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Simplifying concepts and processes is an art form, one which pays huge dividends. By reducing or removing complexity, you create clarity and focus.

Almost no other field has so much nonsense and complexity associated with it as selling does.

There’s no real “trick” to it. We don’t need any voodoo or magic to sell our products and services. When you strip the sales process down to its core, it basically comes down to this simple 3 step formula:

• Here’s what I’ve got
• Here’s what it will do for you
• Here’s what I want you to do next

The point of all your sales and marketing efforts should be to communicate these three points in the clearest and most compelling way possible to your chosen target market.

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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‍‍It's Not About You

Many people never get past step 1 in their sales process. They try to shout the loudest about themselves and their product or service just like vendors in a crowded market:

“We’ve got tomatoes, we’ve got tomatoes,” “We’ve got the best tomatoes, we’ve got the best tomatoes,” “We’ve got the cheapest tomatoes, we’ve got the cheapest tomatoes.”

You get the idea.

Shouting loud to get attention is a strategy, but in a crowded market where everyone is shouting about their wares, it’s difficult and expensive to get noticed.

Telling people who you are and what you’ve got is the first step. But what your prospects want to know most is what it’s going to do for THEM.

Communicating this clearly and concisely is an art form and a vital step in the sales process.

Paint a picture of the result they’ll get from the product or service you offer and how it will take them from pain to pleasure.

Include a Call to Action

It’s incredible the number of salespeople and marketers who stop at step two and never actually ask for the sale. Often they are uncomfortable about what feels like being pushy.

I certainly don’t advocate doing the hard sell but there’s a fundamental truth – people want to be led. And part of your role as a salesperson or trusted advisor is to provide that leadership.

A call to action provides your prospect with a logical final step and answers the question, “so what now?”

By omitting a call to action, you’re setting up an easy sale for your competitor after you’ve done the hard work of educating your prospect about what you offer and what it will do for them. Ouch.

Make sure your sales presentations and your marketing copy have a strong call to action.

Have a Good Offer - It's Vital

Some people think marketing is a substitute for a good offer. And sure you can fool a few people with tricky marketing or sales puffery, but you’ll have mediocre success in the long run.

Properly structuring your offer is a critical success factor. This is often where most beginners fall over. They don’t structure their offer properly and then they don’t market to the right people.

They’re either selling the wrong stuff altogether, or they’re putting the right stuff in front of the wrong people, or the wrong stuff in front of the right people.

For an offer to work effectively, there needs to be a well thought out match between message and market.

Keeping this simple three-step process in mind will help you maximize the yield of your selling effort and identify any holes in your current sales or marketing material.

Happy selling!

Do you struggle with shiny object syndrome?

Like a magpie drawn to shiny objects, you’re easily attracted and distracted by every new and exciting marketing opportunity.

You’d be crazy not to join TikTok. With over 2.5 billion in consumer spending in 2021, it’s a no-brainer. Right? SEO - gotta have it. LinkedIn - why not. Podcasting - never hurts. PPC - sounds like a plan.

But everyone knows that success requires focused attention. When you get caught up with each new fad and shiny object you lose your focus and become overwhelmed. And overwhelm leads to paralysis by analysis and inaction. Or worse, mediocrity.

So what’s the answer?

The simple answer is you need to unplug and get back to basics. But first, let’s look at what is shiny object syndrome?

What Is Shiny Object Syndrome?

Let me ask you this, are you easily dazzled by new trends and media opportunities? Do you pride yourself on being the first to adopt a new digital tactic? Or do you tend to add to your digital marketing arsenal because some ‘expert’ said you should? That’s shiny object syndrome.

It’s chasing the next big tactic, trend or ‘shiny object’ in online marketing without questioning why.

• Why would this be good for your business?
• Is it going to help you reach your customers more effectively?
• Are your customers even active on these digital outlets?

Sadly, it happens to good business owners worldwide. Every day a startup, entrepreneur or small business owner makes the mistake of signing up for another shiny object.

First, it was Facebook, then Twitter. Nowadays, its Instagram and TikTok.

You don’t need to be active on every digital platform. It won’t help you remain relevant. It’ll just cost you time and money better spent elsewhere.

How To Know You Suffer From Shiny Object Syndrome

So what are the signs that you might be addicted to chasing shiny objects?

1. You've got hundreds of business ideas, many of which you're trying to launch simultaneously.
2. You get excited by chasing a new project without seeing it to completion. I'm particularly bad at this. It's why I hired a team. They'll look at the viability of an idea before hitting play.
3. You're always chasing the next tactic or next course, next guru.
4. You never stop to check and see if your next business project (shiny object) fits your strategy.

Here's how to stop chasing shiny objects.

How To Overcome Shiny Object Syndrome

How do you stop the madness? Overcoming shiny object syndrome comes down to knowing your target audience. It’s not about being able to rattle off their age, location, and how many kids they have.

It’s knowing their habits, which social media channels they’re active on, and what influences their purchasing decisions.

For example, we’ve been plugging away at Instagram for a little over 18 months now with very little success. So we did an experiment. We sent my subscriber list an email promoting my Facebook page and one promoting the Instagram one.

Facebook received over 1,000 new followers from that email. Instagram got less than 150. So I know I’m wasting my time posting on Instagram.

So before trying to be the first to utilize a new platform think about this:

• What is the goal? Why am I investing time into this platform?
• What am I employing it to do?
• Who am I trying to attract?
• What is my message?
• What do I want to get out of my followers?

Often it comes down to time management. Unless you have a team, as entrepreneurs, you don’t have time to be active on or create unique content for the different platforms. And you’re certainly not going to thrive.

Here’s what I suggest you do instead:

Step 1: Do Your Research

Speak to your customers. This could be a survey, via email or jumping on to your help desk. Ask if they’re active on a particular social media channel.

Step 2: Check out your competitors

If they’re doing well and aren’t using a particular marketing tactic, chances are you shouldn’t either.

Step 3: Establish Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) Upfront

What numbers do you need to track? Then monitor the performance of these media. Use Google Analytics to track where your leads are coming from. You’ll quickly see if what you’re doing is working.

But remember, if you haven’t mapped out your marketing plan, you won't get the results you want or need. That’s how you overcome shiny object syndrome.

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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Forget Shiny Tactics, Focus on Media You Own

As entrepreneurs, it’s easy to look at a competitor’s business which is thriving and blame your town or industry for your lack of success.

The grass on the other side seems greener and it’s seductive. But is it?

If there is anyone else in your town, industry, or type of business that is doing well, it’s unlikely that moving to greener pastures will solve your problems.

You are most likely the problem.

Russell Conwell’s classic speech Acres of Diamonds includes the anecdote of a man who wanted to find diamonds so badly that he sold his property and went off in a futile search for them. Meanwhile, the new owner of his home discovered that a rich diamond mine was located right there on the property that he had sold.

The message is to dig in your backyard. You have a home advantage. You know the terrain, what works, and what doesn’t. You have contacts and know-how.

You don’t need to travel to a distant land to be successful. Chances are, if you haven’t had success in your backyard, you'd only replicate the same results elsewhere.

And you’re not alone. Many entrepreneurs experience shiny object syndrome chasing. So they chase shiny objects time and time again hoping for high rewards.

The truth is, you can have the best talent and the right motivation, but if your business audience isn't mining a particular media (shiny object), your marketing will always fail.

How To Thrive

According to a quote by Anthony Greenbank in The Book of Survival, “To live through an impossible situation, you don’t need the reflexes of a Grand Prix driver, the muscles of a Hercules, or the mind of an Einstein. You simply need to know what to do."

Knowing what to do will eliminate 99% of your procrastination.

Procrastination is not laziness. I know for a fact that some of the most hardworking people suffer from procrastination.

Many times procrastination is a problem associated with not having a clear idea of what to do next. When you’re not clear on exactly what to do next and how to do it, your brain turns to mush and procrastination ensues.

Procrastination is your brain’s way of giving you something you know how to do as substitute, e.g., check your email, comment on Facebook, have a coffee, etc.

I know of only one way to achieve anything:

1. Learn
2. Do

Complex stuff eh?

Here’s the thing. You’ll never achieve what you want to do perfectly on the first go. If by some miracle you do, it’s just pure luck. Just as learning to ride a bike involves falling and losing balance a few times, so does achieving anything worthwhile.

Waiting until it’s all perfect or until you have all the information is a losing strategy. Remember 80% out the door is better than 100% in the drawer.

Strategy vs Shiny Object

A strategy is a principle, it’s simple and timeless. A shiny object is a technique or tactic. It’s subject to constant change.

As entrepreneurs, you want to learn principles first and then add techniques.

Techniques are the place that most shiny new objects and distractions come from. While it’s true you do need techniques to accomplish your goals, if you first haven’t learned the principles, the techniques will only distract you.

Take selling as an example. You can use the Internet, social media, mobile marketing, etc. to sell your products – these are all modern techniques.

However, the reasons people buy are the same as they were two thousand years ago and will be the same in two thousand years from now. These are principles that are timeless.

If you start with techniques, you’ll waste a lot of time and money and get distracted as the next new thing comes along.

Getting back to basics, truly understanding where you’re going and why you’re going there is the key to clarity and getting unstuck.

If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy our article, What is Direct Response Marketing? As a small business owner, it’s the smarter way to market your business.

Impulses, we all have them. But how often do you give in to yours? Generally there's a reason why.

Someone gave you an offer that was too good to pass up. A brand happened to serve you the right content at the right time, and if you didn't take advantage of it then, chances are you'd not get another opportunity like it.

That's direct response marketing. It's a type of marketing strategy that compels a high-quality prospect to take immediate action and opt into the advertiser’s offer.

• It educates instead of selling.
• It costs very little to produce.
• And the results are measurable, making it ideal for small businesses.

Here’s everything you need to implement an effective direct response marketing campaign—what it is, why it works, and which businesses will benefit from it. Click to jump ahead:

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Marketing Your Small Business - Why Use Direct Response?

The purpose of direct response marketing is to evoke an immediate response in your target audience. The people most likely to buy your product or service.

It uses emotive copy that connects with your prospect on a deeper more meaningful level, and a clear call to action compelling them to take action. It could be

• Opting into your email list (you'll need a CRM. I prefer Ontraport but ActiveCampaign is also a great one.)
• Picking up the phone and calling for more information
• Placing an order
• Filling in a form
• Visiting your website
• Trialing your product
• Downloading cornerstone content (a framework, free book, report, how-to guide)
• Taking your survey.

The point is you capture their details then and there. Unlike traditional advertising, with direct response, you don't have to rely on the prospect to remember to reach out to your business.

So why does this strategy benefit your business?

What are the Benefits of Response Marketing?

Direct response marketing is the ultimate marketing strategy for small business owners because you can't afford to invest in branding.

Branding is expensive. We're talking multimillion-dollar marketing campaigns. For most small businesses, that's probably your entire budget for the next five years.

You need leads fast. And as Hubspot's Not Another State of Marketing report finds that 70% of small businesses struggle with lead generation, direct response delivers the goods.

Here are six benefits of direct response marketing.

1. Lead generation. But not just any lead. High-value leads. People who just need a little personalization and reassurance they're making the right decision, and bam, they're sold.
2. A sense of urgency. Provided your offer is compelling, most prospects will throw caution to the wind and take action. The result — is a faster response rate. No sitting around waiting for the phone to ring.
3. Cost-savings. Because your marketing campaign is targeted, your upfront advertising costs are cheaper. You're not trying to reach a broad audience. So you'll spend less on unqualified leads.
4. It’s trackable. Whether you use direct marketing, social media, Google Ads, or landing pages, direct response is trackable. You can see exactly how many impressions your content received and converted. All you need to do is continue the conversation.
5. It opens a direct line of conversation with high-priority leads. Every single one of those people who opt-in due to your direct response ad are warm leads. They've given you permission to email them. Your goal is to deliver value, build a relationship and move them along your sales funnel until they're ready to buy.
6. It delivers measurable results. You can track how much money you invested into your campaign, how many leads you received, which channels performed well, and how many people converted. TV advertising and radio spots can't give you the same granular insight. They can't give you definitive results.

So what media can you use to implement your direct response marketing campaign?

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6 Effective Channels For Successful Direct Response Marketing

There are several response marketing channels that you can use to run an effective direct response advertising campaign. Ideally, you want to use a mix of online and offline marketing techniques.

Here are six examples of direct response campaigns.

1. Direct Marketing

Direct mail or snail mail is an excellent lead generation tactic. Think about. How many emails do you get from brands each day? Your inbox is bombarded with spammy marketing. It's easy to delete.

Now direct mail is exciting. It's something different that can help to build a positive brand image and start a conversation with potential customers.

You can use direct mail to implement a referral program. For example, include a voucher with a clear CTA for prospects. It could be a discount on their next purchase when they refer a friend. So using direct mail as part of your direct marketing strategy is a powerful example of reaching your target audience through response marketing.

Learn how to ask for a referral using direct mail here.

2. Email Marketing

Another great way to reach potential customers is by creating an email direct response campaign.

For example, you could create a limited time offer that lets subscribers access a course or event for free. You'd include a CTA button in your email that directs your prospects to a landing page where they can sign up for a free trial.

This type of marketing works because it delivers value before a sale. And let's be honest, customers love getting free stuff.

3. Digital Marketing

All of your direct response marketing campaigns need to include digital marketing tactics for example search engine marketing (SEM), banner advertising, and video marketing.

You could create a direct response campaign that answers the questions your audience are typing into Google. For example, if you know your customers frequently ask how to build a remote team you could create a blog that details exactly how to find the right talent, what tools they'll need, pricing strategies, and much more.

In the blog, you'd include a clear CTA that directs a customer to book a free hour consult. So make sure it's part of your direct response marketing strategy.

Here's another example. It earns Google's Featured Snippet. Not only is the blog helping it's ideal target audience, but the backlinks from these podcasts can improve their domain ranking and drive more traffic. So it's a win-win situation.

4. Social Media Marketing

Pretty much every business uses social media and most have a Facebook account. So why not use Facebook ads to target potential customers.

For example, you could create a direct response Facebook ad that offers your audience a free nutritional plan to help them feel good, look great, and drop inches quickly.

All they need to do is like your page and refer a friend.

It's direct, includes a clear CTA, drives prospects to take action, builds your audience and if you nurture new prospects you'll get more sales and brand evangelists. So don't discount social media as a successful direct response marketing tactic.

5. TV, Podcasting, And Radio

We've all seen those television commercials where if you buy now they'll throw in a bunch of extra add-ons. This type of response marketing has been used for years. But with podcasting, your brand now has a captured audience.

You can choose a highly specific podcast show and tailor your direct response marketing campaigns to their customers' unique needs. So make sure to include broadcast in your marketing campaign.

So these response marketing strategies work to build brand awareness, generate qualified leads, make more sales, and grow your customer base. Now that you know how to reach your audience, let's break down the essentials of direct response advertising.

6. Referral Programs

While you can't bank on word-of-mouth marketing to grow your business, it is one of the most effective direct response marketing strategies.

Why? Because people trust referrals from friends and family.

‍Referral programs build brand awareness and increase customer loyalty.

Let's use Fiverr's referral program as an example. For customers that refer a friend, the friend receives a 10% discount off their first purchase, and you could earn up to $100 as well.

So for job hunters, it's a great opportunity to make additional money.

What Is Direct Response Advertising?

Most brand advertising focus on name recognition. Direct response advertising, in comparison, focus on acquiring leads. The purpose of a direct response advert is to evoke an immediate response.

While every direct response advertisement includes a call-to-action, the point is not to sell.

It’s about getting people who are interested in what you do to raise their hand and say I want to know more. These leads go into a follow-up database (or sales funnel). From here it’s up to you to deliver value and position yourself as an authority. To gain their trust and build a relationship.

If you use direct response advertising to drive leads to landing pages, it's vital you've set up your sales funnel for each of your buyer personas. To learn more about how to master sales funnels click here.

Now let's take a look at the characteristics of direct response advertising.

8 Characteristics Of A Direct Response Advert

So what makes a successful direct response advertisement? There are eight key characteristics or techniques. They are:

1. Direct response marketing is trackable

When someone responds, you know which ad and which media generated the response.

This is in direct contrast to mass media or “brand” marketing. No one will ever know what ad compelled you to buy that can of Coke.

What’s more pressing is you track your ads. A survey by Blue Corona Media revealed less than 30% of small businesses use website analytics or call tracking. 18% admit to not tracking anything.

What gets measured, gets managed. You can’t improve your numbers if you don’t track and measure the results.

2. Direct response is measurable

With direct response marketing, you know which ads received a response and how many sales you got from each one. As a result, you can measure the effectiveness of each ad.

Now you can drop or change ads that aren't performing.

So measuring, managing and improving your key marketing numbers will impact the result.

3. Direct response ads use compelling headlines & sales copy

Direct response marketing has a compelling message of strong interest to your chosen prospects.

It uses attention-grabbing headlines with persuasive sales copy that is “salesmanship in print.”

Often the ad looks more like an editorial than an advertisement (hence making it at least three times more likely to get read).

Use the 7-Step Messaging Template to create marketing messages that connect with and convert your customers.

4. Direct response targets a specific audience or niche

It's served to prospects within specific verticals, geographic zones, or niche markets. The ad aims to appeal to a narrow target market. Your goal should be to become a big fish in a small pond.

If you need help identifying your niche audience follow this 8-step process.

5. Direct response marketing makes a specific offer

Usually, the ad makes a specific value-packed offer. It does not sell. Instead, the ad aims to get the prospect to take the next action, such as requesting a free report.

The offer focuses on the prospect rather than on the advertiser. It talks about the prospect’s interests, desires, fears, and frustrations.

By contrast, branding has a one size fits all marketing message. It also focuses on the advertiser.

6. Direct response ads demand a response

A direct response advert always has a “call to action.” It compels the prospect to do something specific.

It also includes a means of response and “capture” of these responses.

Interested, high probability prospects have easy ways to respond. It could be via a regular phone number, a free recorded message line, a website, a fax back form, a reply card or coupons.

When the prospect responds, it captures the person’s contact information. You can now contact them whenever you choose.

7. Direct response delivers a Multi-step, short-term follow-up

In exchange for capturing the prospect’s details, it offers valuable education and information on the prospect’s problem.

It includes a second “irresistible offer,” which ties into whatever next step you want them to take. For example, this could be calling to schedule an appointment or coming into the showroom or store.

Then it makes a series of follow-up “touches” via different media such as mail, e-mail, fax, and cellphone. Often there is a time or quantity limit on the offer.

8. Maintenance follow-up of unconverted leads

There are many reasons why people don't respond immediately. They may not have the money, or they may not need your services now.

There is value in this bank of slow-to-mature prospects. Make sure they continue hearing from you once to several times a month.

For example, let’s look at this LinkedIn Marketing Solutions (LMS) ad.

• As a promoted post on LinkedIn, LMS can track how many times the ad was served to prospects and who clicked on it.
• It uses an enticing headline and compelling copy. It shares the stories of six successful lead generation campaigns. If you want to drive real business results, you'll read it.
• It makes a specific offer. It will show you how to build a sophisticated lead generation strategy on LinkedIn.
• It includes a call-to-action. Learn more.
• On clicking the link you can read the article. A pop-up asks if you’d like to subscribe to the blog. You have to input your email address to subscribe to the blog. See their multi-step, follow-up form below.

Why Response Marketing Is Money At A Discount

Direct response marketing is an ethical way of selling. It’s focused on the specific problems of the prospect. And aims to solve these problems with education and particular solutions. It is also the only real way for a small business to reach the consciousness of a prospect affordably.

Your marketing system must deliver profitable results. You have to know what a customer is worth to you. Then you need to decide what you are reasonably willing to invest in acquiring one. Only then should you build systems that work within that limit.

Direct response marketing is accountable. Because it's focused on ROI, it's the responsible way to run marketing for a small business.

If I sold $10 bills for $2 each, how many would you buy?

The name of the game with direct response marketing is ‘money at a discount,’ e.g., $2 into advertising to get $10 out in the way of profits from sales. When you turn your ads into direct response ads, they become lead generating tools rather than name recognition tools.

Small Business Marketing Resources

I wrote the 1-Page Marketing Plan because I’d been that business owner struggling to figure out how to win at the marketing game.

I’d spent thousands of dollars on bad advertising that didn’t bring in leads or make a sale. It took me ten years to crack marketing my business, and that was ten years too long.

I wanted to give business owners a blueprint for success. It would be something they could use to build a strategic marketing plan and propel their business growth.

The book is an implementation breakthrough. It will show you how to create and implement a sophisticated direct response marketing plan for your business.

Use these resources to develop a response marketing campaign that gets results.

If you want to learn how to write better, click here.

Get Started With Response Marketing

Whether you're a marketing agency, or a small business owner, you need to master direct response marketing. It's the best way to target online consumers and get them to take action. Use it correctly and you'll substantially increase conversions.

Plus, there's no risk when using direct response. Just make sure your campaign and marketing offer is compelling. Direct response won't work if you don't have a good product-to-market fit.

So get on the phone with your customer. Add a chatbot to your website and find out what your consumers' challenges are because that's how you'll craft direct response adverts and campaigns that get results.

Now that you know how to attract the right lead. You need to build a lead nurturing email campaign that moves them along the buyer's journey until they're ready to convert to a customer.

‍If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy our article on Building Business Systems. It will help you to skyrocket your sales, and attract investors.

As business owners, we want to have a very high probability of success when creating and launching a new product or service.

Product creation is expensive and risky. A flop hurts. If it’s big enough, it can even kill the business.

Despite this, the product release process by most businesses is haphazard at best. Often it looks something like this:

• They design a product or service they THINK their market will buy.
• Time, money, and resources were spent creating the product or service.
• They add marketing to try to convince people to buy the product they’ve created.

Many business owners fool themselves into thinking that if their product is excellent, the market will buy.

While “build it and they will come” makes a great movie plot, it’s a terrible business strategy. One which comes with a high degree of failure. History is littered with technically excellent products that failed. A few examples include Betamax, The Newton, and LaserDisc to name just a few.‍

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 Purpose Of A Good Product

Before launching a product or service, ask yourself, "When does a prospect find out how good my product or service is?"

The answer of course is – when they buy.

If they don’t buy, they’ll never know how good your products or services are. As Thomas Watson from IBM famously said: “Nothing happens until a sale is made.”

Therefore we need to clearly understand an important concept: a good product is a customer retention tool.

If we give customers a great product or service experience, they’ll buy more from us, they’ll refer other people to us, and build up the brand through positive word of mouth.

However, before customer retention, we need to think about customer acquisition, AKA marketing.

All the most successful entrepreneurs always start with marketing. Specifically, market testing and measuring.

Fail Cheap, Fail Often Prior To A Launch

If you want to successfully launch a product, you need to understand that the market doesn’t care about your preferences, tastes, or opinions.

Adding marketing after the fact and trying to convince people to buy what you already have is difficult and expensive.

As entrepreneurs we want to turn the tables in our favor and have a high degree of success from the beginning.

Instead of adding marketing after the product has already been created, we want to reverse the product creation process and start with market testing.

As entrepreneurs, we want to find a hungry market and give them exactly what they want. We want to shoot fish in a barrel.

We want to sell someone something they already desperately want rather than trying to convince them to buy something they are lukewarm on.

If you're going to launch a product, then the Internet is your friend. It's quick, easy, and cheap to test and measure demand.

The Internet helps us know with a high degree of certainty what kind of demand a product or service might have.

Google Adwords, the largest and most sophisticated pay-per-click (PPC) engine. It can help you test if your product or service idea is likely to fly or die within a few days. And for only a few hundred dollars – BEFORE you spend time and money on product creation.

To Launch A Product You Need To Test it First

Here’s how the product testing process works.

1. You set up a simple landing page which has a “Buy Now” button at the bottom.
2. If someone clicks the “Buy Now” button, you take them to a second page with pricing, shipping and basic contact fields to fill out. This could be an email address and phone number.
3. If the visitor fills these out and presses “continue with order,” you take them to a third page. It tells them the product is currently out of stock. Explain that you'll contact them as soon as you have it available.

Your entire goal is to test how many clicks you got to your landing page. Then you want to test how many of those clicks would have converted to sales had the product been available.

From this basic information, you can decide whether there is true demand. And also whether it's worthwhile investing in the product creation process.

Now you can kill any ideas that aren't converting and go ahead with a high probability of success on ideas that did convert well.

This way you can fail often and cheap rather than betting the farm and going down in a blaze of glory.

Before a product Launch Survey Your Customers

Some people aren’t comfortable with the type of real-world test mentioned above.

A softer alternative is to survey your customers to check for demand. But this has to be structured very carefully. Why?

Because people will often give positive feedback to a product idea but when asked to shell out their hard-earned cash, their positivity often turns into excuses.

Start Testing the Feasibility Of Your Product

So before you launch a product on the market perform a real-world test. It's a great way of testing for true demand.

Regardless, the point is to test and measure for demand BEFORE the investment in product creation.

This is one of the best ways to achieve a very high probability of success when releasing a new product and is the best-kept secret of successful entrepreneurs.

Do you want to learn how to build a business process that improves productivity and efficiency? We break down how to build a process here.

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.

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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.