Posted by AndyM on June 29, 2010 under Business Growth | 
We’ve all heard the phrase “a level playing field” applied to a variety of situations. Whether one thinks the field is indeed level, or drastically slanted in one direction or another, depends on the person and the issue at hand.
One place where the field is inarguably flat (at least I don’t think I would get any valid arguments) is time. We all have the same number of hours in a day. Those that use them more wisely will do better than the rest. As my business has grown, my to do list has grown with it. Thankfully, as a student of time management, I have been able to stay one step ahead. As you may have read here before, I am a big fan of David Allen and the philosophy he laid out in “Getting Things Done” (GTD for short).
I recently seemed to outgrow my paper-based implementation of the GTD system. After wading into a few forums, reading reviews, and experimenting a bit, I came to www.toodledo.com. Wow! This free online tool has allowed me to get dozens of activities easily out of my head and into an intuitive system. It also offers an iPhone application (for just $2.99) that will stay in sync with my online list. If you have read David’s book, or have become proficient in the GTD methodologies through a seminar or other means, I strongly encourage you to check out Toodledo.com.
My second recommendation is something that has been around for some time. Now that I am a user, it’s hard to imagine why it hasn’t become more popular. After nursing sore wrists and fingers a few weeks ago, I decided it was time to investigate speech recognition software. A quick search brought me to a name I had heard many years ago — “Dragon.” At only about $40 on amazon.com, I got the standard version “Dragon Naturally Speaking.”
http://www.amazon.com/Nuance-Communications-Inc-A309A-G01-10-0-NaturallySpeaking/dp/B001B5J7T8/ref=pd_cp_sw_1
Another “wow.” I wasn’t expecting to shave up to an hour of typing off of my day. Even a fast typist cannot keep up with the spoken word.
If you are fortunate enough to have a private office where you can talk at your computer without annoying others around you, you owe it to yourself to check this out. Now replying to a list of e-mails, writing a new blog post, or creating copy for a client can be super fast, making it easier to concentrate on it as a task, not as a way to make hours vanish from your schedule!
Posted by AndyM on June 21, 2010 under Business Growth |
- Provide a “wow” experience: we do a lot of work behind the scenes to provide our service, create or deliver our products, and help our clients and customers succeed. Our clients cannot be fully aware of this effort — they only know what they experience in brief interactions, engagement with our staff or (God forbid) navigating our pre-recorded telephone tree. Jan Carlzon, former CEO of SAS Airlines, aptly named this dynamic in his book Moments of Truth. We can all benefit from looking at our company through our clients’ eyes. Where can you transform a blah experience into a wow? More “wows” = more customers interested in referring their friends, relatives, clients, and colleagues to you.
- Be specific: just like defining our target audience, articulating specifically who can benefit from talking with us will yield much better results than trying to be all things to all people.
- Ask for one and you’ll get many: try this experiment — think of “anyone” who is a sports fan. Do you have a strong reaction? I’m looking for sports fans, is there anyone you want to refer to me? Now try this — who is the most fanatical baseball fan you know? Now does someone come to mind? When someone asks us to think of the most, the best, the tallest, the oldest, the largest, etc. our brains take it as a challenge. There is an answer to that question and we feel compelled to find it. If my target audience were baseball fans, guess what I would ask after securing the most fanatical fan in someone’s life? “Who is the second most fanatical…?”
- Talk about the benefit of contacting you, not of hiring you or your company: as we’ve discussed before, sales is a dating process. What both the referrer and the person you hope to meet need to know is how he or she will be better off after simply meeting or talking with us. We get better results by selling the meeting, not the value of doing business with us.
- Teach them how: when we succeed in describing who would benefit from speaking with us, trigger the most likely person to have a problem we can solve, and make it clear how a simple conversation will help him or her, our referral partner will be eager to contribute. It stands to reason that we will be doing him or her a service by making it easy to refer. Have a plan about how you would like that introduction to go and make sure it’s easy for him or her to execute.
Posted by AndyM on June 9, 2010 under Business Growth |
I would guess that most of you reading this post would place “increasing profits” as a high priority in your business right now. Great! If we throw in “not work harder” as a parallel goal to “increase profits,” I submit that what you are really asking for is a business that consistently attracts new prospects and converts a high percentage of them into profitable customers…like a machine.
The “specifications” of this machine: it brings good prospects to you, makes the job of converting them into customers easier, and tells you what needs “tuning” over time.
- Contact Management Infrastructure — processes and information systems that allow you to: capture new prospect contact information quickly, categorize them, and ensure that proper follow up will happen. This same system should allow you to easily see how healthy your prospect flow, conversion rate, and profitability per client is.
- A Refined Target — ask yourself, who can benefit the most from my product or service? You should also consider surveying past clients to learn why they decided to buy from you over their other options and focus on people who may have that same need or want.
- Communicate the “Ultimate Result” — for marketing that gets attention, focus on the results you can help people achieve. When in doubt, think about marketing of diet programs and weight loss products. They get your attention with “Lose 20 Pounds in 20 Days” not “We’ve got the best diet, excercise, and nutrition products around.” When trying to get the attention of your target audience, forget about how you do what you do — talk about what results they’ll get…period.
- An “Irresistible Offer” as a Call-to-Action — when your marketing successfully gets the attention of someone in your target audience, give them a “no brainer” reason to contact you. Read carefully — not to do business with you. I call this a “first date” call-to-action. What information, advice, product sample can you offer that any reasonable person in your target audience would say “of course!” to?
- Follow-up Plan — with a compelling call to action, you must have a foolproof and thorough follow up strategy. Worried about feeling like a nuisance? Ever hear the phrase “the marketing is the product?” Many people have a negative reaction to that phrase, as if it means there’s no there there when someone becomes a client. Think of it this way, what if simply by participating in your marketing and your follow up, your prospects will get closer to the ultimate result that they want, and that you can help them reach faster if they become a client? Create a follow up plan that keeps your business in the forefront of your prospects minds while also offering them value.
- Present Options — by offering multiple ways, levels, packages, bundles…through which your prospects can become your client, you give them more power in the buying process. Offer a single product, price point, or solution and you’re basically telling them to “take it or leave it.” And guess what, more of them will “leave it” than you would like!
For more ideas and examples to help you build your client attraction and conversion machine, simply click the “Seven Levers of Profit Growth” link to the right to request your free copy of our eBook.
