In a perfect world every part of your business would work flawlessly. You’d sell more product, schedule more services, make more money. Sounds great doesn’t it? The truth is that in real life, nothing ever works flawlessly. If you’re not selling products, or services you’re not making money. If your service is poor and you get a bad reputation, you’re not making money. If your product is breaking all of the time and word gets out, you’re not making money. This sounds more like real life doesn’t it? The truth is there are so many negative things that can affect your business that it’s amazing any company can make a profit in this day and age.

Does Microsoft spend hundreds of millions of dollars on TV commercials just for fun? Does Chevy spend hundreds of millions of dollars on TV commercials just to slam Ford for being not as good of a truck, even when everyone knows the F150 is the best selling truck in America?They do all of these commercials because they have found them to be profitable to advertising on TV. They do it because they have developed marketing plans that work, and they stick to them. Why develop a marketing plan for just TV commercials? Well because it works! In fact they almost certainly have a system for how their websites get updated, how they answer the phone, how particular problems with software or hardware are handled. In fact, I guarantee you that they have systematized absolutely every aspect of their companies.

It’s amazing how many businesses I speak to each week that do not have any type of internet marketing system in place. A lot of people think systematizing a business is only for large corporations, it is definitely not. Having a system in place for every aspect of your company is essential to whether a company will be successful, or wilt and die out in the future.

Not only does systematizing a business make sure that every single task of your business is handled quickly and properly, it documents those tasks so if your accountant decides to leave for new opportunities, a new accountant could be hired, handed the systems and get to work right away. All they have to do is read them, apply them, and they are good to go! How much overhead time would this save you in the long run. Think about it for a minute, training a new employee how to do every task of your business and answering countless numbers of questions that eat up your valuable time versus handing the new employee a binder or cd full of all your businesses systems that they can read and apply almost immediately. Depending on the amount of responsibility each employee gets at your company this could amount to weeks of information that just got handed down through a binder! This means none of your essential employees need to spend countless hours training and hand holding a new employee. At my company I estimated that it saves me approximately two hundred work hours, that’s five weeks of time that I was losing before I systemized my business.

So the question is, why haven’t you created a marketing plan or marketing system for your business? The experts have already done it for you! Just Google search “marketing system” or “marketing plan” and you will get hundreds of results in all types of flavors that will suit your business! The initial investment will be low too. Most good ones start around $2000 and can go as high as $25,000. You could make up $2000 very quickly. If you hire a new employee and pay then $30.00 and hour, which would mean it would take you approximately 67 hours to earn back the money. If you normally spend weeks training them to perform at their job, you earn your money back on your very first hire! That’s not even including your valuable time!

So what are you waiting around for? Have your business start using a marketing system. Get your company systematized. Set up marketing plans so your business will succeed. Start reading marketing blogs to find new strategies! Don’t just sit and wait for your competition to go out of business, be the more successful company and do it for them!