This is one of the biggest mistakes new entrepreneurs make.😮
If you’re building a business, profit is what matters most. Don’t fall for the guru speaking about “7-figures” in sales revenue. I’ve known plenty of 7-8 figure business owners that lose money each year.
7-figures, 8-figures, etc… don’t mean anything if a business is barely staying in business, or bleeding cash each month.
So how do you maximize your potential to achieve more profit?
Sell expensive things.
As a business owner or hopeful entrepreneur, you’ve already accepted the fact that you’ll have to sell something. That’s business.
I see waaay too many of you wasting way too much time promoting and selling tiddlywink little knick-knack products and services that only earn a few bucks per sale.
You won’t achieve financial success by focusing on selling low-buck things, unless you’ve mastered the tactics of generating high volume sales. That means you’ll need to spend tens of thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) per MONTH in advertising in order to generate the typical 10-15% net profit.
The only other alternative here is to have built a huge personal brand with a huge audience of willing buyers. That’s great if you’ve achieved this, but it’s not the norm. It’s probably not you.
Selling is selling. It’s literally the same skillset if you’re good at it. It’s definitely a skill you SHOULD invest in, and become great at.
It takes the same amount of effort to sell an expensive item or service, as it does to convince some cheap bastard to buy your cheap product or service.
Here’s an example I figured out 20 years ago, with one of my own businesses; selling custom wheels for cars.
Back in 2003, I thought it was a good idea to carry a range of wheels, from entry level (then about $999/set) and top-level forged wheels (then about $3000/set). More products the better, right?
Wrong.
Within a year I learned I was wasting much more time on the phone and in emails with the cheap buyers. They were obviously price-shopping, and didn’t care as much about service or my knowledge. They’d get info from me, and go buy elsewhere based on price.
Those $999 wheels only created about $150 in profit per sale (15%).
The expensive wheels created $750 in profit per sale (25%).
I would have to sell five sets of the cheap wheels in order to equal the profit of only one set of expensive wheels. Same amount of sales effort for both, actually more effort with the cheap buyers.
I stopped selling the cheap wheels. My business grew faster. I focused on serving only the highest quality brands and my marketing focused on service and expertise. Things high value customers respect.
If you want the potential to earn more profit, look at selling the most expensive things you can. Become an expert in those subjects. Quit competing in the bottom market, with all the others who are too lazy to specialize in a higher product level market.
To those of you with already established businesses, you are likely earning 80% of your profit from only 20% of your best products or services… while wasting time on the other 80% of your products that barely move the needle. Don’t be afraid of dropping products off, especially low-performing (non profitable) ones.
-Tony