“Although I’ve been in business for a long time, since joining EC it’s like we’ve turned a corner.
It’s no exaggeration to say that EC has been worth at least £250,000pa in increased turnover to us – which has had a massive impact on our profit and my drawings.
I’m also leveraging ‘who you hang around with matters’ and getting the most from my EC membership through help and support from Nige’s team and other EC members in the group.
It’s pushed me to understand exactly what marketing is and has helped me to implement it properly in my business.
And, of course, the fear of turning up at an EC Mastermind meeting without achieving what I said I would is a real driving force!
It would be impossible to list everything that has changed in my business thanks to my time in EC but one thing that I would pinpoint is that I have become much clearer about where my business is and my goals. As a result, there has been some big changes.
“For a start, we’ve moved to much nicer offices where we can invite customers to visit and demonstrate our services via ‘hands on days’ and training events.
We also took a leap and attended a convention as exhibitors. This was an amazing success and we added just under 300 contacts and 60 new leads, 12 of which we signed up as customers over the next couple of months.
“It was also thanks to the EC – and, in particular, some advice from Nigel – that I am seeing even better engagement from customers with my monthly newsletter. I originally ran it as an occasional publication but when Nige pointed out that it seemed a little haphazard and needed to be more frequent, I decided to write one every month to around 600 people, including prospects. And they’ve now started to see it as a personal communication.
“Although I’ve doubled my turnover, there are things that have made an even bigger difference.
A big move for me has been raising my prices twice and creating a series of premium products.
I have also sacked 25% of my customers; these were paying the least and expecting too much. This happened because when the recession hit we did what many businesses did, lowered our prices. This meant that we attracted a lot of these low paying customers. However, when we joined the EC, we put in place premium products and transferred the majority of our existing customers onto these. This, in turn, gave us the confidence to push others away or ask them to upgrade – in most cases, they went somewhere else.
“Another massive change is that we’ve now got a handle on our numbers. This has helped my sales team work out which areas we should be concentrating on. Tracking numbers have been invaluable in identifying which bits of marketing have been working and which we should stop.
“This has had a massive impact and I’d estimate it has saved us thousands. Thanks to knowing our numbers, we now focus on PPC, telesales, remarketing, direct mail to existing customers, 52-week auto responder campaigns, exhibitions, networking and Facebook ads.
“Just being around the other guys in EC means I’m also picking up some very useful habits. For example, I’ve now got into the habit of reading a new business book every fortnight – I’m aiming to get through 20+ this year. Nige’s book list and Club notes are really helpful for suggesting new books to put on my reading list.
I also making sure I do my 90 minutes every day – but with a bit of a twist. I have in place a 90-day plan to make sure I achieve one BIG thing every day that gets me closer to where I need to be at the end of the month.
“I can honestly say I’ve never been so organised. I even know what marketing I’m going to test each month. All I need to do is follow my plan and I know it’ll make a huge difference.
My personal earnings from the business have also grown markedly as a result of joining EC and I draw a five figure sum every month now which just wasn’t possible before…”
