Much of our business lives we spend asking ourselves what if…? The pessimist asks “what if it fails?” The optimist asks “What if this idea succeeds?” I’m not suggesting that you ignore risk; I’m saying that you need to embrace potential.

I find too many business owners that fail to grow because they are cautious of overspending. That last sentence may not make any sense until you consider this. Advertising should not be an expense. It should be an investment. If your advertising is not bringing you 5 times the cost of the ad in new business, you have two potential challenges. One, your ad was poorly executed. Two, you did not perform on the calls received.

The biggest challenge is that most small business owners can’t tell me what the response rate is to an ad, nor can they tell me what their sales ratio is. So the ad designed for them by the newspaper or billboard company pulled half as much as it could have, and the customers they paid to have call or come in as a result of that ad, were put on hold too long or were never seen by a sales person.

Measure your performance and review it no less than once a week. Write ads that stand out from the noise of your competitors and learn how to better communicate the importance of your recommendations.

When you are capturing above industry standards in areas of call taking or sales closing ratios, you should start to see things in a different perspective. You won’t be asking what if it fails, you will be asking how do I find more people.