Unwittingly, many businesses sabotage their own success. By sabotage, I mean they do (or don't do) things that limit their odds, chance, good fortune, or plans for growth and success. In four separate posts, I'm going to give you the four biggest mistakes businesses make that limit their growth and success.

The good news is each of these mistakes are correctable. Better news is correcting them will increase your rate of growth and make you more money. So, with no further delay, here's Mistake #1 Where's The Offer:

Where's The Offer? This could also be titled, Where's The Beef? Too many businesses don't make an offer to a prospect or customer to purchase something or enter into a business relationship.

An offer is made when you tell your prospect I'll do this, if you'll give me that. You have to make an offer to get a response, otherwise you're basing your success on the ability of your prospect to get it and take action at their will. Neither is predictable or dependable.

Many, if not most, marketing departments aren't working on revenue building activities. Walk into their offices right now and review each and every project underway. I'm willing to bet you'll find an awful lot of branding and goodwill programs - advertising, interviews, panel discussions, tradeshows, web development, sales collateral, public relations, updated product presentation, etc. - all without a specific and overt call to action - an offer that asks something of your reader, prospect, or customer to do something in exchange for something.

Review each and every marketing effort underway and evaluate it for an offer. Challenge your marketing team to create revenue opportunities by making overt offers. Your revenue will grow as a result. It's no more complicated than that.

If you don't have an offer, you're not in business.