Seek and Destroy- The Secret to Your Success

If you are like me you likely have problems seeing your service or product in a big picture way. You likely see what you do or sell to be just that.

You need to seek and destroy the obstacles blocking you from seeing the truth about what you sell. How do you do that?

You have likely heard the 'know thy customer' adage. You know, find out all you can about your customers so you can not only communicate your offerings better, you can find out what else they might want. Trust me they want to buy more stuff, you need to find out what. How should you start?

You can start out by creating the stupidly terrifying and mega easy questionnaire. Most of us fear asking for answers. Half of it is that we feel we are imposing and the other half is we will get answers, some may give us a boo-boo on our ego.

Let me ask you this; let's say you just bought my ebook and I sent you a questionnaire with questions on how I can help to bring you more customers. Would that piss you off?

If you just cleaned a persons carpet and you sent them a little survey or directed them to a website to help them in the future, would they mind? heck no

Developing the right survey

I will give you an example of a survey but you must be made clear on a few things first. People lie. They may fib a bit on their income or on their true feeling about your thingy. To diffuse this it is wise to do blind surveys so they will be more likely to answer it. Don't ask for their names or any other identifying information.

Make a survey through an online service like surveymonkey or have them fill out self mailer cards if you deal face to face.

You are after only one thing, the truth

Questionnaire example:

Thank you for trying ________________. It means a lot to us to make sure you
got everything you wanted from our ____________

If you would please take 3 or 4 minutes to answer these questions it would help us to serve
you better in the future. Thank you very much.

This is an anonymous survey so no name or email is needed

Please tell me the main reason you purchased our (service/product)

_______________________________________________

Please rate on a scale of 1-5 (five being best) why you made the purchase

__ The offer was too good to refuse

__ What was said in the ad

__ Our company name or reputation (or if you are online, your personal name)

__ Timing- You have been thinking about it for a while and there we were

How did you find out about us/me?

__________________________

On a scale of 1-5 how would you rate your experience with us/me?

___

What is it you liked best?

______________________________

What could be improved?

______________________________


Would you tell your friends or family about us/me?

_______________________________

Will you buy from us/me again? If not please explain why

_______________________________

Did you consider buying from someone else before us/me?

____

If so, who was it?

________________________________

Why did you choose my/our product or service over them?

_____________________________

What is your household income?

__ $30,000-50,000

__ $51,000-70,000

__ $71,000-100,000

__ $100,000+

How old are you?

___

Are you single or married?

____

Do you have children?

____

What magazines, newspapers or social websites do you enjoy?

__________________________

Do you use Twitter?

__

Final question: Do you feel like your purchase was money well spent?

__

Thank you very much for your time and please feel free to contact me
personally with any questions or comments.

Bob Crabtree
XYZ Inc
333-444-3333
bob@XYZ.com


The reason for doing a survey is reasons that can turn your business into a very
successful business. No matter who writes your ads nobody can create a successful
ad without knowing really well who you are dealing with. If you keep sending out
ads or creating sales pages that speak to everyone you will not make it.

Next week we take this a step further. Because all of the answers will not be the same
you will need to segment your list into categories of customers.

This will help you a lot with selling more and wasting less on advertising.

Until then, go get some


Paul

Feeling Business Pressure? Stay Strong, Be Smart

I know you are feeling the pressure from running your own business. Everyone is.

In these uncertain times it is important to stay focused. Your business success or failure does not depend on your next ad (I hope), it depends on your plan.

What is your plan for the future?

I have a very motivated train of thought. It is very hard for me to stay focused on one thing. I find that nothing has helped me more than planning. I don't mean a business plan or a 10 year forcast, I mean a daily plan.

Look at your situation right now. What are the things you are lacking to get your business running smoothly? It could be getting your marketing in order to making sure your taxes are in order.

You need to first write down what you need to do. We all procrastinate and that level depends on how we internalize the issue. The more you have built up the matter in your mind dictates on when and if it ever gets done.

Instead of waking up and going through the day doing things you don't mind doing, creat an itinary for the day. You may be running your business for 10 hours but you need to spend some time working on your business.

After you look at what needs to be done, start scheduling those things on your daily schedule. If you need to get your website optimized you sit and complete that task. I am not saying that you need to learn SEO or how to create a website. You figure out how you will take care of the issue and have a completion date.

You may do work on it yourself or you may research who can do it for you. Get the time or costs calculated and schedule that in your planner.

The important thing is to DO IT!

When I write out my schedule it looks something like this:

Tuesday

6am-7am : Create postcard for Joe

8am-10:30am: Work on my website

You get the idea. If I do not write these down for some reason it all becomes optional. I am not kidding, I will pick what I want to do instead of what I have to do.

For some reason when I have it scheduled I see it as a task to be completed and it has less 'think time'. I don't really build up a lot of bs emotions like I do when I just go through the day doing whatever.

Guess what else, use this to get things done for YOU. Maybe you want to learn a new language or get better at something... SCHEDULE THAT TIME TOO!

I absolutely promise you that you will get more done doing this. This is SO valuable to your future. You will make more money and waste less of your life.

Owning your own business is toughest because it takes massive discipline. We don't usually hold our time accountable, we're the boss.

You absolutely need to teach yourself this technique. All the marketing in the world will not help you if everything else is half-assed.

You had the balls to start a business now use your brains to grow it.

Go get some

Paul

Vampires: Your Ads Are Sucking the Life Outta Me

You likely own a business. You likely do your own advertising. You are likely driving me nuts with your crap ads. What is a crap ad you ask?

A crap ad is a sales letter, postcard, website, flyer, banner towed around by a plane or any other device shoved in my face without meaning.

You spend money to bother me and all I get to see is crap.

Do you know why you bug me? Because you don't spit out anything I care about. I have posted in my blogs many times about not generalizing and realizing what your service is not what I want to buy, the result is.

Do you listen? Why do I still get business owners who read this still sending me scratchy toilet paper? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?

(deep breath) It's okay, you can still change your blasted ways quite easily. I will take you by the hand and walk you through a basic concept.

Let's say I hire you to do whatever it is you do. You show up and do it very well. Now tell me what the customer is seeing/thinking/feeling after you're gone.

Have you ever really thought about what happens once you are out of the picture? There is no doubt you focus on things like doing a great job or having integrity and pride with what you left behind... that is not what they are feeling. They likely are not thinking about you at all if you did well.

They are in the moment. They are enjoying the fact that their carpets don't smell like dog. They feel more comfortable financially after meeting with an adviser. They love that their lawn is plush and greener than their neighbors.

They are not thinking about you, but that is good. What they will do is connect that plethora of positive emotion to what you did for them. Those are what you use in your ads. Take the focus completely off of your company.

I am not saying don't mention any specifics about your company but you need to get them emotionally involved with your ad first. Get them to want to know who you are.

When your ad shows up NOBODY wants it. They were not getting ready to contact someone offering your service on the way to the mailbox. Simply announcing you and your service will waste massive amounts of possible revenue over time.

You know the processes of your business very well and that is why you normally focus your ads on that. Nobody cares at first about how you do whatever you do, they care about what they get from what you do.

You need to convey that IMMEDIATELY. 80% of people read the top of an ad without reading the rest. If that headline, caption or image does not connect, they are gone.

If you are not quite sure how people feel about what you do, find out! ASK THEM. I know it is a strange concept but if we don't take in new information we don't learn.

Simply ask your customer/client what they liked about your service. Try to get as many as possible and then start creating your ads using those insights as the theme.

Keep in mind if you are using images; make sure they convey the same emotional connection as the rest of the ad. If you do a home service don't plaster a picture of a home as that is meaningless. If they feel it is meaningless what happens? Yep, they're gone.

Once you start to know your customers this process becomes easy and you make more money.

Here is a final mental image I wish to leave you with-

You are asleep in your coffin in cold dark cellar. You wake to hear creaking boards but know that no one dare challenge you. The creaking stops and total silence once again puts you at peace.

WHOOSH! the casket flings open to see me standing over you. You mutter "Paul Van Helsing!" and I yell "TO HELL WITH YOU IRRITATING DEVIL! I'LL FINALLY BE RID OF YOU ONCE AND FOR ALL!"

Before you can react my stake centers over your heart, with a massive smash of my mallet I drive it into you.

Go get some


Paul