One of the most common things I hear from online entrepreneurs is:

If only I knew what to do, I’d do it!

In this post, I want to address this question, and show you what you need to do at your current stage of business, so that you can make the impact that you’re here to make… without spinning your wheels wasting time.

Whenever I meet an entrepreneur who isn’t getting the clients or customers that they want, the reason is always clear.

There’s nothing wrong with their business idea. And there’s nothing wrong with them. Nine times out of ten, they’re simply not talking to enough people.

Just like you need food and water to survive, your business needs sales and marketing -- and probably more than you think.

So how do you know how much sales and marketing your business needs to survive?

The answer may surprise you.

The most successful entrepreneurs I know spend 30-50% of their time doing marketing and sales activities. Yes, you heard me right. 30-50%.

Now, this doesn’t mean spending 30-50% of your time on Facebook. It means spending 30-50% of your time doing focused marketing & sales activities that are appropriate to your current stage of business development.

Here are the 4 stages of business development:

• STAGE 1: “Blue Sky” (0-$20K revenue)
• STAGE 2: “Call Me” ($20K-$250K revenue)
• STAGE 3: “List Build” ($100K-$1MM revenue)
• STAGE 4:  “Authority” ($500K and up revenue)

(BTW: if you haven’t heard me talk about the stages of business development before, then I highly recommend you register now for the webinar I’m doing on December 29^th to make sure you’re doing the right things at the right times to send your business into orbit. See below for how to register for that.)

So let me give you an example of doing the right kind of marketing at the right time in your business. The kind of marketing that will actually get you clients, customers and results.

The Blue Sky Stage of Business Development

How to know if you’re in “Blue Sky”:

• You’re just getting started & the sky’s the limit!
• Maybe you’re making a little money. Maybe you’re not.  Your revenue is between $0 – $20K
• You may have an idea or message but you’re not crystal clear on what it is yet
• You haven’t yet figured out exactly how to bring in a consistent revenue

If this is you, then it’s critical to spend a at least 30-40% of your time talking to people 1-on-1 about what you’re doing and what you’re offering, and actively selling your service or product.  Speaking your message to people face to face, and asking for the sale is the only way to know if you’re on the right track.

During “Blue Sky”, the best way to get clear on your idea is to talk to people early and often to see how they react to what you’re saying, and begin to market and sell your offers and get real world experience working with customers and clients.

Unfortunately, too many “Blue Sky”-stage people want to avoid investing the time to actually talk to real people and hone their message, and spend 80-90% of their time on non-revenue generation activities such as getting business cards, creating a website, building a list and a social media following, or a membership site, etc.. etc..

The fact is that you don’t need any of that.

In fact, I always tell my students:

“Before you can make money while you sleep, you have to be able to make money while you’re awake.”

Make sense? Any light bulbs going off yet?

Once you’ve nailed your message, then you’ll automatically move to the next stage of business development which is the best time to begin to  scale your marketing and sales to more and more people.

If you’re reading this blog post, I’m guessing that you’re not doing enough sales and marketing…

So, here’s one simple exercise you can do right now to make sure you’re spending your time in the right places:

1. Calculate the total number of hours you currently (or would like to) spend on your business each week. (Whether that’s 10, 20 or 40.)
2. Calculate how much of that time you should spend on marketing and how much of that time you should spend on sales.
3. Download the time-tracking app Toggle (https://toggl.com/) and begin to track how much of your time each week you’re actually spending on sales and marketing.
4. Register below for my webinar on December 29^th to find out how you can best spend those sales and marketing hours, and when you attend I’ll give you the entire 4 Stages of Business Development handout below, that will show you every activity to do in each of the four stages of your business.