One of the biggest frustrations ever is to spend all your resources — money, time, energy, connections, people, etc. — on a business you’re so passionate about… only to realize that you’re actually not making the kind of progress you desire for your business.

You’ve done everything they say: you have social media accounts on major platforms; you post about your products/service daily online; you’ve tried paid advertising, tried influencers, learnt email marketing, SEO, etc. and implemented all you learnt…yet you’re not making enough sales.

It’s now beginning to look like your business has no hope. You’re beginning to feel like entrepreneurship isn’t your calling; maybe your parents or friends or partner were right about you getting a “real” job.

Yet you see other people in your industry, even those ones that aren’t as qualified as you are, doing better than you in their own business.

And you keep wondering why people aren’t buying from you.

If you think I described your situation so well, it’s only because I’ve gone through it again and again; from one failed business to another.

It was when I started an ecommerce business and couldn’t generate sales again that I decided to do EVERYTHING it would take to start making good sales.

Based on my experience growing my skincare business, BeauCrest, from hardly making any sales to later generating multiple 7 figures monthly despite selling low-priced products, and also helping other businesses make so much sales and profits, here are 6 major reasons you’re not making enough sales in your business:

Wrong Audience

This right here is the biggest problem and reason why most businesses fail. And as you’ll see later, it’s even the foundation of most other problems.

Most of us think we are doing great marketing, whereas we spend all our time, money, energy, everything talking to the wrong people and keep wondering why we aren’t getting good patronage.

After spending over half a million Naira on my business and not having any success, this is the most important aspect I fixed, and I’m reaping the benefits till tomorrow!

I simply found my dream customers and started focusing on them. I got to know them so deeply, especially their deepest problems, needs, and desires.

I then display how much I know them, before presenting my perfect solution to them. And they reward me beautifully for it.

Never for once did I share our product on my WhatsApp status or send a DM or disturb anybody around me. Yet, we’ve sold thousands and thousands of products.

Wrong Offer

This one is simple; if you offer people what they don’t want, or at least need, you’ll only continue to struggle in business.

Or can you yourself buy stuff you don’t want?

You see how it ties back to the right audience? You need to know what they want. Or at least know the people who want what you already sell.

And mind you, your offer is more than just your product or service; it also covers your packaging, pricing, incentives and your presentation. And they must all be in accordance to how your dream customers want them.

Wrong Message

You might have a great offer and be talking to the right person, but are you saying the right things?

You need to be able to communicate your solution (or offer) in a way that assures the customer that you really can solve their problems and that you’re legit.

More than that, you also need to be a bit compelling in your presentation, using words that’ll urge them to buy from you, and not words that will repel them.

Knowing the right words to use still boils down to knowing your audience so well and how best to communicate with them.

No Trust

Truth is: your dream customer has been failed before. They bought something that didn’t meet their expectation and this has made it hard for them to trust people, especially strangers trying to sell to them. This is even worse in this part of the world, where there are always cases of “what I ordered vs. what I got”.

How do you make this kind of person buy from you?

Answer is: by first earning their trust.

How? By showing credibility, authority and social proof.

Credibility is to make them know that you’re legit — anything that shows you’re not fake.

You show authority by letting them know that you’re an expert and you’re good at what you do.

And social proof is simply showing evidence that you can help this person.

Wrong Sales Process

When business owners come to me for help with improving their sales, one of the first things I tell them is: describe your sales process to me.

Next thing you hear: “we don’t have a sales process.”

Then I say: “I mean, how does someone go from being a stranger to becoming a customer?”

And they go like: “Oh, now I understand. There’s nothing special; I just post on Instagram and then anyone interested asks me the price. I tell them and they buy.”

In my mind I’m like: how do you want to grow na?!

**Your sales process should start from where you go to find new, fresh prospects, to how you attract them into your world, to how you convert them from strangers to followers or fans or friends, and then to how you convert them to buyers — and even how you convert them from buyers to repeat buyers and brand evangelists.**

That’s about a complete sales process.

Having a solid sales process is what ensures that you never run out of customers. And as you know, that’s the lifeblood of any business.

Playing Small

Once you have the right sales process in place, you need to stop playing small.

The only way some people promote their business is to post 100 WhatsApp statuses daily.

Some people will only post on IG and Facebook and even spam (post their business without permission in) the comment section of every post they find.

Now let me tell you the number one secret to winning in business: he who is willing and has the capacity to acquire the most customers ultimately wins! (Thanks to Dan Kennedy for that!!)

This implies that your ultimate goal in business is to someday be able to use money to make more money – that is, get more customers profitably.

Or do you think the big companies already making billions and yet still spending so much money on advertising are stupid? They do so because advertising works.

The secret to growing your business is that the more people that can see your message/offer, the more sales you can make, as long as other things I’ve listed earlier are in place.

So…stop playing small and start dreaming big. Let your money work for you!

3 Money Lessons From The Man Who Solved The Market

Jim Simons is one of the founders of quantitative trading. He began studying mathematics at MIT at the age of 17 and earned his PhD at the age of 23. He first joined the Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA) to break Russian codes to help the US government in the Cold War.

After the Vietnam War, he wanted a bigger challenge, so he set out to solve one of the toughest challenges in history, the marketplace. It took him and his colleagues more than 10 years to create a secret and complex model that could find tricky patterns in the market and make billions of dollars.

Here are the main conclusions I have drawn from Jim’s philosophy that can help you to achieve exceptional results:

Focus on the odds

Most investors would rather have a 99% chance of making $1 than a 1% chance of making $100.

Jim became obsessed with the odds he had of beating the market. It was the first time in history that anyone had used probability and statistical models to trade, which has many advantages over traditional trading.

The market is driven by ‘fat tails’ and this is something that I have talked about before and that other authors such as Mandelbrot, Taleb or Spitznagel, among others, pursue and benefit from.

“We’re right 50.75% of the time . . . but we’re 100% right 50.75% of the time. You can make billions that way.” — Bob Mercer

The obsession will make you exceptional

Jim Simons is a real obsessive of the financial markets, for more than 50 years he has tried to find the formula that beats the market, and this has made him one of the best investors in history. To do this, he has had to change the roadmap of his investment style several times, in fact, initially, the results were really bad compared to the indices, he did not manage to beat the market for more than 10 years. He learned from his mistakes and continued to evolve his investment style until he founded his hedge fund, Renaissance Technologies, which has an annualized return of more than 60%.

Currently, the market is full of young people who invest based on recommendations from Instagrammers and YouTubers while they do not know, nor understand, what is behind the money they are investing, which will cause them to panic as soon as there are market downturns because their initial conviction is not high enough to stay invested.

Therefore, investment is a process in which we have to evolve, where there is no one formula that fits all profiles and it is important that everyone finds their own, regardless of market conditions.

Use leverage to your advantage

“In my view, derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction, carrying dangers that, while now latent, are potentially lethal.” — Warren Buffett

It is estimated that Simons Hedge Fund trades with 12.5x leverage on average, with up to 20x leverage accessible when the system is confident in the opportunities.

The historical unleveraged returns from Simons are similar to the S&P 500 Index. The leveraged performance, however, is legendary.

This does not mean that it is necessary to leverage to the index, since the losses are multiplied, and that is precisely what we should try to reduce. The optimal way to leverage is through options and generally buying them, where the drawdown is limited.

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