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7 Step-By-Step Strategies To Outmarket Your Competitors

If you’re desperate to grow your business to make a lot more money for all the effort you put in then this may be the most important article you’ll read all year long. For some reason, most business owners think that there is some kind of complex, highly technical, almost mysterious solution to this problem.

And maybe technology has a little to do with it, because every other week there’s a new gadget out that promises to make your life easier. All you have to do is buy. The answer to this problem is a lot simpler than you think. More over, it’s a lot easier to implement than you think too.

So how can you quickly and easily steamroll your competition and leave them in the dust? While laughing all the way to the bank?

Take a deep breath, and relax, you’re about to move just a little closer to your dreams. Ready? Let’s go:

1. Work your current customer list – start with the easiest market to convert. These people have already bought from you before. Studies show that they are twice as likely to buy than a person who’s never bought from you before.

2. Work your past customer list – again, these are people who’ve bought from you before. Start mailing them again, call on them, and make every effort to contact them again with your current promotions. Tell your prospect why they should buy now, how to buy and why they need to do it now.

3. Eliminate spending money on ads that are ineffective – cut down on the institutional ads. These ads are designed only to keep your name in front of people, and not to make a sale. They are non-trackable and a waste of money. Advertising is pure salesmanship. No matter what medium you use, TV, radio, or newspapers, it’s still mass salesmanship. As obvious as it would be, most businesses don’t really understand the very purpose of running an ad. The purpose of running your ad is to stimulate an immediate response. This can be a phone call, a visit to your website, or better – an instant sale. By using direct response advertising, you can help prevent wasting your valuable time and money.

4. Follow up – after you do a mailing, follow up with some kind of telemarketing effort. Tests have proven over and over again, that by using a telemarketing effort as a follow up enhances your total results by 400%, 600% and up to 1,000%. That’s three to ten times more sales, just by following up AFTER mailing a letter.

5. Keep following up – one of the best examples of good follow up is Omaha Steaks. I ordered from them one time, and they immediately followed up 2 weeks later. Then, another 2 weeks passed by, and again they followed up with a phone call. On the third attempt, I ordered a large family package. People who are strongly motivated in your products and services are more likely to buy. But you have to be tenacious about it. It takes an average of 8 to 9 contact attempts until an interest prospect buys. Keep calling, writing, and calling, and writing. Don’t let them slip away once they buy, keep building that relationship.

6. Upsell – best example is any McDonald’s or Burger King drive-thru. When you first drive up, you’ll be asked if you want such and such value meal. Then, after you put in your order, you’ll be asked if you want fries with that or such and such. This technique is a no-brainer. But the sad part is that very few businesses employ this strategy. For every customer you sell to, you simply upsell them. Instead of letting them just buy one thing, offer them a package or additional services or products that go along with that. Almost any type of business can upsell. Car sales people are really good at this. After they’ve sold you the car, they add all kinds of neat options to the sale. In some cases your upsell could equal or even exceed the profit from the original sale. But make sure that you create a believable and compelling reason as to why you’re offering the upsell.

7. Create affiliate relationships – this is a host-parasite relationship. Back in biology class, you learned about the little protozoa living inside the termite. The protozoa enables the termite to digest the wood it eats. So both benefit. It’s a win-win situation. Businesses can do the same. And because of the affiliate relationship, a result is experienced that one party alone could not capitalize alone on. This is when you enter a joint venture with another business. For example, you could have a customer list and your customers have a good relationship with you. You can fully utilize this relationship with all kinds of ancillary businesses. Let’s say you’re a janitorial cleaning business and you specialize in the cleaning of industrial buildings, such as restaurants, bowling centers, doctors offices, etc. You would team up with a lawn service company to offer a total package of cleaning and lawn care to your customers. You could also team up with a pest control company to again, offer more value to your customers. Now all three businesses benefit, because now you are sending new customers to these businesses, and they are sending customers to you.

These 7 steps to outmarket your competition are very simple, and should be obvious, but very few people use these principles to the max. And rightfully so, it’s not easy to create your marketing funnel and also do the other important things in your business. There just aren’t enough hours in the day to try to do it all by yourself. It’s like if you have plumbing problems, you call a plumber. You don’t have time to try to figure out how to fix it yourself. The same goes for marketing and advertising. You simply hire a professional to help you do it.

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My husband has a Pest Control company and wants to put a toll free number on his cards. We relocated and he still services customers in another state. However, he doesn’t want them to incur long distance charges when they call him. Thanks for replies!

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Buying your First Rental Property and Becoming a Landlord

When you are buying your first rental property and becoming a landlord, there is lots to learn. How do I find tenants? What should I charge for rent? Should I update the places to get more rent? How do I tell the tenants they are late on rent?

I have read a lot about how you have rule with an iron fist to keep your tenants in line. Our philosophy is much more laid back, and it has worked out amazingly well for us. Every property is different, but this was our experience.

Our first rental investment property was somewhere we would move into ourselves, and in retrospect, that was an aspect more important than I would have guessed. There’s many decisions along the way, and being a potential tenant yourself makes those decisions much clearer.

First off, when it comes time to market your place, you are part of the target audience, so it is easy to find the right place to advertise. Just ask yourself… how would we go about looking for a place? We actually mistakenly put costly newspaper ads out initially, bringing in the completely wrong renters who were completely not interested. Once we switched to advertising in places we would look, 90% of the people who came were actually interested, the place would rent faster, and the tenants were happy to be in our place.

That leads to the next reason why buying something you would live in as your first rental property makes the landlord learning process so much easier. The tenants! These will be people that you basically get along with because they like what you like, and if you meet them, they will most likely like you, or they would not be renting it. You will make sense to them, and they will make sense to you. When you are at odds with your tenants, the whole interaction and experience can be painful, so getting along helps tremendously.

Why, you say, should I care if my tenants are happy? Because everything is easier. They will more likely pay rent on time, respect & keep your place in shape, and stay longer. Believe me, there is nothing like a completely wrecked apartment by a short-term tenant. Sure you can charge money for damages, but it will still take time and be a hassle to get it back up to a rent-able state. And dealing the whole time with bitter, angry tenants is no fun either.

How do you make your tenants happy? There’s a couple things we do. One is that we allow tenants some flexibility with painting and decorating. 95% of the time, our tenants actually do wonders with our apartments and leave them with a better style than we could have done ourselves. Many times, we even get good ideas to carry over to the other apartments to make them more marketable, like some basic drapes & mounted wine racks. We even had a tenant call us to ask if she could plant some flowers by her porch. We welcomed it. It was an indication that she felt invested in the place and felt at home. Of course, I am not advising you let someone remodel your kitchens… I am talking small things that are easily undone, but make the tenant feel invested and at home.

Another thing to do to have happy tenants is to give them a sizable re-signing bonus when their leases end. And unless it is painfully needed, do not raise the rent, especially if the tenant is someone who pays on time and is easy to deal with. We offer a $500 re-signing bonus each year with rents at $800. It is almost a free month and about the cost it would be for us to do a make-ready, so it is good for us and them.

Also, we do not rent our places at the maximum. We make them a somewhat good deal so that many people will inquire, and so we have a better chance of a good fit that will be happy and stay long. We also do not overcharge because feeling ripped off is one main reason a tenant will leave.

We also treat our tenants with a lot of respect. We call them every time we enter their units, and if repairs take an extensive amount of time or hassle on their behalf, we give them some rent back. We also maintain the property and do pest control. And we always answer their issues within a day, at least with a phone call.

Becoming a landlord was definitely a learning experience. Everyone has their own style, and even different properties may prescribe a different style. Just be open to handling your rental property business (which is basically your tenants) with respect rather than the stereotypical overbearing attitude.

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