Are you experiencing these issues?

1) You're spending a ton of money on advertising and marketing, yet don't seem to be getting much bang for your buck.

2) You're getting beaten up on price by competitors who are selling lower quality stuff but your customers can't tell the difference until it's too late.

3) There's more & more competitors popping up and eating up your market share, making it hard to distinguish your business from the competition.

4) You're a small business and you don't have the budget to compete with the big companies yet you know that you're good at what you do.

If you're like most businesses these days, you know what it's like to spend a lot of money on advertising and not get the type of response that you're after. Add to it, that advertising costs you the same whether it's used intelligently or foolishly. An ad in the newspaper or yellow pages costs you the same amount whether it generates one new customer or 100 new customers. A direct mail piece costs you the same whether it brings in $10 of business or $10,000. Your degree of understanding and skill in marketing and advertising has a major impact on your business.

So why is it that you're not making the money that you want? Most companies don't have a problem selling their services or products - once they get an audience. If a salesperson gets an appointment, as long as they can satisfy the prospect's needs, then they have a good shot at making the sale. In retail, if the customer just comes in the door, it's likely that they'll buy again, provided that their needs can be met at a fair price. Professionals can usually sell new clients if they can just get the initial consultation to demonstrate how good they are. If a manufacturer can just get their products into the hands of distributors, there's a good chance they'll make sales and so on. The problem is generally NOT selling. The Problem Is Getting An Opportunity To Sell.

As you already know, the market has radically changed. Gone are the days of simply placing a few ads or mailing direct-mail pieces and having customers pouring into your business. Now we've got a new situation, buyers no longer have to rely on limited sources of information about a product or service (thank you internet). The landscape of business now has a lot more competition, information, choices and more resistance (price shopping). It's made everyone's sales cycles longer. There's now price competition that didn't exist before. Products AND services are becoming commodities and a lot of the advertising and marketing messages have become identical.

Because of this, customers have become jaded to all of the different advertising that's out there. They see your marketing materials (ads, web sites, brochures, commericals, etc.) and compare it to your competitor's marketing materials and guess what they realize? The marketing materials are all saying the same thing! This is why your customers don't think that what you offer is any different from anyone else's. We call this the "Carbon Copy Scenario". So if they don't think that your product or service isn't any different, then it only makes sense to base their decision solely on price. This is why they'll go with a cheaper company rather than you. They never realize that your service or product is better, more complete, longer lasting, has better variety, longer warranty, better support, better hours of operation, better construction, FREE delivery, is guaranteed for life, etc..

To learn how to change this around click here...