If ‘feast-or-famine’ is not the top complaint I hear from business owners, it’s certainly in the top three. And to be honest, it’s their own fault!
Think about it… when you’re busy (the feast), you focus on your clients’ projects. But when they slow down (the famine), it’s only then that you decide to spend some effort on sales and marketing. When that has an impact, business picks up (the next feast)… until it doesn’t any more (the next famine).
And so it goes… an endless cycle of revenue ups and downs, which makes your business difficult to manage and extremely stressful.
The fix is actually pretty easy… but most of you won’t do it. Why not? I’ll get to that in a minute, but let’s first talk about the fix: frequent and consistent marketing and sales. To help you see what I’m talking about, here are several easy, low-cost/no-cost frequent and consistent activities to consider…
- Posting on LinkedIn 3 to 5 times every week
- Writing one blog post every month
- Sending a monthly or quarterly newsletter to your database of contacts
- Reaching out and inviting several new people to connect on LinkedIn each week
- Checking in by phone with your current contacts between projects
- Once a month, calling a lapsed client to try to rekindle a relationship
- Participating in online and in-person events to network and generate sales leads
The list could go on. Again, the key to success with any of this is frequency and consistency.
And here’s the ‘Why not?’… “But Steve, when we’re busy, we don’t have the time. “Bullsh**!” It’s not that you don’t have the time, it’s that it’s not a priority for you.
And you know how I know that? Because if P&G called tomorrow to offer you a $100,000 project, you would not say, “We’re too busy!”… you’d figure out how to get it done. So, why not give similar priority to your revenue growth efforts?
I’m not talking about hiring a full-time marketing person, outsourcing to a marketing firm (though, we’re here if you need us) or even committing several hours a day to it… and I’m not saying that one person has to do it all. But if you spread the work across a few people, we’re talking about less than an hour a day each. That’s what I call cup-of-coffee marketing… that is, get it done while you’re enjoying your first cup of coffee each day.
Conclusion
So, here’s your choice… come up with a simple, frequent and consistent marketing and sales activity plan to stay top-of-mind, enhance your reputation and generate sales leads to help you grow your business. Or, live with the difficulty and stress of a feast-or-famine business.
It’s your choice!