There is one task that will determine if a business goes from idea on paper to profitable enterprise. Without it you’ll scrap and fight for existence, struggle one month to the next in order to pay all the bills and meet pay roll.
It is foundational to business success.
If you get it right your business can often go on for years very successfully. The drawback being that you never fully take advantage of the other opportunities this one skill generates for you. Success with it can blind you.
If you are halfway serious about marketing I bet you know what it is…
Drum-roll, for the uninitiated.
To be able to buy a customer, cost effectively.
The reason I say ‘buy’ is because you buy customers either by having salesmen on the ground pounding on the pavement or dialling for dollars (You either pay commissions or salaries or both). That is the real cost of a sale right there.
You pay for it in media and in follow up if you are a marketing driven business.
That cost of sale has to be absorbed either by being able to cover the cost in the first transaction or else by paying for it over multiple sales.
If you can’t affordably get customers in the numbers that you need, then your business is toast. However, when you do get it right then nothing can stop you growing your business to the size that you want.
If you haven’t already become proficient at getting customers, it is really hard to be able to generate referrals, you need existing customers to get referrals, you need customers to buy from you once, before you ever get a repeat purchase.
This is why we can’t help a business that is a start-up. To me a start-up is where you hammer out your customer acquisition system. Be it with brute force and a team of salesmen, be it with marketing. However you get there, you need to be getting customers and making initial sales before you’ll ever have a shot at a second sale.
That is your first challenge in business, getting customers. Once you are proficient at that then your next challenge is maximising their value to your business. That is where Newsletter Marketing Systems does its best work.