A consumer survey reports that 56% of people said that they plan to start their shopping using the internet, and more than 60% said that they plan to start their Christmas shopping before the end of October!

So you need to be getting your business ready now for the Christmas season if you haven’t already done so, you don’t want to miss out on those sales.

If you have a website that you can edit easily yourself, you can make these changes immediately, and start your Christmas marketing campaign quickly. Then, if you have a mailing list, as soon as your site is ‘set up’ for the festive season you need to use your list to let your customers know.

Keeping in touch with your customers is the key to increasing your sales and this is, of course, especially true in the holiday season.

When so many smaller retailers are competing for consumer attention you need to reach out to your customers before somebody else beats you to it.

* Attend a networking event and expect it to generate business

* Invest thousands of dollars in direct mail and expect prospects to eagerly call about your services

* Treat your vendors poorly by not paying them on time or not communicating with them in a timely manner

* Misunderstand the differences between advertising, PR, and promotion – and what they can and cannot do for your professional service firm

* Underestimate how important it is for your to address your clients’ PERCEIVED need (i.e., what THEY think they need) vs. what you know they need

You’re playing chess when you…

* Understand that there are right clients and wrong clients for your firm, based on where you want your firm to be in one year, two years, five years – and that your definition of “right” will change over time

* Consider what the right kinds of clients look like for your firm and then carefully develop a roadmap for all marketing activities that align with your definition of “right”

* Use a combination of carefully crafted “touches” to move prospects through your relationship pipeline from Stranger, to Acquaintance, to Friend, to Lover, to Loyal Partner. Are looking six moves ahead, instead of at the next move. Whether it’s developing your website, deciding what committees or networking groups to join, if you should invest in a particular piece of marketing collateral, or where to publish your next article…chess players see the connections between today’s marketing decisions and their impact months and years ahead.For a game plan to avoid checkmate, try these things:

* Consider where you want to be in 6 months, 12 months, 18 months and 36 months. Identify the big steps to get you there. I organize my actions by “theme of the month.” For example, within 6 months, I want to be well into developing an online platform to launch subscription-based marketing tools. So January and February are Research Months. I’m attending two related conferences to quickly assess the latest approaches, make some good contacts, and scope the competition.

We all love to make money but after a while when you get too much product built up, you can start losing money. Why would we do that?

What happens is we get in a mindset on the value we feel our items are worth, rather than what we can get for them. That’s why when purchasing items it’s important to keep in mind that you make money when you buy, Not – When you Sell.

But we also get into the territory where you feel you should get a certain price for something. We develop an emotional attachment to our products. And that’s what we need to shake…. immediately. This is the mindset that can make or break your auction business.

You need to be watching your products and if something isn’t pulling in the money anymore, you need to blow it out. Product on the shelves is not money in your pocket…. it’s out of your pocket. Product collecting dust is not collecting money in your bank account.

Whether you love it or hate it, marketing and sales are critical to the life blood of any business. You can make it more fun, if you take the approach that you want to seriously flirt with a growing list of prospects.

Marketing attraction. It sounds like flirting doesn’t it? And in a way, that’s exactly right. You do want to flirt with your prospects, to allow them to get to know, like, and trust you. Since it takes upwards of 7 touches to make a sale today, you need to attract them to your product, service, or program in many different ways.

One critical element you must have in your basket of attraction tools today is a fully developed web presence. People are most likely to google for you or your service or the benefit/solution they seek first. They are less likely to open the telephone book and flip through the yellow pages. The future of your marketing reach is the internet.

Even with the internet, you need an arsenal of marketing strategies to reach your prospects and attract them to your product and services. You can’t flirt with them, if they can’t find you.

Here are a few ideas which you can do quickly and on a budget. They are culled from the likes of Mitch Meyerson, Jay Conrad Levinson, Seth Godin, and Bea Fields.