His now ‘Rock Star’ status is down to a few things that are remarkable and have instant application to your business.

1     After every gig he made copious notes about the audience reaction to his material; he noted what they laughed at (often just once in the whole performance) and what they didn’t laugh at, when they heckled and when they applauded (not very often it seems!).  He put his performance and his material under the microscope and analysed what worked and what didn’t.  That takes courage.  Do you do that?

2     He believed he could be a successful performer.  “You have to believe you can do something before you can do it”, he says.   “Even if everyone else thinks you are mad”; which they did.  He always believed in spite of overwhelming evidence that he would not make it.  Do you believe?

3    He understood the concepts of marketing.  He learned how to attract audiences when he worked as a street performer; learned that you need to stand out and do something – anything- to get attention and get in front of his audience.

4    He took risks and action.  He booked venues, applied for roles before he was ready and got ready; he came out as a transvestite just as his career was taking off.  What risks are you taking to push yourself out of your comfort zone?

5   He just kept going; looked failure in the eye, learned and tried again.  He never gave up.

And he keeps learning, growing and challenging himself.  Do you?

A quick recap then: It was launched in 1996 in the UK with a £10 million promotional campaign, enabling it to become the third most popular soft drink behind Coca-Cola and Pepsi. So what was it that meant it became so popular?

Largely it was the sheer amount of marketing money that was thrown behind it and the fact that the promotional campaigns led consumers to believe that it was a healthy alternative to other soft drinks. It was sold in the cold section of supermarkets, in fridges next to fresh orange juice – a very nice bit of psychological positioning.

It sold faster than the production line could cope with.  And then someone looked at the small print.

Oh dear, oh dear. It wasn’t healthy at all. In fact its main ingredients were corn syrup and water and it contained only 5% juice. The orange colour came from food colouring.  The food commission were on to them and then a little girl turned orange. This coincided with a most unfortunate piece of television advertising showing a snowman turning orange after drinking Sunny Delight.

Sales plummeted.

It has been re-launched three times since then and sales just continue to fall. At one point the drink contained 70% juice and no added sugar but did anyone notice?

No – it was too late.  The consumer had been misled and the product was not what it seemed. They over hyped and under-delivered.

And hype undermines trust. We react badly to having our trust broken. When we have our trust broken by a corporate company we simply stop buying.  And if your customers lose trust in you, it takes a very, very long time to win them back.

Compare the tale of Sunny Delight with this one: We were with our Platinum Group yesterday and one of them has grown his business 30% in the last year. Yes, in 2010/2011.

“Wow – how did you do that?”

“I don’t really know”

Of course he did know – it just wasn’t with a great deal of ‘overt’ marketing.  It was by under- promising and over- delivering; by doing an excellent job; by holding an ethical code that is unusual in the industry and turning business away that breach his code; by having his clients recommend him to others because he does such a great job.

By building trust.

So –long-term thinking or short-term thinking? Building trust or losing trust?

Growing your business or losing business?

Your choice.

We’ve spent a lot of time working with entrepreneurs and owners of small businesses – and these ten points are all tried-and-tested strategies for success.

So, here goes:

1. Find a way of encouraging visitors to your website to leave their details. Give away something of value to them, make it free and offer it in return for their contact details (name and email address is fine). You’re building your database/your list.

2. Many people say that the most valuable asset in your business is your database. Actually, it’s not. It’s the value of the relationship that you have with that list. You must keep in touch regularly – weekly.

3. Once you have the list, segment it. If you segment your list by product/service/membership category, then you will be able to craft your messages to “hit the spot” whenever you communicate with your list. And NEVER let anyone off, even if they stop buying.

4. Don’t be dependent on one or two marketing methods. The best companies use between six and ten. How many are you using? And whenever you do use a new one, do what David Ogilvy says: “test, test, test”.

5. Become an expert and build your personality. Get used to the fact that you are an expert in your own business. Promote that: let your clients and customers know, and do everything you can to position yourself as an expert. People pay more to work with experts.

* Write articles for trade magazines and internet article sites
* Start a blog
* Contribute to industry forums
* Speak at conferences
* Go to networking events

6. Send all your existing customers a sales letter with an offer to buy something from you that is extra to what they would normally buy. The letter should have the following:

* An attention-grabbing headline which gets them to read on
* The offer and the reason why the offer exists in the form of a story
* A deadline by which they need to respond
* Instructions on what they need to do next

7. Offer a premium product or service at a premium price. In most businesses, 20 per cent of customers will pay for a premium product or service.

8. Collect as many great testimonials as you can and use them ruthlessly in your marketing efforts. What others say about you is many, many times more powerful than what you say about yourself.

9. Ask yourself two questions that few businesses ask at all. First, what’s the next thing you can offer your customer after their first purchase? If you’re in a single-purchase market, this still works. You just have to be innovative. Second, what else could your customer want (that you cannot supply) that you could help them get?

10. Forget your marketing budget. Instead of trying to allocate funds to a marketing budget based on historical and traditional thinking and data, think about it this way. How much are you willing to spend to get a customer? Work out the lifetime value of a customer to your business and if you don’t know, guess their value over three years. Then decide how much you would be willing to pay to get them. That’s your marketing budget.

My final tip is to take action. The biggest difference between the least and most successful business people and businesses is implementation.

Well, we’ve struggled in the past with this in respect of our business; not the business itself, our ‘elevator pitch’ is very simple; “We help you to find the hidden money in your business.”

What we’ve sometimes struggled with is giving words to the feelings we have about our business; to articulate the real reason for its existence.

When I think about the businesses we know and have worked for, we have been made very aware that their key measure of success is profit. Everything that they do, every investment they make, is determined on the basis of its potential for profit. And usually profit today or, at the very latest, tomorrow. Contrast that approach, reflected in this statement from John McKeen of the pharmaceutical company, Pfizer: “So far as humanly possible, we aim to get profit out of everything we do”, with the philosophy of another pharmaceutical leader, George Merck of Merck and Schering-Plough:

“We try never to forget that medicine is for the people. It is not for the profits. The profits follow, and if we have remembered that, they have never failed to appear.”

Thankfully, Merck became not only the most admired company but also made more money and is now the second largest pharmaceutical company in the world. Two more examples:

Sony: “We shall eliminate any undue profit-seeking”

Bear Stearns (sign above the trading floor): “Let’s make nothing but money”

Which of these is the most successful? Talk about self-fulfilling prophecies! ‘Bear Stearns did indeed make nothing but money; not friends or loyal clients, not even many products that customers should have wanted to buy. And in the end they lost all the money they had ever made.’ John Kay, Economist.

So, we are in business, and this is what drives us, what gets us out of bed in the morning, what keeps the candle burning late into the night; not for the profit – of course we want to make money – but because we want people to succeed; to make the most of themselves; to learn that whatever they think they are, that they are always and in all ways more than that; to build vibrant and sustainable businesses; to leave a powerful legacy; to be free to pursue their dreams.

And actually it’s quite easy to articulate it. It’s all to do with stepping out beyond the business, beyond the product or service that you offer and focusing on the purpose of it all. And it’s heartening to know that there are other businesses out there who look at it in the same way and become hugely successful and profitable whilst doing it.
And I’m sure many of you will have done this already, but if you haven’t I recommend it to you. Take some time out to think through and to write down what it’s all for.

What is it, that life beyond profit?

I met a plumber the other day.  I was at an event for entrepreneurs and small businesses.  Everyone there was looking to build their business, to become more successful and to live the life they wanted to live, on their own terms.  Good place to be.

The plumber, let’s call him John, was no different to anyone else.  He has his dreams.  He dreams of a fleet of vans on the streets of his home town, emblazoned with his logo, rushing to the aid of home owners and business owners alike.  He has dreams for his family as well.  There’s only one problem.  He’s not going to achieve them.  At least, not if he carries on thinking the way he thinks right now.

You see, when we talked about the issues facing his business and what is stopping him getting where he wants to go, we hit an age old conundrum.

I’ve been doing a lot of networking recently and I’ve got a lot more coming up, something like fourteen events in the next month alone!  It’s turning out to be a great way of getting new members.

What’s been interesting is the number of people I’ve met at these events who’ve said, ‘I hate networking!’  And most of their dislike is based around this fact that they have to walk into a room full of strangers.

Of course, what I’ve noticed at a number of these events is that people tend to gravitate towards the people they already know – the ‘usual suspects’ – thus negating the entire point of being there!

So for any of you who have the same kind of experience, here are my Top Tips for making the most of a networking event: