Get this right and the results will be staggering – as this three minute video interview with one of my clients explains…

The back-story is that Ben had been trying for over two years with telemarketing to reach some key people in large corporates, but found they would simply never take his calls.

The great thing about corporate customers is that they have plenty of money and large volumes of work available.  But everybody wants a piece of the action, so the people you want to speak with are being bombarded all day long with marketing materials and sales calls.

Because of this pressure, they can come across as unfriendly or overly busy.  In reality, they don't have the time to look at all of the offers that come their way, so they tend to ignore everything unless it really catches their attention.

That's precisely what I helped Ben to achieve.  I showed him an idea for a series of direct mail letters, supported by extra materials that were specifically chosen to be relevent to his customers.

When the first letter was sent out, with a Where's Wally? book (as seen in the video!), Ben received an email within 24 hours from a manager who would simply never take his calls, asking for an appointment.

As we continued with the marketing campaign, we made sure his prospects would pay a great deal of attention by being creative and standing out from the crowd.  Within weeks, they were picking up the phone and ringing Ben for more information.

In 2011 too many businesses have struggled to win new customers.  Instead they have battened down the hatches to try and just stay solvent.

Meanwhile I've personally helped a small group of clients to swim against the tide, achieving strong growth in trading conditions that are leaving their competitors gasping for survival.

If you are ambitious and like to stretch the boundaries of what's possible, we should talk.  Fill out the contact form and let's find out how fast and how far your business can go.

Will you recognise your rescue?

Nobody could be blamed now for forecasting another recession, a second dip because the whole world is just too badly screwed up by the greedy bankers and the egos of the politicians.

But for most small businesses, it doesn’t feel like the first recession ever really went away.  Trading is very tough and you’ve got to take clear action to protect your business.

When times are tough, some people simply trust to luck and hope it will get better soon.

Here’s a true story that sounds just like a joke I know (I've included the joke later on for you)…

Many years ago, I went to see a man who ran a building supplies company.  His business was in real trouble.  A friend of his had asked me to go see him.

A quick warning – it mentions God a few times.  I don't have strong religious convictions, but religion is central to this story (and it gives an important lesson too).

So we met at his offices and went through the problems in his business – there were plenty – staff who didn’t care, high costs, customers who kept going bust without paying him, cut-throat competitors, suppliers who wanted cash before they would deliver to him.

The list just kept on going.

He seemed like a truly broken man, his eyes almost glazed over in acceptance of some terrible burden that he had to carry.

I told him it didn’t have to be this way.  That he could fix things if he would just try doing some new ways of doing things.

He shrugged his shoulders and said, in completely genuine tone, “I trust my God to look after me.”

He went on to explain that he was a very religious man and that the only thing that kept him going was his faith.

I was left speechless.  This man had a family to feed.  A community in which he lived to feel proud.

I understand religious faith.  But faith is about hoping you are doing the right thing, not sitting back and praying that some mystical force will do it for you.

I tried to help him.  He was in such trouble, I was scared for him.  I told him three things he needed to do in the next month to start turning things around.

But he just stuck to his guns, saying, "What can I do?  I am just one man.  In God's will I trust."

Talking to my mutual friend later, he told me this man had failed in business several times already, by doing exactly the same thing – sitting back and hoping it would fix itself.

They say that the definition of madness is to keep doing the same things and expect different results.

In which case, this gentleman was living proof of the saying.

Here's the joke…

A man lives in a house in the country and has devoted his life to God.

His government decide to build a dam downriver, which will cause the land all around him to flood.

When planning to build the dam, they send him a letter offering to buy his house off him at full price, and relocate him somewhere better.

He writes back and tells them, “No thanks, in God I trust.”

As the dam is built, the water gradually starts to build up.  They send a boat down to his house, and offer to take him to safety.

He smiles and waves to them, “No thanks, in God I trust.”

The water gradually builds into a deep river and they send in a helicopter.  They find him sitting on the roof, smiling serenely.  The winch man is lowered down to him and…

He smiles and says, “No thanks, in God I trust.”

A week later, at the pearly gates, St Peter is surprised when our hero arrives, wet and bedraggled with a look of surprise and anguish on his face.

He says to St Peter, “I have devoted myself to God.  I was not swayed when the government destroyed the beauty of the countryside.  Why did He not save me?”

St Peter replied, “Didn’t you get His letter, His boat or His helicopter?”

The problem with "In God I trust" is that it's excusing you from taking any action.

It says that you are helpless.  It's up to some supernatural force to decide how the dice will land.

Look around at successful people and you spot one thing about them all – they fight tooth and nail when things get tough.

They don't just sit back and hope things will get better.

If they were religious, you can bet they would say that "God helps those who help themselves."

I do not hold strong religious beliefs, but I do believe in this saying.

Doing nothing right now is not an option.  Too many people depend upon you to take decisive action to protect them.

Right now, you need to do whatever you can to help yourself, to provide for your family and to protect all the hard work that has gone into your business over the years.

Dark tides are coming our way, carrying much doom and despair, rising jobless figures and unrest from the unions (who are just as bad as the politicians).

So whatever you are doing, if things aren’t going right and your business is at risk, try something new.

Don’t throw everything at one wild strategy, but try new things out, measure the results, and don't give up.

Whatever you do, keep your faith that you can get through this.

Dr Paddi Lund enjoying tea at his private dental practice

On Friday evening I went to dinner with a dentist from Australia who has consulted with England's rugby union team (helping them on their way to the 2003 World Cup), a major UK holidays firm and countless dentists worldwide. I wanted to interview him for the book I'm writing, "Double Your Business".

As an independent dentist working with support staff, Dr Paddi Lund was able to gross well over $1M per annum while working about a third of the hours of a typical dentist.

In Paddi's book, "Building The Happiness Centred Business", he talks about taking a chainsaw to the reception desk at his dental practice, clearing it out and replacing it instead with a waiting room that resembles a coffee shop.

At the same time, he introduced private waiting rooms for those people who wanted to sit quietly alone without looking at other people waiting for treatment.

As a patient, you would know the nurse who looked after you – she would be your single point of contact for booking appointments, greeting you on arrival and generally looking after your welfare while at Paddi's practice.

The result was a very strong relationship between his clients and his dental practice.

He introduced many, many small touches that differentiated his business from any other dentist around. They are difficult to spot unless you are carefully looking for them, yet together they make the whole experience feel so much better than an ordinary dentist. He called these things his Critical None-Essentials, or CNEs.

One of the special ideas was a big button that his patients can press to make him stop. He gets them to try it out on their first visit, so they have the confidence that they are in control, not him. He installed a TV in the ceiling (way back in the 1980s before anybody else thought of it).

His total focus was on making everybody happy – himself, his staff and his clients. This scared off some patients because his prices shot up along with his service, but for the customers he wanted, it was the perfect solution.

It was the topic of CNEs that Sir Clive Woodward wanted to understand and apply to his rugby team. According to his book, "Winning", the 2003 World Cup winners had 127 extra ideas to help them get a little edge on their competition.

None of these 127 ideas alone made the complete difference, but altogether they helped to create a winning mind-set for the players and give them a practical, mental, emotional or skill boost that took them to the top, helping them to win 42 out of 47 matches from 2000 to 2003's World Cup final.

This isn't about rugby, just in case you're thinking it is.

It's about getting an edge over your competition. Which is what winning in business is all about.

At the restaurant with Paddi on Friday, he noted that our orders were taken by a waitress who was attentive and friendly. She took the time to build a relationship with us and we had some fun.  She asked how our steak should be cooked and what side-dishes we would like.

But then it was delivered by a completely different waiter. He had no idea who had ordered which dish and so had to ask us.

Worse than this, he made assumptions about the side-dishes and gave us the wrong ones (in fact, one was missing altogether).

The same thing happened for coffee.  I wanted normal, but Paddi wanted decaffeinated.  She took the order and another guy we'd never seen before delivered it by stumbling through the question of "Who ordered the decaff?".  It was terribly clumsy.

We did not feel special at all. Each time we were served, we both felt just slightly let down, but not so much that we might have thought to mention it.  Except we were talking customer service and were looking for the cracks.  For a meal that cost around £60 per head, it was not good enough to make us want to go back.

If you are in business, you need to be great at customer service. It should occupy a lot of your thoughts, because it's where the battle for customer loyalty is won or lost.

It is not enough to simply do the same things as your competition, because that will give you no edge at all. Clive Woodward looked outside rugby to a mad dentist with a chainsaw.

The French restaurant where Paddi and I dined was a nice place, great food and a decent setting. I'd happily eat there again, but I won't plan to go back again with other friends, or to tell anybody about it.

I am a mainly satisfied customer. But satisfied customers aren't very loyal – you need delighted customers for that.

If you want your business to stand head and shoulders above your competitors, a simple place to start is to think outside the box for ways to delight your customers.

A few weeks ago I wrote an email about a client called John Carmichael, who runs central heating firm Superwarm Services in Edinburgh. His business has doubled this year in part because we have applied some lessons learnt from selling consultancy services to selling new boilers. His customers love it, and so does he.

I have worked with hundreds of businesses and sometimes we can apply novel ideas from another industry into yours. Ideas that none of your competitors have used.  These CNEs are the difference that makes the difference.

If you want to win in business, make your service extraordinary. It has doubled Superwarm's sales, it was worth $1M a year to Paddi Lund and it helped England to a Rugby World Cup. What could it be worth to you?

Watching the programme, it was clear that his own expectations and standards were light years away from those of the franchisees' sites that he visited.

But perhaps a bigger issue for him is that of negative publicity for his brand.  For what makes good TV is sensationalism, so the cameras and editing focus on all the problems and fun scenes.

This makes it good watching, but it can't be great advertising for the brand.  The problems with hygiene (if you saw the show, you'll know about the uncooked, open chickens left in a basket on the floor of one run-down branch) are not going to do much to attract new business.

But shown publicly on a show like this could damage the long-term health of the brand.  The Daily Mirror was delighted to announce today in a headline that "Multi millionaire fried chicken boss calls his food sh*t".

The press is not interested in reality (especially the gutter press); they just want to sell papers and have their headlines quoted everywhere.

The truth was that he did a "secret shopper" visit to one branch and the cameras didn't follow him in.  When he returned to his car, before testing the food he expressed grave concerns about the way the branch was being run and the service.

Sadly, they just showed him eating the chicken and being disgusted by it, then failed to come back to finish the story off with what he did about it.

That's a great pity.  It would have done his brand a huge amount of good if he had closed a branch down for simply being too poor for words.

Instead, it finished with the same kind of story that every episode of The Undercover Boss seems to do: light reprimands, thanks for the insights the staff gave him, a showing of generous support to help them make changes and the seemingly obligatory free holiday for a poor member of staff (although this time at least it was clearly appropriate).

Channel 4 have to be commended for their investment in business programming -they really are leaders in this niche and long may they continue.

But as media specialists they should also help the owners of these businesses to understand how to manage their branding through the process. Warts and all is great TV, but for providing great content for the show, I hope the owners are given a little more than the chance to be light entertainment or shock value.

But what can you expect from the book when it's published?

Here's a description taken directly from the proposal agreed with my publisher, Financial Times Prentice Hall:

An extraordinarily effective "how-to" manual for everybody who wants to enjoy a more successful business. Double Your Business teaches you how to leap the Growth Barriers that stop ordinary businesses in their tracks and to propel your business to giddy new heights of success. It's a blueprint for success for the ambitious small business owner.

I created the concept of Growth Barriers after recognising that so many small businesses seem to get stuck for different reasons.  It's not just about marketing, but your abilities in leadership, management, marketing, sales, finances and others.  In fact, as I reviewed past clients I realised that there are many things that can hold you back.

This is because everybody tends to work according to habits – you do the things you’re comfortable with and avoid areas you don’t understand.  In business this translates into small problems that grow with your business until they block further growth – they become your Growth Barriers.

At certain points of turnover, your business simply becomes stuck and stubbornly refuses to budge until you figure out exactly what’s holding you back. This scenario plays out daily in businesses everywhere and finally a solution is at hand in this book.

Imagine being able to pinpoint exactly the problem that stands in the way of your success and being given a powerful action plan to eliminate it; this is the essential secret of Double Your Business.

This book does not randomly try to fix everything about your business; like my coaching services, it concentrates your effort where it will produce the biggest rewards.

The solution lies in the new and powerful concept of ‘Growth Barriers’: when your business hits the buffers and you don’t know how to kick-start it back into growth, you have hit a Business Growth Barrier.  There are 37 different barriers to growth within the six broad business disciplines:

• Leadership & Vision
• People Management
• Marketing
• Sales Management
• Financial Control
• Systems & Processes

Double Your Business: How to break through the barriers to higher growth, turnover and profit" helps you to diagnose which of the 37 Growth Barriers you’ve hit and gives a practical action plan to break through to the next level.  There will be resources available online too.

The manuscript is well under way with almost 30,000 words written.  It's why I've been quiet this year!

It will be published in Spring 2012 and will be available through Amazon as well as major book shops.  Make sure you sign up to my list and I'll keep you informed of progress and even give you some "sneak peeks" at what you'll find inside.

People often ask what kind of results are possible through coaching programmes working with The Double Your Business Coach.

In this two and a half minute video, Paul Marsden, the managing director of Virtual Business Source Limited, explains how his sales have grown substantially in just 12 months.

The business is a £1 Million turnover payroll and bookkeeping business and we've built a lead generation machine for his business now that is reliably producing 2-3 times more leads than ever before.

With the strategies we have put in place, that figure is likely to grow a lot further over the next twelve months.

This video started life as a test of the camera for using with client testimonials.  We did it as a kind of practice run to see how my camera would work.

Anyway, when I got back and watched it, I realised that this was a great bit of relaxed fun, and Paul surprised me when he put a number to his sales growth, so I couldn't resist putting it up here for you to see.

John Carmichael, managing director of Superwarm, rides the waves of change in 2011

Mary Portas has been enlisted by the government to try and revitalize the high streets of the UK, according to a story on the BBC website today. Good headlines for the newspapers, but there is a limit to what a business coach can do, no matter how good they are.

I thoroughly enjoy what the Queen of Shops does – she gives no-nonsense advice and helps shopkeepers to look at customer service in a whole new light.  But there's a bigger problem than simply customer service here, which nobody seems to want to admit.

That problem is an evolutionary change in our habits, brought on by a combination of the continuing dominance of the supermarkets and the advance in Internet shopping.

As a teenager I used to love browsing in book shops and spent many hours tracking down old Genesis records for their prized B-sides in the second-hand record shops of the Midlands.  I now buy nearly all my books from Amazon.co.uk and music from iTunes, along with anybody else who has moved with the times.

Mary Portas will undoubtedly identify a series of problems with many shops, plus some fundamental issues with town centres (lack of free parking is an issue when compared to the big supermarkets, as just one example).  She'll tell shopkeepers to offer a special experience for customers, because these days it's all about the experience.

This is good, but it is not enough; there is a bigger reality happening – ignore it at your peril.  King Canute commanded the waves to hold back, but they still came crashing in to shore.

Nokia believed that they would hold onto their 50% share of the mobile phone market and that the iPhone was just a niche product.  They were terribly slow to react.  In April they announced a programme of 4,000 job cuts and a tie-in with Microsoft to try and recover.  They have a big, big problem, caused by trying to ignore radical, disruptive change in their marketplace.

The world changes fast.  You cannot afford to deny it.  I'm not a huge user of Twitter or Facebookm but I don't complain that they're ruining our youth or communication, either.  If you are in business you must embrace change.

So here's a few thoughts on developing your business in this technological world…

1. Embrace Internet marketing and start to sell your products and services nationally.
   Ignore this at your peril.
2. Develop a WOW Factor customer experience
   This will get your customers to tell their friends about you.
3. Embrace Social Networking
   Twitter, Facebook & LinkedIn are huge – they've supported revolution throughout the Middle East – what could they do for your business?
4. Build Relationships, Not Just Sales
   What are you doing to make your customers want to come back for more?
5. Use Direct Response Techniques
   Database marketing is a must to both retain existing customers and to win new ones.  Simply putting an ad in your local paper is a waste of money 80% of the time.

Many of my clients have used these precise strategies during the recession to produce astonishing results.

• Travel agents/Tour operators Airworld Tours have doubled their sales;
• Optician Richard Pakey sold more high quality glasses than in any previous year;
• Virtual Business Source, through their new payroll services website have tripled their new business generation in a year by embracing the Internet.
• Sri Lankan restaurant Hop & Spice have had their most profitable year since opening, and trade remains brisk
• None of these businesses are naturally Internet based, yet all have achieved remarkable success through using it for lead generation.

Mary Portas' approach to revitalizing the high street is a sticking plaster strategy when surgery is required.  Definitely embrace everything she advises, because it's right.  At the same time, move with the times and embrace the Internet and other approaches for marketing, or your business may be washed away forever.

Here is a completely different way of thinking about motivation.

Then think hard about how you manage your team.

Is everything you do based around reward?

Do you have a compelling vision to encourage your staff to be part of something bigger than just a business?

How much freedom do you give your staff to feel like they're not simply lab-rats running on a wheel?

Food for thought, eh?

Being a lone male, I tried to pick an action movie rather than getting caught up in a love story, as I didn't want to stand out as a sad lonely man in a sea of couples.  So I chose the film with Matt Damon that I'd seen a clip from a week or two before called  The Adjustment Bureau.

It was a love story.  D'oh!

Fortunately, the cinema was pretty empty so I didn't feel like a complete idiot, and I settled in to watch the movie.

As the story unfolded, it became clear that it's based around the idea of fate, that whatever you do, there is a hidden force at play that creates opportunies and takes them away, following some kind of plan that's been laid out for you.

If you think like this, you're giving up without really trying. Sometimes I'll get an enquiry from a client who thinks I can wave a magic wand and make their world a better place, without them having to do anything.

Last year I worked very briefly with a client who has a good business, but who is sitting back and watching it die.  We agreed a strategy to bring in a bunch more business.

But instead of putting the plans into action each week, he made excuses for why he couldn't do it.  The truth was he was scared to try.  He was scared to face up to his life being hard.  He was scared of taking responsbility for his own actions and the results in his life and business.

You have just 70 years or so on the planet.  Make every year count.  Do what it takes to live your life to the max, as the Pepsi advert goes, because at the end you don't want to die with any regrets.

When there's so much opportunity in the world, you have to make the effort to reach out and give it your best shot, or else you'll live in the shadow of the life you could have and it'll make you sad, bitter or miserable, possibly all three.

The truth is that life throws all kinds of troubles your way.  In his famous book, "The Road Less Travelled", Dr M. Scott Peck starts with the wonderful three word sentence…

"Life is hard."

And life can be hard.  But feeling sorry for yourself doesn't make it any easier.  In fact, it makes it even worse.  It's living in denial – thinking that life is unfair and that you don't get the breaks.

But look for inspiration from the people around you who have achieved something with their life.  Don't find things to criticise about them, but look instead for the positive things they do to get what they want.

Notice how they take chances and don't fear failure.  Then copy them. Meet your life head on, instead of looking for an easy ride.

Stop making excuses about why you can't, and just get on with it.  Don't fear rejection or failure, because those fears are simply the feelings of helplessness that hold you back from a happier, more successful and fulfilling life.

While The Adjustment Bureau may not have been the action movie I was looking for, it was a great reminder that we need to take action when something is precious in our lives, or the opportunity may disappear forever…

Do you try to keep too many balls in the air at once?

I read a great post about overcoming procrastination at Ian Brodie's blog last week.  Procrastination, in case you feel the need to look it up, is the urge to do other stuff instead of the important things that'll make you more successful.

It got me thinking about one of the most common causes of procrastination for business owner/managers – too many options and ideas, with no plan or priorities to get them done.

Too Many Balls In The Air…

Entrepreneurs are a special kind of people.  We have tons of creative energy but if a child behaves like many of us do, they would be labelled as having Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

But this creativity is a great strength when properly harnessed.  If it's left to run amok, it will be your undoing.

If you fail to focus on an idea until it comes to fruition, then you'll run around in circles trying to keep lots of balls flying, until you wear yourself out and all of the balls land in a heap at your feet.

80/20, Mars Bars & Making More Profit

This brings us nicely to the 80/20 Rule, or Pareto's Principle.  It's named after Italian economist Alfredo Pareto who noted in 1906 that 20% of the population owned 80% of the land in Italy.

The wider point is that a small amount of influence or effort makes the big difference in our lives.

If you're overweight it's not the 2,000 normal calories per day that does it, it's the extra Mars Bar or Dairy Milk every time you stop for petrol or buy a paper – that extra 300 calories of chocolate yum-yums wreaks havoc.

Your business follows the same principles.  If you were to look at all sorts of figures in your business, you'll find this same kind of pattern will emerge.  Most of your sales will come from a few sources.  Your referrals will come from a small number of customers.  A few products will make the bulk of your profits.

Take the time to analyse what really works for your business and then think about all these balls you've got in the air.  Are they really helping your business to grow, or among the chaos are you kidding yourself that it'll be better soon?

Concentrate your efforts where they will be best rewarded, stop trying to keep as many balls in the air, and you will soon see better results in the bank, too.

Use 80/20 To Set Priorities

Make a list of the projects or ideas you've got on the go and write down the number of hours each will take.

Next put a value against each project, so you have an estimate of how much each would bring in for your business.

After you've done this, you can just work through your list on the projects and ideas that will bring the most profit per hour for you.  Simple, eh?

As a quick example, let's say that you've got a bunch of projects, like this:

Of course, you'll probably have far more projects and ideas in your own list (mine goes over at least a sheet of A4).

But here's the big secret – if you try to do all of them a bit at a time, you'll only spend an hour or two a week on each one.  Which means that even the smallest project will take weeks or even months to complete.

Which means months without making any profit from them at all…

It's a very common problem I get with clients who get lots of ideas from marketing clubs or listen to CDs from Chris Cardell – just too many ideas!

But stick to one project at a time and you'll quickly start to rake in the benefits.  Real cash flowing in that brings a real return, quickly.

In this list, the total income from the projects will be around £49,000.  But £39,000 comes from just 2 projects – C and F – for just 90 hours effort.  That's the 80/20 rule in play – in this case 40% of the effort gives almost 80% of the rewards.

Which reminds me – don't get hung up on the 80/20 thing – it's a ratio that often works out in practice, but not always.  So if 40% of the effort is needed for 80% of the results, it's an 80/40 thing instead.

Sometimes it doesn't even matter which you choose – there's no profit from anything until it's finished.  So pick one and put the rest on a list, in a drawer that doesn't get opened again until you finish the one you're working on.

When you finish that first project, it starts giving profit.  Forever.  It's a really neat way to improve profit and it's something practically everybody can benefit from.

The great thing with this kind of approach is that it's really easy to see where the value is for all of your projects. Just be careful to be honest and realistic about the value of each project and then stick to it.  Your bank will thank you, and you'll love your results.