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Many new businesses take the approach of expecting sales to happen by the mere fact that they exist. Some open a physical store, others open a website and expect sales to just start rolling in. Their marketing strategy is hope.

And sure they may make a small number of sales just by virtue of being there when a random prospect wanders by. But that is a guaranteed path to frustration.

Many such businesses make just enough in sales to torture themselves to death. They then conclude the market or their industry is too competitive.

Truth be told, I don’t know of any market or industry that is not competitive. But one thing I know for certain is that in any market or industry you look at, no matter how competitive, there’ll be someone doing really well and there’ll be someone struggling.

So if we were honest with ourselves we couldn’t really believe it to be a problem with the market or industry. So what’s the problem?

Do You Want to Grow Your Business Rapidly?

Then you need to market it. But not just any marketing will do. In my new 1-Page Marketing Plan Course, I show you the exact techniques I've used to start, grow, and exit several multi-million dollar businesses, so you can too.

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The “Me Too” Problem

The problem is likely that you’re positioning yourself as a commodity, a “me too” type of business. When you position yourself in this way these are you’re marketing weapons:

1. To shout as loudly as possible (which is very expensive)
2. To discount your prices as far as possible (which is dangerous).

Unless you are a Costco, Walmart or other such behemoth, you really don’t want price to be your key differentiator, as that’s a battle you won’t win.

At this stage, many businesses realize their folly and start making dubious and unquantifiable claims like being “the best,” “the highest quality,” etc. These are stupid marketing strategies.

Two Questions To Keep Asking Yourself

There are two questions I ask myself and my clients today. Answering these two questions is the path towards financial success in business.

In fact, I would argue not answering these questions is the reason why 96% of businesses fail in the first 10 years. So the two questions you must ask and answer are:

1. Why should they buy?
2. Why should they buy from me?

These are questions that should have clear, concise, and quantifiable answers. Not wishy-washy nonsense like “we are the best” or “we have the highest quality.”

What Is The Unique Advantage You're Offering?

Now the uniqueness doesn’t have to be in the product itself. There are very few truly unique products.

The uniqueness may be in the way it is packaged, delivered, supported, or even sold.

You need to position what you do in such a way that even if your competitor was operating directly opposite you, customers would cross the road to do business with you instead of your competitor.

Do it really well and they may even stand in line overnight to do business with you instead of your competitor like they do with Apple products.

And this all starts with having a marketing plan.

Put In Terms Your Prospect Can Easily Understand

Your prospect has essentially three options:

• Buy from you
• Buy from your competitor
• Do nothing

You may think your competitors are your biggest problem, but in reality it’s more likely to be a fight against inertia. Therefore you need to answer the question of why they should buy first in addition to why they should buy from YOU.

We live in a sound bite, MTV generation which has to deal with thousands of messages each day. The importance of crafting your message in an immediately understandable and impactful way has never been more important.

Can you explain your product and the unique benefit it offers in a single short sentence? Think of this like an elevator pitch. If you take nothing else away from this article take this: Confusion leads to no sales.

This is especially so when explaining a complex product. Let’s take a look at an example from one of the world’s best marketing brands – Apple.

When they launched their now legendary music player, the iPod, they could have talked about the 5-gigabyte storage capacity or other technical features. But instead how did they promote it? “1000 songs in your pocket.”

Genius! 5 gigabytes doesn’t mean a thing to most consumers. Neither does a bunch of technical jargon, but “1000 songs in your pocket” – anyone can instantly understand that and the benefits it will offer.

Apple was by no means the first portable music player on the market or even the best, but they were by far the most successful because of their ability to quickly and easily convey the reasons why you should buy.

Your clarity around this will have a huge impact on the success of your business.

If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy our article on How to Create a Lead Magnet that Converts in 6 Steps. As a small business owner, it’s the smarter way to acquire leads for your business and build your authority.

Business systems are by far the most overlooked aspect of running a successful small, medium, or large business.

We’re going to look at what they are? Why you need them? And how they can help you build massive value in your business?

Read the article or watch our live training on how to systemize your business for scale.

What are business systems?

In short, business systems start with documented procedures and processes that allow your business to run without you.

This is often referred to as an operations manual. Its purpose is to capture the collective “know-how” of the business.

The poster child for business systems is McDonald’s. This is a complex, worldwide, multi-billion dollar business essentially run by pimply teenagers. Kids who can’t even be trusted to make their beds.

How do they do this?

They run this hugely successful and profitable business because they have amazing business systems. Their operations manual covers everything from hiring to product delivery to customer interaction.

Why business systems are often overlooked

There are various reasons why business systems are overlooked by many small business owners. And you really don't want to make these expensive mistakes.

Reason #1 - Boring

Business systems are regarded as “back office” functions. Unlike the latest marketing strategies, sales techniques or other highly visible aspects of your business, good business systems are considered boring. While building them may indeed be boring, the incredible power they give you is anything but.

Reason #2 - Lack of time

In the startup phase, owners don't have time to build business systems. There are seemingly more important things to do like sales, marketing, and order fulfillment.

With all of these important things vying for their attention, systems get put off. However, just like any other accumulation of neglect over time, it rarely ends well.

Reason #3 - Overwhelm

Setting up systems can be overwhelming for many business owners. They don't know which systems to prioritize and so they land up doing nothing. But think about this, do you really want to take someone through how to do something ten times when once would suffice?

Reason #4 - Confusion

Another reason why systems don't happen is because people don't know how to manage a system. They know they need it, but they have no idea how to implement it and so it doesn't get done. That's why I'm going to show you how to create a system.

Do You Want to Grow Your Business Rapidly?

Then you need to market it. But not just any marketing will do. In my new 1-Page Marketing Plan Course, I show you the exact techniques I've used to start, grow, and exit several multi-million dollar businesses, so you can too.

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Four reasons why you want systems and processes in your business

It’s a sad situation when a business owner goes to sell their business and finds out after putting in many years of hard work, that their business is worthless.

It’s not so much that the organization itself is worthless, it’s that they ARE the business and without them there is no real business to sell.

In cases like this, they can’t sell it for any kind of reasonable sum beyond the value of their stock and maybe a small, nominal amount for “goodwill.”

There are numerous benefits to implementing systems in your business. Here are some of the most important.

1. It builds a valuable asset.

It’s nice if your business gives you a great cash flow to fund your lifestyle. But wouldn’t it be fabulous if one day when you decided it was time, you could sell your business and have the biggest payday of your life?

You can only do this if you build the value of the business. And that can only happen if it's a system that can continue running without you. Yes, you need marketing assets, but systems are where the money is made.

In this article, I explore 10 of the best marketing assets. Check it out.

2. Leverage and scalability.

Systems give your business the ability to expand. You can replicate your business in other geographic areas. You can do this yourself or through franchising or licensing the rights to your business system. Many fortunes have been made this way.

3. Consistency.

Consistency is one of the keys to delivering an excellent customer experience. You may not like the food at McDonald’s but wherever you go they deliver a consistent experience.

4. Lower labor costs.

Systems mean you don’t have to waste time and effort re-inventing the wheel each time. This improves your efficiency and reduces your labor costs.

How to systemize your business

The reason we have systems set up is that we have a series of steps to produce a consistent outcome. It might be documented via a video, a checklist, or a step-by-step process.

When we think about business systems, you want to think of your business as one big system where the goal is to have your business as a series of systems working independently from you.

So you are outside of the business and there are different components to your business. There are sales and marketing, and maybe you’ve got HR and finance.

Just visualize your organization as one big business with all these subsystems within it.

Underneath each of these departments, the goal is to identify the 20% of the systems that deliver 80% of the result for the business.

There’s probably a handful of systems that are really driving the result. Think about how to identify them and how to create an easy way to extract and systemize what’s already happening. This allows you to remove key person dependency.

By capturing what your team does, we can make it possible for other team members to come in and take over, if need be.

Your business is dependent on your sub systems. If you have an unhealthy sales department, it’s going to drag the rest of your business down. So you really want to think about your business holistically.

Turn systemizing your business into a game

Now I want you to think about translating this into a game. On the top you’ll have your departments listed and down on the right side you will have tasks.

Trigger tasks are those where something is triggered. Maybe a client makes a purchase and that’s the trigger to fire off a series of activities. There might be other things that happen on a daily, monthly, quarterly or annual basis as well.

You can go through each department and think about the task and build a map of what systems drive your business, applying the 80/20 principle to identify the key ones.

This becomes a game and you can color code it. Once you’ve got the game in place, it makes it much easier for your team to play it with the idea that you want to turn everything into a green color.

This is a simple setup to create on a spreadsheet. Figure out which are the triggered tasks and which are done daily, monthly, quarterly and annual.

Getting started with business systems

The next thing to think about is where to start. People can get overwhelmed as there are many different options. There’s a start point and end point for each different task.

Some tasks have different decision points and different ways to get to that outcome. When you first create a system, think of the most probable outcome for that type of system and just document that. That helps to simplify what you are documenting and you’ll find that anytime there is an exception, that’s usually when it goes to a senior team member.

When new team members are on board, they will follow these simple systems. You are getting the team involved and understand that the systems will evolve over time.

A lot of people have a picture in their head that a system will create a lot of work for them. But if we simplify it and say it will evolve over time, it will be much easier.

Creating your system

Think about who on your team enjoys systems and processes.

Systemization is a two person job. There's the person who knows how to do the task, and the person who helps to extract, document and make sure it’s in the right place.

The business owner, typically speaking, is the worst person to create the systems and processes. As a business owner you don’t have to love creating it, but you have to love what it will do for your business.

Create a section in your productivity tool for systems, policies and training creation. You might be doing training, and oftentimes the knowledge that’s uncovered in that meeting is forgotten. The key is to figure out a way to go from idea/video to creating the documentation.

Create a job request. You'll want to identify:

• Who has the knowledge
• Who will document it
• What type of system it is
• What is it about
• Link to the recording of the task getting done
• Link to any additional documentation
• Determine where it will get saved
• What sort of task is it
• Whether there an associated Asana task

Review your initial spreadsheet. Assign each task to the correct team member. Add a specific due date with very clear documentation on how it’s done. Then set the process in motion.

Download our FREE SYSTEMS TEMPLATE here.

Develop a culture that loves systems

It's crucial that you get buy in from you team when it comes to systems.

While a business system can help set the tone of the company culture just having the system documented won't miraculously make everything work.

You need to encourage your team to review the system before going to their supervisor. Only if they can't resolve an issue should they then come to you.

This starts at the recruitment level. You want to implant these ideas from day one, that will let them know that’s how you do things at your company.

How detailed should a process be?

It really depends on what the task is and who's executing it.

Some tasks, such as issuing an invoice or setting up a one-click automation in your CRM would need to be very detailed.

Tasks that give an overview of a system can be more high level. Systems that lend themselves to the high level approach would be something like the delivery of your product or service.

When it comes to the delivery, maybe it’s very complex. If you get that feeling that you have to go granular and you don’t know where to start, that’s the trigger for you to keep it at a high level.

Do you need a business system's champion?

It is easier to build a business system when you have a team, but if it’s just you, it can be done.

• Start by identifying what systems you need to create.
• Then record videos whenever you perform task.
• Organized them in a systems folder.
• Once you can hire a VA, gave them a copy of Systemology and access to your systems folder.  
• Get the VA to watch all of your videos and document them.

Here's what will happen. Your VA will realize they can take over certain tasks, as they learn how it's done. When you are small, that’s a great stepping stone.

Then you can copy business systems and repeat the process. That's how you build an effective business system, increase your capacity, client retention, and revenue.

Ask yourself, "Why does your business exist?"

Let me ask you a question. If you went overseas for six months leaving your business behind, would it be in better or worse shape when you come back?

Would you even have a business left?

If you answered negatively to either of these questions, then it’s likely you don’t have a business. Rather, you ARE the business.

Many small businesses, especially sole operators, make the mistake of not thinking about systems. After all, the business is small and the founder or founders perform all roles.

Unfortunately, this thought processes dooms them to staying small and remaining a prisoner in their business.

They often find themselves in a catch 22 situation. They have no time to work on the business because they're too busy working in the business.

They can’t get away from the business because they haven’t developed documented systems and processes.

So they’re stuck in a business that's become a self-made prison.

Don’t get me wrong, they may be financially successful. Their business may be thriving with a loyal base of customers. But the problem is they are stuck – shackled to their business.

If they were to leave or get sick for an extended period of time, their business would cease to exist.

Effective business systems provide freedom. So ask yourself, why does your business exist?

Level up your business

Remember, the problem about not having systems is that all the “know how” of the business is stuck in a silo between their entrepreneurs' ears.

The only way out is to make time to create and document these business systems.

Thankfully this daunting process is not that difficult when we break it into chunks. Start with building your marketing plan. Get your messaging right. Then review which systems you need to level up your business.

In our next article, we’ll start this process and go through some of the practical first steps of creating documented business systems.

If you’re in business or planning to start a business, then this might be some of the most important information you’ll ever read. There's a bottleneck in your business. And it's likely to be YOU!

Every business owner struggles with delegation. You built this business from the ground up. But your inability to let go is turning you into a bottleneck.

You know that implementing systems in your business is vital – in a business sense it’s what separates the men from the boys.

It’s what’s going to give you speed, scalability, and leverage. Without systems, you’re putting a lid on the growth of your business and turning it into a prison for yourself.

But there's a process to building systems in you’re business.

Even if you’re not looking to get out of your business immediately, the day will come when you need to take time off, want to go onto another venture, employ more staff or even sell your business.

When the time comes you’ll be thankful you followed this advice.

Step 1: Think Ten Times Bigger

Your job as an entrepreneur is to be an innovator and a builder of systems. Even if you are a sole operator right now, it’s important to think long-term and think big.

The first part of the process is to think of your business as being ten times the size it currently is. If that were the case, what roles would exist?

For example, would you have someone taking care of the bookkeeping, someone else in shipping, another person in sales, a marketing person, etc.

You get the idea.

If you’re a sole operator or a small business, it’s not a problem if you currently perform all or most of the roles in your business. But it is a problem if you currently HAVE TO perform all the roles in your business.

If you are indispensable, you are a bottleneck and the business will only move as fast as you can.

Step 2: Define the Roles In Your Business

Now we need to start looking at each role in the business. When I say "role," I don’t mean person.

For example, in a smaller business, the same person might be both on reception and doing the bookkeeping. Even though one person does both of these roles they are still two separate roles and if the business were larger these two roles would be performed by different people.

In an even larger business, a single role might be broken up even further. For example, there might be a separate bookkeeper for accounts payable and accounts receivable. Once you have identified all the different roles in your business, you can start defining what tasks each role performs.

For example what are all the tasks we expect the person performing the bookkeeping role to do? The tasks may include:

• Invoicing customers
• Bank reconciliation
• Follow up unpaid invoices
• Entering supplier invoices

Now once we have identified all the roles within the business and defined what tasks each role does. We now need to document exactly how each task should be performed.

Step 3: Become a Creator of Checklists

One of the best tools you can use in building business systems is checklists. These are easy to create, follow, and track.

Once you’ve created a list of all the tasks performed in your business, you are ready to start documenting exactly how these tasks are performed.

A simplified example for the task “Follow up unpaid invoices,” could look something like:

• Run account receivable report
• For any invoices that are 7-13 days overdue, send a friendly reminder
• For any invoices that are 14-27 days overdue, call the customer to remind them to pay
• Forward any invoices that are over 27 days overdue to our debt collection agency

See how we’ve broken the task down into small easy-to-follow steps?

Now granted the above is a simplistic example for illustration purposes.

In fact, some of these steps include subtasks which would also need to be documented – for example how do you run an accounts receivable report?

So to recap – it’s essentially a three step process:

1. Identify all of the roles in your business
2. Define what tasks each role performs
3. Create checklists for properly completing these tasks

Now if you wanted to delegate or outsource a task, it’s going to be so much easier to hand the person a step-by-step process rather than just giving them ad-hoc training and watching over them constantly to make sure they do it right.

Why Systems Matter

Once the system is in place, scaling your business becomes super easy – just add people.

Once you see the awesome power of systems in your business you’ll never go back to the old way of doing things working all the time and wondering why you got into business.

As you can see, this process is a way of getting the systems you already have in place documented. Currently all these systems are stored in your head and accessible only to you – at least until we come up with a way to read minds.

Documenting these business systems will be the only way to easily scale your business and let it run without you.

If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy our article, Marketing Your Business 101. It covers everything you need to start marketing your small business, get leads and convert them to customers. Check it out now.

Don’t forget to share it on social media.

Setting price on your products or services is one of the weightiest decisions you'll make in your business. It will touch every part of your business, from the financials to how you are perceived in the marketplace.

So why do so many business owners get their pricing strategy wrong?

Because you're allowing your own bias to dictate how you price your products or services. I'm going to show you the right way to set pricing.

What to consider when setting your pricing strategy?

Too many small business owners pay little attention to the psychology and marketing potential of price. More often than not, business owners set prices based on what their competitors charge.

So they'll set their prices slightly lower than the market leader in their industry. Or they'll take the cost price and add what feels like an acceptable margin.

Both of these are good starting points. But if you're not thinking about the marketing or psychological implications of price, you're likely leaving vast sums of money on the table.

Don't let your own bias influence how you set your prices

If you’ve been raised to buy the cheapest version always, that will rub off on your prospect.

How many sales have you blown because of your own bias?

A lot of business owners do this. They think I'd never pay that much for a course or a consulting session. So why would someone else?

The truth is, plenty of people would. Don’t let your own bias get in the way of a big stash of cash. Price can be elastic. Make sure you’re not underselling yourself.

Do You Want to Grow Your Business Rapidly?

Then you need to market it. But not just any marketing will do. In my new 1-Page Marketing Plan Course, I show you the exact techniques I've used to start, grow, and exit several multi-million dollar businesses, so you can too.

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Pricing for businesses: avoid too many or too few options

Regardless of industry, most products or services offer multiple flavors or variants of the primary offering.

Henry Ford famously offered his customers the Model T "in any color that he wants so long as it is black."

While it may seem backward by today's expectations of infinite choice and expressions of individuality through ever-increasing personalization, the great industrialist brings up an issue relevant to all entrepreneurs.

How much choice should we offer?

Conventional wisdom would have you believe the more choice you offer, the more sales you'll make. Wrong!

A famous study by a professor of business at Columbia University illustrates this point well.

In a California gourmet market, Professor Iyengar and her research assistants set up a booth of samples of jam.

Every few hours, they switched between a selection of 24 flavors of jam to only six flavors.

• On average, customers tasted two jam flavors, regardless of the assortment size.
• 60% of customers were drawn to the large assortment, while only 40% stopped by the small one.
• 30% of the people who sampled from the small assortment decided to buy.
• Only 3% of those confronted with the full selection purchased a jar.

Their findings: offering too much choice can prevent sales.

The psychology behind this finding is that people get caught like a deer in the headlights. Fear of making a suboptimal choice prevents them from making any choice.

6 types of pricing strategies

It's really important that you find a winning pricing strategy for your business. I've listed three of my favorite pricing strategies which I've used in my business and my client's businesses.

1. The Standard/Premium Pricing Strategy

If you look at Apple and its wildly successful products, you’ll see they are usually offered in only two or three variations each.

This seems to be the happy medium between too few options and the brain overload caused by too many options.

Along these lines, a pricing strategy that I’ve seen work very well is offering a “standard” and “premium” variation of a service or product.

The “premium” version is priced at about 50% above the “standard” but offers twice or more value than the “standard” variation.

When using this strategy, it’s essential to ensure that you genuinely offer much more value with the “premium” than the “standard.”

This strategy works exceptionally well in cases where the incremental cost of delivering the “premium” is relatively low because the price differential ends up as pure profit on your bottom line.

2. The Unlimited Pricing Strategy

Most people are extremely risk-averse. They fear being stung by unexpected charges whether this is related to data usage, medical costs or consulting fees.

If you can remove this risk for them, you greatly increase the opportunity for a sale.

An excellent strategy for removing this risk is to offer an “unlimited” variation of your product or service at a fixed price.

For example, an IT company could offer unlimited technical support for a fixed monthly fee, a restaurant could offer unlimited beverage refills, and so on.

While many business owners fear that abuse of an unlimited option will send them broke, this can easily be remedied in your terms and conditions which would allow fair use but would stop or limit abuse.

Especially when you are selling something that needs to be consumed in a particular time frame, the risk of offering an unlimited option is very low.

Looking at your average transaction value over time and working with the law of averages can give you a very accurate idea of what it will cost you to offer an unlimited option.

People tend to overestimate how much they'll use a product or service when they are at the point of purchase – my ab workout machine is a testament to this!

So offering an unlimited option helps you capitalize on this and removes any perceived risk of overage charges.

3. The Ultra High Ticket Item Pricing Strategy

In every market, a small percentage of the population wants to buy “the best” variant of product in its class.

The indicator most often used by consumers as to what is “the best” is price.

Some consumers will pay 10, 20, or even 100 times the price of other functionally similar products, like Rolls Royce car or private jet travel.

While you might not sell these high-ticket products every day, if you don’t offer them among your regular product mix, you are leaving money on the table.

These ultra-high ticket items can

• make up a huge percentage of your net profit even if you only sell a small number of units.
• help you attract a more affluent customer who shops based on prestige, service, and convenience rather than price.
• make the other variations in your product range look much more reasonably priced by comparison.

4. The Price Skimming Strategy

Skim pricing isn't necessarily a strategy that small businesses would employ or one I'd recommend you adopt.

Price skimming is best for attracting early adopters and generating a great deal of profit in a short term.

5. The Penetration Pricing Strategy

I'm sure you've seen this before. Penetration pricing is something I've used myself. Often when you're launching a new product, you'll set the price of your product or service quite low until it gains traction.

For example, when I launched my course it was still under production. I used the early launch to get invaluable feedback from customers and improve it.

While I now sell the course for $497, it launched at $397.

Startups often use penetration pricing to entice customers to switch brands.

6. The Competitive Pricing Strategy

Earlier in this article, I mentioned a competitive pricing strategy. It's the act of strategically pricing your products and services based on competitor prices rather than business costs or target margins.

The problem with this strategy is there's always someone who'll price their products and services cheaper than you.

So really it's a losing strategy.

Winning pricing strategy: 10 top tips for pricing your products or services

1. To determine pricing, start with the product cost and the desired margin, building in room for discounts.
2. Understand what features of your offering are most important to your client. Do these elements make or break a sale? Or are they nice features to have?
3. Keep pricing as simple and transparent as possible.
4. Price products just under a round dollar amount (for example, The 1PMP Course is $497).
5. Make the value of the offer seem higher than the asking price. (For example, noting the normal price of individual items in a package or stating the average gains for past customers.)
6. Create a "most popular" middle-priced item as an anchor.
7. Research competitor pricing.
8. Don't enter into pricing wars - no one in your industry will win.
9. If possible, test higher and lower price points to estimate volume vs. profit margin.
10. Sending or publishing a list of features leaves the prospect guessing what the benefits are. Focus on communicating the benefits to the prospect and help them to understand what type of product is best for their profile. (For example, Personal, Small Business, and Enterprise software products.)

How to display price online

If you run an eCommerce business or sell online, it's crucial that you display prices in such a way that prospects can easily segment themselves.

Here are my top tips:

Pricing Tip 1: Make it easy for your customer to identify the best option for them.

Sounds simple enough, and yet, so many businesses get this wrong.

If you’re presenting a pricing plan choose a good headline and include a short summary that segments your customers according to their needs.

In the example above, we mention exactly who the package is designed for and what it costs. So there's no chance for confusion.

Pricing Tip 2: Add a clear call to action.

Tell your customers what they need to do next. Don’t make them guess.

It could be an apply now, book a call, or buy now button. Really it depends on what is the next logical step.

Pricing Tip 3: Give them the option to choose between monthly and annual billing.

Look, if you give me a 20% discount on the annual price of a service, and I've got the available cash, why would I choose monthly billing?

• I'm saving money.
• Plus, I don't need to worry about this cost until next year.

Now, not all your customers think like me or can afford to invest in annual billing. So always give them options. But some can so give them the option.

Pricing Tip 4: Use a table

Can your customers see what is included and excluded from each plan at a quick glance.

For example, if they want to compare premium with economy they need to see the added value they get.

I’ve found a table is best for comparative analysis. The problem is it can be difficult to view on mobile. Really, it works best on a desktop.

Resist the urge to discount price

When the market you operate in is highly competitive, there is a strong urge to discount your prices. This strategy needs to be used with extreme caution, because of the pressure it puts on your margins and profit.

Unless you have a very specific loss leader strategy whereby you try to entice a customer based on price and then upsell or cross-sell then try to avoid discounting.

A better option than discounting is to increase the value of your offering. Bundling in bonuses, increasing quantities, or adding peripheral services can be of genuine value to your customer but cost you very little to do.

Regardless of which pricing strategies you implement, it is important to continually test and measure.

Consumers are bags of emotion and are not driven purely by rational motivations.

Make setting price a central part of your overall marketing strategy.

In our previous article, we talked about persistence being the most important trait of successful entrepreneurs.

However while persistence is vital, it alone is not enough - you need a methodology for business and personal success, and in summary here it is:

• Decide
• Do
• Measure

Rinse and repeat.

This is a simple and reliable methodology, however, it takes resolve and persistence to follow through consistently. Let's briefly discuss each of these aspects.

Do You Want to Grow Your Business Rapidly?

Then you need to market it. But not just any marketing will do. In my new 1-Page Marketing Plan Course, I show you the exact techniques I've used to start, grow, and exit several multi-million dollar businesses, so you can too.

Tell Me More

The Cost Of Indecision

People often fail to count the cost of decisions they make, however even more common and costly are the decisions that are not made. A common misconception is that by putting off a decision, no price has to be paid.

The thinking is that as long a decision has not been made - a mistake can't be made either. The truth, however, is that every single decision or indecision has a price.

In the case of indecision, you still pay the price later, but with interest on top and without any of the benefit along the way.

Decisions give you clarity. Clarity gives you focus. Focus gives you results. Make the decisions in every major area of your life; health decisions, financial decisions, spiritual decisions, relationship decisions, and so on. Settle these critical issues early and manage them daily. Count the cost of your decisions and then get busy paying the price. Putting it off only makes it far more costly in the long run.

Why Easy (But Important) Things Don't Get Done

Once a decision has been made we need to walk the walk and get things done, however, it's rarely that simple.

A man suffers from obesity, diabetes, and eventually dies from a heart attack. Doctors say he could have prevented this by walking around the block for twenty minutes a day. Why didn’t he do it? Sounds easy right? Twenty minutes a day to save ill health and a heart attack?

It turns out that the things that are easy to do are also easy not to do. Neglecting easy (but important) tasks can be absolutely disastrous and tragic. It’s easy to be faked out because, for most of these, the timeframe between cause and effect is long, so there is no perceived urgency.

Take a long view of the important things and don't let yourself be faked out just because of the temporal difference between cause and effect.

Take Massive Action

Lack of information is not our problem - we have masses of good, up-to-the-minute information. In fact, we have such an avalanche that there is a term for it – information overload. If information was the only key to success, then librarians would be the most successful people in the world.

Information needs to be transformed into education. However, we also know that education is not the end of the process. Action is the active ingredient in the success formula. It needs to be preceded with information and education but without massive action, all the information and education in the world is moot.

Resolve to take some action on every single one of your goals daily, even if you think it's small or insignificant. It's the development of this long-term habit that is significant, rather than the actual action you take.

Numbers Tell Us The Whole Story

Want to improve your results? Simple. Just improve your numbers. Income, weight, sales conversion rate, number of books read in your field – all of these have numbers associated with them. Put a post-it note on your fridge with whatever numbers are most important to you. Then measure and work on these daily.

We don’t need a big long complex story when measuring results. Just give us your numbers, because numbers tell us the whole story. Start to improve your numbers in one area and you will notice something unexpected; your numbers in other unrelated areas will start to improve. How did that happen? Success breeds success. Measure regularly and work on your numbers daily.

Having A Healthy View Of The Past

The way we deal with past experiences is absolutely crucial to our future success. This is especially so with past negative experiences. The past, if you let it, can beat you up, put fear into you and prevent you from reaching your true potential.

Missed opportunities, incorrect execution, false assumptions, and disappointment are some of the issues from the past we need to deal with – but how? Ignore them? Just think positive? We know that doesn’t really work as it remains there lurking in the subconscious, still affecting today’s actions and tomorrow’s success.

The healthiest way to view past negative experiences is as a teacher. Education always comes at a price so don’t fail to let life teach you. If you fail to learn the lesson, it will just come back again and again and the price will continue to increase. Don’t pay twice or more for the same lesson. If your mistake cost you money or a failed business or a health issue – learn the lesson but do not let it beat you up. View the past as a teacher.

This three-step methodology for business and personal success is reliable and time-tested, yet most of the time people never even get past the very first step.

The exciting thing is that once you’ve made your critical decisions, the other steps flow naturally. Following this process will give your life purpose and a feeling of control over your destiny.

As an entrepreneur, sometimes it’s easy to get into the trap of focusing on making money rather than on delivering value.

Making money and delivering value are often confused because they often go together.

It’s important to remember that as entrepreneurs we get paid for bringing value to the market.

Sure it takes time to deliver value but here’s the catch – as entrepreneurs we don’t get paid for time. We only get paid for value.

If we deliver a huge amount of value to the marketplace, we get a huge payday.

If we flop, we make a loss.

That’s a risk most people aren’t willing to take. They want to get paid per hour worked.

They want to avoid loss at all costs. Making gain to them is a nice-to-have but their real objective is pain avoidance.

If nothing else that’s probably the one thing that distinguishes entrepreneurs from others – Entrepreneurs play to win. Most other people play not to lose.‍

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Bringing Value To The Market

The money we make as entrepreneurs is an automatic side effect of bringing value to the market.

If our focus is on bringing value to the market, this will stop us from making all kinds of foolish mistakes. We’ll treat customers with the long-term in mind rather than just making a quick buck.

The products we create or the services we deliver will not be half-baked. Focusing on the cause (value) rather than the effect (making money) will lead to much greater long-term success.

The more times we deliver value (i.e., get a customer), the more we get paid.

Don't Get Distracted By “Playing Business”

“Playing business” is when you do things that LOOK like you’re “busy” – but that aren’t producing the result that you want – which is getting customers.

Some examples of this include getting your business card perfect, tweaking the colors on your website, and checking your email and voicemail constantly. These are examples of “playing business.”

Instead of playing business, you must DO business.

Winning in business requires a “trick” that you must learn to do.

The trick involves continually bringing your focus back to the ONLY activities that deliver value.

These activities are innovation (aka creating products) and marketing.

Doing Business Is About Getting Customers

We don’t create products and do marketing just to do them.

Each of these activities is actually about an even more important activity: GETTING CUSTOMERS.

When you get customers, it means that you have sold something. It means that you have delivered enough value that someone is willing to pay you for it.

The “trick” of bringing your focus back to products and marketing is actually about getting you to continually do the things that bring you MORE CUSTOMERS.

The battle you must fight every day is a battle with distraction, interruption and “playing business.”

If you allow yourself to be distracted from your work to get customers, your business WILL FAIL!

What commonalities are we distracted by? Things that are more fun, more urgent or things that we think we’re supposed to be doing.

We are wired with a rationalization mechanism that rationalizes all the things that we do when we play business.

There are really only a few activities which you need to do every day to get customers, but you need to do them well instead of playing business.

Your view of time affects everything you do in your business.

For the entrepreneur, time is NOT money. Value is money. Time is just one of the inputs it takes to deliver value to the market.

What is an elevator pitch and is it something you should care about?

Absolutely. A good elevator pitch can be the difference between you getting a job or signing a new customer.

Unfortunately, the 30 seconds that follows "What do you do?" is one of the most commonly wasted marketing opportunities.

The retort is almost always self-focused, unclear and often nonsensical.

This is where many people reply with the most high sounding title they can get away with, as they feel the inquirer’s judgment of their worth will depend on the answer.

“I’m a waste management technician,” says the janitor.

While it’s true many shallow people judge a person’s worth by their job title or line of business, there’s a much better way to respond to this question. A way that doesn’t require you to raid a thesaurus in order to inflate or obfuscate what you really do.

As a business owner, being able to succinctly convey what problem you solve is a real art, especially if you are in a business that is complex.

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What Is An Elevator Pitch?

An elevator pitch is a succinct, well-rehearsed summary of your business and it’s value proposition. It should be delivered in the time span of an elevator ride, so roughly 30-90 seconds.

The elevator pitch is a powerful opportunity to convey your marketing message on a regular basis and in many different settings.

So at networking events, on Zoom calls, in the about section of your LinkedIn profile.

“What do you do?” is the perfect queue to deliver your “elevator pitch.”

Obviously you don’t want to come across as a pushy, obnoxious salesperson, so it’s important to structure your elevator pitch properly.

Need help crafting your elevator pitch. Check out these tips for writing better copy.

Pitching Your Elevator Speech - Why Most Fail

The problem with most elevator pitches is the same problem as overinflated job titles. It leaves the recipient confused or thinking “what a douchebag,” rather than the intended effect of impressing them.

I once asked a lady what she did for a living to which she replied, “I’m a senior event builder.” None the wiser about what she did, I continued probing until I finally came to understand that she arranges seating for concerts and large events in stadiums.

Bad marketing is highly product and self-focused.

Good marketing, especially direct response marketing is always customer and problem/solution focused.

And that’s exactly how we want our elevator pitch to be. We want to be remembered for what problem we solve rather than for some impressive but incomprehensible title or business.

When do you pitch your elevator speech?

You want to get comfortable with pitching yourself. So I'd encourage you to use your elevator pitch in any of these scenarios.

As a business owner, you might use your pitch when engaging with leads on LinkedIn, or networking at an industry event, even on your company website.

An effective elevator pitch can help you close a deal. For example, say you're selling a course, but your prospect is worried about the cost. You want to demonstrate the value your course offers. So while it might be $497, they could potentially reap their investment within the first three months. Everything thereafter is pure profit.

As a job hunter, you could use your pitch on your resume, during a job interview, or on your LinkedIn profile. Many organizations and recruiters now use LinkedIn to hunt for new employees. By clearly conveying why you're the best fit for their organization you could receive job offers without having to put any effort into the process.

A Good Elevator Pitch Structure

While this is an oversimplification, good marketing takes the structure of:

1. Problem
2. Solution
3. Proof

Your elevator pitch should be no different.

So how do you effectively communicate these three components in the space of 30 or so seconds?

3 Helpful Elevator Pitch Examples

The best formula I’ve found to date is:

You know [problem]? Well what we do is [solution]. In fact [proof].

Here’s a three strong elevator pitch examples:

Example 1: Insurance Sales

“You know how most people rarely review their insurance coverage when their circumstances change?

Well, what I do is help people have peace of mind by ensuring their insurance cover always matches their current circumstances.

In fact, just last week a client of mine was robbed, but he was able to recover the full cost of the items he’d lost because his insurance coverage was up to date."

Example 2: Electrical Engineering

“You know when there are power outages that bring down critical systems in large businesses?

Well, what I do is install backup power systems for companies that rely on having a continual supply of power for their operations.

In fact, I installed the system at XYZ Bank which has resulted in them having 100% uptime since the system was installed."

Example 3: Website Development

“You know how most company websites are out of date?

Well, what I do is install software that makes it easy for people to update their own websites, without the need to pay a web designer each time.

In fact, I installed the software for one of my clients recently and they saved $2,000 a year in web development costs."

This gives you a reliable formula to craft your elevator pitch while being customer/problem focused rather you/product focused.

My Best Elevator Pitch Tips

• Keep it short and succinct. So often my clients will send their best attempt at an elevator pitch, and it's always too long. Remember, no more than three sentences.
• Be clear. Don't assume that your audience understands what you're talking about. So avoid jargon-fueled language.
• Use persuasive language. Think of this as a sales pitch. What major achievements have you earned over your career? What could you say that would excite the person you're speaking to. Numbers are always compelling so don't be scared to throw in an impressive achievement. It could be you saved a company a million dollars in tax or you wrote an article that was featured in Forbes magazine.
• Write it down and practice it until you can say it in your sleep. Seems obvious, and yet, I've listened to more than one professional stumble through their elevator speech. This is not the time to ramble.
• Use the formula: problem, solution, proof.

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To many, personal development is all about motivation.

Its true motivation, which feeds action, is a large part of the success equation. However, the tired old “motivational speaker” cliché has run its course.

Genuine personal development begins with education, not motivation. If you take an idiot and motivate him, all you have is a motivated idiot!

Why is Education Important?

Education, especially self-education, is absolutely key to making progress, achieving success, and reaching your most daring goals.

It’s sad when people end their education after they leave school. They have effectively put a lid on their potential. With the accelerating pace of change, Jim Rohn’s classic quote has never been truer; “Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.”

Formal Education vs Self Education

Formal education trains you for a specific vocation, which is important, however, you can go through years of formal education in the form of school, college, etc. without ever learning even the basics needed to achieve a measure of business success.

A chiropractor can spend years in formal education learning how to whack and crack bad backs. But formal education fails to teach the basics of how to use marketing to get new customers or how to systemize a business so that he is able to leverage his time and expand.

This is the first reason why self-education is so valuable - it helps you fill in the gaps in your knowledge so that you are not caught off guard.

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The Answers Have Changed

The rapid rate of change is the other reason why self-education is so important. Many businesses suffer because they fail to anticipate changes in their industry. In other words, the way they currently do things is now out of date and they have not kept up with the latest trends, techniques, or market forces.

It's said that Albert Einstein was once giving an exam paper to a class. It turned out that it was the exact same exam he had given them the previous year. His teaching assistant, alarmed at what he saw and thinking it to be the result of the professor's absent-mindedness, alerted Einstein.

"Excuse me, sir," said the shy assistant, not quite sure how to tell the great man about his blunder.

"Yes?" said Einstein.

"Um, eh, it's about the test you just handed out." Einstein waited patiently.

"I'm not sure if you realize it, but this is the same test you gave out last year. In fact, it's identical."

Einstein paused to think for a moment, then said, "Yes, it is the same test but the answers have changed."

Just as the answers in physics change as new discoveries are made, so too do the answers in your business and in your industry. If you're still doing things in your business the same way you were doing them years ago, it's likely your business is, or will soon be, going backwards.

It's vital to be constantly improving your skills and understanding the new ways to run and market your business.

What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You

Ever heard that silly phrase “what you don’t know won’t hurt you”? Let's correct it!

The book you didn’t read could cost you a fortune. The seminar you didn’t attend could cost you your business. The advice you didn’t seek could cost you a relationship.

Don't be fooled; what you don’t know CAN hurt you.

Nothing will bring success easier and faster than continual self-education and the application of it in the form of action. The most successful people I know are all lifelong students and implementers. Self-education and action are an unbeatable formula for success.

One of the most disturbing trends I have seen over the past few years is people allowing technology to dominate their lives, waste their time, and allow themselves to effectively develop a learned attention deficit disorder.

Email has a special place in this discussion. People are treating email as a real-time communications tool, reacting to the email “ting” or visual cue with an almost Pavlovian response.

While email is a wonderful tool, it has become an absolute menace to productivity for at least two reasons: volume and incorrect usage.

Many email programs check for new messages every minute. That means in a 9-to-5 workday, you are giving people 480 opportunities to interrupt you—not including other methods of contact such as instant messaging, telephone calls, and chatty co-workers asking if you “have a minute.”

Here are two practical tips for getting this monster under control.

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‍‍1. Keep Your Email Program Closed By Default

Open your email program only a few designated times each day - preferably only once or twice per day if that's possible.

This will accomplish two things. Firstly and most importantly, it will allow you to have more focused and uninterrupted concentration on your most important tasks.

Secondly, it will reduce volume because people expecting immediate responses will stop sending you email and when they do it will be more thorough and to the point, as they know they will only hear back from you once or twice a day at most.

Don’t worry, if something is truly urgent, they will pick up the phone and call you (have you ever heard of someone emailing for an ambulance?).

2. Adopt A Productivity System

The simple fact is that most people don’t really know how to use their email.

Some treat it as a to-do list system, while others treat it as an archive for all of their communications. The simple fact is that your email is just an electronic version of your physical mailbox or in-tray.

What do you do when you collect mail from your mailbox? Remove it! You don’t store it there or leave it in the mailbox as a reminder of what to do later. You bring it in and (hopefully) handle it.

Your email handling process should be part of your overall productivity system. I personally use and highly recommend David Allen’s excellent Getting Things Done (GTD) system.

However, go with whatever system works for you. The important thing is to have a system which gives you clear rules on how to handle growing volumes of incoming information, whether this is in the form of email or anything else.