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30 Retaining the Wrong Professional Advisor

From time to time companies and senior executives inevitably are involved in circumstances that are not familiar to them. In those circumstances, it is a good idea to retain a professional advisor. But it can be disastrous if the wrong advisor is retained.

Often the decision about the advisor who is retained is much more controlling in determining the outcome that is achieved than are the merits of the strategy pursued, the potential of the new business opportunity, what diligence is employed, or how much resources are expended. If you retain the wrong advisor, you may end up with an unfortunate outcome.

Retaining the wrong advisor is a mistake.

11 Promoting Traffic at the Expense of Profitability 

Seeking to establish themselves in a new market, some companies may emphasize customer traffic—to the exclusion of whether they make any money on those so-called customers.

As Peter Drucker has observed, it is a fundamental business truth that the purpose of business is to create and retain a customer. But if you do not make any money on your customers, you do not have a business. Generating traffic without revenue and profitable customer transactions is a sure way to financial ruin. This lesson was relearned by many dot-com technology companies in the 1990s, who promoted traffic to their websites but failed to establish a viable business model. Numerous dot-com companies that failed did not sufficiently understand that, at the end of the day, maximizing hits is much less important than generating revenues in amounts more than the expenses incurred in
achieving those revenues, so that the business can make a profit and sustain itself.

Promoting customer traffic at the expense of good business is a mistake. 

1 Strategic Incongruency

Strategy, to be effective, must be congruent.

If balance and consistency between different parts of the business strategy are lacking, the resulting incongruence compromises the prospects of business success. Strategy congruency means that there is a reasonable connection between one part of a strategy and another part of a strategy. The purposes of one part of the enterprise are complementary to those of another part of the enterprise. The goals of one division are supportive of, and in parallel with, the goals of another division. 

1 No Plan

A surprising number of companies operate with no plan.

If you operate with no plan, you are proceeding in reliance on spontaneous, reactive, and even impromptu action—rather than on the basis of deliberate, considered approaches to the business. If what is to be done is not much thought about in advance, the opportunity for reflection, consideration and choosing the best way is quite limited. Without a plan, the benefits of plans—focus on priorities, assignment of responsibilities, accountability for results—cannot be realized. Enterprises with plans achieve greater and more frequent success than those that lack them. For as it has insightfully been said, failing to plan is planning to fail.

Not having a plan is a mistake.

Are you a physician, dentist, info-marketer or financial advisor? Do you have a business plan?

Most who reach out to me for business planning help don't have any type of plan in place.

The tool we use at eLaunchers is called LivePlan. I'll share how you can use this valuable business planning tool in your business.

Physicians, dentists, info-marketers and financial advisors need good business planning and access to real-time financial information.

"You can't really know where you're going unless you know where you've been." -- Maya Angelou

We're in the 4th quarter of 2019. Now is the time to review your 2019 business plan and begin preparation for what you're going to accomplish in 2020. 

What is a business plan? It's a written description of your business's future, a document that tells what you plan to do and how you plan to do it. Don't worry - it doesn't have to be long or complex to start. Ryan Deiss is famously known for making one on a napkin.

I suppose to enlighten the newbies and skeptics in the readership I should begin with a definition of direct response.  After all, it’s what we love to do, what we advocate, and what we insist upon from our clients.

Direct response is the second of two distinct means of strategy as it refers to marketing.  The first one is Branding – or mass marketing.  Direct is the one that makes the register ring, the number at the bottom of the P & L black and not red.

Your ability to attract ideal clients is directly roportionate to your magnetism. There are sub-laws or minor laws that support the primary law. For instance, the laws of celebrity, resonance, and truth in being the genuine article. For now, let’s concentrate on the encompassing law of magnetism rather than its components so to speak.

Trust Trumps All

Part One

(from your mother-in-law to your physician)

Image Credit:  Flickr

TRUST is one of those things that the entire world hinges on.  Trust trumps all, and that includes when your mother-in-law professes her undying love for you.

I happen to have been lucky in that regard albeit the exception to the rule.  Alice was indeed a person that loved me, and I her.  She trusted me to always be there, and I trusted her to mind her own business.  She used to say that “she loved me more than she did her own kids.” Sometimes.

If you wish to end up winning, the recipe is outspending the competition. It’s the unvarnished truth.  It’s not the best business that always wins, it’s the best marketed.  But don’t let me get too far ahead just yet.

The typical business owner looks for every advantage imaginable to spend as little as possible on gaining a new customer, client, or patient.  Whether it be pay per click ads, sales commission, incentives, discounts, whatever.