•Life-Time Value. How profitable a given customer is over time defines your LTV or Life-Time Value. Companies spend ten times more to acquire a customer than to keep a customer. However, existing customers are more likely to purchase again, spend more money, and therefore become more profitable. If you don’t know your LTV, then how do you know how much money to spend and on which customer segment?

•Demand Forecasting. Every customer buys on a cycle. So this means that you should track cycle times and variance to increase accuracy of your forecasting and loyalty of customer. Do you know when your customers need to reorder?

•Improve Lead Quality. Do you have methods in place to measure conversion potential of each lead? Lead generation activities (i.e. forms) should pre-qualify every new lead so that you can take right follow-up actions for marketing offer. Strong leads produce strong sales.

•Increase Awareness. To keep sales pipeline full of good quality leads you must continuously increase awareness of your company and solutions that it provides. Public relations is more efficient at building awareness than advertising, yet many companies spend wildly on advertising and trade shows while neglecting to fund public relations efforts much at all. Increase your name recognition, not your budget.

•Reduce Discounting. Discounts represent deficiencies in sales & marketing processes, which means that you should use them sparingly. Instead, determine root cause and then fix process that’s causing need to discount. Show customers added value, and they won’t focus on price.

•Train Personnel. Provide your sales & marketing personnel with regular formal training. This will arm them with better product knowledge, as well as presentation, negotiating and selling skills that will improve effectiveness. This will boost both employee morale and bottom line – a win-win.

Control of Sales and Marketing Policy and Procedures

Improve your sales cycle efficiency. Reduce your marketing expenses. Tie it closer to your customer’s buying cycles. And take control of your sales and marketing program to let it work for you.

Improvement with Well-defined Policies and Procedures

With well-defined processes and procedures in place, you will increase efficiency by reducing ineffective sales and marketing programs. And, again, we make such improvements to create more cash on hand – all toward that million dollar goal and to cross finish line.

Next week, we will hurdle final $250,000 mark with Accounting Payables function – so close you can see it.

"But who has done this?" I asked Carolyn. "It's just one woman," Carolyn answered. "She lives on property. That's her home." Carolyn pointed to a well kept A frame house that looked small and modest in midst of all that glory. We walked up to house.

On patio, we saw a poster. "Answers to questions I Know You Are Asking" was headline. The first answer was a simple one. "50,000 bulbs," it read. The second answer was, "One at a time, by one woman. Two hands, two feet, and very little brain." The third answer was, "Began in 1958."

There it was, The Daffodil Principle. For me, that moment was a life-changing experience. I thought of this woman whom I had never met, who, more than forty years before, had begun-one bulb at a time-to bring her vision of beauty and joy to an obscure mountain top.

Still, just planting one bulb at a time, year after year, had changed world. This unknown woman had forever changed world in which she lived. She had created something of ineffable magnificence, beauty, and inspiration. The principle her daffodil garden taught is one of greatest principles of celebration. That is, learning to move toward our goals and desires one step at a time, often just one baby-step at a time, and learning to love doing, learning to use accumulation of time. When we multiply tiny pieces of time with small increments of daily effort, we too will find we can accomplish magnificent things. We CAN change world.

"It makes me sad in a way," I admitted to Carolyn. "What might I have accomplished if I had thought of a wonderful goal thirty-five or forty years ago and had worked away at it 'one bulb at a time' through all those years. Just think what I might have been able to achieve!"

My daughter summed up message of day in her usual direct way. "Start tomorrow," she said. It's so pointless to think of lost hours of yesterdays. Just ask yourself, "How can I put this to use today?"

Author Unknown

SO STOP WAITING:..

There is no better time than right now to be happy. Happiness is a journey, not a destination. You can only plant seed of future, why not start now? Apply this theory and see where you get in 20 years time! I am ready to help you. For motivation and inspiration visit me at http://www.thinkingfaster.com

Best of luck,

Jennifer Schilling