You want to make money…flip businesses…not houses.
The crowd at the party who gets excited about buying a runt house, dumping money and time into it (we call that risk), in hopes of turning 50K profit after a year (generally overly optimistic) should be looking at American Business today. How about buying a sign company with a 10 year track record that is selling for one times earnings and does no outbound marketing. Increase sales, put self management in place, earn money instead of spending money, and resell for two times earnings a year or two down the road. Now THAT is smart business.
Before and After #1
Industry: Transportation and Freight
Location: N.E. US and Canada
Problem: With the economy down, many industries that previously did not have to be savvy marketers are finding themselves with an insufficient client base to continue operating at a profit. Never before having to aggressively seek work, they find themselves ill equipped at the game of acquiring new business. As the economy weakens, the herd is thinned out, however generally not in proportion to the ratio needed to keep the remaining players fat and happy. Each competitor increases whatever marketing methods are brought to their attention (that’s what us marketers do) and proportionately each marketing message has less effect than it would have if presented when the market was stronger ( a reminder to market during the good times too).
Solution: After script writing and generating email marketing items to send to prospects, telemarketing calls were placed into the North Eastern states into the manufacturing and distribution sectors to start (SIC code 20-39 and 50-51) with companies that had sufficient revenues to warrant our interest. The biggest obstacle we encountered was that even though we set the bar high for revenues, many of the company’s were telling us that they used only UPS type services and did no full pallet shipping which was our target. We attempted to more closely isolate the SIC code so that we were calling companies working with larger items like an irrigation pump rather than smaller items however this did not help much as even items as small as golf balls were often shipped in bulk and did use pallets due to the weight . We conversed with the client to see if they had their own list of specific companies that were exact targets and other than their past client list the answer was “No.” Our job then became to shorten the script to quickly find out if they shipped by pallet and then if they did ship by pallet ascertain how we could begin converting them to a client.
Outcome: After placing some calls back into the prospects who said “No” to our telemarketer so that we could do some market research of our own, we isolated the two most important desires to be safety record and price. We are only a few weeks in to the new focused calls and results are promising as the client has shared that he has some good looking prospects and the return on investment of landing a few good clients could be substantial.
Having issues with your sales and marketing? Email us your problem and let us work on it for free.
Before and After #2
Industry: Plastic Injection Mold Manufacturer
Location: Phoenix, Arizona
Problem: This shop is owned by an Eastern European man who came to the US decades ago, therefore his skills in selling, outdated equipment, and limited English language put him at a clear disadvantage to a more modern competitor. His competition could out speak him, out produce him and had developed a better presence in his local market. This shop had been a “captive shop” meaning a small group of clients kept returning to him for his good pricing and quality work, however when the economy took his clients out of the picture, he was left with nothing.
Solution: Telemarketing calls were placed into the Phoenix MSA but the current economic downturn generated only longer term leads and put no immediate money in his pockets. Since we knew he could not compete with the big boys we ran small targeted Google ads after building him a website with a marketing message driving home a one week turnaround and a product made by him personally, a skilled craftsman in the USA rather than China outsourced.
Outcome: After leaning to his strengths of quick turnaround (due to no business and eagerness to eat), quality work (performed by his skilled hands), low pricing (as he had some raw plastics inventory in stock and machines with nothing to do) the Google ads brought in a plethora of inventors and others needing short run work completed accurately and quickly. Surprisingly to us his website even brought in local business. Sales are now up to the level that Steve the owner is busy and “problem solved.”
Having issues with your sales and marketing? Email us your problem and let us work on it for free.