Almost by accident, over the years, I’ve come to see Business Expansion clearly, and it boils down to something rather simple. As you probably know, pretty much every business has three parts –

• Marketing,
• Admin, and
• Production.

Every entrepreneur I’ve ever met has been brilliant at production. What we might call their core technology. Auto repairmen are great at fixing cars. Hamburger places really know how to make hamburgers. Dentists know how to fix teeth. Hair stylists know how to cut and style hair. So in general, that part (production) generally needs little help.

And usually, the Admin part becomes obvious: keeping books, paying bills, and things like that.

The Weakest Part of Struggling Businesses

The weakest part, in all businesses who are struggling, is Marketing.

So, always the main problem is: how to get enough business? Most entrepreneurs don’t know a lot about this.

Here’s a simple, logical proof. See if this is as obvious to you as it has become for me —

• If you can find and attract enough appropriate people, then you can speak with enough people
• If you can speak with enough people, enough of them will sign up
• If enough sign up, you will have enough money coming in
• If enough money comes in, you can have growth and prosperity

How to Attract Appropriate People

So business expansion and growth comes down to one question — “Can you find and attract enough appropriate people?”

And attracting appropriate people comes from your marketing methods and systems.

So let’s look closer at marketing. First, marketing also has three parts —

1. Outreach,
2. Follow-Up, and
3. Selling.

Again, just about all entrepreneurs are rather good at Selling, because selling is just a conversation, and entrepreneurs know how to talk about what they do, and how their business helps their clients.

The weakest part of marketing, for all businesses which are struggling, is the Outreach.

Outreach is necessary because the new people who could become customers do not know about your business yet, and so  the entrepreneur must reach out and place the information in front of these people. Without this  happening, there can be no new people becoming attracted to the business.

And because people usually don’t buy things immediately, then some sort of organized Follow-Up is needed. An automatic follow-up system will usually increase the actual sales from outreach marketing 2 to 8 times.

The Missing Elements for a Struggling Business …

So the missing parts, in all businesses which struggle are —

1. an outreach system, and
2. a follow-up system.

Outreach is the most important to get started, and what is effective can be very different for different kinds of businesses.

Follow-up is usually one or more of these —

• email,
• text messages,
• messenger broadcasts,
• responding to people on facebook or instagram,
• sending letters,
• phone calls, or (for some types of businesses)
• walking in their door from time to time

Here’s an example: The outreach systems I’ve seen working best recently, for many types of business-to-consumer organizations, if you have any budget, are facebook ads shown to people in your area, offering a special deal for the new client’s first visit.

This kind of offer needs a bit of system added – it needs a way to provide the special offer’s promised benefit, it should at least capture their name, email, or phone (for later follow-up). It should also send them reminders (because many will forget), and it should notify you, so that you can react and reach out to them.

Now if your business does not have any budget, then you must use time instead of money. For example, you can uses things like joining groups which contain likely clients, and giving discount or free services to get people to start talking about you. Now when your business becomes active, your time will be demanded by your core technology or in managing the people who do this. So plan in advance to switch from spending time to investing money, as your time becomes limited.

(If you devise a good outreach system that works, then quite often it is possible that YOU pay for it only for a month or two, and thereafter the income from new clients covers the cost, so THEY pay for it forever after. More about this later.)

Coming Soon: The Voltos Library (“Business Expansion Made Simple”)

There is more, but it will have to wait, for now.

I have recently started creating free video trainings about this, based on my 40+ years of working with advertising and marketing for my own businesses and for clients. It will take some time to create more of these training videos. (This is part of MY outreach program.)

I will soon have a mailing list so that any business owner struggling with growth can have access to these tried-and-tested methods. I will then use this mailing list to notify business owners when this free video training is available, and as additional training videos become available.

All the training videos will be short, clear, and focused, so that it will be in small enough “bites” for a business owner to understand clearly and they’re then fairly easy to implement.

Stay tuned!  🙂