March 3, 2011 at 11:16 am
It seems as though every few months I am reminding business owners about the small things in business that make a huge difference in their success. Not to sound like a broken record but it seems as though some of you are not getting the message. Once again, here are some simple rules to follow to make your life as a business owner easier and more profitable.
Show up on time for meetings. No 1 minute late is still late. Not showing up on time for meetings shows major disrespect for the person you are supposed to be meeting with. Whether it’s a colleague or a friend but ESPECIALLY for prospects and clients. If you show up late (even showing up right on time for your meeting is bad) your telling your prospect “Don’t use my product or service because I can’t even get it together to show up for meetings on time”. If you are going to be late at least let the person know and give them a time frame of when you will be arriving. When you get to the meeting you better apologize profusely and offer to buy lunch or coffee for wasting their time. Don’t make this a habit either.
If you can’t make the meeting let the other party know as soon as you can. This morning I had a meeting scheduled with a business owner who decided to not show up and decided to not bother to call or email to let me know that she couldn’t attend the meeting. After waiting for 15 minutes and calling her to find out where she was, I left. Not only did she miss out on getting some valuable advice and tips for her business she lost the introduction I was going to make for her (I really liked her work) to a client who is looking for exactly what she offers. Not to mention future business I would have referred to her. Not a month goes by when I don’t have 2 or 3 people who are looking for what she offers. Next time you decide to skip out on a scheduled meeting and “can’t be bothered” to respect the person enough to let them know that you can’t attend think about what you could be missing out on.
Don’t look at your phone or check email while in a meeting. This is simply a huge pet peeve of mine. I know people that are fine with this but to me it is just hugely disrespectful to the party your meeting with. If you do this while your meeting with prospects, best of luck to you because your not going to land that sale if that is the way you conduct yourself. My one caveat to this rule is if the person warns me ahead of time “I don’t want to appear rude but I just have to keep my eye on my phone because {insert reason} and it better be a damn good reason!
As a business owner you work hard to generate prospects and to close more business on a monthly basis but don’t screw yourself out of clients just because you are being a “knob” with how you conduct yourself. Business is hard enough without you making it harder because you can’t get the simple things right. It’s the simple things that count the most.
February 8, 2011 at 1:49 pm
Laying on the couch all weekend (down with a bad cold - I laid on that damn couch for 18 hours each day). I came across the Chris Rock “Kill the Messanger” stand up comedy show and Chris was explaining to the auidence the difference between a job and a career. He explained that he was constantly working on his ‘Career’ and that he doesn’t have a “job”.
In the world of Chris Rock, he says that when your building a career time just flies by, you wonder how time can move so quickly… you want to make up that much earlier the next day so you can get “everything done” and your excited about it. In a job, you are constantly looking at the time and while you are working at your ”job” time even tends to stands still. (He related this to a funny story about him working at Red Lobster – but I am not going to bother writing out the joke – besides it won’t be as funny).
So… in your business are you building yourself a job? or a career? Food for Thought.
January 25, 2011 at 10:23 am
A common mistake that I see with clients is that they do not have a clear set of strategies that they use consistently employ on a monthly basis to generate new prospects for their business each month. In the Sidestep Coaching system we have over 55+ Business Development and Marketing strategies in our arsenal that our clients can take advantage of.
A Business owner who wants to experience continued growth and revenues on a monthly basis needs to have a minimum of 8 – 11 strategies consistently running every month in order to bring in new prospects month after month. The optimal word in the previous sentence is consistently . Are you going to send a monthly newsletter, run seminars and workshops, mail postcards, align and create co-marketing with strategic alliances, attend networking events, send intro emails, advertising, cold calls to prospects.. etc?
Once you know what strategies you are going to use each month you need to implement and then you need to be able to keep track of how successful (or not) each strategy is. It is critical that there is a quantifiable way of measuring results on a monthly basis. How many prospects did the strategy bring in? Is it bringing in more money than it costs? How effective is the strategy with your time? (i.e. If it takes you 5 hours of work a week to keep a strategy going but it only brings in 2 prospects for the month is it worth it?). In the Sidestep system clients have a simple way of tracking their strategies and results with our Strategies Pipeline Tool.
The Challenge
Once you have your monthly business generating strategies running each month and you are consistent with implementing, tracking, tweaking, and re-deploying on a monthly basis business revenues will become consistent as well. I challenge everyone to develop 8 – 11 strategies and run and track them consistently each month for the next 3 months and your business will increase. If you get stuck drop us an email: info@Sidestepcoaching.com and we will answer your questions to keep you on the right path.
January 17, 2011 at 1:55 pm
In business we have two major resources that we need to manage and budget for in order to be successful. Time and Money. With money we need to manage cashflow (revenue coming in and when VS money going out and when), budgeting for marketing activities, operations of the business, and how much of it we need AND want to make.
Time is something that business owners put on the backburner and don’t realize how critical it is to budget your time. Time is the number ONE factor that directly effects your ability to bring in money on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Learn to budget your time and your ability to create money will increase exponentially. Show me someone who doesn’t budget their business time in the correct ways and I will show you someone who isn’t making enough money.
In my coaching practice I see clients, other coaches, and partners who don’t budget their time in some of the following ways:
- They don’t schedule time for Business Development (prospecting for new clients) on a weekly basis
- They let Social Media influence their critical pieces of time (social media is great but it has to be focused and measureable to affect your bottom line in a positive way – twittering about walking the dog or blogging about buying a car isn’t increasing your business
- Golden Time is missed – a mentor of mine used to say “9am to 5pm is all about the money”. During this time focus on tasks that directly makes you money: attend networking events, run marketing activities, have meetings with prospects, call prospects, go on sales meetings, align strategic alliances, speak to groups, invite potential referral partners out for coffee, etc. Before 9am and after 5pm is when you should be blogging, working on admin activities, developing marketing strategies, tweeting about your dog. Focus during the day on what makes you money.
- they don’t set weekly targets and don’t have an overall monthly goals laid out for business. I.e I want to meet 5 new prospects, I want to book one seminar a week, I will attend 2 networking events per week, I will connect with two clients for coffee
- They don’t control their own schedule, their clients do. If you let clients control your business (not paying on time, demand unreasonable amounts of your time, set your schedule around their needs) you won’t be able to budget your time accordingly
- they don’t leverage resources they leverage themselves… to the hilt. 95 percent of business owners have a small problem with control issues. We want control over everything to make sure it is “always done properly” but as more business comes in it becomes harder to open up the time needed to continue making sure the business continues to grow. Look for ways to leverage your time so you are not doing everything.
In order to set yourself on the path here are a few recommendations and some examples of how I budget my time:
- Mondays are admin and development days. Nobody likes Mondays anyways. I spend Mondays prepping meetings for the week, working on and scheduling new marketing activities, and researching and approaching new prospects and exploring new services to offer to prospects and existing clients. Most of my Mondays are consumed by Business Development.
- Besides Mondays I set another day of the week for Business Development even if I can only schedule one more hour. This is usually Thursday mornings before 9am
- I control the length of my meetings. When I meet new prospects I give them 30 minutes maximum (unless it is a coaching session and then they get 60 minutes). We all have those prospects that like to sit and “chat” and all of a sudden you’ve only had 2 meetings and half the day is gone
- I leverage people. I hire people to build mailing lists, develop promo’s, market my seminars, admin work, invoicing etc. Tasks that are time consuming or I don’t enjoy doing (and therefore avoid doing until it becomes an issue) I farm out
- When I am working on tasks I put my phone away, or turn it off. This is the number one way that you will find focus in your time budget. Stay focused on the task at hand
Budget your business time correctly When you begin to budget your time correctly business will become more focused which allows you to accomplish and earn more!
January 13, 2011 at 12:22 pm
I am selfish in business. Yup, I admit it and I am giving you permission to be selfish in business as well. It’s the only way that you as a business owner are going to build the type of business that you want and that rewards you. If you aren’t selfish you will find: you will chase prospects who will never buy, clients won’t respect your payment terms and won’t pay on time, prospects that will nickle and dime you on price, strategic partners or referrals sources who never send you business, and you will find yourself doing work that you hate in your business just to “pay the bills”. Now don’t mis-understand my point, it is good (highly encouraged) for you to be selfish in how you do business but don’t be selfish in business. Let me clarify with some examples.
I am selfish in how I do business in the following ways:
- I engage with clients that I enjoy working with and fire the clients that I don’t or who aren’t doing the work
- I decide who I will engage with and at what level
- I ask for what I want when I want it and expect my clients / colleagues / prospects to do the same
- I control the tempo of my own business (my clients and prospects don’t)
- I ask for the business / introduction / referral / sale
- I say No when I need to or when I don’t feel there is a fit to do business together
- I value my own time and needs first – I am not willing to compromise to do things that come from aimlessly spending time and effort in areas in which I really don’t want to engage
I am NOT selfish in Business in the following ways:
- I honor and respect people’s time
- I look to connect clients/prospects/colleagues where I can see them doing good business together
- I go out of my way to ensure I honor my relationships
- I tell people why it’s so important to be selfish in how they run their business!
So, go ahead and be selfish in how you do business. You may find that once you have given yourself that permission that you find yourself happier, less stressed, being paid more, enjoying your business and the people you work with. Once you are clear on how you will be selfish (and how you will not) business will get easier.
Comments always welcome!
