The better you are known for being a leader in your field, the easier it will be to attract business.  Most of the successful small business owners ($100,000+) I have worked with were not well known when they started out.  Many became known by positioning themselves to become recognized leaders in their field. The positioned themselves by doing one of the following: Gaining greater knowledge in their field Assuming a leadership role in their field Beginning a new field For example, some of the things I have done to position me as an expert are: Volunteer my time as a counselor […]

Many of the most successful small businesses ($100,000+) that I have worked with have become successful because they had access to the people that made the buying decisions.  They gained that access because of strategic alliances. A strategic alliance is a person that knows and trusts you and works with you to build your business by feeding referrals to you. For example, in a printing company I own, I have strategic alliances with graphic artists, business consultants, bankers, copy shops, and even other printers that do not have the capabilities of high quality full color that I specialize in.  When any […]

The most successful home-based or small businesses that I have analyzed are highly specialized.  They have a product or service that serves a small niche that no one else is serving properly or not available. One of the biggest mistakes I find most small businesses make is they try to be everything to everyone.  They are afraid they will miss work if they speicalize and not tell people they do “everything”! Little do they realize that if they define thier niche properly, they would get  more business!  Instead of being a general management consultant they are consultants to the fashion industry on […]

Over the past 35 years, (especially the past 12 as a counselor for SCORE), I have worked with hundreds of small businesses and home-based businesses.  I have analyzed the marketing strategies of the most successful – those making over $100,000 a year.  I found that the successful ones do one or more of six things that others usually do not do. 1. Get people to “beat a path to your door”.  This is what all self-employed people want.  They think that if they provide a good enough or even a great product or service, customers will magically materialize.  So sure that this […]

If you are like most of the growing ranks of the self-employed, you probably do not think of yourself as having a sales personality.  Most likely you dislike having to sell and even dread it.  But you are good at what you do and that is why you went into business in the first place.  And you know that if you can’t get enough business fast enough and regularly enough, you are doomed to go back to work for someone else. So you are determined to find practical, effective ways to attract a steady flow of business, and you would […]

One of the first things a new SCORE client will ask me is: “What have you done that qualifies you to be a SCORE counselor?” Fair question.  Let me answer that question before I move on to helping small businesses get more business. At the age of 10, I became involved in the “Family Business”.  My dad ran a grocery store and we lived in the back.  This was not the first family business my father owned, but the first one I became involved in (other than the family farm). Through my growing up years, I watched my father run […]

Last week I met with a SCORE client and counseled him with his business.  (SCORE is the Service Corps of Retired Executives and offers free counseling to small businesses).  As I was telling this client about my background, he was impressed that I had taken 18 companies from near bankruptcy to profitability in a relatively short amount of time. He asked me all sorts of questions, like: Did you spend a lot of money on marketing to make them successful?  Did you have to hire experts to help you?  How did you cut costs and build sales to make them profitable?  And […]