The 7 deadly sins of finding new business

It is said the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over and expect something different to happen.

Or maybe your business is sailing along and you are thinking ‘Why change the wheel?’ All I can say is think ‘Kodak Eastman; the largest photographic company in the world last century who went bust in a matter of a few years, as they refused to except change.

When you are doing well that’s the time to start thinking about expanding to new markets or growing your peripheral supply to lateral markets, well it is If you want your business to expand in the long run.

How do you find new customers are you going to do the same as last year?

Do you suffer from any of these deadly business sins?

1) Do you go to network clubs at ‘silly o clock’ suited up in the morning, extol its effectiveness only to find yourself yawning and waning badly at 2 PM therefore rendering yourself useless to any more work that day?

Biz-find early networking fatigue

2) Do you go to evening networks and bump into the same people over and over again, politely refusing the advances of half a dozen financial advisers, trying to avoid the wine, and yet end up in a disco and getting hell when you go home very late?

Biz-find deadly sins Gluttony

3) Do you open your laptop at 9 AM at home sigh for 20 minutes, try to get some ideas for your blog from Yahoo or M.S.N, have another coffee and then look up some blogs about your business and then get caught up in Facebook or by having a Skype chat with your best mate instead of concentrating on your content marketing which your Uncle Alan has been bleating about for years?

4) Do you start posting direct sales messages on Facebook and Twitter and other social media sites about your products and services, because basically; you are too lazy to court your customers first and let them know that you know a lot about your industry, and how your knowledge could be really beneficial to them?

5) Do you blame email marketing systems like; Awebber, and Mail chimp, Get response etc. for lousy returns on your email marketing campaigns? It was an epic fail mainly because no one was a double opt in subscriber to start with.
Another classic mistake; you did not clean your list down first.

Sadly you never ever educated or invested in yourself in seminars and education to learn about how to make it work for you, even if you are not the person doing the email marketing and you have a dedicated marketing employee, still no excuse to let a valuable part of your business run astray from you.

Biz-find deadly sin Sloth

As the boss you need to ask yourself; if everyone left your company tomorrow, do I know enough about all aspects of my business to keep it afloat for a while alone?

6) Do you have a telemarketing team? A bunch of hardened criminals who are so used to negativity and refusals that they have been trained for years to overcome every negativity to fight their corner to glean an appointment for you, so that when you turn up for the meeting, you have a 90% chance that the person who reluctantly agreed to see you on the phone, has suddenly developed a host of rare diseases and cannot see you today? Do you ignore all blogs and news reports that cold calling is simply dead in the water and is just not at all effective anymore?

Biz-find cold calls

7) Do you sometimes hear about good opportunities and ignore them out of hand because you have been taught that like everything in life; if it sounds too good to be true it PROBABLY is?

The keyword there is ‘probably,’ you should always look deeper and make sure that; it is too good to be true, remember to seek your own truth always.

Biz-find deadly sins Doubt

Like: Biz-find leads, our premise is simple:

We have created a number of free ‘user added’ country wide online business directories mainly in South East Asia.

We blog and share our members like crazy and have done for years so we attracted a decent number of listed businesses.

We have a team of Investors that could also find capital and expertise for your business.

Our members love us for it because we drive more traffic back to their page on our sites and eventually more branding, search engine optimisation, and direct business for them all for free!

This activity then give us, by reciprocation, the right to contact our 4000+ directory members and ask them what they want to buy, we offer incentives like upgrades and actual cash for leads, by leads we mean:

We ask them what services and products they are looking to buy today.

We then offer these ‘wants’ as leads on our site.

Biz-find Leads

In September of 2015 I was networking and spoke to a sausage/meat retailer and told him that on that day we had a Hotel restaurant looking for English breakfast items on our site, and he ignored this, I later found out that anther meat supplier answered the call and got a really big order for over a year’s supply of meats from the Hotel….

Don’t be the mug and lose out because it sounds too easy, take the time and look to see what leads we have today!

Our team find around 15-20 leads each day from the business community in our sites across South East Asia from every sector of business.

I reckon we are all guilty of at least one of the deadly sins of business people above, and like an alcoholic, acceptance and the desire to change can only lead to an effective transformation.

Good luck to all our members in 2016.

Alan Johnston Owner of Biz-find

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