Growth Secret #1
Early in my business career, I heard that the key to success in real estate was “Location, Location, Location.” Twenty-five years later, I discovered the secret to business growth—especially growth during tough times—is the simple motto “Follow Up, Follow Up, Follow Up.”

Follow up is one element that less than 10% of businesses do—in good or tough times—yet it (or rather the lack of it) is the reason for 80% of lost sales. Most businesses don’t follow up effectively and therefore never come close to their potential. They typically fall short of the opportunity available to them.

Some will even spend large amounts of money to find new clients, yet don’t realize the huge potential in their current list of prospects due to a lack of follow up.
Most sales reps believe that if a prospect hasn’t made a purchase by the third contact, then they probably will not. Wrong! It is a proven fact that over 80% of sales come after the fifth contact, whether they are made by mail, fax, email, phone, or in person.

Too many of us stop just short of massive success because we feel it better to prospect new leads over old ones. This is a classic mistake which could cost your business during tough times. So your new meditation should be Follow Up, Follow Up, Follow Up—over and over until they buy.

“No,” doesn’t mean “No” unless you stop asking. It may mean “No” for today, but not necessarily “No” for tomorrow. Now, one problem is that follow-up takes time, and time is money, so you need to be smart and find tools to help you. Some tools I like are VistaPrint.com, SendOutCards.com and InfusionSoftPro.com. They are big time and money-savers by helping automate follow-up for your business.

Growth Secret #2
Whether you’re a fan of Big Macs or not, you cannot deny the massive success of McDonald’s. Take a look at the reason for that success—it has never been great-tasting food…it’s their systems. The business has been successful, while using teenagers to run the stores, because they have a thoroughly-thought-out system in place which details every single process and duplicates them exactly throughout each franchise around the globe.

So what is your company’s system? If you don’t have one, maybe you need to set one up. Using systems can save you hundreds, or potentially thousands, of dollars each month as well as save time, like it did for me—and you will be able to handle more clients with less effort.

Systems avoid mistakes, reduce failures, increase efficiency, expand revenue, and grow profits. You will never grow your company beyond your ability, time, and resources unless you have a system. With a system in place, you don’t need a highly-skilled (read ‘expensive’) labor force—this translates to paying lower wages and that means lower overhead and greater profits.

Take the time to evaluate what your business functions are and what you and your staff do on a daily basis. Record these functions and break them down into pieces to determine the steps needed to accomplish them. Often, looking at your business as if you were going to franchise or sell the business helps you determine the systems you need to create so the business can run without you—you need to set up a system which puts you out of a job.

So remember, if you want to experience massive success you need to perform follow-up until you win prospects into satisfied lifetime customers and develop systems so your business can operate on its own.