Recognizing the Red Flags.

Thu 28 Jun 2007 2:26:58 AM GMT

How to Use Your Sales Statistics to See Problems Before They Happen Sales Statistics are an essential part of taking care of your business. Statistics ensure that you can see the warning signs of trouble before they sneak up on you. Statistics encourage you with the small successes before you accomplish the major ones. More importantly statistics keep you from becoming one of these statistics. 80% of businesses fail within the first 5 years, another 80% fail between 5 and 10 years. What sales statistics are important? The only two tasks you need to focus as a business owner on are how to keep a customer, and how to create a customer. Any other sales statistic should be deemed as interesting but not essential. Your first task is to determine all the ways that people receive your message. What marketing tools do you use? Do some of those tools lead to them using other tools? For example, does someone see your ad in the newspaper, and then look you up in the phonebook, or on the internet? Keep track of all of the contacts you receive through each of these mediums. You can then see and continually test your message and advertising. Which messages cause your target markets to react? What is your return on investment for each advertisement? Remember, your advertising is “productive revenue”. Make sure it is working for you. The next step is to determine conversion rate. How many calls are converting into the sales process? Is the next step a sales presentation, an appointment, a trial program? This will tell you how effective your staff is at the initial contact. If you have a large number of calls, but few first steps, you know that your message in the ad is wrong, or that your staff is under trained. My goal was to have 80% of my telephone calls turn into sales presentations. If your next step is a purchase, you have to determine what is an acceptable rate. On the internet a good conversion rate is 1%. Follow this same procedure for each additional step in the sales process. Determine what an acceptable rate is and ensure that you are giving your staff the appropriate training and opportunity to reach those goals. WARNING: Don’t make this process overcomplicated or you won’t follow it. This should be a simple system that you can follow on a daily, even hourly basis. Some of the most effective systems that I have experienced tracked 4-5 different numbers on an hourly basis (with other factors worked in on a daily basis). Professionals keep score. Every professional athlete knows that they must have a great performance and that the only way to judge their individual performance is through their statistics. Make sure that you are tracking your key statistics.

More Members Now!

Thu 21 Jun 2007 2:50:11 AM GMT

Are you making these 5 Fatal Mistakes? Business owners slowly kill their own business by making small fatal flaws. They don’t mean to do it. In fact, it was all in the process of trying to help their members. Are you guilty of making any of these fatal flaws? 1. Undervaluing their services. Many business owners feel that lower membership dues mean more clients. This may be true if you are looking to lease a car, or are comparing apples to apples. More often lower prices scare customers away from your business. Clients are looking for the best possible service for their dollar. Would you want a discount doctor, or lawyer, or would you want the job done right the first time? 2. Not providing proper value and recognition. The most important part of your business is your customer. Most of your effort must be focused on providing maximum value to your customer. Continually upgrade your education in your field, add services and benefits to your customers, seek dynamic partnerships. Do whatever you can to serve you clients. Remember, you would be lonely without them. 3. Not setting proper boundaries. As Business Owners, our clients sometimes become almost part of our families. Make sure that you set the appropriate boundaries between your personal life and your professional life. Letting your clients cross that line can lead to serious complications in your business. You could lose clients simply by personal life actions that they don’t want to be associated with in their business. Your clients will judge your personal life, whether you like it or not. The simple solution, your business clients are business, and your personal life can be an enigma. 4. Letting your customers have too much of an opinion on your business. Clients will believe that as your customer they have a right to an opinion on your business. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not telling you to be rude to your clients, but there is a difference between a survey and an opinion. Be polite and hear out your clients. They truly care about your business, they want to belong, and they want to feel important. The most important lesson is to have a strong enough commitment to you plan of action that your customers see that you are dedicated to a specific direction and that you appreciate them, but know what you are doing. Keep your clients involved by routinely surveying your clients to find out what they really want from your business. 5. Let your customer know too much about your business. If business is slow, if your are fighting red ink, or if you are preparing to buy the new Mercedes, your customer does not need to know that unless that is important to serving your clients. I recently visited a website where a business owner posted a history of their business including that they took it over after the business failed a couple of times. I wasn’t encouraged to join. Gaining a client is one of the most difficult tasks in business. Make sure that you don’t have to repeat the cycle more often than your need to.

What is Coaching? Clarifying common misconceptions around the field of coaching.

Tue 19 Jun 2007 2:12:00 AM GMT

Coaching has become a popular buzzword for many different activities these days. Managers no longer criticize or teach; they coach. Consultants now offer their services as coaches. This has become so widespread, the actual meaning of coaching has been lost and misconstrued. This has caused a lot of confusion for the clients who are looking to achieve results. Coaching is not: • Therapy - Coaches do not analyze and diagnose problems. • Consulting – Coaches do not give you their solution to the problem. Their solution may not work in your situation. • Mentoring – Coaches are not the experts teaching you about a specific way. Coaches are skilled communicators trained to identify speech patterns and emotional wave patterns. They are taught to ask deep meaningful questions to help find your best solution, your solution. They are co-creative partners. Coaches: • Insist that you set the agenda for your session • Focus only on you and your goals. • Ask powerful direct questions • Actively listen • Be a sounding board and give honest opinions • Be an accountability partner. • Keep you focused so you can identify barriers, opportunities and way to work through them. A skilled coach can make a major impact on your life. Coaches help you set and achieve goals, stay focused and work through challenges. They strive to help you create your own solutions because those are the ones that are the most successful and create the most emotional buy-in. Most coaches also offer free introductory sessions. Research your coach carefully to ensure that you are getting exactly what you are looking for.

Wealth Video

Mon 28 May 2007 2:31:02 AM GMT

And so it begins...

Wed 14 Mar 2007 10:51:07 PM GMT

I work with small business owners, and I will not mention any names, but I will be completely frank as to what I feel is good, and bad about their experiences so that we may all learn from them. One business I visited was a wonderful nutritional supplement shop. I feel that supplements are so important to our health both mentally and physically, but most people don't have the proper education as to what supplements are right for them. The answer: Everyone is unique, and needs proper assesment to know what they need. Anyways, this small business owner mentioned to me that he was paying $400 per month on a website and not making a sale off of it. This confused me. Why was he paying so much for so little return? He felt that to be competitive, he must be on the 'net. Is this true? Do you need to be on the 'net? The internet is a powerful marketing tool. More powerful than any medium ever created. UNLESS YOU ARE COMMITTED TO LEARNING HOW TO EFFECTIVELY USE THIS TOOL, YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE A WEBSITE. Follow the first steps below to make sure you are ready to put your business on the 'net: What return do you want from the net? Is it simply monetary, or is it to develop a list of prospects to constantly market to? Are you going to commit time to marketing your website, or is it going to be an information site that your current customers can visit for current information? Who is your ideal customer, and how can you find where they visit on the 'net? What information can you give your customers to ensure that they will visit your website. Stay tuned when next time I discuss more on websites and Yellow Pages...