Want to Jump Start Your Sales? STOP Marketing! Part IV of V

If you had $100 to invest, where would you put it: in a new business or in a slot machine?

According to data, the slot machine is a safer “investment!” Here are the odds of success for a new business or a new idea from a big business: big company (2 year survival): 25%, small company (5 year survival): 25%, venture capital selected idea: 10%. Compare this to the fact that, by law, a slot machine is guaranteed to pay back 32% of the time!

It’s funny, today the advice and expertise available to us is unprecedented in the known history. Yet, the rate of failure of businesses is the worst ever. In 1961, less than 50% of the new businesses failed. In 1972 the percentage was a little over 60%. In 2000, 98% of the new businesses failed!

What’s going on? Where are we going wrong in managing our businesses?

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The answer is simple: we have lost confidence in ourselves.

Let’s face it, the more we trust the experts to run our businesses, the less we trust our own gut and instinct. And there in lies the problem.

May be that’s the reason why most of us try so hard to be just like our competitors.

It’s absolutely crazy when you think about it. We start a business all excited with a great idea. It’s unique, it’s different and it gets our juices flowing.

We do some marketing. Then we realize that people are not responding to our marketing. Not as much as we like any way. So we add a new service or product to our business that our competitor is selling. Then we repeat this process, over and over again.

Pretty soon, people can’t tell us apart from our competitors. We look exactly like them! Worse, a part of us starts to die. We start killing our passion just to survive in business. Pretty soon, we don’t like our business. Still, we feel that we don’t have a choice. We have to keep going just because there is no other way to stay in business.

Is there a way to return from this path?

Well, there is. And the answer is simpler than you think. But it’s going to require some courage.

The answer is simply to go back to the design table and figure what makes us different from our competition.

Think about this question: What is one thing that your business does that no one can do in the world, no matter how hard they tried?

Tough question. But the answer may be simpler than you think. The answer may be simply to get back to the time when you started the business.

So take out a pen, some paper and answer the following questions:

1. Why did you get into the business in the first place?

2. What injustice, problem, pet peeve did you set out to address with your business?

3. What are you most proud of regarding what you offer?

4. What part of your product or service gets you most excited? Why?

5. What do you offer the world that nobody else does?

Answer these questions and you will notice that your energies start flowing a little quicker. A part of you start feeling… alive. If you feel like you want to keep going, don’t stop.

If you need more questions to stimulate your thinking, drop me an e-mail and I will send you a worksheet we use in one of the AMBICA workshops.

Until then, remember that knowing and living what makes you unique and different improves your chances of profitable success by some 300%!

What does that mean?

If your likelihood of success is, say 10%, after you get this answer and start living it and communicating it, you will improve your chances to 30%. I don’t know about you, but that was a pretty good reason for me to do this exercise for my business. Hope you will do the same for yours.

Visit http://www.ambica.net/jump_start_your_business_brain.html for a workshop on this topic.

Happy Success!
Bhavesh Naik.