The four different stages of a business’ life cycle are:

• Infancy
• Adolescence
• Growing Pains
• Maturity

Let’s take a little deeper look at what each of these cycle’s means and how each can help expand your business’ lifespan.

Infancy

This is generally considered the technician’s phase, which typically is the owner. At this point, the relationship between the business and the owner is that of a parent and new born baby. There is an impenetrable bond that is required to establish the path your business will follow.

The key at this stage is to know the business must grow in order to flourish. You cannot stay in this stage forever.  Those businesses that do not grow from this stage end up burning out from the constant struggle between client acquisition and product/service fulfillment.  Leveraging people is the only way to escape the seesaw struggle between these two essential areas of a business.

Adolescence

In this stage the business needs to start bringing your support staff together to delegate to and allow for the growth to happen. The first line of defense is your technical people who need to bring a certain level of technical expertise and experience. Although your technical people are what your clients and customers will pay their money for, this cycle really belongs to the manager. The planning within the business needs to start and a relationship should be built and nurtured with the entrepreneur in order to effectively plan for the future.

Growing Pains

There’s a point in every business when the business goes ballistic and becomes chaotic. This chaos is referred to as “growing pains.” It’s a good problem to have, but a problem nonetheless. You are often faced with a number of choices:

• Avoid growth and stay small and continue talking about reaching the “next level”
• Go broke and start working for someone else where things are much easier
• Push forward into the next cycle aka next level

Maturity

The last cycle is maturity, though this doesn’t mean the end of your business. Your passion as an owner for growth must continue in order for your business to succeed. You must keep an entrepreneurial perspective in order to push your business forward, see changes in the current environment and position yourself to take advantage of the new opportunities that emerge.

All four of these cycles are connected and depend on a strong foundation for each one of them to be successful. All three of your key roles, entrepreneur, manager and technician must work together to navigate through these cycles.

If you’re having trouble putting together your business life cycles and figuring out which of the key roles you fit into, try our FREE test drive and work with one of our amazing coaches.

The four different stages of a business’ life cycle are:

• Infancy
• Adolescence
• Growing Pains
• Maturity

Let’s take a little deeper look at what each of these cycle’s means and how each can help expand your business’ lifespan.

Infancy

This is generally considered the technician’s phase, which typically is the owner. At this point, the relationship between the business and the owner is that of a parent and new born baby. There is an impenetrable bond that is required to establish the path your business will follow.

The key at this stage is to know the business must grow in order to flourish. You cannot stay in this stage forever.  Those businesses that do not grow from this stage end up burning out from the constant struggle between client acquisition and product/service fulfillment.  Leveraging people is the only way to escape the seesaw struggle between these two essential areas of a business.

Adolescence

In this stage the business needs to start bringing your support staff together to delegate to and allow for the growth to happen. The first line of defense is your technical people who need to bring a certain level of technical expertise and experience. Although your technical people are what your clients and customers will pay their money for, this cycle really belongs to the manager. The planning within the business needs to start and a relationship should be built and nurtured with the entrepreneur in order to effectively plan for the future.

Growing Pains

There’s a point in every business when the business goes ballistic and becomes chaotic. This chaos is referred to as “growing pains.” It’s a good problem to have, but a problem nonetheless. You are often faced with a number of choices:

• Avoid growth and stay small and continue talking about reaching the “next level”
• Go broke and start working for someone else where things are much easier
• Push forward into the next cycle aka next level

Maturity

The last cycle is maturity, though this doesn’t mean the end of your business. Your passion as an owner for growth must continue in order for your business to succeed. You must keep an entrepreneurial perspective in order to push your business forward, see changes in the current environment and position yourself to take advantage of the new opportunities that emerge.

All four of these cycles are connected and depend on a strong foundation for each one of them to be successful. All three of your key roles, entrepreneur, manager and technician must work together to navigate through these cycles.

If you’re having trouble putting together your business life cycles and figuring out which of the key roles you fit into, try our FREE test drive and work with one of our amazing coaches.

• Define your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
• Put an effective sales offer to work
• Avoid the marketing pitfalls
• Use a world-class marketing perspective
• Get results!

1. Put together a headline that gets immediate attention.  Remember to use something familiar, unusual or problematic to your intended audience.
2. Share benefits of your products/services speaking from the customers’ perspective.
3. Identify the specific needs your products/services fulfill.
4. Make it easy to do business with you by offering guarantees, testimonials, samples, etc.
5. Share your specific sales proposition.
6. Walk your customers/clients through how they should respond and act.  Remember, you may need to explain to them the next step they need to take in your process.
7. Motivate with a call to action.  Keep in mind you want to sell the next step in your sales process harder than the end result.  You need to nurture great clients by bringing them through your sales process.

• Ignore market testing and push on with an inaccurate plan.  This is a sure fire way to waste marketing dollars and lose long term clients/customers.
• Offer an incomplete case, or reasons, throughout their marketing plan.
• Fail to notice the needs of their prospective customers/clients.  Make sure you are hitting their hot buttons.
• Fail to diversify their marketing options.  Don’t put all your eggs in one marketing basket.
• Fail to get market opinions on their offers.  I call this reading the label from the inside of the bottle.  Our views are biased about our products and services, so take the time to get outside objective views of your product/service.

1. Keep a marketing journal and scribble down anything innovative that you see.
2. Keep encouraging your marketing department, or yourself, to try new things and dump the ones that aren’t working.
3. Order from your own company under a different name and analyze the process of ordering, shipping, online store, customer service and the product itself. This will show you where the areas for improvement are in the customer experience.  You can also hire a temp to be a secret shopper of your product/service.
4. Read every quality ad you can find and keep a file for future ideas to consider.
5. When out in public, watch how consumers behave in different situations and how they consider their purchases.
6. Step down a notch or two and work on the front lines with your sales and customer service staff.  Also read the reviews about your company online.  You can order an online reputation report for FREE at Influence Engine Report.
7. Continuously acknowledge your staff, vendors and customers. Everyone works and shops better when they feel appreciated.
8. Always listen to feedback from employees and customers.
9. Continuously test markets, ads, and marketing techniques. This is the only way to stay successful and know what’s working and, more importantly, what’s not.
10. Offer more information in your marketing than anyone else. The more information you offer, the more products/services you’ll sell.  Don’t fall into the “White Space” Trap from advertisers.
11. A great marketing plan can only get better. Continue to fine tune and refine your marketing plan based on testing results and feedback.
12. Be classy in your marketing. Make sure your marketing and advertising fits your company image, products/service and quality.  Don’t get mad that someone opts out of your contact database.  They are not your target audience and you don’t want to spam people who are not receiving benefit from your marketing.
13. Improve your best marketing areas and drop those that aren’t working.
14. Focus on what you say, not how you say it. The best marketing ideas turn into the best marketing naturally.
15. Develop all your ads, campaigns and sales materials with an attention to compelling and factual information.

• Providing quality products/services
• Providing high quality customer service
• Providing a low-pressure, highly informative sales experience
• Taking all the risk away with a great guarantee

• Build your database with a contest.
• Do regular mailings with sales, discounts, or other incentives.
• Find other creative ways to keep your current customers coming back for more.

“As long as the reward is directly related to your product or service, you can’t lose. Why not get started today? It’s so simple, it’s so seldom done, and it’s so profitable. And that’s the bottom line.” Jay Abraham