We've all heard the word system, as in computer system, circulatory system, or solar system, but most people are not aware of the important role systems play in our lives and in the health and growth of our businesses.

A system is simply a 'series of steps designed to achieve a specific result.'

You may have a system for making your favorite cake recipe, or a system for paying your bills. If you have employees, you probably have a system for hiring new employees and a system for training them. Actually, you have a system for doing everything you do.

Chances are, you have a system for attracting new customers, and a system for selling more products to your current list of customers. But, are these systems as effective as they could be? Are they producing the level of results you want each month?

Exactly how are you currently attracting prospects to your business? What steps do you take each week or each month to attract these prospects?

An effective system should produce predictable and consistent results for you. If it doesn't, there is something wrong with your system.

Before we moved our business to the Internet a few years ago, we used a number of offline marketing systems to attract customers to our business. Each one produced consistent results for us.

For instance, one of the marketing systems we used was a one-page prospect generating letter that we mailed to our target market each month. Every time we mailed that letter, we received on average a 3-4% response.

That means, if we mailed 1,000 letters, we received 30 - 40 responses. Our system was designed to ensure that the only people who responded to our letters, were people who had a genuine interest in the solution that we provided.

We then had another marketing system for setting up an appointment with those prospects. That system consistently resulted in 60% of our prospects agreeing to meet with us in person.

And finally, we had a third marketing system for converting our appointments into paying clients. That system consistently converted about 50-60% of our appointments into clients.

Each of those systems was made up of a series of separate steps. As long as we performed the steps the same way each time, we could expect about the same results each time.

Because of this predictability, we were able to project, fairly accurately, how many sales we would generate each month.

If our system produced 1 new client for each 100 letters mailed, then we knew that we would produce 2 new clients by mailing 200 letters, or 3 by mailing 300, etc.

Because of our effective and predictable systems, we could 'decide' how much income we wanted to generate each month.

This is the way all effective marketers grow their businesses. They each have learned very effective marketing systems that they apply consistently to produce their results, just like baking a cake. There's no reason why you can't do the same.

Here are the three basic marketing systems that are mandatory for growing your business:

If you don't have an effective system for generating prospects, you need to get one.

If you don't have an effective system for converting your prospects into customers, you need to get one.

If you don't have an effective system for selling more to your current customers, you need to get one.

You can't develop an effective marketing system by guessing at the steps. And you'll waste a lot of time and money trying to develop a system haphazardly. You don't stumble upon effective marketing systems -- you learn them.

The easiest way to develop your own marketing systems is to learn them from others who have already tested and proven the effectiveness of their marketing systems.

You want to learn a marketing system that is based on solid marketing principles. Human nature never changes, and all effective marketing systems are based on human nature. Improve your systems and your results will improve at the same time.