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From 6 to 7 figures in a tough business environment

It was at Martin’s kitchen table in 2010 that he shared with me his desire to take his business from 6 to 7 figures, ‘despite’ the business landscape looking really tough at the time.

We were still very much in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 crash and businesses were still not making any significant investment in their ‘IT’, that said Martin had done exceptionally well in having maintained a steady turnover (Circa £100K) through the previous few years but, and it was a big fat BUT, this was simply not going to achieve the things he wanted to achieve for him and his family over the next 5-10 years.

Essentially the business was affording a reasonable personal income but it wasn’t growing at anything like the pace he had hoped for when he’d set the business up 10 years earlier.

The challenge was ‘how to get a lot more business’ in the door in order to transport the company to a whole new level?

The first step was to look at all of the resources that Martin already had, which on the face of it didn’t look amazing by virtue of the fact he was working off his kitchen table. (I’ve personally done this many a time and I’m sure you’ll either have been or know someone who’s there today)

The most valuable resources we all have are resources that most people either do not value or do not know is of massive value are those that they often ‘KEEEP’ to themselves

• Knowledge
• Experience
• Existing clients
• Existing connections
• Perspective

Martin already had a great reputation for doing an outstanding job at delivering on time and within budget a bullet-proof IT system which made it easy for him to pick up the telephone and deliver an even greater service to his existing clients and with a few tweaks to the architecture of his conversations it really didn’t take too long for those conversations to turn into a lot more business.

Having been an active business mentor and turnaround specialist for well over a decade now I can assure you that most business owners undervalue and do not leverage their ‘KEEEP’ assets to build a stronger business.

As we sat the table over our 2^nd cup of coffee, we began by deep diving into the way in which the company interacted with everyone on the client base, and agreed a more consistent method to ‘talk’ to each and every client and connection with a process that was on purpose for every conversation.

Within a very fairly short period of time Martin was winning a lot more business by simply being a great guy who was really deep diving into each person’s real world 'day' to better understood what was really going on in each business and from that how he could add greater value in solving their challenges and giving them a more efficient way of operating their business.

We then put in place a process to systematically ‘talk’ to just about everyone that Martin had in his business phone book, whether they had ever purchased his services in the past, or he’d simply met at a networking event.

It helped that Martin is a great communicator and a genuinely lovely guy, so it didn’t take long for these actions to begin to yield amazing results and within a few years of having his head down and following the process, his business moved 'off' the kitchen table and into a serviced office, quickly followed by 2 more moves into the large premises they operate out of today, serving 10 times the volume of work they were doing only a few years earlier.

Don’t get me wrong, there was a ton of work involved in 10 folding the size of the company and all of the challenges that came with scaling a business in such a short amount of time but crucially the difference that made all the difference was in Martin making the decision to go ‘all-in’ and pay the price in time and energy to build it to where it is today.

So, to you my friend I have 2 questions…

1. Are you willing to invest in learning and actioning the core business tactics that result in a truly extraordinary outcome ?

2. Are you willing to overcome your current habits to form new habits that will ultimately change your outcome? (accepting that it’s going to take mental fortitude)

Most people are looking for a magic bullet to make it all happen for them, when the honest truth is that the only way to fast-forward tangible results is to learn from someone who has been where you want to go so that you fast track past the school of hard knocks.

Sure, there are people out there that have been an overnight success by being in the right place at the right time with just the right offer, but for the vast majority of us, it’s a case of working at it like most are not prepared to do and being as shrewd as possible in the decisions we are making to tactically speed up the journey.

As for Martin’s journey; the reason we are still working together 10 years on is we have found new challenges to overcome, the most recent of which was when Martin spotted an opportunity that was not being capitalised upon by manufacturers of Wi-Fi hardware i.e. protective covers for Wi-Fi units in vulnerable public spaces.

Enter a brand new product called the Oyster shell which is now in the process of being sold to distributors and public facing organisations across the UK and now reaching out globally.

Finally I’d like to formally introduce you to the UK’s finest bullet-proof IT company www.InternetworkMedia.co.uk. If you are scaling up your business to achieve great things, I would give Martin and his team a call; they’re the guys that will make the tech work for you instead of against you, they’re certainly doing that for me…

Thank you to Martin Kearney for signing off on this piece to help inspire others to achieve on their journey, he has been an absolute pleasure to work with and I’m truly proud to call him a friend and to see what he has achieved through sheer hard work and tenacity of purpose.

If you take one thing away from this, I hope it is the fact that you too can achieve even your widest business goals once you make the decision to raise your game and go all in...

John F K

25 way to get more customers

John Kettley

John F Kettley is the founder of the Sales Masters Guild

 

A serial entrepreneur from his teenage years, John and his companies have sold a vast range of products and services across just about every market sector and medium there is, both here in Europe and the USA.

 

Find out more about John on his Sales Masters Guild profile page

 

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