Are you feeding your competitors?

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.

Subscribe to receive a FREE Case Study on the success of just one strategy.

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

How do you know that you should be looking for leaks?

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.

Be alert - SUBSCRIBE NOW

"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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

Are you feeding your competitors?

You neglect your current customers at your peril

To grow your business you need a continual stream of new customers coming into your business. There are of course some other steps which will grow the business and its profitability, like increasing the average transaction size from those customers, and increasing the frequency of their purchases.

But the latter two steps can only come into play once you have gained those customers.

There's another BUT, and it is a big BUT. What if you are leaking customers out of your business as fast as you are bringing them in? Even if it is not as quickly as that, any customer leakage means that you will not be growing your business and its profitability as rapidly as you could.

You neglect your current customers at your peril.

The old adages about the importance of the lifetime value of a customer, and that it costs more to get a new customer than service an existing customer are so true.

What makes customer leakage worse is that those customers are likely to still be buying, to still be in the market place. So how are their problems being solved, how are they having their requirements met? The answers pretty obvious; if you are not servicing them, your competitors are. Your current customers have become your competitors' customers.

How could such a thing happen?

There's a couple of obvious answers.

You may just have stuffed up, provided some bad service, not met their expectations, been late or whatever. They've been disappointed and not felt that they'd received value, and gone elsewhere. And you DIDN"T KNOW ABOUT IT.
Or it's been a while since they've bought from you and you've dropped off their radar - out of sight and out of mind. You haven't built a relationship with that customer.

Not knowing there's a problem is serious. Customer complaints are a key kickstarter to improving your business. Do you make it easy to for customers to provided feedback, especially if there is a problem?

If customers feel intimidated about complaining to you, feel that complaining is a waste of time, or find it just too hard then you won't hear back.

Research shows that a complaint fixed quickly can lead to increased customer loyalty, but the longer it is left the more likely they are to complain - to others. And of course they don't come back.

So create a mechanism to make it easy to complain, and ensure your staff encourage feedback.

Which leads to the second point: build relationships with your customers. Give them reasons to return. There are many mechanisms you can use to show your appreciation:

Regular newsletters with real, helpful information;
Provide special offers for regular customers;
Have a resurrection campaign to restore 'dead' customers;
Write a personal note to customers who have been with you for a long period, or made a major purchase;
Ask them about additional services or products they would like you to provide;
Talk to them - in one family business I knew the owner was referred to as Sputnik after the original Russian satellite, because he kept circling the business and communicating.

Customer leaks are profit leaks. Stem the flow and build your business.

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