How to Jump Start Your business When Sales Are Slow
Article by: Shana Yao, Your Marketing Mastermind®
HOW TO JUMP START YOUR BUSINESS WHEN SALES ARE SLOW
You want to make money. I mean, let’s get serious. You have to make money. You have to make money to eat, live, and thrive.
And especially when you’re not, money tends to be your focus. You’re only focus.
I get it. I really do. But what you don’t understand is that as an entrepreneur who wants to do big things, help others, and make this world a better place, it’s not your wish for money or the things that you do that will make you the money you want. It’s who you are.
That sounds like a “nice thing” to believe. But the truth is, people pay money for value. And worrying about making money, trying to learn more, do more, and feeling fear and almost desperation to make it, actually steals your value.
“People pay money for value. And worrying about making money, trying to learn more, do more, and feeling fear and almost desperation to make it, actually steals your value.”
It depletes the value you already are. Yes - all of those years of experience. Your life challenges and huge accomplishments - inside of you is not just a dream of what you want to become, but a CALLING.
“Money is the echo of value.”
Money is the echo of value. And when you “try” to make it, you are not reflecting your highest value (or values). You are trying to make money. But without the value, money is meaningless. It’s a flat piece of paper with words and images printed on it.
If you have a $1 bill and a $100 bill - there is little difference except the number printed on it. Sure, the value of the two are different, until you hold it to the fire and both burn into ashes.
So similar are you. What you create for the love of money it's not from your inner wisdom. It’s not your highest calling. And because of it, you don’t earn what you should. This causes a lack of clarity in your goals and a leaves a high value entrepreneur focusing on tactics rather than strategy.
Tactics - such as creating a webinar, a sales funnel, or building an email list - mean NOTHING without clarity of your goals. If you don't understand where you are going, you will never get there even if you are driving a Tesla.
STEP ONE: CLARITY OF YOUR GOALS
If you don't know where you're going when you get in your car, you will never reach (or come close to) your destination. Just like a car trip, if you don't know what your overall goals are - long term and short term - and you don't know why it's important to you, it's very hard to know what to do to accomplish those goals, if they are actually working, and how to find your unique voice and message that will connect and sell.
Your goals must be specific, measurable, tangible, and with deadlines and a time-based focused. They should include income projections and monthly set points, in addition to daily income producing activities.
Once you have a clarity in your actual goals and how to actually achieve those, you are able to see what is currently working or not working. You can identify if your mission is inspiring you or draining you (both inside of you and in your bank account), and find holes and leaks in your overall value of you and your business.
What I find in my clients, is that people with past success and expertise - possibly in a job or as a natural talent - lack not only clarity in their goals but also in their mission. They don't have a deep connection with their why ("I just want to make money doing what I love" is not clarity in your why). And without that, you cannot understand who your target customer is that would pay you money for the value you are.
Discovering your E2 Personal Blueprint - a sort of mind mapping exercise I do with my clients - helps you dig deep into your life story, what successes and surprisingly, what challenges have led you to become the person you are today. Knowing that, your mission and life purpose is revealed inside the touch points of your story, and your message, target client formula, and business foundation is revealed.
The lack of clarity happens because a lot of people helping entrepreneurs with their businesses focus on WHAT instead of WHY. "What do you want to do?" In which most entrepreneurs reply "Make money doing what I love."
Most business coaches and strategists will focus on people's marketing before focusing on the solid business foundation. And while marketing and activities are important, if you don't have a solid business foundation FIRST, you will be building a skyscraper on top of shaky ground. It's like you're climbing a ladder leaned up against the wrong wall.
You can't make the money you want, do what you love - everyday in your marketing - if you don't understand what your value is.
STEP TWO: THE SCIENCE OF MAKING MONEY
To sell is human, so said Daniel Pink in his best-selling book of the same name. I call it Conscious Selling.
Conscious Selling is the ART and SCIENCE of producing income in your business. It's the science of understanding the WHO, WHAT & WHY, found inside your brand story, and the art of creating a simplified marketing plan that leads to clients and a revenue generating system that creates wealth.
Conscious Selling means selling on value, not price, is essential to communicating the value of you work. Many business owners get caught up learning and seeing what other people do, and because of it, miss the key differentiating points that are necessary to attract people that value them. Understanding your value, involves the essential elements named above, but it also involves the tactical elements of PRICE vs COST vs VALUE.
COST: the cost of your product or service is the amount you spend to create it
PRICE: the amount you charge for providing the product or service
VALUE: the value of your product or service in the minds of your prospective clients
If you are an plumber and you are called to an emergency situation, with someone's toilet leaking all over their house, ruining their furniture, and you find the cause is a loose pipe that just needs to be twisted in place - so the solution takes you about 10 minutes, the VALUE of your service far outweighs the COST of your service - and therefore the price you charge can be much higher because it's not based on time, it's based on urgency.
To more clearly identify your COST PRICE VALUE strategy, and if your business is already POSITIONED correctly, you need to ask a few well-thought out questions, including:
√ What is the urgent problem that you solve that will determine the benefit to your ideal clients?
√ How are you ideal clients judging your service? (your competition, other options, distraction, etc)
√ What value your customers place on receiving the benefits you provide
√ How are you communicating that value before the client sees the price?
Clearly defining the benefits that give you, standing out from your competitors, and knowing your unique positioning in the marketplaces, gives you the freedom to charge what you are worth.
STEP THREE: UNDERSTANDING YOUR VALUE
Have you ever wondered, maybe the reason I’m not making what I should be making is because I’m not doing what I should be doing? That those un-lived dreams and thoughts in your head of your highest visions, the things you ACTUALLY want to do but shut down because you think “it won’t work”. What if that is the thing you MUST do so that you WILL make money?
Where are you investing your time? Time is the most valuable thing we have. It’s the one thing that you will never get back. Are you spending time on Facebook “looking for clients”? Are you spending your time and money looking for the answers OUTSIDE of you?
What you invest your time and money in is what becomes who and what you are.
What you need to invest in, to make the money you want, is actually the last place you would think. It’s you.
Put your money into yourself. Invest time and money to grow and you find that you're worth more money. You let go of things that are stealing you value. Whatever distractions you have now - Facebook, a vice, negative people... when you raise your own value you raise your vibration.
Things that are a lower vibration than you just fall away.
When you realize you are so much more than what is trying to influence you, you rise to a new consciousness. A new understanding of just how much excitement and energy lives inside of you.
- Do you know why you're learning what you're learning?
- Why you are on Facebook?
- What marketing efforts move your business forward?
- What income producing activities you should do everyday?
- What is NOT working and steals your confidence and value?
- Causes distraction?
Learn how to make more money by discovering your highest calling. It lives inside of you. Inside your story. The story of your life.
While that seems so NOT what will make you money, here’s why it is. You can only teach and share with others the level you know yourself. No webinar, sales page, or live video will deliver that highest calling until you understand the depth of it and purpose.
When you discover your calling, your highest value - when you do what scares you most in life - to become more than you already are, you raise your vibration. You raise your own perception of your own natural gifts. And suddenly, you remove the blocks holding you back.
Like a wall that has been lifted, you can’t HELP but make it the success it was meant to be.
At a higher confidence and internal happiness, it becomes a WIN WIN WIN.
- A win for you - you become happier, more confident, laser focused on your goal.
- A win for your clients - by becoming more you are able to share a deeper knowledge with others. Your value to others increases - and people will pay you more for that value.
- A win for the world as a whole. You are able to empower more people who are now buzzing at a higher vibration and able to share their highest callings to the world.
Win win win. By not trying to make money you make it, and raise the consciousness of others
When you give from your highest alignment you win. Trust the calling inside of you. Stop numbing yourself with Facebook and food or anything else that steals your job. Live in your heart.
Step into your greatness. Change the vantage point from which you are seeing yourself and your life. Change the way you see yourself and the things you see will change.
DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE CHEAT SHEET
18 WAYS TO MAKE MONEY (without sacrificing your value or brand)
Shana Lynn Yao is a Personal Brand Stylist and CEO of Total Genius®.
With over 28 years of experience managing multimillion dollar retail and shopping center locations, including the famed Rodeo Drive, winning awards by the International Council of Shopping Centers for marketing innovation, she now works with creative entrepreneurs to empower them to own their expertise so they can make a bigger impact in the world, with a signature business that reflects their personal style.
She is host of the Marketing Made Meaningful podcast on ITunes, dog mom, and creative visionary.
Driven by purpose, Shana found her calling to help holistic business owners when over the past few years was struck by a severe autoimmune disorder, that left her relentlessly seeking answers to find the cure to her own heath condition. Living a holistic and organic lifestyle, she was determined to dig deeper to find real solutions to this seemingly sudden condition. This caused her to learn about human psychology, emotional and positive intelligence, neurology, the science of flow, how food and our own minds impact not only our health but our overall success in life.
Now with this empowered knowledge, Shana leads her business with a new determination to help others overcome their business, life and personal challenges that hold them back.
Through neurolinguistic programming, solid business strategies, and the science of the mind and biology, Shana helps them discover Master Your Money Code where their unique life purpose lives inside their own life stories. Together they create a business based on their greatest strengths, talents and life experience, and a solid strategic business and marketing plan to create the success they desire.
If you're ready to build a business you love on your terms, and Master Your Money Code, schedule a free consultation and get on your road to success!