1. Failure to win traditional marketing awards. If you have won any traditional awards, it means that you have lowered your marketing efforts to the standard of 'status quo'. The standard of excellence inevitably has nothing to do with bottom line market share and revenue production, but in what I term, 'cutsie' or funny ads. The best marketing is always the marketing that most webmasters, friends and other experts will tell you NOT to do. It is also the kind of marketing that gets your competitors angry.



Speed To Market Principle: Angry competitors, loved ones who tell you "don't do it!", and going against the grain of so-called expert advice, these are the three indications that you should proceed with your marketing. Beware of agreement with any of these people!

2. Failure to email with the right frequency to encourage people to unsubscribe. Only email to get rid of your dead wood. Or in other words, 'unsubscribes' are a welcome method of analyzing the effectiveness of you business success. I tell my clients that if they are not experiencing 'unsubscribes' they are not staying in front of their ideal clients frequently enough. Remember, most of the people on you distribution list are dead wood. They are simply there to get free material or check you out. People who opt-out of your distribution list are a good thing. It means that your message is getting through to the important people who really need what you do.

Speed To Market Principle: Eliminate the decimal point'i.e. Move the 'free line'?give away your best material in exchange for contact information'to demonstrate the power of your system, but move the decimal place to the right to communicate the value of your time.

3. Failure to sell a $10,000 coaching program before one sells a $27. Most people dabble on the Internet to sell a $27 eBook or some other downloadable program but they fail to understand that the basic skills sets of selling are the same. Selling a low program is usually indicative of going after the wrong clients who realize you get what you pay for. Positioning your marketing to make the big sale also usually means that there is less competition at this level and it makes selling your programs easier than competing with a 'sea of sameness' where thousands are all competing for the $27 sale.

Speed To Market Principle: The first company that develops a sales team wins in the market place!

4. Failure to create software that demonstrates your market mastery. Software creation is the ultimate way of demonstrating that you have a business that can be quantified and qualified by specific systems. The reason for creating business systems is three-fold. First, to quantify what it is your company actually does. Secondly, to begin to increase your company's productivity, software demonstrates mastery of a particular system. Thirdly, systems' creation is the answer to your exit strategy. As you build your company consider what you are going to do with you company in 'x' number of years when you want to get out. The three possibilities are: 1. sell your company; 2. .take your company public; or 3. leave it to a loved one.

Speed To Market Principle: Mastery is best communicated by creating a system to increase the productivity of your target market.

5. Failure to leverage Milgrams' Law and Zipf's Law to become the Knowledge Broker of your market place. Milgram's Law states that people will blindly believe the words of an expert. Zipf's Law states that your ideal clients will naturally choose the person or company perceived to be on top: and they will choose this person or company for life!

The quickest way to leverage Zifp's Law is to author your own book by solving a very specific problem in the market place. When you do this successfully, your happy clients will choose you for life. In other words, they will lean on you for answers in many areas associated with your competence and also in areas outside of your competence! The secret to wealth and leveraging Zipf's Law is to create an association of people you trust and sell their programs bundled with your own.

Speed To Market Principle: The secret to leverage Zipf's Law is to become the expert in you market place. Knowledge brokering begins first by solving a problem a specific problem for you ideal clients.

Use these five counter-intuitive indicators of a successful business to achieve market dominance in your niche quickly.