Use this checklist to make sure you are taking best advantage of all the opportunities for earnings that would be arriving safely if you only plugged up those holes.

It really doesn't take much to increase your business profits and a lot is based in increasing your productivity. See the quick list below for a few small changes to you marketing, customer service, and time management that pack a big punch.

1. Improve your follow-up.  According to the National Sales Executive Association, only about two percent of sales occur on the first contact.  Eighty percent of sales require at least five contacts before the transaction occurs.  You must repeat that message again and again before it wakes up busy people to what you are offering.

2. Put your marketing activities on schedule with a plan.  I see a lot of businesses living the "feast or famine" syndrome, where they stop marketing when times are good and therefore have no pipeline in place bringing them new leads when the economy slows down.

3. Increase your personal productivity by working at your most creative times.  Follow this process that creativity researchers will tell you is used by top scientists and inventors:  Absorb all the facts and define the challenge for yourself, then go to sleep, take a walk or step into the shower.

4. Stop unproductive marketing activities, boosting your profits.  Advertising pros know that most advertising doesn't work, but they continue to spend like crazy because part of it does.  If you can identify which marketing efforts of yours are not giving you a return, and stop spending money and energy on those, you'll be earning more from what you spend.

5. Market more often to your customer base - much more often.  Hardly anyone stays in touch with existing and past customers often enough.  They think they might be "bothering" their clientele by letting them know about new products, opportunities to buy before a price increase, success stories of other customers like them, and so on.

6. Hire help for mechanical tasks or a virtual assistant to help manage communications.  Feeling overwhelmed?  If you can make, let's say, $100 an hour doing what you do best, you should not be spending too much energy on routine things.  An exception to this principle is when you do the repetitive tasks as a break or rest from money-making activities that tire you out. 

Increasing your productivity means increasing the income from your business without spending more hours working.