Q We have a small firm, and it looks that whenever we have enough work, i am too busy to promote. Then i have to play to gain when business is slow and really hurry to bring in work. What can we do?

A If you are like many businesses, you are so busy doing the work that you tell yourself you have no time to promote. You work and work until you finish most everything in-house. Then, all of a sudden, you are in need of business. So you advert heavily for a few weeks or even months till you do not have more work. At last, deluged, you stop promoting once again and the whole process repeats.

Sound relative? If so, you are blaming yourself and your company to life on an economic roller coaster. It is always hunger. Actually the very way you promote your business contributes directly to these highs and lows and keeps you from ever finding an even fall.

Lower your cost per sale

Some firm owners by mistake use the word marketing. When what they mean is sales. When you meet to buyer, you are not marketing, but your are selling. Actually, sales activities are all the one on one methods, including phone calls and meetings and that will drive prospects directly to you. Marketing on the other side has existence to support sales and consists of methods that create leads or to motivate buyer, such as direct marketing, public relations and advertising.

Selling intense is more than marketing which can be greatly automated or subcontracted. While some sales process have to go on consistent, such as meetings with buyers to sign contracts and for presentations and at other side, marketing methods can take their place. It will not only drive benefit but also save lots of your time and lower your cost per sale.

Follow this : Based on your firm and type of business, total sales call can cost you several hundred dollars. So just assume you generate a list of 100 buyers, contact them all personally by phone and then go out to meet with as many as you can close for appointments. This could take you months and cost thousand of dollars. On the other side, during your busy time you could send email request to those 100 buyers-plus 5000 more. You would generate leads from the most qualified and will fix meeting only with them. You would have results within a weeks only, not months and spend considerably less time in process.

Advanced planning

Strategy to maintain a year round marketing plan, without those horrible highs and lows that can cost you so dearly, is effective pre-planning. Have you developed your yearly marketing plan? It does not have to be involved-just an outline will do, so long as you also schedule your strategy in a contact management software program or even on a paper calendar. Contact managers are crucial when it comes to track both sales and marketing works, and the major of all programs, ACT, is priced at affordable rate for most businesses.

With an outline and plan for your basic marketing methods, you can produce and planning. For an instance, a monthly email newsletters is a best path to maintain contact with buyers and takes less time than making individual phone calls. Within every four month, you can plan three issues at once, choose your topics and collect information so that on the designated monthly mailing dates your newsletters are ready to go.

Select such tactics that save time

Some marketing methods take more time than others. Public relations, for an instance, can take more time than advertising. Small firm owners rarely have the significant PR budgets necessary to select agencies and tend to manage public relations in-house. And there are so many hands-on steps include such as collecting the media contact list, creating press releases and press kits, sending them out at appropriate times, contacting the media and providing information for stories that they add up to hours upon hours of time. A consistent advertising program, on the other hand, can be pre-planned and booked once or twice per year with the help of an ad agency or directly with the media reps.

There is no tough and quick rule telling you exactly how much time you should spend promoting your business. In the quick growing business with sales of $1 million or less, the owners tend to spend from about 25% to 40% of their time in sales and marketing every week. Though, if your business is new, you may need to devote about 60% of your time for a while to increase it and running. The most crucial thing is to manage a continuous effort. This will keep your growth rate steady and enable you to more effectively develop your business over time.