will be alive and prospering at that time?  Are you focused on not just surviving, but thriving, in your current field?  Or, are you contemplating leaving Corporate America (or maybe you have already been “right-sized” out) and hanging out your own shingle?  Whatever your circumstances, here are ten action items you can implement in the next 30 days to help ensure you’ll be in business and prospering three years from now:

1. Choose one company orindustry not currently targeted by your sales and marketing efforts and implement a plan to meet with a business owner, president or CEO from that company or industry to learn more about it.  Who knows – you just might uncover a new business prospect or develop a new referral source. 

2. Determine the average number of new business appointments you have had each month and develop a plan to increase that number by at least two in subsequent months.  Two additional appointments per month—not an overwhelming task—means twenty-four more appointments per year.  Even with a mediocre closing percentage, what might that mean to your business in additional revenue?

3. Make three new business calls or contacts before 9:00am every business day.  If you do nothing else the remainder of the year, this step alone will increase your revenues by 20%!

4. Identify the four most prevalent stalls, put-offs, and/or objections you receive from prospects and develop a strategy to more effectively deal with them.  You know what they are – you’ve probably heard them enough!  Identify what it would take to preempt the stall or objection—the appropriate action, strategy, question, or response—then rehearse, rehearse, rehearse with a colleague, or even your spouse. Internalize the responses and actions until they are second-nature.

5. Obtain five referrals from your clients.  It’s very likely that many of your existing clients or business associates know of, interact with, call on, and/or are friends with people with whom you should be talking. Make it a point to ask them; more often than not, they are happy to help.

6. Identify the six most common problems or challenges that your product or service solves for your clients, and be prepared to articulate them for potential prospects.  Many of them are caught up in the day-to-day minutia of their lives, and don’t know – or won’t acknowledge – they have those problems. Your job is to point them out (in a nurturing fashion) and offer solutions.

7. Identify seven existing clients who could benefit from some additional products, services or advice from you.  Call each and offer a one-on-one meeting, perhaps over lunch, to discuss their challenges and, perhaps, do some strategizing.

8. Identify eight prospects who “got away” last year.  In the normal course of business, things slip through the cracks.  Sometimes those “things” are your prospects:
   - An appointment needed to be moved, but it was never rescheduled
   - You met someone at a networking event who said, "We should get together," but an appointment was never set.
   - You were given a referral, but, after a couple of unsuccessful attempts to contact them, they, too, were forgotten.
   Once you've identified the eight who got away, commit to contacting them within the next eight business days.
   

9. Identify nine clients who have achieved definable and measurable success as a direct benefit of the products or services you’ve offered.  Ask them to write a one or two-line testimonial that you could publish on your web site or perhaps quote in newsletter article.  The next time someone asks for a reference, tell them you’d be happy to provide nine references…then direct them to your web site.

10. Take ten minutes out of each business day to quietly plan, strategize, reflect or simply reenergize.  Business is occurring at an ever-increasing pace.  Are you running your company/organization, or is it running you?
     
    Few people plan to fail, but many fail to plan.  Don’t be one of them.  Pick one (or more) items from this top ten list to begin working on immediately.  Make 2010 a great year, and we’ll see you in 2013!

© 2010  Sandler Systems, Inc.  All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reprinted or used without the expressed written permission of Sandler Systems, Inc. and Strategic sales Solutions, LLC.
 Jim Marshall, President Strategic Sales Solutions, LLC - Sandler Training