LLP stands for Listen, Learn, and Profit.
When I started my first business in October 2001, it was called Dynamic Communication. I was planning to be a consultant but I thought I'd also offer customer newsletters as a way to generate some cash immediately, and then that would lead to some consulting jobs.
Well, it's pretty hard to sell consulting services, but the newsletter part of my business really started taking off. So I started out doing newsletters one-on-one with clients. I would write and design their newsletter and then get paid for it. Then when that newsletter was done I'd have to go and find another client. I did that for four years and developed a pretty good business.
However, while I was in my clients' offices, I kept hearing how it took them too much time to write and put together their own monthly newsletters. Besides that, they never knew what type of articles to include in their newsletters. Coming up with the content was a problem for them; a pain point. This is step one in LLP listening for 'pain points' that your customers have.
It was around this time I started learning about internet marketing and I started my first online business, No Hassle Newsletters. With No Hassle Newsletters I put together all the content a fun, informative customer newsletter should have and right off the bat I started getting monthly subscribers because my program cured a pain point felt by many small business owners.
The next part of the story is when my clients said, "We have a hard time getting designers to design newsletters the way you say they should be designed. And I thought, Okay, there's another pain point and opportunity!
So, I then created my No Hassle Newsletter 'Done-for-You' templates, basically newsletter templates that are already filled in with content. Using these templates, my clients can put out a monthly customer newsletter for their business in less than an hour each month. So essentially, I heard the additional pain point and I added more value to my existing program.
In November 2008, while exhibiting at a Marketing Conference in St. Louis, a client came up to our booth and said, "Jim, I love the newsletters, the content, and I love the new templates you provide, but we have a hard time working with printers who understand the way that you suggest the newsletters should be folded and mailed. They also don't know how to work with the mailing list."
Another customer pain point and that spells opportunity!
So within 30 days I created and launched The Newsletter Guru's Concierge Print & Mail on Demand Service. We now print more than 40,000 newsletters a month for my clients. So when they do their No Hassle Newsletter, they just send us their newsletter mailing list, pay for the quantity they want, and then we do the printing and mailing. They never even have to leave their desk or talk to anybody on the phone.
As you can see, every single one of the additional businesses and revenue streams that I've created came from me listening to what my customers were telling me! I listened to their pains, learned how to solve their pain by added more value and then I profited!
So listen, learn, and boost your profits!
'Be a good listener. Your ears will never get you in trouble.' - Frank Tyger
Action Exercise:
What 'pain points' do your customers and prospects share with you?
How could you use this information to offer additional products and services that could be of help to solve these pain points?
Graham McGregor is a marketing consultant and the creator of the 396 page 'Unfair Business Advantage Report.' www.theunfairbusinessadvantage.com (This is free and has now been read by business owners from 27 countries.) You can email him at the link above. 
