Is the Internet a threat to your business?

You too can increase profits without necessarily increasing sales!

How?

The “Profits Leak Detective Newsletter” offers regular tips and strategies to help you identify and plug those leaking profits.

You may never have known you have them.

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BONUS free report “7 Clues to a Profit Leak”, valued at $47.

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Are there some clues or symptoms that are telltales saying that a

bit of drilling down into your business might pay some dividends?

Possible leaks could be anywhere.

This report provides 7 clues that should put you on alert for a profit leak.

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"Adam, over the past six years, I've had the pleasure of 'bumping into you' on at least three business and marketing related forums. Your contributionsto discussions have always been courteous, astute, incisive and practical,delivered with good humour, and based upon 'real-world' business experience. You are clearly an experienced business professional who actually knows what he is talking about. I wonder if your clients know what a gem they have in you? As one business professional to another, I salute you.

Good Wishes,
John Williamson - The Wealth Coach
www.thewealthcoach.com
www.retaildisplaysecrets.com

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I just LOVED "7 Clues to a Profits Leak".

Steven Walker - Profit Improvement Advisors
Calgary, Canada

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You will be proud how your protégés are proceeding! We have expanded the business to Katherine and Alice (Tennant is also on the list). T he catering side of the business is far less stressful and is actually profitable, now that we only take the good jobs.
We will never forget the assistance you gave us in re-inventing our business!

Karen Sheldon

Managing Director

Karen Sheldon Catering

Darwin, Australia

+++++++++++++++++++

The chap is Adam Gordon whom I have known for many years. He is a former resident of Darwin having lived here for perhaps 25 years, is an excellent communicator and has a very good appreciation of small business, business plans and all that goes with it. In fact Adam is regarded as a business guru.

Charles Wright, QS Services, Darwin, Australia

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Thanks for the catch-up the other day. It's great to be working with a legend in the small business community.

AJ Kulatunga, BLKMGK ICT

Darwin, Australia

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The 7 Clues is a great.

What I like the most in the Seven Clues report is that it clearly explains that accounting is merely a subset of proper financial management and

that only the business owner can practise financial management. The accountant does the accounting, and in doing so supports the business owner's financial management. And the business owner uses the accountant's information, but relying on the accountant to do full-blown financial management is short-sighted.

The report nicely "grounds" an otherwise complex topic which many business owners are afraid of touching, so they often move ahead in blissful ignorance. The water hose and the soggy soil under the leak makes an excellent and easy-to-comprehend example, upon which the financial management concept is nicely built.

Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan, Organisational Provocateur Dynamic Innovations Squad
Personal and Firm-Wide Performance Improvement for Management Consulting Firms

Vancouver, BC Canada

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
You have played a very important role in my development in business.

You were there with the right information at the right time, I thank you for that.
By adding the next level of systems, and marketing knowledge that you brought to the table we able to identify our objectives, acknowledge the gaps in our business and put in place the planning so as to achieve those objectives. Within 5 years we achieved 9 of our ten stated objectives. In that same year we won the NT Telstra Small business of the year"

Greg Haigh
Director - Trade Group
Regional And Northern maintenance services
RANms

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Recent newsletters include:

How well do you know your market?
How turning away customers leads to profits
How to create Superior Value
How to win against your competition
Do you need to make changes to your business?
"Our customers are costing us too much!"
Why competition is good news
What makes a web site effective?
Most businesses have one, but...
How to improve your quotations
How to raise prices without losing sales
Is your business resilient?
How to develop a new product in your niche
How big is your profit gap?
How discounting destroyed value
Benchmarking for best practice
From all customers to some customers
How to take the guesswork out of growth
Should your USP be based on logic or emotion?
How to triple your quotation success rate
How to dramatically improve your quotations
How to make more effective decisions?
How to develop your USP
Do you want to make better planning choices?
Are youmaking these mistakes in planning?
How to use SWOT properly
Does your sales conversation balance the scales of justice?
The perils of profitless cash flow!
So what is more important, cash flow or profit?
Are you getting value from your pricing?
Do you report to yourself monthly?
Follow the money trail!
Performance also counts!
Get more bang for your buck!
Without measurement there can be no improvement!
Where would your business be without customers?
Using your monthly report to improve your profits
Just who is your customer?
And what do you know about your customer?
How branding can increase your profits!
Can branding make you more money?
How to balance the value equation
Tilting the balance in your favour
How to pin the tail on the donkey
Are you groping in the dark with your real cost of labour
Mastering core marketing principles
Building a 5P marketing plan
Profit leaking processes
Should you be trying to increase or decrease cash flow
At times it is folly to hasten
5 steps to create your future
What will be the X-Factor in 2009
Lies, damn lies & statistics
How to use a squad profit leak detectives
Confidence leads to action
Increase sales - so easy to say
So you want to know how to increase sales
Is selling a necessary evil?

Is the Internet a threat to your business?

King Canute isn't dead!

Or at least the type of action which saw him whipping the waves to stop the tide coming in isn't dead. A short article in my local newspaper recently suggested that the Internet was a threat to local businesses, taking sales which in its absence they may have won. It went on to urge people to shop locally.

I'm sure people will shop locally, unless they can get a better deal somewhere else. Somewhere else may be the shops in a bigger town with more variety and more competitive prices.

Somewhere else may also be the Internet.

While the Internet may be a threat to local business you can't ignore it. To do so just condemns your business to on-going profit leaks.

Like it or not, the Internet is not going to go away. All the stats show that using the Internet to buy goods and services has been growing dramatically, and is forecast to keep growing. World Internet usage statistics as at March 2009 report that Internet penetration as a percentage of population in Oceania/Australia is 60.4%, second only to North America at 74.4%. By comparison Europe is only 48.9%.

New data from the U.S. Census Bureau show that 62 percent of households reported using Internet access in the home in 2007. It will only have gone up since then. Australia is not too different from America, and with the increasing broadband speed promised under the National Broadband Network access is only going to get faster, and easier.

Sure, you can appeal to people to "go forth and spend" locally, but that is only like King Canute whipping the waves. I doubt the Internet tide can be beaten into submission.

So how do local businesses compete?

Being well stocked and competitively priced is only part of the response as the article suggested. The article touched on lack of after-sales support from an e-commerce site. That is true. A provider based in another country can't provide the support a business just down the road can provide. There's a strength that you can build on.

But you must do more than just provide good customer service. You need to tell your prospective customers about the products, the service you provide, and the support that is readily available.

There are always two faces to every threat.

Look at the Internet from a different perspective. It is also an opportunity.

As the old saying goes, the best form of defence is attack. That calls for some good marketing. Marketing wasn't mentioned as a strategy in the article. As another old saying states, "Being business without marketing is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you're doing, but nobody else does."

Why not come in with the tide and develop your own website as a key element of your marketing strategy?

Developing a simple website need not be expensive. After all, what do you spend on Yellow Pages ads? And do you really know how many sales result from them?

Having a website doesn't mean you are selling to the world. There is no reason why it shouldn't be targeted purely at your local market. Research also shows that along with increasing household (and business) usage people are increasingly going on-line to research their requirements. Most of your prospective customers are turning away from traditional places such as the Yellow Pages and towards the Internet, simply because of the depth of information it can provide.

But your site must be more than an on-line brochure - a waste of time and money. You must tell prospective customers about the problems you solve, and give them a good reason to come to their local business. Make them compelling offers.

The tide is not for turning. Don't ignore the Internet. Turn it into an opportunity and plug that profit leak.

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