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Read Time: 4 minutes 30 seconds YOU BACK? How to Push Past Your Limits H ave you ever heard a quote that just hits you hard? Here’s one that got me: WHAT’S HOLDING “Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of the work you’re avoiding.”
July 2024
kids and making memories is one of the primary reasons I work hard. If you don’t have a mission and reason for getting up and working every day, it can be nearly impossible to push hard when you don’t have to. Many businesses stall for this very reason. In my experience, many people in masterminds or coaching groups don’t need the next lead generation idea, nor is there a major problem they can get help solving from outside the group. They are often stuck because they’re not clear on their mission and why. When the business was new, the entrepreneur dreamed of making $250,000 a year. Then, it jumped to a million dollars per year. They hit those numbers but now can’t seem to drive and push to the next level. This is super common, and I’ve been there multiple times over my career. In my experience, this is a situation where what got you here won’t get you there. What I mean is, if you used money, status, power, etc. as the motivating factor to get you where you are now, that same motivation won’t work nearly as well this time around. You also can’t use someone else’s motivation. For example, your spouse wants a yacht, and you love her, but you couldn’t care less about owning a yacht. That isn’t going to motivate you for long. When you hit this kind of plateau in your life and business, you have to dig deep and ask yourself what you really want. 🌟
Ouch! I feel called out because it’s 100% true. I have items on my ideas list or work I know I should put more time and effort into, yet I don’t. 😅 I was pondering this while on vacation with my kids. It always feels great to get called out for the work you’re not doing while on vacation.
On the bright side, it did give me time to consider why I wasn’t taking the actions I knew I should be. Personally, it came down to a clear sense of mission. Why should I do all this extra work? What is the benefit, and is it worth trading my time for? 🤔 That is also an interesting question to ponder while on vacation. Taking amazing trips with my
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One way to get the answer to that question is to describe in detail what a perfect day would look like to you. Be very detailed. Now, describe what a perfect week would look like. Then, consider what a perfect month and perfect quarter would look like. You can be less detailed on these two if you prefer. 📝 You’re going to have to be vulnerable with yourself. If you would prefer to play golf in the afternoons and be done working by noon, write it down. If you don’t want to work anymore, write that down as well. If you want a Lamborghini and fractional jet ownership, write that down. Don’t filter your answers. You can always modify exactly what you want later. 🚗✈️ Now, go through each item you wrote down and ask yourself why that motivates you. How will you feel or how will your life be better when you have this item?
How much more needs to be sold is where most people stop, and it’s a massive mistake. Start by looking at what you’re already doing. How can we get the most out of all we’ve got? Let’s assume you need 100 more customers to achieve your goals. If you have three lead generation sources and could optimize the traffic to get an average of 20 more leads from each, and that converts into two new customers, you’re now 6% of the way to your goal and likely haven’t spent a dime. 📊 How are you doing on lead nurture? Can you add a few more emails, another lead magnet, some phone calls? 📧📞 Don’t forget about current customers. Can we get them to upgrade their services or add a new product or service? Do they know all the products and services we sell? Do you think any of those existing customers would give you a referral? What do we need to do to make this happen? How much could these add to our goal of 100 new customers? Is there a manual process we can automate to cut expenses? Can we outsource part of the business operations or marketing and maintain at least equal or better quality than before at a lower cost? 🤖💡 How about a past customer reactivation campaign? Do you think some previous customers would want to come back? What kind of promotion can we run to win them back? 📨 How can we decrease customer cancellations? This is by no means an exhaustive list of ideas to give anyone a massive kick toward your goals and the life you actually want. Unless you’re a startup, it is very unlikely you should start with new traffic sources to push you toward your goals and dream life. Get the most you can from everything you already have first. Doing so is typically cheaper, faster, more profitable, and will also increase the resale value of your business when the time comes. 🏆 You have the template to get everything you’ve ever wanted. The only question is, are you going to do the work or continue avoiding it? 💪🛠️
Next, we need to be realistic about what it will take to make our dreams come true. For example, if you only want to work four hours a day, four days a week so you can golf, perfect. What has to happen in your life and business to achieve your goal? For example, who is going to do the work you’ve been doing? How much is that going to cost in terms of payroll and benefits? Will you need to purchase a country club membership as well? If so, how much extra do you need per year for that membership? Your own golf cart? Add that in as well. ⛳ Now that you know what will motivate you to work more and how much you’ll have to grow the business to achieve your goals, take those sales goals and break them down into how many new customers or more units need to be sold. 📈
–Shaun
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Little-Known Tactic That Top Businesses Use to Crush Their Competition! 💥
Read Time: 2 minutes 45 seconds
When you first start out in business, your primary focus is lead generation. If your business survives, you learn that you can fix many business problems with more leads. What you don’t learn, in many cases, is that it is not the best way to solve business problems. Continuing to focus on lead generation and more new sales instead of developing the other skills required to scale a business will lead to frustration, disappointment, lower profits, and more stress. 😖 This is extremely common in many businesses. One of my favorite ways to grow any business is to get the most you can from what you already have. 💪 If you want more new customers and are willing to make small changes to your existing lead generation, nurture, and sales processes, you’ll get incredible returns. When I say incredible, I’m not exaggerating. With just a 9% improvement to what you’re already doing, you can significantly increase your sales. I’m going to show you how, but I have to warn you, this work isn’t glamorous, but it will make you rich or even richer. 💰 Let’s take a look at the leads and conversions of our fictional company, Buck’s Blue Bricks. The blue brick business is going well, but I’m looking to make a move in this hot sector. 🔥 Buck’s Blue Bricks Sales and Marketing Numbers: Currently, we generate 500 leads per month. We have a lead-to-prospect conversion rate of 50%, resulting in 250 qualified prospects per month.
Forty percent of those qualified prospects speak to sales. Out of the 100 sales calls the salespeople take, we have a 30% close rate. Each month, Buck’s Blue Bricks gets 30 new customers out of 500 total inbound leads. Most businesses would ask how we can get 250- 500 more leads. That isn’t as easy as it sounds and creates overhead. A better approach would be to ask how we can maximize all the business from everything we already have coming in. By improving the numbers by only 5% across the board, here is the impact we can have on the total number of new customers.
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“Do not conform to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is — his good, pleasing, and perfect will.” Romans 12:2-4
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Buck’s Blue Bricks Current Numbers: • 500 leads per month • 250 qualified prospects (50% of all leads are qualified) • 100 sales calls (40% of qualified prospects get on sales calls) • 30 new customers (30% close rate) By improving the numbers across the board by 5%, we see something magical happen. ✨ Buck’s Blue Bricks 5% increase (I rounded to the nearest whole number): • 525 leads per month (5% increase in leads) • 289 qualified prospects (55% of all leads are qualified) • 130 sales calls (45% of qualified prospects get on sales calls) • 46 new customers (35% close rate) In total, this is a 53% increase in the total number of new customers for Buck’s Blue Bricks. 🚀 All of these adjustments can be made with minimal additional investment in marketing dollars. 💵 Let’s look at one more scenario. This time with a 10% increase across the board. 🔝 Buck’s Blue Bricks 10% increase:
• 165 sales calls (50% of qualified prospects get on sales calls) • 66 new customers (40% close rate) That is a 120% increase in total new sales with only a 10% increase in leads and 10% improvement on conversions. 🌟
• 550 leads per month (10% more leads) • 330 qualified prospects (60% of all leads are qualified)
These are not even all the adjustments you can make. In many cases, there are other levers that can be pulled to further improve these results. Ignore the conventional wisdom and shiny object sellers who will tell you all you need is more leads to grow your business faster, cheaper, and larger than you could do with lead generation along. For many reading this, hopefully, this will be eye-opening for you, and you can get off the hamster wheel of constantly looking for new sources of ever- increasing leads to sell to. 🛑🔍 Take some of your time and treasure and focus on improving your numbers, and next time we see each other for dinner or drinks, you’re buying. 🍽️🥂
–Shaun
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