A beggar had been sitting by the side of the road for over thirty years. One day a stranger walked by. "Spare some change?" mumbled the beggar, mechanically holding out his old baseball cap. "I have nothing to give you", said the stranger. Then he asked, "What's that you are sitting on?" "Nothing", replied the beggar. "Just an old box. I have been sitting on it as long as I could remember". "Ever looked inside?" asked the stranger. "No" said the beggar. "What’s the point there's nothing in there". "Have a look inside", insisted the stranger. The beggar managed to pry open the lid. With astonishment, disbelief, and elation, he saw the box was filled with gold.

– Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now

I don’t know about you but I’m feeling almost battered by the stream of negative news coming out about the economy.

It’s hard not to feel like there’s not enough to go around. Not enough customers. Not enough money. Not enough to sustain you and your business.

Leaves you feeling like the beggar who sees only lack and hardship.

I would never tell you to ignore reality. As business owners, ignoring reality is a dangerous practice.

However, I do request that you pay attention to more than just the negative side of what’s going on.

There’s a positive side and it’s as real and as concrete as all the downer stuff we’re hearing.

Your Ability to Solve Customer Problems is Your Box of Gold

One of my teachers, Thomas J. Leonard , once said, “The more problems you have, the more opportunities you have.” As a small business owner, I would add “The more problems your customers have, the more opportunities you have.”

Meaning?

People don’t like pain: physical or emotional. If it’s bad enough they’ll do just about anything to make it go away.

• If you have a bad toothache, you will find a way to get to a dentist.
• If your car won’t start, you’ll find someone to help you figure out what’s wrong.
• If your biggest customer is thinking about going to a competitor you will want to at least see if you can get them to reconsider.

And you own a business because you’re good at solving some of your customers problems. Yes?

The Important Points are:

1. Your customers will always have problems
2. Your business offers good solutions to at least one of those problems
3. If the problems are painful enough, they will pay to have those problems solved
4. If they feel confident you can solve their problem and they likeyou and your solution better than the alternatives

You will get business

Marketing Opens the Box

To open the box so you can get the gold four things need to happen:

1. Customers need to know you exist
2. They need to know what you can do for them
3. They need to trust you and feel comfortable doing business with you
4. They need to know what the next steps are to hire you

The job of marketing is to enable these four things to happen so your customers can get the help they so desperately need. And you get the revenue you need to sustain your business.

Opening the Box of Gold for Your Business

If your business isn’t exactly booming, chances are that one or more of the four steps isn’t happening enough. Here are my suggestions to help you open your box of gold so you and your business can truly begin to prosper:

Step 1: Introducing More Prospective Customers to Your Business

You need to be visible before people can even consider hiring you. At a minimum they need to know your business name and the problem you solve.

This is why I strongly encourage business owners to make sure every way they might “touch” a prospective customer includes their business name, a tagline that succinctly describes who they help and the problem they solve, and your phone number.

Here’s a good example by my colleague, Jessica Reagan Salzman :

Jessica Reagan Salzman Behind the Scenes LLC
Helping entrepreneurs turn their bookkeeping problems into profits.
http://www.behindthescenesLLC.com/
phone: 781-688-0284

It’s also why I recommend that you give business cards to your customers, business partners, anyone who knows about the work you do and might come across someone who needs your help.

Step 2: Building Trust and Credibility

So many business owners skip this step. They want to close the deal and they figure it’s enough that their prospective customers know who they are and the solutions they offer. But you will struggle to get customers until they not only know who you are but trust you’ll respect where they’re at and can deliver the results you promise.

This is why I help clients develop mailing lists and encourage them to send emails at least once a month.

Other great ways to build credibility include using social media like Facebook and Twitter , blogging, participating in discussion groups, and offering free information products.

You have a chance to demonstrate that you care and that you can get results.

Step 3: Make it Easy for Them to Become Customers

One of the beauties of low cost information products is they may it very easy for your prospects to become customers. It’s an awful lot easier for a prospective customer to click a link and buy a $19 ebook than it is to sign up for $2,500 worth of consulting.
And if they really like your $19 ebook, they may very well sign up to take your $200 teleclass, your $500 workshop, and so on.

If you aren’t already offering one or two products under $50 (in addition to one or two free products) it is an excellent investment of your time to begin doing so.

Bottom Line

No matter what is going on in the economy, as long as you can solve problems that drive your customers crazy, your business can continue to support you.

This is the box of gold that is always available to you. And to open that box your marketing needs to be constantly making you visible to the customers who need your help, cultivating trust and credibility, and making it easy for them to hire you to get the help they need.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 29th, 2009 at 11:32 am and is filed under Small Business Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.