This blog post inspired by ideas from my friend, Tom Davidson, who is THE leadership expert for the forestry industry. Tom says he used to be a victim of "You Never Know" ...but NOW he knows. And his business is booming!

When it comes to small business marketing, "You Never Know" will kill you...

See if these scenarios ring a bell with you...

1. "We've been talking with this prospect for YEARS and now they've suddenly expressed interest... You never know!"
2. "We've been running that expensive ad month after month and sure enough, someone just called... You never know!"
3. "This guy asked me for a proposal last year and then disappeared on me. Couldn't get a hold of him to save my life. But he just opted into our website... You never know!"
4. "We wanted to stop offering that program and focus on more profitable services, but just last month, two clients signed up before we could pull it off the website. You never know..." 
5. "We were in the process of changing our tag line because nobody knew what the heck it meant. But then a new prospect just told me, 'I love your tag line' so we're keeping it. You never know..."
6. "Although 70% of our business is in this industry - we don't want to exclusively focus on them because we'd be cutting ourselves off from other business. You never know..."
7. "We love working with small companies, but my sales coach told me that if we're ever going to seriously grow revenue, we have to start selling to much bigger companies. He may be right. You never know..." 

You're breaking my heart... 

And you're killing your business... 

STOP IT!

Look at you... Spinning your wheels, chasing all your random maybes.

STOP hedging your bets. 

(Thank you to Peter Sheahan for hammering that point home in a speech.)

You need to focus on a SPECIFIC audience, dedicate yourself to ONE distribution channel, lead with one FLAGSHIP service, promote one CORE program, sell one MAIN product line, PRESENT prospects with a PRIMARY investable opportunity. 

The sound bite I share with my marketing seminar audiences and marketing coaching clients is "Focus on what you want - you can always take what comes."

Big problem: Maybe your business model IS "we take what comes."

5 Signs Your Business is a Victim of "You Never Know"

1. You feel you're chasing your tail and spending too much time and too much money bouncing from idea to idea or initiative to initiative...
2. You have no idea where your next lead is coming from...
3. Your pipeline is full of "maybes" but it's been months since you've closed a deal and cashed a check...
4. You find yourself succumbing to too many sales pitches for marketing ebooks, get-rich-quick courses, social media services, online sales tools, subscriptions, advertising, directories, web software...
5. You are relying on hope as a marketing strategy...

Bottom line: The truth is that you may very well never KNOW...

But you sure as hell can DECIDE.

And as my pal Jim Canterucci likes to say, once you DECIDE, your choices are easy. 

That's the key you need to unlock marketing success for your small business so that you get better traction, make faster progress and make more money.

And then leave a comment below with your questions, thoughts, and advice on the ideas above.

Are you a DO IT freak? Welcome to the club!! Please use the social media buttons at the top of this post to share it with your network. YOU are a rock star!