The images will mostly speak for themselves:

Before:

After Logo Design:

After Sign Up Box Design with Logo Incorporated:

Total Time Spent: 1 hour
Total Money Spent: $200 (logo design)

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But the truth is, you need to spend some money in order to make some money. It’s the principle of leverage: You need to put in a little bit of effort (the spending of hard-earned money) in order to get a larger result (making more money).

Recently read: Small business investing
I was reminded of this recently when I read VANetworking’s blog post “You have to Spend Money to Make Money“.

In their blog, they outline 3 areas that business owners need to spend money so that they can make more money:

The first is networking and they advise that you invest in your networking – whether global or local, whether free or paid – to talk up your business and help grow it. This is good advice.

The second tip they offer is to invest in your own education so that you can have a more compelling offer and so you can stay ahead of your competition. This might include teleseminars, webinars, classes at a local college, conferences, and other events that sharpen your gray matter.

Their third tip is to outsource some of your work to a virtual assistant. I think this is s great advice, too, since business owners can spend more time focusing on sales and less time on administrative details.

Some additional small business investment tips
I’d also add a few other tips as well that small business owners might think about investing in:

• Invest in developing new products or services to broaden your revenue base. This might be as simple as repackaging some of your work into new forms. Or, it might mean developing an entirely new product.

• Invest in a way to systematize your processes, such as a CRM system or a project management system or an upgrade to your online scheduling system (or whatever works for your business).

• Invest in marketing your business. Look to add two more marketing channels that you’re not currently using and spend some money on doing them well. This might require that you outsource to an expert or that you get some help. But this upgrade could start to earn you higher revenue.

In today’s marketplace, marketers have done an effective job of confusing us when it comes to what we want and what we need. So my advice is this: In general, you’ll want to invest in places that will help you to become more competitive, perhaps by increasing knowledge or by improving systems or by offering additional products or services. If you can’t tie a specific competitiveness-enhancing benefit from the investment, don’t buy it until you’re flush with cash. (So that fancy new stapler you have your eye on? Maybe skip it right now).

Happy Blogging!

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At the risk of sounding like I’m stating the obvious, I feel that it’s important to highlight the one best practice that all businesses should be pursuing this year:

MORE SALES

Businesses need to increase revenue (assuming that they are able to earn some profit on that revenue). When economic conditions are better, businesses can tweak their processes and spend a little more on development and innovation, but in these times they need to sell more, plain and simple.

Here are some tips to help you sell more:

• List all of your current customers and determine how much they buy from you in a quarter. Then find a way to get them to buy just a little bit more. It might be because of increased value, or it might be because of a promotional sale, or it might be because you’re giving them a discount on a bulk purchase… or any other number of reasons. Make it a goal to increase your per-customer revenue from each customer, even just slightly.

• List all of your previous customers. Working backwards from most recent to oldest, reconnect with them and entice them back to you. See if you can determine why they no longer buy from you. Do they no longer need your product or service at all or are they buying from someone else instead? Don’t make assumptions – find out!

• Explore the possibility of offering your products to a slightly different market. First, consider how your current products or services might be attractive to another market. Then, consider how you can slightly modify your products or services to a completely different market.

Approach your increased sales as a project. (Yes, I’m saying that as a project manager, because I know that this method is successful). Build an entire project around the goal of “increased sales” and work with a project manager to drive the project to a successful completion.

Big Bank Balances make Happy Entrepreneurs,

Heather Villa

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I said that the first part of the conundrum of committedness is: The more commitments you have now, the less time you have to generate new commitments. But the less time you spend on generating new commitments, the fewer you will soon have.

But there’s a second part to that conundrum and that is: your new commitments aren’t fixed. In other words, your prospects aren’t perfect. You can (and should) market to fill your pipeline but not all of those prospects will react in the same way at the same time. Some will come to market faster than others. Some might suddenly buy more at one time than anyone else. You might have one quarter where all of your prospects fall out of your pipeline and sales diminish.

Let’s talk about the consultant example again. The consultant has several clients (“commitments”) and he or she stays busy with them, carving out just a little bit of time to market because it’s important to generate new business. When all progresses well, it’s a perfect system. But then “part 2″ of the conundrum kicks in and the prospects suddenly (and unexpectedly) buy more. What should the consultant do?

It’s a tough balance. Turning some away might be the wrong answer in today’s economy. Putting in extra hours is probably a good idea. But there’s a risk to this sudden influx of new commitments: the consultant notices that he or she doesn’t deliver as quickly anymore. And some might say that he or she is working too long each day. And there’s the risk that this “overwork” will diminish the amount of time to market.

Guess what. There’s no easy answer. Every business needs to find that special state of Zen in which they have a healthy number of commitments to continue earning an income but marketing in such a way that there is and continuously full pipeline. And they need to acknowledge that new potential commitments could suddenly increase and they should be prepared for it… but not to the detriment of their business today.

So, the consultant should leave a bit of ‘wiggle room’ (but not too much) to market and perhaps a bit more (but not too much) just in case there is a sudden influx of clients. And the manufacturer should leave just a bit of excess inventory (but not too much) to manage any surprise and they should have a plan in place to produce more inventory (but not too much) if demand rises unexpectedly.

In the next blog (tommorrow), I’ll give some more ideas about what businesses can do to work with this conundrum.

Speak Soon,

Heather

Related posts:

1. The conundrum of committedness – part 1
2. The conundrum of committedness – part 3
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