3 Steps To Business Success

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I’ve been receiving the same story from different Internet marketing newsletters I subscribe to. Here’s how the story goes, in a nutshell…

There are three ways to improve your online business –

  1. Increase the amount of traffic to your website
  2. Convert more of that traffic into customers
  3. Sell more to converted customers

If we take these principles and apply them to offline business the message is the same. No matter what type of business you operate your aim is to –

  1. Attract attention and bring people in your door
  2. Convert these visitors into customers
  3. Then sell more to the established customers since you know how to meet their needs

The mistake many business owners make is that they focus on number one too much – increasing the volume of new prospects exposed to the business. This is fine if you have a well tuned conversion system and a deep sales process that maximizes the benefits gained from converted customers (and of course conversely the benefits converted customers receive from you).

If you presently throw your prospects at a terrible conversion process you should stop. Instead, work on how you take those prospects and convince them your business is worth spending money at. Then go one step further and show those already paying customers more high-valued things you can sell them – tweak your backend sales process.

Once you get step two and three covered, you can throw your energies into step one and drive as much traffic as you want to your business, sound in the knowledge that your systems are working as hard as they can to bring in sales.

While you do need at least some prospects coming in the door in order to test and improve your conversion process, that is not where all your energy, money and time should be spent.

12 thoughts on “3 Steps To Business Success”

  1. Lucas

    Hi Yaro,

    I’ve been meaning to ask you if you have any recommendations for online software that deals in these 3 areas, more specifically the latter 2. I only ask because since i’ve been running CommerceCubes the past few months i’ve been spending a good chunk of time converting prospects to clients the old fashioned way and while i do have results to show for it i am wondering about a more automated sales system to handle/offload some of this and improve my results (after coming up to speed with the learning curve of said system)… any thoughts on this Yaro? Look forward to your response.

    Lucas

  3. Dave Free

    Good one Yaro. My only thought would be that I think there is a fourth step: turning converted customers into sales people. That is, meeting their needs so well they spread the word to their friends who also become converted customers.

    http://www.promoterz.com

  4. Yaro

    Lucas – I know there is software to handle things like split testing which can optimize your sales copy, of course you have to conduct the tests.

    You can use email autoresponders to capture prospects and sell to them automatically over time – that’s a key automation function you should have.

    Does that answer your question or were you after something else?

  5. Yaro

    Yes Dave, quite true. You can definitely be proactive in encouraging customers to become evangelists – a few automatic mechanisms encouraging word of mouth and referrals is a good start.

  6. Lucas

    Hello Yaro,

    It partially answers my question… The second half of this would be is what to suggest/recommend to automate things on my end, software-wise. I know you are a fan of Aweber are there any other tools that would be useful that you can think of?

    Talk soon Yaro,

    Lucas

  7. Yaro

    Hey Lucas – for my businesses, I really only use autoresponder emails via AWeber to automate my sales process. Most of my customers come either converted already or are heavy prospects so only need a few short answers before they decide to buy.

    I know some people use CRM systems to control the whole client relationship process creating some pretty good data for mining purposes.

    Then of course there is software for split testing, but I haven’t used any as yet.

    Google AdWords conversion tracking tool is something I use which is handy.

    Basically there are many little programs that automate and make my businesses more efficient, which all combine over time to improve things, but I don’t have any more specific software recommendations beyond that.

    My online income sources are really very simple.

  8. Lucas

    Hello Yaro,

    Thanks for getting back to me. I am actually playing around with SugarCRM and created my first LAMP to host it on my desktop. I am thinking of trying out Aweber myself… i’ve read the good things you have to say about it so i figure its worth a shot… i am not expecting dramatic results overnight… like anything there is a learning curve.

    I am looking to develop my own content off of CommerceCubes for people looking to do specific things… how-to guides and articles for Commerce-based technologies. Using a little adwords to get people to the site but at the same time focus on building value to the site as i figure that will keep it sticky… I need to learn more about landing pages… but i’ve been reading a lot of MarketingExperiments.com articles which also has articles on split-testing and other topics… PPC… comparision engines, etc.

    Thanks for the feedback and tips Yaro… still coming to Toronto in July? Talk soon,

    Lucas

  11. mark

    I don know but why i don find such informative and profitable blogs so often,I suspect blogging world is becoming so small that we cant find such lucrative blogs like this one. And one thing more I saggeust the blog owner make some more blogs like this . so we get more info on it.

  12. Pingback: 3 Steps To Online Success « Opt-In List Secrets

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