Business success is not a mystery, but it can often feel that way…

• How often have you struggled with the question of WHAT to put in place to grow your business?
• Or wondered week-after-week why your sales aren’t growing (when everyone else around you seems to be doing well)?

Meet Scott, Olivia, Maggie, Mike, Matthew and Annie…

Six dedicated entrepreneur personas who really want to grow their sales, but despite their best efforts, are making these six sales crushing mistakes…

Read on to see if any of these areas resonate with you and to discover the solutions that will help your business grow this year!

Surface Sourcing Scott.   Scott started out selling a great product line. But these days there’s too much product competition, margins are being squeezed and demand has softened. Scott knows he needs to make a change in his sourcing habits and spend some time digging into that stack of supplier catalogs on his desk. But he’s having a hard time making it a priority.

Scott needs to shift his time to sourcing. There’s only one solution to Scott’s problem and there’s no way around it! As competition heats up online, the money is in the sourcing. Whether it’s Scott or his business partner Steve – someone in the business must shift time and energy to sourcing new inventory.

It’s a must do if this business is going to grow!

Overwhelmed by Operations Olivia.  Olivia tries to do it all herself. Sourcing and shipping by day, an intrepid bookkeeper by night, and an operations manager into the wee hours of the morning…

But Olivia’s exhausted, getting nowhere and her business is stalled. She’s losing faith in herself and in her ability to create a business that will drive the sales she needs.

Olivia is making the classic mistake… thinking that you need to grow before you can automate and delegate.

Olivia must to automate to grow. Whether it’s tools, software or people – your business will never grow until you get out of overwhelm mode. We’re very fortunate to be in business during a time when there are affordable resources, tools and technology available to even the smallest of start ups. Every day I work with members of our Strategic Biz Marketing Program to help them find ways to do more of the right things in less time. You can do this too! Even if it’s just one task to start.

Mortified by Money Maggie:  Maggie has no idea what her monthly sales numbers or profit margins are. And she doesn’t want to know. She “feels” like the numbers aren’t good, so she’d rather avoid the truth.

The problem is that Maggie can never improve those numbers UNTIL she looks at them every month. She needs to know how she did the previous month so she can make changes/improvements to her business this month.

Maggie needs to face her internal struggles with money. It’s the only way to run a profitable business. If she’s prefer to be the creative side of the business, she needs to enlist the help of her financially savvy sister, Money Magnet Monica to help her deal with that part of the business.

“Marketplaces Should Market”  Mike. Mike has a point, he does pay Amazon and eBay to get buyers and market his products. He’s optimized his product pages, perfected his pricing strategies and all-in-all, his sales are doing OK. But Mike wants more sales from his marketplace products and he doesn’t know how to get them.

Mike must take the marketing of his products into his own hands! Whether it’s using Pinterest, Google PPC, or Amazon Sponsored products… if Mike wants to to get an advantage over his fellow marketplace sellers, he needs to actively drive traffic to his marketplace products every day!

Mindset Mismatch Matthew. “Mindset schmindset!” exclaims Matthew, when a buddy suggests he needs to to revisit the way he THINKS about his business and himself as an entrepreneur. Matthew has no time for mindset – he thinks it’s a frivolous pursuit.  But even though he hates to admit it, he deep down he knows that “mindset gotchas” like fear of risk, staying in his comfort zone and some old self-talk from a dad who didn’t think he could ever make it as an entrepreneur, are standing in his way.

Matthew must nourish his entrepreneurial mindset. Whether it’s reading books on how to reframe his negative thoughts, working with a coach who can help him view things differently or hanging out with positive-minded entrepreneurs, nothing is going to change in Matthew’s business until he changes “what’s between the ears.”

“Actionless” Annie. (BFF’s with Overwhelmed Olivia). Annie wants very much to work on the RIGHT things in her business, but as a busy wife and mom, and the same crazy schedule as Overwhelmed Olivia, Annie struggles mightily with taking the most important actions every day to grow her business. She isn’t sure which to-do’s are her big rocks, the activities that will generate the most income in her business.

And with a list of 19 (and growing) to-do’s on her list, Annie never has enough time to get it all done.

Annie’s solution is two-fold. First, Annie needs to identify what her most revenue generating activities are for each day.

Next, she needs to plug these into Action Appointments on her calendar. Action Appointments are the equivalent of a business meeting in corporate America. Don’t miss them unless you absolutely have to!

The SOMMMA Strategy

The  six common mistakes above all tie back to the six core areas your ecommerce business.

• Sourcing
• Operations
• Money
• Marketing
• Mindset
• Action

I’ve identified these areas using the acronym SOMMMA.

The SOMMMA Strategy helps you work on each area of your business, so that you can really get your biz firing on all cylinders.

In the Strategic Biz Marketing Program, we’ll work with you on your SOMMMA Strategy, helping you to find solutions for whatever problems you have in each of the six areas.

Learn more about the 2013 Strategic Biz Marketing program and take advantage of the 33% savings through February 4th.

Yours in online selling success,

Lisa