Have you ever seen a college professor give a lecture? Some of them are riveting, but many others turn out to be dry and boring. The professor is probably highly qualified. They wouldn’t be lecturing otherwise. They’re probably passionate about the subject matter, too. Yet despite your best intentions, you end up tuning them out. A chance to gain knowledge from an expert in his or her field turns into an exercise in trying to stay awake. 

Why? Maybe it’s not the message, but how it’s being delivered. Business is ultimately about communication and how effectively you communicate will go a long way in determining how effective your business is. The most basic communication model looks like this:

Contrary to popular belief, marketing involves much more than setting up a Facebook page, renting a billboard and running a few ads. Another valuable marketing tool that you can employ in your business is the sales letter. If you’re not familiar with the idea, think of it as a paper salesman. The purpose is to convince your audience to purchase a good or service.

You’re pretty good at what you do, right? That’s a big reason why you went into business. No reasonable person starts an accounting firm if they struggle with math or opens a computer repair shop if they don’t know the difference between CMOS and a C prompt. 

You need to do more than just be good at something to stay in business though. You have to let people know that you’re good at what you do, and more importantly, that you’re good for them. In our series on Connecting with Your Customer, we’ll look at a number of ways you can form a strong, authentic bond with potential customers. The first step, of course, is to find said customer. And not just any customer either. You want to find your target customer.

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Change isn’t easy. After all, we’ve already got a lot invested in the status quo. Large scale change in a business means disrupting the very foundation we’ve relied upon. It means tough choices that will affect not just us, but our vendors, employees, stockholders, not to mention their families. It involves extensive, often emotionally laden discussions on what’s going well, what’s not going so well and what’s the best path forward. However to remain competitive a business must be nimble, and that means change whether we like it or not.

How long have you lived in your house? Did you just move in or have you spent many comfortable years under the same roof? If you’ve lived in the same place for a while you probably have noticed how your stuff seems to accumulate. That shelf full of knick-knacks fills up and there hasn’t been room in the garage for the car in some time. When we’re on the move, we often have to make choices about what to take and what to leave behind. Yes, we have some great memories with that trusty sofa, but there isn’t room in the moving van.

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Somewhere along the line we’ve all had the experience of being uncomfortably near someone who’s, shall we say… not so fresh. Whether that person is coming from a long day at a dirty, sweaty job or simply hasn’t bothered to invest in even the barest level of soap technology, the effect is the same. The last thing you want is for your email list to resemble these unfortunate souls. No, you want it showered and fresh and ready to face the day. 

So how do you keep your email list smelling like a rose? In practical terms, email list hygiene means making sure that every address on your list is active and deliverable. If they’re not, you’ll need to purge them in order to reduce your risk of spam traps and other digital maladies. 

Your email list is a bit like your house plants. Really, you ask? Well, the analogy isn’t as far off as you may think. Like house plants, your email list is pretty easy to keep up when you first get it. However, things get more challenging the longer you have it. 

With plants, you have to make sure you water and feed them and give them the proper amount of light. You get busy with the holiday or with a project and the next thing you know those house plants have seen better days. To save them from an unfortunate demise, you’ll want to give them some good plant food, water them and make sure they have to right temperature and humidity to flourish. 

You’ll want to do something similar with your email list if it’s gotten brown and wilted. It’s called list re-engagement, and it’s the next topic in our series on connecting with your customer.  

You can’t really be telling me that you don’t have a membership site?

I’m here to tell you that you need one.

I don’t care what business you are in, whether it is online or bricks & mortar, whether you do coaching and consulting, whether you are in the professional services or food services, or maintenance services or whatever. Do not fall into the “But, my business is different!” trap.

Because it is not.

Here are just a few reasons to have a membership site:

You could be pardoned for not finding caterpillars particularly appealing. They’re ungainly, unshapely and sometimes downright hideous. However we also know from science class that many caterpillars will enter a cocoon and emerge as beautiful butterflies. It’s not hard to see how the analogy applies to a business coming out of a restructuring. Like the caterpillar, your business didn’t look particularly attractive. Otherwise you wouldn’t have gone through the painful process of reworking it from the ground up. You have emerged from your metaphorical cocoon and it’s time to spread your wings and show the world who you are now.

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The world can be a tough place to make a living, as naturalist Charles Darwin aptly observed. The environment is always changing, and when it does species are faced with two very stark choices: adapt or perish. Of course, the same is true with businesses. A successful business will change with the times to remain relevant, while an unsuccessful one will eventually be consigned to the dustbin of history.

With the craziness of the holiday season in full swing, you may not have given much thought to your business model. But now that Christmas and New Years’ are in the rear view mirror it might be time to take another look. In our upcoming series on business models, we’ll examine some basic questions about these valuable tools, including whether it’s time to give them a fresh coat of paint or remodel them entirely.