12 Deadly Marketing Mistakes
and How to Avoid Them - Part 2

Did you miss part one of this article? You can read it here...

Mistake #7 - Engaging In Price Competition!

Failure to properly position and differentiate your services from competitors forces professionals to sell their skilled service at too low, “hours-for-dollars” rates.

Often prospects can’t tell the difference between one service provider and another and base their decision to price alone.

Unless you don’t mind being treated as a commodity and making only a fraction of the money you really could me making, you should take steps to clearly communicate you HUB (Hot Undeniable Benefits) of doing business with you.

Mistake #8 – “Winging it” Sales Process!

Not understanding the proper syntax of an enrollment conversation, most professionals practice the “show up and throw up” sales method, which easily “turns off” even the most eager potential clients.

Develop a set of five to ten “must-have-answered” questions that illustrates your expertise and ensures you this prospect is the right type of client for you.

It’s important to remember this: While you are engaging in sales conversations about your product or service all the time, your potential clients only do it once in a while and they rely on you to guide them through this process.

Don’t disappoint them and rob them of opportunity to work with you by being lousy at closing the deal!

Mistake #9 – Over-Depending On Referrals!

Not knowing the difference between getting referrals and a strategically developed word-of-mouth marketing system many professionals can’t understand why satisfied clients don’t refer them to friends and colleagues – but they don’t know how to solve this problem.

Your good clients want to refer you to their friends they often don’t know how to do it. Unsure about how aggressive you’ll be in pursuing the contacts they give you, they prefer the safer option of not giving it to you at all.

Know when it’s best to approach clients about referrals (hint – it’s not at the end of your engagements!). Educate them about your follow-up process to make them at ease with your practice. Those two simple tweaks alone will make a huge difference in your “referral-ability”.

Mistake #10 - Misusing Technology!

Many professionals mistakenly assume that “internet is a business”. They either refuse to get into “that business” all together and miss out on huge marketing possibilities, or try to convert their business to be 100% internet based. Both are costly mistakes.

Savvy professionals recognize new business development opportunities that internet makes possible so they make online marketing an important part of their strategy, but they don’t drop everything else.

Employ the power of online marketing to make your business easier to find, and to keep in touch with current and potential clients. But also give your promotions a healthy “multi-dimensional” appeal with offline strategies like postcards and phone calls and watch your business explode.

Mistake #11 – Being a “Lone Ranger” and a “Super Hero”!

Lack of delegation skills, not having a support team, and working alone without access to a community of like-minded peers who are committed to our success diminishes the opportunity to creatively brainstorm new ideas, explore new opportunities, or uncover blind-spots.

Admittedly, lack of good delegating skills is my personal biggest vice I continue to work on. It’s also what keeps most professionals and entrepreneurs from building a more successful business.

I’m finding that better planning, reminding myself of the value of my time, and constantly improving my delegation skills is very helpful.

Also, forming my personal board of advisors (mastermind) and being able to seek their counsel when needed is very powerful tool to keeps me focused and on track to achieve my business goals.

Mistake #12 – Lack of Business and Marketing Systems!

Too much creativity negatively impacts profitability. Constantly working on new one-shot strategies and reinventing the wheel results in larger than necessary workload, overwhelm, and diminished profits.

Remember that many of your business growth strategies can become more profitable as you implement them again and again and tweak and perfect them over a period of time.

Bigger payoffs can be generated from focusing on one strategy, optimizing it for best results, and systemizing and automating it than from chasing a half a dozen of ideas that never get fully implemented.

Make it one of your business goals to create systems that can be duplicated, automated, or delegated and free your time to focus on money-making aspects of your business – like improving your marketing and generating more leads.
 

(c) 2006 Adam M. Urbanski 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adam Urbanski, the Marketing Mentor, helps Independent Service Professionals and Small Business Owners attract more clients. For more promotional tips and a FREE 32-page marketing guide go to http://www.themarketingmentors.com

NOTE: Are you looking for fresh content for your ezine or web site? Feel free to reprint this article as long as it's kept intact and unaltered (including the “about the author” info at the end), and you send a copy of your reprint to adam@themarketingmentors.com
 

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