How much should you invest in your business

I just finished a phone call with a person who was just getting started with his business with Africa Imports. He wanted to buy some catalogs; and he couldn't decide if he should order 12 catalogs, or less than this. With 12 catalogs he worried that he might be wasting money. He might only be able to give out six or eight, and then have some left over that he wouldn't use.

There is always some waste in advertising. To get enough customers to have a real business, you will need to show your ideas to some people who don't buy anything. If you aren't giving enough people a chance to see what you have today, you will have a much smaller group of customers (and a smaller business) tomorrow.

This caller was deciding about some small catalogs that cost $0.39 each. The cost of 12 catalogs for this person was $4.68. If even one person buys anything from him, he will get his $4.68 back. If he has only a 10% chance of anyone buying the smallest order possible from his catalogs, the more catalogs he buys, the more money he makes. I could go through the math in more detail, but hopefully this already makes sense to you.

When you are trying to decide how much to spend on buying catalogs or other promotional materials for your business, do what other successful businesses do. Not every person buys something from each ad that they see on tv, radio, the internet, or any other place. But successful businesses still buy these ads; and some customers still buy enough from them that these successful companies make a profit from their advertising.

The big prize is to have a successful business, which means having a lot of loyal customers. To get these customers, you need to give them a chance to get started with you. Focus on the big prize; and not the smaller costs of getting there. Think about this the next time that you need to decide about spending time, money, or both on getting more new customers.

Plan to intelligently waste some money this week. If you give away 30 catalogs, and you get three new customers, and you do this every week for a year, you will have 150 new customers a year from now. How would your life be different if you had those 150 new customers now. If you could pay for all of the catalogs now; and get all of the customers right away; it would be an amazing bargain.

How much should you invest? A lot more than you might feel like you should. You will get all your money back though soon: and probably a lot more. Your investment in "wasted" catalogs could pay for itself within a month.

Good luck,

Wayne Kiltz
Owner, Africa Imports
We help businesses grow by having exciting and exotic products found nowhere else.

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