Blog: How to Become a Business Coach

Fail More! (oops, the F word again)

7/11/2015

Thomas Watson, founder of IBM, has an easy formula for success: “It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You’re thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn't at all.”

Double your rate of failure. In other words, if at first you don’t succeed…you know the ending!…try, try again! I know at least three times in your life that you failed miserably, but kept trying, and eventually succeeded. In fact, you went on to become pretty good if not an expert in each one.

You:

1. Learned how to walk after countless head-knocks on walls, doors and furniture. I mean, talk about bouncing back!

2. Learned how to speak a language. Do you know how ridiculous the English language is? But you didn’t give up!

3. Learned how to ride a bike (or swim or skateboard or sprint) . Are you kidding me? How many skinned knees did it take? This all just supports the previous post about Resolve. We can’t fail. That’s why I say just remove that word from your vocabulary. In each step of the way, you are just getting that much better at your business. Your sales strategy is improving. Your marketing efforts are paying bigger dividends. Your customers service is getting to be top-notch.

As long as you don’t take your eye off the Big Picture, you are on your way to success.

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Scratching A Niche

7/1/2015

Sorry…I couldn't resist that title!

When it comes to marketing, one of the most powerful concepts is the Niche Market. I've found that many small business owners are reluctant to focus on a smaller segment of their market, for two key reasons:

1. They have a hard time actually defining that segment/niche

2. They are afraid they’ll lose potential customers that are outside that niche

Defining the niche is a tricky task, but your niche might just be sitting there waiting for you to run with it. Take a look through all of your customers. Is there a group that are just a real pleasure to work with? You know, the ones who pay on time and truly appreciate the value of your product/service! Or…Or! You might look at one particular product or service that sells the best. In either case, your potential niche might just be right there in front off you.

The second problem is a little more difficult. I completely understand the reluctance to take your current efforts and, in a sense, REDUCE the size of your target. The key is to make a smooth transition from a general marketing campaign to a niche marketing campaign. I hate to do this to you, but look at the law industry (lawyers). It’s very rare that you see a sign for a law firm that just says, ‘Lawyer’ or ‘Attorney’. They all dig out a niche: accident law, business law, sports law, divorce law, bankruptcy law, etc. In fact, they likely carve it a little deeper by sticking to a certain geography.

The other thing to consider here is the shear size of your market. If you did some research and counted the size of your current market, I’m positive you’d find enough of them to start getting more focused and still have plenty to sell to.

The point is that a marketing message designed to target a specific niche will be heard faster and louder by its intended audience. Isn’t that something we’d all want from our marketing campaign?

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Ring Around the Collar? Itchy Scalp?

6/22/2015

Do you remember those commercials for the dandruff shampoo? Even now, when I scratch my head, I cringe at the thought that I’m sending the signal, “I have dandruff!”

That commercial made a simple, effective connection between scratching your head and the need for their product. You might remember the same thing with the "ring-around-the-collar" commercial. Both of these products (Whisk! and Head and Shoulders) did a fantastic job of tying their product to something you see in your daily life.

Now, think about your business. If you were to tell somebody, “A good lead/prospect for ME is…”, could you pick out an object that would spark their memory to connect you to your customer next time they see it? A couple good examples are:

• The membership sales team at a local chamber of commerce and ‘Coming Soon’ banners

• A non-slip floor treatment company and the yellow ‘Slippery When Wet’ cones

• A cracked windshield and the windshield repair company

Go figure out your marketing symbol. And while you do, enjoy the trip down memory lane!

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Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici, / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Focus, Balance, and that Final Degree

5/8/2015

Have you seen that inspirational video that’s going around? You know, the one about the difference between 211 degrees and 212 degrees of water. Just one degree is the difference between steam power and plain old hot water.

Here, take a look.

To get your business to the 212 degree boiling point, you must have many flames burning: marketing, sales, operations, cash flow, teamwork, goals, etc. There are two keys to being able to do this:

1. Keep that Big Picture view of your business. This is the temperature of the water, your company’s raison d’être, it’s ‘reason for being.’ Call it strategy, bird’s eye view, the view from 20,000 feet, whatever you want. The point is to know maintain this focus while working on all the small flames that will boil your water!

2. Manage all the flames (goals, plans and details) that will bring that water to it's boiling point. Which flames are contributing to your boiling point? Which are not? Which need more fuel to burn, which can use less? As business owners, we have many flames burning, and we need them all to get that water to its boiling point.

To help you balance your flames and keep an eye on the big picture, I recommend a good plan. Sit down and map out your plan:

1. Strategy: Map out your strengths and weaknesses in your market as compared to your competitors

2. Cash Flows: forecast your sales, plan your monthly expenses; compare these to actual results each month and make adjustments

3. Marketing: Write out your promotional plan for the year and make sure you do it each month

4. Goals: identify your Big Picture Goal and figure our what its going to take to get your there (all the flames)

5. Metrics: find the numbers that will give you the pulse of your business: sales, profits, sales per transaction, etc.

Now, keep an eye on these plans every month. Pretty soon, your water will start to boil.

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I Work Twelve Hours a Day!

4/16/2015

I Work Twelve Hours a Day!

This is one of the most commonly uttered phrases from an entrepreneur's mouth: “I work twelve hours a day!”, or “I work 80 hours a week!” It makes me wonder, “Do you really love what you do, or are you just bad at it?” I think as entrepreneurs, we are too creative and innovative to put up with working those kinds of hours.

Now, I know that if you’re a new business owner, you are probably putting in these long days. My point is not to insult you, but to get you thinking about a new way to improve. When you are getting started you may need to put in crazy hours, hopefully, it is a pleasure. But, if you are still there a year, two years, ten years later, you may want to rethink your methods.

If you took a good hard look at your day, would you realize that you could take just as many steps toward reaching your goals in much less time? How many hours could you cut out of your schedule each day or week?

I propose getting onto a Time-Loss Program (as opposed to the good old Weight Loss Program). Use these tips/ideas to help you get rid of wasted time:

1. What tasks can you delegate or outsource?

2. Where can you move from “perfect” to “good enough” in order to save time?

3. How could you better manage your calendar to save time in travel, meetings, and events?

Once you start thinking this way, you’ll be amazed at how much time you can get back: time to think big; time to explore; time for yourself.

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Image courtesy of [contributor name] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Shut Up and Sell!

2/17/2014

I like to say that marketing can be summed up as, “Ask your market what they want and give it to them.”

I think that good sales can be conducted in the same way. Many of us have been to training or seminars that taught us to get our prospects to tell us why they’re saying ‘no’ so that we can help them overcome this block, or objection. Keep pushing, keep prodding, until they finally break.

Ugh!

The key to making a successful sale is to create a win-win situation. How do you do that? Easy.

Ask your prospect what they want and then offer it to them. A while back, when I was doing sales, I was asked to land a key account. ‘Asked’ in the form of an order, really. I was coached how to close a deal, how important this was, etc. etc. etc. I decided, rather than using the ‘close the deal’ method, that I would use two separate meetings on this one. First, I would sit down with this prospect and listen — find out what was really important to him. Second, I would go back to my office (or, in this case the hotel in Vegas), and put together an offer that was tailored to what this guy wanted. And that’s what I did.

Do you know what he wanted? He wanted to be #1 in his market. Recognition. He wanted to be recognized. Easy. I offered him the opportunity to be #1 instantly by carrying all of our products, and I offered him a title to be recognized by: ‘Elite.’ He would be our only ‘Elite’ dealer in Vegas. I offered what he wanted and he signed on. Win win. I shut up and listened, then made a good offer.

Rather than think of selling as an exercise to negotiate and win a deal, start thinking of the win-win component. Get to know your prospect and start making offers that make sense for both of you. A funny thing, but in the process, you’ll also start to weed out those prospects that would have made for bad customers. Even more win-win!

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Did You Save Room for a Business Lesson (Part 2)

1/28/2014

In my last post I talked about the simple marketing lesson every good restaurant teaches us. Now here's the final marketing lesson from your meal; the Top-Down Sale.

There are four places where the Top-Down Sale is very common. Think about the last time you purchased one of the following:

• A car. After you told the sales person what you were looking for, did they take you right to the most expensive version of that?

• A home. Did your Realtor start your search at the top, meaning the highest priced homes?

• The Stereo Store. Ouch. These guys are the best (or worst) at this. Ever say you’re looking for a TV and get taken straight to the home theater displays?

The last example is the dinner table at a restaurant.

Whenever I try a new place to eat, I always ask the server what he or she recommends. I like to know if they’re going to recommend the surf-n-turf, $54 plate. One look at me, and they know right away I can handle such a plate! I’m always surprised when the response is, “I like the pasta plate!” (First of all, I have never ordered pasta, but that’s beside the point). The point is the server missed a great opportunity to sell me the granddaddy plate and, therefore, increase his/her own tip. There is a local restaurant that is great at this. I rarely leave there without some sea creature’s tail next to my steak.

"Did you save room for dessert?" How many times are you on the fence when it comes to dessert? You may not be sure you *need* the dessert, but you also know this place makes the best cheesecake outside of Manhattan. All it takes is a little nudge from the server and cheesecake it is!

In thinking about your business, are you offering your clients the best you have to offer (the lobster and fillet)? Are you making sure they’re getting the whole of your services (dessert)? Are you offering them the polite nudge they might need to have the most satisfying experience?

This one, simple, concept of the Top-Down Sale can have a significant effect on your top line: revenue. By simply offering your customers the best possible option, you will see an immediate increase in your sales revenues. Now remember, we’re not out to steal from your customers. Don’t push them to purchase the home theater when all they want is the extra TV for the guest bedroom.

Next time you’re out for dinner, put your entrepreneur cap on and check out the customer service and sales job your server does. There might be a great model to use for your own business!

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Tasy Image courtesy of jackthumm / FreeDigitalPhotos.net. Thank you, Talented JackThumm!

Time Management for Business Owners: The Task List

12/16/2013

Read on to learn how to create time...

A few years back, while sitting on a Southwest Airlines flight to Las Vegas, I read an incredibly valuable tidbit in an airline magazine. A tiny, sidebar paragraph hidden deep in the magazine had this golden nugget of information: stop creating a task list and put those tasks on your calendar. The point is: if a task is worth doing, it’s worth scheduling time to do it.

So, here’s my recommendation, one that I've made a thousand times since reading that gem:
1. Sit down with your To Do list and your calendar and schedule each task as an event on your calendar.
2. The ones you don’t schedule time for are really low-priority tasks. You can file those away under a ‘brainstorming’ type of file somewhere
3. DO the items on your calendar as scheduled, or move them around as necessary.
4. Pull out that brainstorming file once a quarter or so just to make sure you don’t lose the idea of the century.

The greatest thing about scheduling these tasks on the calendar is that they actually get completed, right?
NOPE. That definitely is a good thing, but the real benefit here is that it’s hard to schedule an event for less than 15-30 minutes on a calendar. When that task actually only takes 5-10 minutes, you have just bought 10-25 minutes!

What are you going to do with the time?

I’ll tell you:work ON your business.

Use this new-found time to sit back and think about the Big Picture of your business. At the end of the day, you will have completed your tasks, gotten rid of that nagging To Do list, and spent time being the entrepreneur your company needs you to be.

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"Image courtesy of Stuart Miles/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net".

Vision: Building a Strategy for Success in Small Business

12/10/2013

As small business owners, it is very important that we direct our companies toward a clear vision of success. In order to do so, we need a well-defined strategy. Here is how I define strategy:

1. Know where you are today

2. Know where you want to be tomorrow

3. Have a good plan to get from here to there.

I’m going to focus on #2 for now: Know where you want to be tomorrow. This means having a vision of your success. If you can envision your company as it will be at that moment you have achieved success, then you can start building that company today.

To you imagine your company the way it needs to be once you've achieved success, think about the following things:

1. How many employees will you need?

2. How much are you doing in sales?

3. What kind of profits will you need (gross and net) to feed the growth?

4. What process and procedures need to be defined and implemented?

5. Will you need more financing?

6. What about your facility…will it need to be larger?

If you can keep this vision in your mind (where you want to be tomorrow), then the third step above, creating a plan to get there, will become very clear. At this point, you will know that you are creating a winning strategy.

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Finding A Mentor

10/3/2013

I was fortunate enough to speak to the great group of small business owner the Chandler Chamber of Commerce at their event a few weeks back. I did a presentation called ‘Do You Have What It Takes to Succeed ?’. In answering that question, we revealed that a key component is having a good business mentor.

As I combed through my past business ventures, my clients, and other small business owners , I realized that having a good mentor has been a key to just about every successful small business. Mentors can range from a former boss, a relative, or somebody in the industry who is willing to lend advice and a helping hand.

In my case, I sought out my mentor on my my first day as a Sales Rep (a million years ago!). I had just started my own rep business by basically becoming a sub-rep to existing firms that didn't have an office in Phoenix. The national sales manager for my biggest product was in town, and we met at the office of one of my accounts to do some ’sales.’ I showed up in sandals and shorts. What a lesson. This national sales manager realized right away that I needed help. Over the next two years, he became the mentor I needed. I called him for advice. I asked him to visit my accounts frequently. We had very different selling styles, but we had the same goal: increase sales.

Today, I credit my success in that venture to my mentor. I was able to increase my sales from $1.9M to over $3.5M in just over two years thanks to his mentorship. The bottom line here is that I recommend you go out and find that mentor. It can be a friend, family, competitor, or somebody on the verge of retirement. Seek him/her out, ask for a lunch meeting, and let them know you’re looking for a mentor. It may just be the difference you’re company needs!

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