Blog: How to Become a Business Coach

Don’t Use the ‘F’ Word!

3/12/2014

A Friend sent me the story of the Apollo 13 Mission, where Flight Director Krantz says in the heat of the moment, “ We never lost a man in space, and we’re sure as hell not going to do so on my watch. FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION!”

Not only is the F-word not an option, but I feel we, as entrepreneurs, should remove the F-
word from our vocabularies. Because if you’re saying it’s not an option, then you’re at least
considering it. Nope, I think our focus should be on the S-word, Success: Success is our only
option!

If you’ve been to my Passion+Focus=Profits seminar, then you’ve heard my take on a famous
Abraham Lincoln quote.

Lincoln: “You cannot fail if you resolutely determine that you will not fail.”

The new take on it: “You can only succeed if you resolutely determine that you will succeed!”

So, focus on success and take the F-word completely out of your vocabulary. Thanks, Kathleen!

Where Should I Go Now?
Main Blog Page
Become A Business Coach like Stuart

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!

Where Should I Go Now?
Main Blog Page
Become A Business Coach like Stuart

Dyslexia and Entrepreneurism in America

2/7/2014

I came across this old article in the New York Times, which has an interesting finding tying dyslexia to entrepreneurism.

I wonder if you have heard this...

Here is the quote: “One reason that dyslexics are drawn to entrepreneurship, Professor Logan said, is that strategies they have used since childhood to offset their weaknesses in written communication and organizational ability — identifying trustworthy people and handing over major responsibilities to them — can be applied to businesses.”

She found that 35% of entrepreneurs in the US have dyslexia. So, one third of us has dyslexia? Go ahead and chime in and let us know how that has affected you and your success as a business owner!

Read more at The New York Times.

Where Should I Go Now?
Main Blog Page
Become A Business Coach like Stuart

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!

Where Should I Go Now?
Main Blog Page
Become A Business Coach like Stuart

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

Did You Save Room for a Business Lesson?

1/23/2014

While having dinner with my family, I realized I was in the middle of a very good marketing seminar. The server, one we've gotten to know over time, took us through the customer service and marketing routine I've come to expect from a good restaurant:

1. Welcome us to the business and tell us about the current specials

2. Ask us what we want

3. Deliver to us what we asked for, in a timely manner

4. Check back to see how we like it

5. Make any necessary adjustments (more hot sauce, Stuart?)

6. Take our money and ask us to return again soon

Count me as a happy customer.

Wow. Can it really be that simple? I think we can all take our customers through this process. The central theme here is getting to know the customer, building a relationship with them so that we can deliver the best possible experience.

How are you handling this process with your customers?

I also saw a great sales lesson, too. More on that next time....

Where Should I Go Now?
Main Blog Page
Become A Business Coach like Stuart

Image courtesy of stockimages / FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Taking the Time to Aim your Marketing Efforts

1/6/2014

One of my favorite movies, Pulp Fiction, has an accidental marketing lesson in one very dramatic scene. It addresses a very common problem for small business marketing. In this very tense scene, two hit-men are in an apartment, guns smoldering from a recent ‘hit’ when an unknown man comes flying out of the bathroom, draws his weapon, closes his eyes, screams at the top of his lungs, and empties his pistol firing towards the bad guys — hitting nothing but the wall behind them. To them, it was a ‘miracle’ that they weren't killed. To me, it was a regrettably common event in small business marketing. Here's how it goes:

An exercise I often take my clients through is to have them bring all of the promotional campaigns they've used over the past year or two to a meeting — flyers, postcards, ads in papers, ads in magazines and so on. After we go through them, we usually have a pile on the floor I call Mt. Marketing Everest. They have tried EVERYTHING and nothing really worked. What they did was come into the market, eyes closed and guns blazing. That doesn't work, especially for the relatively un-branded small business.

The key to successful marketing for the small business is persistence. It is so important to do your homework, design a good promotional mix, and STICK TO IT. As you design this mix, I think you will find it weighted more heavily on the networking and strategic alliance side of things, rather than the traditional advertising side. But, the point is to take the time to take proper aim. Lining up the target isn’t an old west concept, it’s sound marketing.

Where Should I Go Now?
Main Blog Page
Become A Business Coach like Stuart

Don’t Just Teach a Man to Fish!

12/27/2013

Give a man a fish, feed him for a day

Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime

Teach a man to SELL fish, and he will eat STEAK!

Special thanks to Bono for the ‘Sell Fish’ part and to Jay Leno for the ‘Eat Steak’ part!

Isn't that what we want from our business? To eat Steak? What are some of the benefits of running a successful business?

- More time to give back to the community

- More time to strengthen relationships

- More time to expand our horizons

- Financial security in your future

- Financial freedom

- The pure joy of success

- The satisfaction of having created something out of nothing

Mmm. Steak.

Where Should I Go Now?
Main Blog Page
Become A Business Coach like Stuart

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.

Where Should I Go Now?
Main Blog Page
Become A Business Coach like Stuart

"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.

Where Should I Go Now?
Main Blog Page
Become A Business Coach like Stuart

Success: How Do You Define Success for your Small Business?

11/21/2013

If I asked you what success means to your business, how would you answer? I think many of us small business owners view success as a month-to-month financial objective: I pay my bills and have a little extra left over in the account each month. Some might get closer to the big picture, with a focus on net profits or sales growth or other growth. It’s hard to argue that a business that makes a good profit isn't a successful business, but I wonder if we can’t think a little bigger than that.

Here are two criteria I recommend for the success of your small business:

1. How much could you sell your business for today? Would you be able to sell the business and have that retirement nest egg or the money you need for another exciting startup? If you can build your business to a point that somebody else would purchase your cash flows, then you have achieved one element of success.

2. Could you franchise your business? I’m not saying you want to have your business on every major street corner in America, but building a business that could be duplicated with ease is a sure sign of success. If you have processes and procedures in place that would allow for just about any qualified person to step in and start running the business, then I think you've stepped right up next to success. Many small business owners talk of hiring a manager to run things while they go play a round of golf or soak up the rays in Hawaii. Building your own ‘franchise’ is one sure way to get there.

Where Should I Go Now?
Main Blog Page
Become A Business Coach like Stuart