Jul 1, 2014 | Marketing
There are three keys to creating predictable and consistent cashflow through marketing:
1. Strong and sustainable Unique Selling Proposition: A strong USP is one that cuts through the clutter of our everyday lives. A USP is like a beacon that calls you like an irresistible force. It is the lighthouse that brightens the night sky after you were lost at sea and thought that all was lost. Do you get the picture?
In his book, Purple Cow, Seth Godin explains that the USP must be as remarkable as seeing a Purple Cow. So, if you do not have a USP or you believe your USP is weak, try this exercise by Jay Conrad Levinson, author of Guerilla Marketing. First, write down everything you possibly could think of that you do that would possibly be unique and put it into seven paragraphs.
Next, take the most unique ideas and reduce it down to seven sentences. Finally, take the seven sentences and use only seven words that describe your uniqueness. Going through this exercise, will give you a good starting point for a powerful USP.
2. Overwhelming a particular niche: Many entrepreneurs that start out with their first company make the mistake of focusing too narrowly on a specific target market.
Hang on, shouldn’t we be very specific about our target market? The answer is yes, and no. When starting a new marketing campaign the target market should be small and very focused. However, having this narrow focus for a marketing campaign does not mean that the company should have a very narrow focus.
A new company or new product may not have yet realized exactly what target market has the strongest demand for it. Once you identify a target market or a niche, then you can further develop the niche until you master it.
Seth Godin refers to this process as “overwhelming the hive”. As when bees protect and swarm their hive, the same is true about how similar people tend to congregate as a target market. People within the hive naturally spread the word about you until everyone is talking about you and your product and services.
In planning your marketing, what are the top three target markets or hives that your company is determined to overwhelm? Identify them in excruciating detail.
3. Multiple strategies producing balanced lead generation: Once you have a strong USP and you know who and where your target markets exists, then determine what specific lead generation strategies you can put to work.
How often have you heard a business owner say that they get all their business from referrals? Well, if you think of the example of a diving board and its one leg, how much spring would the diving board have compared to having multiple legs prop it up? This example is true in business too.
If you have one strategy or leg supporting your marketing diving board, how much bounce in your cashflow are you going to experience?
For businesses, which rely solely on one referral strategy, cashflow will go up and down. Drive predictable cashflow by using well thought out strategies that equally produce a balanced set of leads. Just like your financial adviser tells you, a balanced portfolio will smooth out your returns.
In the event that one strategy does not work in a particular month, there are several other strategies that could. We at ActionCOACH like to use a 10 x 10 lead generation plan which means that a business should have 10 lead generation strategies that each produces 10 percent of the company’s leads.
To learn more about lead generation strategies, come to the next ActionClub seminar.
Jun 24, 2014 | Planning & Goal Setting, Self, Time Management
Eat That Frog: Last week was the third installment in Time Management – “Time Mastery “. Now that you’ve had time to develop your vision, set and write down your goals and learned how to prioritize all of your tasks, you’re ready to take the final step – developing the habits to keep you focused for long-term success.
Okay. So, you’ve started your day, and there’s so much to do. Ever ask yourself, “Where do I start?” This is the first sign of a day of little accomplishment ahead. Many business owners I talk to have way too much on their plate: sales, marketing, finances, hiring, and let’s not forget actually providing your product or service. Many people, faced with so many balls to juggle, find it hard just to get started, so they choose to start with email. You think, “its easy, I can get through it quickly and then move on to more important things”. I know you’ve done it. You might even do it routinely.
So you dive into your inbox. And then the phone rings. And then an employee comes in asking for guidance. And then a customer calls. And before you know it, it is 5 p.m. and everyone is leaving the office except you, and you’re thinking “Jeez, I haven’t gotten anything done that I needed to get done today.”
There’s a way to stop the cycle, and it’s called “Eat That Frog!” If you’ve read this time management series this far, and you haven’t read this book by Brian Tracy, go order it NOW.
You must develop a new habit that can change everything when it comes to achieving your goals. The key to getting the results you want from yourself is to START each day by doing the number one goal you have for the day. The best time to identify that task? The night before. Every day, the last thing you do at the end of your workday is WRITE DOWN your top 2-3 priorities for the next day. Then when morning comes, you’re ready to “Eat That Frog!”
What the heck? You might be asking about now. Mark Twain once said, if your list of things to do today includes eating a frog, do that first, and know nothing worse is going to happen the rest of the day. Your “frog” is the most important, and biggest task on your list – the one you are most likely to procrastinate about doing. Skip the inbox, skip the interruptions, get right down to eating that frog. Block out the time on your calendar, and stick to it.
Continually ask yourself “Which one project or activity, if I did it in an excellent and timely fashion, would have the greatest positive impact on my life?” And conversely, which one, “if I DON’T get it done, will have the most negative impact?” Then develop the habit of asking yourself throughout the day, “is this the best use of my time right now”. Did you eat your frog?
It takes 21 days on average to develop a new habit, after that you won’t have to think about it, you’ll just be doing it. Start today. Write out your frog for tomorrow. Then do it!
Get in touch with me to find out when my next time management workshop will be held.
Jun 17, 2014 | Planning & Goal Setting, Self, Time Management
Time Mastery – How To Get The Best of You
Time Mastery – Last week was the second installment in Time Management – “Setting Your Goals”. Now that you’ve had time to think about your vision, work out your ideal future state, and set and write down your specific SMART goals, you’re ready to take the next step – how to work on the RIGHT things to accelerate achievement of your goals.
Time Mastery is one of the most difficult and most critical challenges facing business owners today – how to efficiently utilize your most valuable resource – your TIME! The things that you choose to spend your time on in your business will have a significant influence on how successful you are as a business owner.
Stephen Covey in his “7 Habits” and “First Things First” books describes a simple matrix of Importance vs. Urgency to easily categorize how you allocate your time investment to have the most positive impact on achieving your goals. These four areas can also be called Waste, Deception, Necessity and lastly Quality & Leadership or Strategic.
You’ll find things like e-mail and surfing the web are most often Not Urgent and Not Important – or Waste. It is critical to avoid spending much time on these activities during the day. Many phone calls and walk in requests fall into the category of Urgent and Not Important. They come to you because someone else did not do what they were supposed to or because there is no process in place to handle the situation. Many customer calls or production issues are Urgent and Important. You handle them to satisfy a customer or keep the operation moving, but they suck time from you largely because there was no system in place to handle the issue properly in the first place. Does any of this sound familiar to you?
It might surprise you to know that the quadrant where you want to spend the most time is the Important and Not Urgent corner. This is where you find focus, and work on things like strategy, planning, goal setting and relationship building. The biggest challenge for you as business owner is to spend as much time as possible in this corner. These are the Strategic decisions that will determine where you take your business and if you accomplish your goals. Because the projects in this corner are not Urgent, they often times get pushed back in the priority stack – and then just get forgotten or just never done. As the business owner, it is your job to invest your TIME on these areas of your business. If you do not, who will?
So you ask, how do I make time to focus on the Not Urgent but Important? One practical idea is to bake it into your schedule. I call it using a Default Calendar. That is blocking the time on your calendar for those critical tasks you must do even though there is not an emergency driving them. When you put the BIG, CRITICAL items into your calendar first, you will always find time to fit in the other, smaller items.
And, related to this thought, when you put the big items into your calendar, FOCUS ON THEM! Resist the urge to blow right past them and put them off. Discipline yourself to focus first on the Strategic and them the operational and execution-oriented activities will flow more naturally.
Try it! If you have a white board in your office, draw the matrix there, and list your projects and activities in each quadrant. Make sure you are spending blocks of quality time in the Important & Not Urgent corner. How you spend your time will determine your ultimate level of success.
Need help with setting goals and planning? Our next GrowthClub 90 Day Planning & Strategy workshop is coming up on Sep 23rd. Its your chance spend a day in quadrant 2!
Jun 9, 2014 | Planning & Goal Setting, Self
Setting Your Goals. Last week was the first installment in Time Management – “Destination: Where are you going?” Now that you’ve had time to think about your vision and work out what your ideal state (for your life, business, career, etc.) looks like in 1, 5 or 10 years, you’re ready to take the next step and define the specific goals that will get you there.
Do you have written goals for your business? One year out, three years out? What about the next 90 days? If you don’t know very explicitly and clearly what your goals are, which determines your priorities, then how can you possibly know what is the best use of your hours TODAY? And how can you know if those goals will get you to your vision?
Many business owners operate without a real clear picture of the goals they have for their business. They seem to just go through the paces, week after week, without knowing whether they are ahead or behind on meeting their goals. I think the reason most business owners do this is because if they never commit to specific goals, then they can’t fail when they miss them. It keeps them from failing; it also keeps them from succeeding.
Goal setting, and using those goals to drive your daily priorities is a habit you can develop. Like any learned habit, typically will take at least 21 days to develop, and then many months and years to refine until you master the discipline.
There is a lot of material and advice out there about goal setting, but here is a simple and effective process for setting goals :
1. Decide exactly what you want. Be clear, specific and write it down on paper. The very act of writing down a goal significantly increases the likelihood that you will achieve it.
2. Make your goals measurable. Your goals should have clear metrics for their achievement. For example, a goal to “become the best salesperson” is a nice goal, but how do you measure “best”? To make this goal measurable, it could be restated in the following way, “I will achieve $1,000,000 in gross sales revenue, helping me reach the top sales position in the company.”
3. Make a list. Write down everything you must do to achieve each goal, including every step, actions, strategies, decisions, milestones, etc.
4. Set a deadline for each of your goals. This will help you overcome the human tendency to procrastinate and will exert some pressure for you to stay on task.
5. Finally, develop an action plan from the list of activities and immediately take action on your plan. Resolve to do something every day to get you closer to your goals.
Clearly written goals will have a powerful effect on your thinking and will motivate you into action. They act as the “guiding lights” to keep you on task, using your time in the most effective manner possible, keeping you focused on your priorities. Make a habit of asking yourself throughout the day if what you are doing right now is moving you towards your goals. If not, STOP what you’re doing and do something that will.
Need help with setting goals and planning? Our GrowthClub 90 Day Planning workshop is coming up on June 16th. It’s your chance to take a day out of your business to work ON your business!
Jun 4, 2014 | Planning & Goal Setting, Self
Is Time Management an oxymoron? Can you really manage time? Time marches on its own schedule, whether you like it or not, with or without you. You can’t manage time, but you can manage yourself, and what you do with your time. As your single most valuable resource, successfully leveraging time is critical to your success.
You can always make more money but you can’t make more time.
As you look at what you do with your most precious commodity, it only makes sense to start with the end in mind. Why is that important? Simply put – if you do not have a clear vision or goals in life or in business – then time management really becomes pointless. In other words, if you don’t know where you’re going any road will get you there, and what you do with your time doesn’t matter.
I did a seminar for NAWBO yesterday on TimeWise – how to properly invest your time, and it reminded me of how extremely valuable it is to master getting the best results from the investment of your time. There are tremendous tools and techniques for mastering it that most people don’t know about, or don’t use. So I’ve decided to do a series on the subject, this is part 1.
STEP ONE: DESTINATION – Where are you going?
A key element to develop effective time management is Vision. I know many people (and I’m sure you do as well) that waste so much precious time because they have little sense of purpose and vision. Therefore, they are doomed to live life, day to day, getting pulled this way and that, taking what comes and missing the possibilities that exist. Clarity is the most important concept when it comes to vision and personal productivity. The key reason why some people achieve more in a day than others (all things being equal) is due to the fact that they have complete clarity on their goals and objectives and don’t deviate from them. The discipline of clarity prevents procrastination and provides the focus and motivation that propels individuals to reach their dreams.
Let’s define vision. Vision can be described as your ideal state (for your life, business, career, etc.) in 1, 5, 10, 20 years and beyond. You should be able to picture this vision with absolute clarity and describe it with precise detail. The more clarity you have with your vision, the more motivation and focus you will have in your life. Commit to spending 2 hours developing and writing down, or drawing, your vision.
Having this clear vision will help you determine what you must do today in order to achieve what you want tomorrow. Once you have established a clear vision, it’s imperative to develop the goals that will help you achieve that vision. While vision is the destination, goals are the short and long-term milestones along the path that get you closer and closer to achieving your ultimate vision.
Do you have written goals for your life and your business? Next week I will talk more about setting goals. For today, focus on Vision, and developing a mindset of control over how you invest your time. You are responsible for how you choose to use your time. Its not anyone else’s fault, if you allow unimportant interruptions in your day, its your fault.
Developing the vision, and the right mindset and proper attitude sets the stage for creating effective time management habits and disciplines. Many of us feel chaos in our lives because we have not established the fundamental disciplines of time investment. You have to first believe your situation can change and that you have the power to overcome your ingrained habits. Once you have a firm desire and make the conscious decision to get control of your actions and behavior, you will then be open and prepared to learn and embrace the key disciplines and tools of effective time investment.
Where are you going?
Need help with setting vision or goals? Sign up for a free Business Health Check to get started.
May 19, 2014 | Sales
The perception of most business owners I talk to is that people are very price focused shoppers, and only care about price. But the only reason customers ask for the price first, is because that is what we, as business owners, have trained them to do, and we have not done a good job of finding out what they really need.
More often than not, people go into a store not really knowing what model, style, color or features they are looking for and since they are uncertain what else to ask, they ask for the price. At this point should the salesperson come back with the direct response, “That is $49.95” or should they ask the customer some questions about how they are looking to use the product/service? Lets look at a simple example of a coffee maker.
Now in many people’s eyes a coffee maker is a coffee maker, but it can have many different features and offer many different benefits.
So, instead of just responding with the price, what if the sales person simply asks the customer, “Just so I can help you better, is it okay if I ask you a couple of questions about the coffee maker you are looking for?” This is a better response than simply telling the customer how much the kettle costs. Most certainly, the customer would give an affirmative response, since he’d like to find the coffee maker that best suits his needs.
The sales person may then ask questions like: “Is it a gift for someone or are you looking for one for your own use?” If for their use, “Are you looking to replace an existing coffee maker? Do you regularly use your coffee maker or is it only used occasionally?” “Have you seen the single cup options that are available?” “Are you looking for something to match your kitchen?” “So what color are you looking for?” “Coffee makers come in different cup capacity; how many cups will you drink typically? Do you think you’ll use a 12-cup capacity or is 8-cup a better size for you?”
From these questions, the customer gets the idea that the sales person is genuinely interested in their needs, and that the salesperson is able to offer options in the most suitable coffee maker based on his needs.
The importance of the price, is therefore, minimized. It is just a matter of now asking the customer to buy the coffee maker and close the sale. A good salesperson would then ask, “Well, based on what we have just spoken about, there are two options to choose from, model x and model y; which one suits you best?”
Finally, she can ask, “Great, would you like to pay for that by cash or on a credit card.
How does this apply to other businesses? Though this example was for a lower cost item, this process works equally well on cars, retail, houses, furniture, service-based businesses and any other product there is, including funeral homes. Also, while this example is a face to face situation, you can translate the same process onto a well designed website.
Every business owner needs to work out what her customers actually need when they ask for the price, how they’ll use the product, and what’s most important to them in their buying decision.
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