Customers. We love them don’t we. All of us who run our own businesses love that moment when a new customer signs up with us/buys our products & becomes part of our gang. It’s what we do it for after all. New customers are the life blood of our business, and we spend a lot of time looking for them, connecting with them & building relationships with them.
And sometimes, you have that heady moment of looking at your order book & seeing that IT IS FULL!!
Whoohoo!
You’re fully booked!! Break out the bubbles, do your happy dance – you are FULLY BOOKED! Your client list is FULL! You are at MAXIMUM CAPACITY!! You can stop marketing, stop networking, get off the social media hamster wheel & take a break because you are FULLY BOOKED!!
Yeah. About that….
I’ve been running my own business now for over 21 years. I’ve been coaching small business owners (and many others, like racing drivers, CEOs, L&D directors) for over 10 of those years now. And I see this happen a lot. And it is killing your business.
Yep. Killing it.
There are a few things that will very quickly kill your business – stop it dead in it’s tracks, leave you looking at tumbleweed, wondering what the hell happened – three that are guaranteed to do this are:
Over promising and not delivering
Not paying your suppliers on time/at all
Stopping marketing when you are busy.
Putting your feet up when you are busy can feel like a reward for all your hard work – and I’m not saying that you don’t deserve a little respite – but sitting back & pressing the ‘stop’ button is fatal. You see, it’s a busy old business high street out there, and if your shop window is empty & the door is closed, guess what? Those potential customers are just going to keep on walking down that high street until they see one that is open.
I hear things like this all the time (and am guilty of doing so myself from time to time too):
I’m too busy to network right now
I haven’t got time to post on social media
I’m really busy right now so I don’t need to focus on marketing for a bit.
And it’s all bollocks.
The quickest way to become invisible is to stop marketing/networking. I’m experiencing that myself right now. I’ve been involved in a large corporate project since July which has taken up every spare moment I have outside of my coaching commitments to my clients – which means I haven’t been able to get to the networking meetings I would normally go to. And I can tell. My order book isn’t empty, but the number of mini sessions being booked has dropped.
Why?
Because I’m not being visible enough.
So, if you are currently looking at a full order book/database/list and patting yourself on the back, thinking you can stop all the marketing for a while, you are very wrong. It’s important to be consistent, it’s important to be visible, & it’s important to keep at it.
I use social media scheduling tools to pick up the slack when things are manic – making sure I am still posting content even when I know I will be stupidly busy. I use SocialBee – you can give it a try through this link: https://socialbee.grsm.io/kapowbee
I also use the fabulous Amanda Roulstone (who is posting this blog for me) as she makes sure I remember to create these blogs each month, and that they actually get up on my website when I am down in the long grass coaching.
So, the next time you are looking at a full order book etc, give yourself that pat on the back – absolutely – but instead of pressing the ‘stop’ button, take a moment to do this instead:
What did you do that made this happen?
What was different?
How can you replicate that going forward?
Look at your success and work out how you are going to incorporate that into your ongoing marketing strategy (you’ve got one, right? If not, let’s have a chat)
Because, deep down inside, you know you can’t really press the ‘stop’ button – that’s just not how running a grown up business works.