How to Fix the 3 Most Common Mistakes New Entrepreneurs Make

Are you leaving money on the table? This is a common mistake of new entrepreneurs. Good business coaches are able to look at a company objectively, ask pertinent questions, and guide the owner through the process of creating a plan for future growth. Consider a business coach your objective third party, the one who can sort through the processes that work and those that don’t work and help mold your company into a profitable entity.

For any entrepreneur with an predominately online presence there are many passive ways to build income streams into your website and products that will bring in extra money while you focus on serving your current customers. Passive income is good and will help your bottom line while you actively market your business. You’ve invested good money into your business and your website; why not make it work harder for you?

Mistake #1: Not using Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is a simple way to make commission by recommending products or services to your audience. This process is similar to telling your friend or neighbor about the great pizza place where you just ate dinner. Simply sign up for the product’s affiliate program and place a unique link within a product review on your blog or on a web page listing all the business tools you recommend. Every time someone clicks on your link, they are brought to the product’s site and if they make a purchase, you get a commission. Affiliate links can also be added to eBooks or other digital products you sell. However, review the Terms of Service for all the social media platforms before posting an affiliate link.

Mistake #2: Not Including Upsells in your Sales Funnel

Creating upsells in your sales funnel is another overlooked place where you can bring in extra money. Do you have a basic sales funnel in place, where you make an offer to your broad audience and then have more focused, more expensive offers for them to choose from over time? These additional offers bring your customers down the funnel toward your most expensive offer.

Now, for each main offer in your sales funnel, think of an upsell your customer would find valuable. This may be free admittance into your private Facebook group or maybe it’s a report, checklist, form, or eBook for a nominal fee that is a no-brainer add-on to their order. For your more expensive offers, add a more expensive upsell, like a trial period in your membership site.

The key is to choose relevant upsells that will benefit your customer and that makes sense to couple with the initial product purchase. In other words, don’t create an upsell that doesn’t make sense.

Many business owners procrastinate or are scared to create a funnel for various reasons. Most commonly, they get overwhelmed at the idea of having to have multiple offers for their prospects and like anything else, once you start to overthink an idea, it gains a life of its own and seems impossible to create.

Mistake #3: Getting Mired in Back-End Administrative Tasks

Back-end efficiency is important to any business, whether it’s strictly online or whether you also have a physical location. A business coach can objectively assess whether you’re working most efficiently and can offer solutions to make customer service, billing, and customer fulfillment (just to name a few areas) quicker and more accurate. Very often business owners are too close to the situation to see how everything flows (or doesn’t flow) together, similar to why having someone else proofread your sales copy is ideal because they are more likely to pick up typos, strictly because they didn’t write the copy. Often the answer is as simple as outsourcing to an experienced virtual assistant.