welcome to stop my crisis i'm your host vivian caspar have you started a business yet are you thinking of starting one soon over eighty percent of people who start a small business unfortunately will fail unless they learn the techniques to help them become the one in five the one in five who succeed and become the small business owner who ends up employing many others we have a great guest with us here today she is an expert in helping small business owners succeed to not become the statistic done appraise a business and marketing strategist professional keynote speaker and trainer and published author she founded her company compass rose consulting in two thousand and three after over a twenty year career and not for profit management and against ration thank you so much for joining us here today because i'm very excited to share your knowledge with our audience well thank you i'm excited to be here what do you see is the number one problem that small business leaders face today well i think the biggest problem that i see coming into my business is people need more money which means more customers more leads they just they're hoarding they're struggling yes so what i've always heard is regardless of what your business is whether you're an attorney a c p a whether you're building bridges i don't care what your services and what if you're in turn to your doctor or a c if you don't have sales you don't have clients you don't have income you have an expensive hobby right right exactly yes i know your mission is to help small and small business failure you want it and small business failure definitely will to be in that twenty percent success ratio so this seems like one of your key is how do you do that what is the five step four million mentioned to me when we use a five step profit formula where we businesses look at the key areas to increase in profits so the that because the more transactions you have from one client one customer it's more effective is it more expensive to gain a new customer than get the same customer to buy more from you definitely definitely the other way to increase revenue is to increase your prices so higher prices and then to increase your profit margin so more profits so those are the five areas that we start working with people on and when we start looking at the numbers small changes in each of those areas can actually have a huge effect on the overall revenue of the business so if we start talking about number one more leads what are some easy tips you can give on that area well i see people doing a lot of things to generate leads especially with the internet right so everyone's got their website and they've got their social media going and they're doing doing a lot of activity but it doesn't result in leads and part of it is because they're using some tactics and they haven't put their full strategy together so they'll do a facebook post and it doesn't result in anything and they need to have that strategy put together so that the person comes to or realtors you know there's thousands of realtors so how do you stand out from that crowd and say you have to create your what we call a market dominating position and that's one of the are steps in putting together your strategic marketing plan is that market dominating position so that when people see your ad they go wow i need that so you just talk about realtors but a realtor is not self employed they have to work for a real estate broker so part of what you talk about isn't it also including salespeople that are told to be treated like their own little business so a realtor they might work for a broker but it's treated as their own business that's still count as to who you assist definitely definitely because there's things that realtors can do to make themselves stand out even from the other people in their brokerage so if i go to a realtor website and i look you know and there's twenty five fifty one hundred realtors there i'm picking from a little teeny picture when i look at that whole page and it's like which one do i pick to i pick that one to pick that one i mean i know out of a lot of real estate agents they even have their own website exactly they so have their own website don't rely upon the brokers website so it applies to small business owners and it applies to all commission sales people definitely great so in addition to more leads how do you get that to be more conversions into sales from those leads one of the things that we see happen when when we send people to our website is that we have this big website that has a lot of choices and we're hoping i call it hope marketing you know i hope that this is going to work and so instead of having a website that has a compelling offer on it and by that i mean it's something we have to look at the we have to get in the head of the people that we're trying to help right so what is it that they need what's the pain that they have and then my goal is to solve the pain right so i need to get in their head so if it's a real estate will stick with that they want to sell their house if i want to sell my house i w don't want to be on the market for six ten minute let me tell you have to clean your house to get ready for people to look at it oh yeah and it's stressful i've seen houses on the market for years so you know i owned houses could be on the market for a long time i heard the higher the price depends upon location the longer it stays in the market so that's just a very stressful process right so if i'm a realtor i want to have a compelling offer that lets people know i can sell your house fast so i'm going to send people to a website to download my my report on how i can prep your house to sell it fast and i'm going to create a headline that makes you know that i'm going to solve your pain sell your house fast and how i'm going to do that and by capturing that person's information i now have a chance to continue marketing and building a relationship because one of the things that happens is we expect people to be in a buying now mode and when we look at most buyers a lot of industries they're not in by now they're in research mode like i have back pain i'm going to look for a chiropractor i'm looking at all my options but i'm not buying that right now i'm like how do i solve the problem and who's the best person to solve it for me so you so you're capturing there from ation what type of information are you capturing don't you just want their name and email address all i want namely all address or even just e mail i want your name email phone i want all of that but if the best  get is your e mail then i know i can continue to engage with you that's your job that's your direct marketing campaign correct yes so the next step would be to have a drip campaign a follow up campaign so i see in a lot of different marketing tactics that people put their marketing out there and then they don't follow up on that marketing they say oh well that didn't work well but i hear that it's a believe it these six to eight or more touches in order to convert a lead to a it's a phone call an email a text some kind of a touch right it's not usually a one touch and you're done that's just luck or genius right well i mean there's some things where you're in a by now mode you know like if you're driving and you get a flat tire you've got to deal with that right you've got to do that right now but most things aren't necessarily in that by now mode but the way we market we expect people to call us calling is a high risk activity because i'm going to engage with you and the fear that i have as the caller is that you're going to try and sell me something and i don't want to be sold a plain want to buy not be sold to right they don't want to deal with the salesperson where they've got to like get out of that sales process or figure out how to get off the call and so by giving them something that's low risk like a free report where they can download it now i have an opportunity to continue building that relationship via email possibly a phone call if i got their phone number and get them to a place where they're ready to do business with me do you believe it's ok to text people as a form of a touch instead of just an e mail phone messages and the both ways males and stuff like that and they've got their e mail right on their phone now too so they're all good good tactics to get to people so i just thought texting might be more immediately seen because i don't know about you but i get at least thirty to fifty or more emails a day and you just simply can't look at them all and so all the people where i put my card into the exhibitors booths you know i'm now a lead to them right i know what that means so that means i'm getting that many more contact and e mails if you're going to do a trade show you need to have your whole process put together before you spend your money to be at the trade show spend your time have your giveaways like it's a big investment is an investment and i've gone to trade shows where i've handed my card to the person and said i want to do business with you and they never called wow you know so so like when we leave money on the table when we don't follow up with people yeah i think it's happened everyone i mean yeah if you go to networking events you can sitting down and talk to somebody but then if you talk to ten people and next thing you know you get back to the office and you did a day operations and you forget the follow up of your time right so i think a lot of value is in the you just gotta make sure you do your follow ups or don't do as many trade shows or don't do as many write working if you can't handle the quantity of follow ups right you know and that's why i love the drip campaign because once you set it up it's an automated campaign that's going out to the to the prospect gives them information about your services and can give them more information than you can say in your thirty second or sixty second elevator pitch even if you see them over and over they can see something that they say oh i didn't know she did that oh that's what i mean you see the same people and one more conversation like oh well i saw an e mail and i didn't know you did that you know that really is important and you have multiple so many competitors right now can do these campaigns so researching a good company to work with is very helpful yes definitely so no other thing you mention is about how to get more transactions after you've converted and gotten a new customer paying client right so how do you get additional transactions from someone well i would look at the services that or the products that the client has and figure out are there ways that we can up so or down s something else that the person hasn't bought yet so you know the mcdonald's is famous for do you want fries with that right so they're adding something on to your purchase and so they've increased the transaction and kind of bundled things together and so that's what we would kind of look at like how do we are there bundles are there packages that we could do you know so if somebody is coming in and they're buying a product are there things that we could offer to them down the road that are similar so a florist for example you know you buy roses for your significant other and whatever occasions say it's for valentine's day you know i could offer you a package where i'm going to you're going to pre order gifts for your significant other for the full year that's a great idea and then i'm going to set it up so that you're going to pay me you know based on what the gifts are that you've selected a monthly i'm going to bill your monthly so the spread out through the whole year and i'm going to deliver your gift on the birthday or mother's day or whatever the significant holidays are you know so if i increase that purchase of roses from roses to five gifts during the year like i just made significantly more money on that one customer and you're creating a residual sale and a lot of people don't mind doing a credit card when they know that they're going to be doing x y and z right and then and by the way it also establishes di poor by the way a lot of as you said it's mcdonald's people that still use the whole with fries at that but they don't stop and think that that's actually up sale and they're only if it used to it their wrists are used to receiving that information but i think a small business owner is almost it's like do you want the apple pie or that apple turnover thing that they have so they still do an up sell of something else because then what do you increase their sales previously right but do you have you seen that your clients are now a sense of undoing that in their lives and what do people of faith of well i think people are afraid of losing a customer because but the thing that we have to keep in mind is that what we're offering to a customer actually has value to that customer and so it's almost a service or it is a service to offer them that additional value and be open to the no you know but you're offering that and for a lot of customers they're going to appreciate that offer you know especially if it's something that they would go someplace else to have to buy right so no one answered they even now they're going to know convenience like i'm getting it from you i don't have to go all these other places and they really happy with you they're already interact with you that done business with you they're comfortable with you right and so it makes sense to them so don't be afraid to eliminate the fear and you'll just see more success right and i think that that's where they say that sometimes two years it's fear stands in people's way of our oath yes there is a big problem for a lot of people we definitely help with that fear and how do you overcome the fear overcome the objections you know there's the fear of making calls if you're in sales like picking up the phone and making that call and you know that can be challenging for people how do you do the things that are really going to make you money every day well i think keeping your mental state higher i mean right if you watch there's some great videos on you tube of very successful individuals and if you just look up on you tube inspirational videos on sales and that confidence boost will help you along with the money right i think inspirational videos any inspirational thing that you can do to increase your energy and your feeling and then if you get that note go right back to that inspirational stuff to you know and get back on the phone again i know the one who watches it before every bigger sales call they have to scheduled it helps them keep that mental state very high and peaked and their energy because people sense the energy they don't want to buy from someone who's a they want to buy something right right so the next one is you mentioned getting higher prices i think people are afraid to raise i was going to say here is fear again right down to it right the fear that oh my god they will stop buying for me fine price too high right but i think it's a respect thing that people don't i think people don't respect you enough if you're charging too low it's true and i was just doing a workshop the other day where we were talking about these things and one of the women said she raised her prices and her business increased while that's a great way to start off right so i think people are afraid that they're going to lose people and when we actually flush out the numbers of the number of customers that you would actually lose versus the amount of increased profit that you would have you can afford to lose customers and with that increase profit and still break even to where you were and then be better off and have you know for the ball game great right so like when you do the numbers it's actually beneficial to raise your prices and i agree also that it's a perception of value that's right people expect to pay more to get better value but i think they get suspicious if they're paying too little it might not be good but not exactly bill and worth it right i think it might even be better to offer a payment plan and have higher prices to make it affordable for someone because again you're raising the perceived value definitely definitely so you'd still extend it was a while ago it's a fear and you can do your price increase slowly gradual increases hot like test it out to five percent and then ten percent you know and but if you do that slow increment and you look at you know the overall benefit to your business it's significant because that price increase is profit rate because your expense hasn't increased and it didn't you mentioned before that you've encountered business owners who have been in business many years five ten years or longer who haven't increased their prices at all definitely and you can't afford to do that and you had to have had costs rise right i mean over the many years your cost must have increased so you then have shrunken your profit margin if you don't raise your prices to keep pace you know if you're increased costs you're doing a disservice to yourself and your family definitely and so it's one of those fears that you have to like battle through it in and tested out which goes to the last point you mention which is more profits right and so more profits is looking at the expenses like how do i increase my profit margin and decrease my expenses and so we look at some great strategies for helping come needs to do that and one of them is to use interns and i know that's a strategy that you've liked in your business too and in turns can do a wealth of things for your company and bring in actually help bring in more customers through the work that they're doing and lower your costs you know when i say unpaid interns what's really great is remember you're not taking advantage of the interns because i've actually come across a lot of people for example they want to be in business but only experience events so far is maybe waitressing or clerical work where no one's going to hire them to pay them to do something significantly more they don't have the expe know get into something if they don't have experience or you know but if they start off as an intern somebody now teaches them the ropes it might cost a little bit of time but now they've built up their resume right and it makes sense and that's why we have employed in our business here in turns because we're helping people also we give them opportunities defend testicle work experience we give them great reviews on when people call in for them to now progress to paid employment and i've done the same thing in my company where i panned interns in marketing programs at colleges and it's been fun for me to work with the professors and to help that student succeed in the course that they're taking and my company has benefited from what they've done for us what is besides that fantastic inturn schip program that we both utilize and the other suggestions on how someone can lower their profits and by the way i even heard large companies now i mean some of the large banks on wall street have encouraged some of their upper staff to work remotely so they could cut back on how much office buildings space they take up in their cost and along that right have you seen that employed definitely and i think it depends on the the business and what their actual expenses are you know what strategies can be used to lower those expenses you know and so it depends on their overall operation and  how you can cut back on those expenses i think it's now working remotely is the same thing as working from home it's a cell is more upscale it done now that they are large companies are now employing the same thing that people used to think is a negative right i think  lot more mainstream an acceptable so why shouldn't more small business owners employ the same thing that these huge fortune five hundred companies are now see the light that they're saving money on right and some of them are using the shared work spaces as well so instead of having you know a big office you know there's the co working spaces that for a lot of small businesses work really well i think is a good idea because you have conference room or access to conference room and meeting space and but you don't have the expense of your own office you know silex very professional exactly you know so that can be a great strategy depending on the business doesn't work for every business but depending on the type of business could be really effective well i think that some of these strategies are not just suggestions but i think all of these strategies should be looked at because if they're if someone is not investing into their business to move forward i myself have come across a lot of business owners were like well i've been doing x y z for these years and that's it i don't want to do anything else you've encountered these types of people right right and as a business coach you saying well how if they just do one or two or three should actually have shown me how people then can increase their businesses by thirty to fifty percent by just making tweaks changes correct definitely and the unfortunate part about the person that you're talking about is i've seen several of those people go out of business that because we're smart and they were johns if they've employed right because they were willing to make those tweaks or to focus on the things that can really bring in more money more customers more leads into their business now you hand told people through this process right it's not like here's a seminar go do it and figure it out correct i have a resource center where the we have all the strategies and training that people need and then i work with people one on one on the implementation of those strategies and how you put it into action for your particular company and business that's really important because of course somebody has to hear the information how it applies to them right now that it's generic and they have to then implement on their own accord because some people just aren't capable of doing that then they need a little bit of hand holding but if and if it's them and there's a huge trickle down effect so donna thank you so much because when you help a small business owner succeed it's not just about them and their families but so many of these small business owners have employees and they need to stay employed and do better and of course to grow and have oil points i agree like it affects it ripples out is how how i look at it a ripple effect yes definitely thank you so much and remember tift top professionals top pros of tiger woods and every major sports player in the arena and he's topped professors like even twenty robins have coaches w doesn't every small business owner or every entrepreneur looking to be in the business have a coach it's a very worthwhile investment into your business i personally throughout all the businesses i've ever owned i've always believed in coaches because we cannot do something we're going to flourish and become very large successes at all by oursel