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My friend Gil grew up on a dairy farm in the 1960s. His parents bought a farm that came with an ancient three-bedroom house. When they had their first couple of children, it worked fine. However, when they had more kids than bedrooms, his Dad realized he needed a bigger house, so he started adding extensions.

Picture your potential customer hunting for a product or service, where are they most likely to look?

Generating new, qualified leads is the lifeblood of any business. Your ability to analyze each lead's cost, product, or sales funnel with your ROI is a critical factor in your success as a business owner.  

Your sales staff carry a heavy load. Every day they prospect to find leads, follow up on leads, score leads, send out emails, log calls, and schedule appointments. They put together sales quotes and proposals, onboard customers, record conversations and notes on prospects, and request approvals – all while staying on top of products, services, and pricing. Most of their tasks don't make them or your business any money. Non-revenue producing activities make the most sense to automate. Automating frees up your sales staff to focus their efforts on doing the things that bring in the most income.

Effective marketing and successful gardening work the same way.

A cactus and a fern are both plants, but if you plant your cactus in the shade and water it as much as you water your fern, it will die. Similarly, if you plant your fern in scorching full sun and water it once a month, you've got yourself a dead fern.

Wouldn't it be great if you could make a sale after just one well-done sales presentation?  

Typically, your salesperson puts all their energy into doing a great job of the initial sales presentation and then follows up with one phone call or email. That's it. The prospect doesn't buy, and your salesperson believes they are not interested in your product or service and gives up on them. That's how most businesses lose money.

Would you be surprised if I told you direct mail gives you a higher return on your investment (ROI) than digital ads? You might be thinking – are you kidding?! That's as outdated and old school as playing music on a cassette player or using an overhead projector for a business presentation!

When you started your business, a simple spreadsheet was enough to keep track of your customer information. Then you brought more staff on board. Your receptionist might have had an excellent memory and liked to store some data in her head, other information in her email files, and keep a few paper files. Your sales representative may have kept a spreadsheet. Maybe your accountant kept a stack of invoices in a file folder.

You understand that your business' marketing system needs more than just one approach to reach customers. You know that coordinating your website, blog, sales funnels, social media, and content is a complicated, time consuming, ongoing, daily process. You can also understand that it's easier to have everything managed from one location than having all BRENT's parts function independently.

Moving on from last week’s blog, let me tell you more about BRENT - Business Relationship system for your ENTerprise.

Let’s start with the basics. Entrepreneurs know that the best businesses solve a problem. To make things crystal clear, I’ll describe what BRENT’s head, heart, legs, and trunk tell you about the areas a successful business system follows when applied correctly to problem-solving.