When I first started marketing my business online back in the late nineties the biggest problem was so few potential customers on the internet. Competition was not a problem so I found it very easy to reach those customers who did have an internet connection. Ten years on and the world’s population has flooded onto the internet, there are so many products and services available online they are all spoilt for choice. The market is huge and the competition is intense, which makes it very hard for the new entrant to internet business to know where to start. A recent comment from Dominic, one of my readers, on an earlier post said it all, “im tryin 2 start ma own business and would like 2 no the best way 2 go“.

Well, I started this website some time ago to try to help people like Dominic but now I’ve gone further. After much searching I have sourced a regular supply of Special Internet Marketing Reports. They cover everything from setting up an internet business, including the basic technical stuff, through affiliate marketing (i.e. selling other peoples’ products on commission), setting up a website, getting visitor traffic and building customer mailing lists.

At the time of writing there are 15 reports, each report currently sells for $19.95 as you will see from the website. However, to help out in this recession, we have a package special at the moment where you can get all 15 reports for only $67 (that’s less than $5 each!). What’s more, you also get a special discount coupon which enables you to get all future reports at a mere $5 each. There’s no obligation to buy more or to buy every month, it’s not a ‘book club’, just a way to make this information available at a price affordable to anyone.

You can get the special package of all reports here=>Special Reports Package.

Maybe someone will buy it for you for Christmas

The topic I was considering was how to find out what my customers would need next, a preliminary to product creation. Her enquiry gave me the blindingly obvious thought, why not just ask them! Why not just make a list of my best and most influential customers and ring them up and ask “what 3 things connected with telecoms would help you to grow or better manage your business right now?” Telecoms is my primary business as you probably already know.

Once I get a selection of typical responses from my customers, I can then look at how I might deliver what they have asked for. But better still, I can then contact prospective customers with the same question. Rather than take the usual telesales route of trying to pitch prospects on a particular service, I can ask them what they want with a fair idea of what their responses may be based on the results of my customer conversations.

Approaching prospective customers is a little trickier so a ’softly, softly’ approach is best. I would simply ask if they could spare a minute to give me their thoughts on what 3 things about their telecoms would most help their business to move forward in the present economy.

You see, when you ask other people their opinion and express an interest in their business, they open up and are happy to talk to you. The normal ’sales barriers’ come down leading to some very useful discussion, and what’s more – they will remember you as someone genuinely interested in their welfare not just as some salesman trying to make a buck.

So where does the ‘penny’ come in? Well, at current business phone rates (UK) that penny buys me a minutes worth of phone time, the very minute that I asked the prospect to spare me to give me their thoughts.

Of course most of them will talk for longer once they get started but by then I’ve turned a prospective customer in to a warm lead and a probable future customer.

“A penny for your thoughts“, a very inexpensive way to find out what the market will buy from you next!

Try it, let me know how you get on.

PS (shameless plug warning!) If you are a UK based business here’s where you can get your business calls at a penny a minute.

The classic is the ‘make loads of money overnight with no effort’ or the ‘everything is done for you’ approach. There is no such thing as ‘money for nothing’, I know – I’ve searched for years and years . In the internet world the latest game is to convince you that your own personal robot or software will do it all for you. An example is a recent comment from a reader on the Forum page about an investment trading robot.

No! Software won’t do it all for you, it may take a lot of tedious or routine work off your shoulders, but it won’t make the entrepreneurial decisions or take the key business actions that are essential to success.

There are shortcuts to success in business, but they come from your aquired knowledge and experience and working ’smart’, not from buying some ‘get rich quick’ scheme.

Way back in the dim and distant past I was introduced to the concept of working on my business instead of working in my business. This was quite a revelation and is actually the key difference between creating a job and building a business.

Working in your business means spending your time doing all the work involved in getting customers, providing them with the products or services you sell and doing all the admin stuff that goes with it all. This means that growth is limited by the time you have available. Even taking on staff to do some of the work can often involve you in more work training and managing the staff.

The magic formula for getting you as a business owner off this endless self-imposed treadmill is systems. The systems I have applied  to my business have given me time to plan strategically and, more important, given me more time for myself and family. In fact I now work only 3 days a week and yet the business keeps running just fine.

Setting up systems can take quite a bit of time initially, but will pay dividends for years to come. The first thing to do is to list all the jobs and tasks that need to be done on a day to day basis. Then for each task identify all the steps in the order they are carried out and the specific ‘how to do it’ process. Then write a detailed description or procedure for each task. The real trick is to document the procedure in such a way that anyone with the necessary skills could just walk into the business and take over that task with the minimum of training.

The next thing is to look at each task to see if it can be improved, streamlined or automated. Can the task be computerised or mechanised. Start by looking at what the end result of the task should look like and consider alternative means to the same end. Just because a task has always been done a particular way doesn’t mean that it is still the best way!

Think of it as producing, task by task, a complete operating manual for the business covering every area of the business.

Once the ‘operating manual’ is complete, look at who will carry out each task and what equipment, if any, is needed. Make use of check lists for each task to ensure quality control.

One of the most popular books on setting up small business systems was “The E-Myth” by Michael Gerber. That’s now out of print but was later replaced by “The E-Myth Revisited“.

Be Your Own Boss will still be my main site for business development advice and support but the new HQ will manage delivery of all products and services as well as memberships, subscriptions, accounting and my affiliate program. For anyone with diverse business interests who is finding it difficult to keep track, I can certainly recommend centralisation of core business services. This is going to make life so much easier, I would have done it earlier if I could have found the right software but now I have. I’ll give you more information on it as I become more familiar with it.

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