Why to Avoid Discounting and Competing on Price?

Business owners - what’s your marketing philosophy toward discounting prices vs. adding items of high perceived value?  
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Let’s assume we are not under duress, clearing inventory or other mitigating circumstances and seek what’s in the best interest for both the customer and company long term.  

If you choose discounting what are the implications?  

1. You admit you’re competing primarily on price and you’re looking for a transaction vs a successful and fulfilling relationship with the customer.  You educated the customer that your new base price is now your discounted price.
2. If your discount was significant to attract customers you probably discounted your profit margin away and are in first place to a race to the bottom
3. And even it you still have a positive margin you have to make a lot more sales to make the same profit as you would with a higher price. For example, if you have a 35% margin, and you are considering a 10% price decrease, you must have a whopping 40% increase in unit sales to end up with the same total gross profit dollars.

If you choose adding items of high perceived value, then

1. You’re enhancing the offer with other products and services that enrich the transaction and make the customer feel more fulfilled and successful and it didn’t cost you a lot to include
2. You are preserving your margins
3. And you had to make fewer sales to achieve the same profit amount

ActionITEM Tip:  To avoid having to discount prices, come up with a product and service list everything your customer values, calculate your margins per product and service and determine where you can add these to your marketing offers.  For the best answers of what has high perceived value, ask your customers.  Finally, measure and test your offers so you know what’s working and how to improve.

If you’re at a loss as to whether to discount or what you can offer that has high perceived value, then let’s talk.  I’ll offer a complimentary marketing assessment guaranteed to leave you with at least a half dozen ideas to avoid competing on price.  

Ph:  972 709 6776   Em:  StephenMarino@ActionCOACH.com

Why Calling Everyone in Your Sales Process a "Lead" is Costing You Sales

By calling everyone in your sales process a “lead” you are losing valuable sights on how to improve which results in fewer sales.  

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Here’s a conversation every owner needs to have with their marketing and sales team which starts with,

“What is the company’s acquisition cost of a client?  Is the trend increasing or decreasing?  And what specifically can be done to improve it?”

If you received vague answers then here’s what the best marketing and sales teams do:

1. Build a sales relationship process recognizing these four stages:
• Target audience - your ideal client based on demographic and psychographic data
• Suspects - those that responded
• Prospects - contacted and engaged
• Leads - qualified for your solution and can make a decision
2. Measure your conversions from target audience to suspects to prospects to leads to customers/clients.
3. Evaluate why people move and/or don't move from stage-to-stage
4. Calculate your acquisition cost at each conversion
5. Make changes in marketing and sales scripts to improve effectiveness and efficiency

Need to improve your sales relationship process?  Let's talk.  I'll offer you a Complementary Sales Assessment.

Call me today:  ph:  972 709 6776 eM:  StephenMarino@ActionCOACH.com  Let's get started...

Answer "Yes" to These 3 Questions and You'll Diminish the Value of Your Business to Selling a Job

Business Owners - When your business is at its peek and you're considering its sale, ask yourself these 3 questions to determine the value. 

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1. You have the key relationships with clients?  Yes/No
2. You have the key relationships with vendors?  Yes/No
3. You have the key intellectual property and systems in the company?  Yes/No

If you answered "Yes" to these questions then the value is diminished to selling a job.  

After having reviewed over 800 businesses in the past 15 years for sale, taken to due diligence a tiny fraction of these and acquired even fewer still, I learned that to maximize the sellers value the answer to these 3 questions needs to be a resounding "No!"  

What's being sold?  Assets, systems, customer base and people that produce a predictable discretionary cash flow only when the owner is there.  

What's being bought?  A job.  It may be a high paying job but not nearly as much as a business that's commercial, profitable and works without you always being there.

And isn't that what you had in mind when you started your business?  

So let's have a conversation that'll increase the value of your business.  Let's start now...

pH:  972 709 6776 eM:  StephenMarino@ActionCOACH.com

How to Gage When You've Gone Beyond Break-even to Super Profitability

Business owners - How do you gage when your business is beyond break-even and onto profitability?  One answer for break-even is having money in your bank account at the end of the month.  A better answer is covering not only the day-to-day expense and having funds anticipating capital improvements, operational repairs and maintenance, labor cost for additional employees, taxes due, servicing debt, as well as, your marketing and sales.  

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However, many owners with 3 to 35 employees acquiring this number accurately, timely and consistently is daunting.  This requires knowing exactly the fixed cost to operate the business, being able to predict their variable cost to provide their products and services and forecasting their sales.  Where their sales exceed expense, that the break-even point, and everything beyond that is your profit.

Sounds simple...but not easy.  

Knowing your breakeven number is like knowing the score in a ball game.  Without it, you don’t know if your business is ahead or behind and which strategies you’d employ.

If you’re open to getting the knowhow and solutions to understand important numbers in your business and what drives them then let’s have a conversation to move your business toward super profitability.

pH: 972 709 6776 eM: StephenMarino@ActionCOACH.com

Let's get you back in control of your business today...

Business Owners - Closing the Gap Between Knowing and Doing Means Profits and Productivity

Business owners how large a gap is there between what you know should be done vs. reacting to the interferences of the day?  Yes, the daily interferences that humble most owners causing them to exceed expense budgets, tolerate misaligned employees, accept ineffective systems, or fail to delight customers.

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By allowing these interferences to cumulatively add up, you risk being forced to either give up or burn out.  

It's tough eliminating these interferences.

So how do you turn this around?  Let’s talk. Let's sit down for an hour or two and have a conversation that assesses where you are today, what's working, where are the shortcomings, where are the opportunities and specifically what strategies will close the gap. I call this the business "diagnostic conversation."  

As a business owner, operator and coach with 15 yrs experience, I share with you how to minimize time, team, money and system interferences that get in the way of predictable increasing profits and productivity.  

What's most exciting about this conversation is that we'll be able to quantify the percentage increase expected in customers, revenues and profits. Now we're both in a position to assess what direction to take. I can see whether I can help you and you can see whether coaching moves you forward faster than you could otherwise.

I'm so confident that if you don't walk away with at least half a dozen specific implementable ideas to improve then I'll donate a meaningful dollar amount to your favorite charity in your name.

Let’s have the conversation that results in the actions to close the gap between knowing and doing.  You deserve it.  Let’s get started...

Call me at ph:  972 709 6776 or eM:  StephenMarino@ActionCOACH.com

Which is More Important - Entrepreneur's Character or Idea?

Whether you're the bank, an angel or venture capital investor which counts most, the entrepreneur's/business owner's character or their idea?  

View YouTube - What Counts Most - Character or Idea?

A big fallacy is people believing that if only they had one great idea the business takes care of itself.  Bill Gates developed someone else's idea into Microsoft DOS idea.  Steve Job leveraged Steve Wozniak's engineering prowess into Apple.  And if you look in the US Patent Office you'll find plenty of brilliant ideas that have gone nowhere without a person with the character to build success.  

Investors seek to understand the owner, their motives, beliefs, skills, values and identity.  They look into the owner's past performance and circumstances as to how they've overcome time, team, money and system challenges and still found success.  The investor is making money with money.  They want a commensurate risk/return "of" and "on" their capital.  They ascertain from the owner whether they will convert the investor's money into greater value.  

So before you seek an investor, work harder on yourself, your character than the idea - to be worthy of investment.  And if you're going to work harder, wouldn't you also want to work smarter?  

Just like any sports team with a coach they work smarter to achieve more faster than they would otherwise.  Is it any different in business?  

Do you believe that with an accomplished business coach would you get the know-how, insights to ask higher quality questions, improving your skills, impacting your beliefs and values about what’s possible which ultimately allows you to make higher quality decisions and take actions that move you to your goal of a commercial profitable business that works without you always being there?  And isn’t that why you started your business in the first place?  

Let's get started...give me a call today.  

ph:  972 709 6776  em:  StephenMarino@ActionCOACH.com

No Reason to Operate a Business in N Texas and Not Have Access to Business Coaching Tools for Growth

If you operate a business in N Texas there is no reason not to have access to the tools to grow your business.

At ActionCOACH - Business Coaching there are at least 5 major categories of products and services offered to business owners. View YouTube link.

1.  Our Flagship program is our one-to-one coaching  where we coaching week-over-week with the business owner toward the ultimate goal of a commercial profitable business that works without the business owner always being there.  This is our most intense program and it’s not for everyone.

2.  The next program is group coaching.  We gather 8 to 12 business owners to work bi-weekly together where the coach facilitates the knowledge to grow a business going through ActionCOACH’s 6 Steps - Mastery, Niche, Leverage, Team, Synergy and Results business level capabilities.  This is for owners not quite ready for the intensity of one-to-one coaching but often after these 3 months they find they know a lot more and graduate to the one-to-one coaching programs.  

3.  The third level consists of seminars and workshops on specific business growth topics from business vision and planning, marketing, sales, customer experience, systemization, team building to name a few of the topics.  These vary in length from a few hours, half day, day to two days.   These can be customized for your specific business or franchise group.

4.  Next are ActionCOACH’s digital products on the business growth topics similar to the seminar and workshops plus our ActionCOACH books.  With these products you can gain the know how and refer back to them for reference.  These are often included as part of the one-to-one and group programs.

5.  Finally, we offer special projects for business owners perhaps seeking expansion capital, hiring new talent, preparing for exit or transition, deciding whether they are ready for expansion via licensing, franchising or organic growth.

Based on the business owner’s needs, commitment to growth, resources and time availability, we select the right offer to move you forward.  Thus, no matter what level of budget and time availability, there is likely a program designed for you.

So let’s have the conversation to moves you and your business further faster than you thought possible.  Call me at ph:  972 709 6776  eM:  StephenMarino@ActionCOACH.com