Three must-do sales techniques

August 4th, 2009

Sales Puzzle

Whether you have a brick and mortar shop or a virtual showcase, your customers will be looking for 3 things when they visit your store.

  1. A solution to their problem
  2. A good price
  3. Good customer service

A solution to their problem: Notice the first one didn’t say ‘product’ or ‘service’. People are not looking for a product or service, they have a problem and they need a solution for it. Sure the end result is a product or service, but psychologically, it’s a solution they’re after.

If you are the one who can solve their problem at the right price whilst treating them well, you’ve made a sale of your product or service. Before I move on, let me say there are probably hundreds of other little issues but the three named above are usually the most important to get right.

A good price: A good price doesn’t mean the cheapest, cheaper than all the other stores, or the lowest price in town. Pricing can be a complicated process and you need to get it right. Don’t just say that it costs you this much and you need to make this much profit so the price is… Do your research of other local stores and internet stores, seasonal trends and local area expectations. Taking the lowest price in town avenue will only get you into trouble if you can’t handle the very small profits that come with it.

Good customer service: I can’t believe that I still get bad customer service, where have people left their brains? They certainly didn’t take their brains into work with them.

Analyse the way you and your staff interact with customers, make sure the customer is happy at every stage of interaction and don’t stop at that. Why not make their experience a happy and memorable one? Go out of your way to make your customers feel very well looked after and that you’re interested in solving their problem. Don’t show them that you’re the best salesperson or that your business is the best because it sold hundreds of [product]. People only want to know how YOU can help THEM solve their PROBLEM using great CUSTOMER SERVICE.

Tip: Try looking at the human five senses and see how you can tantalise them in every part of your customer service experience.

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Giving advice? Practice what you preach!

July 29th, 2009

Practice what you preach

Have you ever written a blog post, written an article in a print publication, written a book, or given a speech that’s full of advice? These days it’s a normal thing for anyone to write about what people should and shouldn’t do.

Think about what advice you’ve given recently and tell me to what extent you “practice what you preach”. Do you really do everything that you tell others they should be doing? It seems that people who give advice (including me) are not doing exactly what we’re telling others to do. So does that make us hypocrites?

I’ve been giving people business advice for years and when the time comes to use my own advice, I don’t always do it. Why? It seems like the ultimate thing and I have only recently realised that this behaviour is not just something I do, it’s something many people do.

Since I’ve noticed this happening in my own life I’ve been making a point to take and follow my own advice, and you know what, it really is good advice and I should have been listening to myself all along. It’s not that I didn’t believe what I was saying, I just wasn’t making the connection between telling other people to do it and practicing what I preach. I had the ultimate knowledge but I wasn’t using it, is that being lazy or having a selective memory or something?

I know what I should be doing because I’ve been telling everyone else what to do for years, now those things that I haven’t been doing are being put into action and the rewards are already showing, thanks me, I knew you could do it!

So what advice have you given in the last year or so that you haven’t been acting on yourself (practicing what you preach)?

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Exit Interviews Vs Stay Interviews

July 28th, 2009

Excited group of business people

The best way to attack workplace issues and high employee turnover is by conducting stay interviews with all employees (including managers).

A stay interview is similar to an exit interview. The key difference is that stay interviews are done when it really makes a difference to the individual’s needs.

A stay interview consists of the Managing Director or CEO, or an external third party sitting down with an individual employee to go through a bunch of questions that are directed at extracting the truth, the real reasons why they’ve felt unhappy in their job at any time. Some example stay interview questions are:

  • What makes your work day a great day?
  • What do you like about your work?
  • What do you want to learn this year?
  • Is there anything you’d like to change about your job?
  • Is there anything you’d like to change about your team or department?
  • Are your talents being used well?
  • What would make your job more satisfying and rewarding?
  • Do you feel supported in your career goals?
  • Do you feel we recognize you? What kind of recognition do you like?
  • Is there anything else we can do to keep you here?

There are hundreds more questions you could ask but you should choose only the ones that are suitable for your situation, or you’ll be there all day.

Stay interviews can change an employee’s decision to quit their job. An employee might not be telling the full story until someone sits down with them in a one-on-one interview to hear the real truth about why they’re not happy.

The outcomes of the stay interviews can then be used to fix or help to fix any issues before they become giants. This is not only good for the individual but good for the business by showing a pro-active approach to employee’s needs. Whilst you can’t make everyone happy, there’s plenty of ways to make a difference using stay interviews.

Stay interviews can also be used as a means of attracting new employees by making the statement ‘we really do care about our employees’. It’s proven that the majority of employees would rather have their workplace issues fixed or regular recognition for their efforts, in place of a pay-rise.

Stay interviews can also be used to gather insights and ideas about the business from the people who are in it every day. You can then use that information to create an employee manual. Employee manuals are a great supplement to workplace training, let a new employee take it home and read it to get a better knowledge of the business and general procedures before heading into their position. Don’t turn your stay interviews into an information gathering session, just add one or two questions in about new ideas, otherwise the stay interview will become more about the employer and less about the employee.

Exit interviews are conducted at the time an employee quits, whereas stay interviews would be conducted annually or even more regularly. If your organization conducts exit interviews and has a high employee turnover, consider changing to stay interviews, it’s definitely worth the extra effort.

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What the f— is wrong with these people?

July 23rd, 2009
Angry Boss

This is the question many frustrated CEO’s and Managers are asking about their employees. There are plenty of reasons why your business might be stuck in a rut or going pear shaped and it could be due to employees not performing well, being misguided or not having enough training. Let’s have a look at some common issues and solutions…

Are your employees happy in their jobs? If they’re not happy they could be working against your mission. Do they even know your mission? Most employees don’t even know the business mission statement, they don’t know what the business is trying to achieve, they come in everyday and work in their own little world.

If your employees are not engaged with the business and where it’s headed it’s like having dags, do you know what a dag is? It has something to do with sheep, that’s all I’ll say. If you have unhappy and frustrated employees, you must look into a solution for it immediately or your dags will weigh you down forever.

So far I’ve put quite a lot of heat on the employees, well let me stop that right now and switch the heat onto the CEO or manager. As the manager, it’s your job to make sure the employees are performing up to standard, if you are not making this happen, it’s your fault.

Don’t start blaming your employees for not keeping up with the times, they were hired to do a job and they’ve probably been doing it. I bet nowhere in their job description did it say “keep an eye on the market and change what you do accordingly, and while you’re there seek out new opportunities for future advancement and business improvement tools to keep things running smoothly”. No, that’s not something that goes into a standard job description because it is seen as a waste of time to have an employee doing unguided research and the employee should be doing what they were employed to do at all times.

That doesn’t mean you should start delegating those tasks to employees, it means that you (as the CEO or manager) should be the one who starts things off by seeking out possible solutions, then if you don’t have enough time to pursue the opportunities further, delegate that task to an employee and have them report back to you to see if it would be suitable path to take.

Research shows that employees would rather be recognized for their extra efforts rather than have a pay rise and forgotten about. Think about it, they come in to your workplace and do work for you every day and it takes up the majority of their waking hours. Wouldn’t you want some kind of recognition if you put in extra effort for somebody else’s gain? Show other people in your business how the person put in an extra effort and how it helped the business By showing recognition the employee is more likely to put in an extra effort again, and other employees will see the recognition they get which will give them more incentive for putting in extra effort.

The following are some other issues that must be attended to…

  • Employees having difficulty communicating with other employees inside and outside their immediate division or department.
  • Meetings not being attended.
  • Employees usually have solutions to their problems but can’t act on them due to almost definite rejection by management and therefore the solutions usually stay neatly tucked away in the employee’s head.
  • Employees not taking responsibility for tasks that they are responsible for, handballing tasks, or simply avoiding a task they don’t want to do which means another employee has to take up a task that’s not part of their duties.
  • New employees not getting enough basic training that’s specific to the business. This significantly slows down the employee’s ability to perform efficiently and also makes some employees appear incompetent at their job or feel embarrassed for not knowing simple procedures that are specific to the business.

So before you say ‘What the f— is wrong with these people’, take a look at the points I’ve made above and tell me who’s responsible for your workplace. Somebody needs to take control of these things, it’s your job to do that.

Show your employees you respect them and you want to help them to succeed in their position, in return they will respect you and feel happy and willing to succeed in their position. This is called ‘working together’ it’s a simple thing but often dismissed due to a manager on a power trip or simply not caring about other people.

Hopefully this article can help you make a start to remedy your workplace issues.

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How to work with a zero dollar marketing budget

July 20th, 2009
Earthquake Dollar

You have a great idea but you realize you’re in such a position that limits you to a zero dollar marketing budget. No matter what direction you want to head in, there is no chance of spending money until you make money. But you know your idea is a winner and it won’t take much effort to get it off the ground, the only problem is there’s no way you can put money towards it due to whatever your current situation is. What are you going to do with a zero dollar marketing budget? The only thing you can do – use your brain, use your creativity, create some buzz and… I’ll get to that later.

Now turn the tables, you have a 3 million dollar marketing budget, so what do you do? You spend it, you spend your time on spending it, and you spend it by print advertising, getting a television commercial made up, buying branded merchandise and giving it away to customers, having a new website made up with all the bells and whistles by a marketing agency, getting a booth at a few trade shows, ordering new signage and the list can go on and on, before you know it you’ve done 2 million dollars and the remaining 1 million will be there to support the deals you’ve set up and future events.

Do you think that the two scenarios above could compete with each other? “Obviously not” you say, the 3 million dollar marketing budget kicks ass all over a zero dollar budget, “what can you do with zero dollars?”.

I’ll tell you what you can do with zero dollars, you can use your brain and creativity:

  • Create a free webpage at a suitable social networking website, for professional services or B2B use LinkedIn or for B2C use a facebook business page, use both if you think it will help. Of course there are others, and you should look into them, but these two are the most popular that you should start with. Customize your webpage to suit your brand and advertise that URL wherever you’re talking about your brand.
  • Start creating conversations about your brand all over the internet using blogs and blog comments, forums and social networking sites. Look into as many ways of gaining new connections or followers as you can, but don’t do anything unethical because you will be frowned upon and probably banished which will make all of your hard work disappear in an instant.
  • Make a new offer – a deal where people can try before they buy or give out some free samples in return for testimonials of the product or service.
  • Ask for referrals from everyone.
  • Ask your existing customers to promote your products or services in return for more of your products or services.
  • Partner with other businesses and use each other’s databases to create a cross-promotion.
  • Add a touch of personality to your emails and regularly keep in touch with everyone who gives you their email address with content that is useful to them. Empower your followers and make them feel special, but try not to come across as creepy.
  • Try a viral marketing video on YouTube, or a viral email campaign, or viral anything that’s not actually a virus.
  • Set yourself up as a guru.
  • Create content that’s controversial, risky, emotional, persuasive.
  • Individually send a message to each one of your existing customers by making the first 15 minutes of every day your ‘existing customers’ time, send at least 5 emails in this time every day. The more the merrier, but don’t overload your customer’s inbox, they’ll get annoyed and send you to the junk-email folder. A customer shouldn’t get any more than one marketing email per week from you.
  • Go out networking, you should be able to find some free networking events, otherwise, consider making your own free networking event and advertise it through your online social networks.

It might take a little more effort than the job of handling the 3 million dollar budget but if you can create enough social conversation about your brand, you can overtake the company with the 3 million dollar marketing budget.

What’s the biggest thing you need to do? Create something different, out of the ordinary, a WOW thing, something people will not be able to miss, something that grabs their attention and makes them so curious that they can’t put their attention elsewhere, something that creates a big word-of-mouth campaign. Think about the things you tell your friends about and what they talk or gossip about, can you replicate one of those things and tweak it to promote your brand?

It might be difficult to create and decide on an exercise like this, and a risky thing to put your name on, but are you here to be ordinary and get ordinary results? No, you want to get ahead of the competition and move on in life. Then, once you’ve made some profits, you can afford to compliment your zero dollar marketing budget with some conventional advertising in niche publications or some Pay Per Click targeted internet advertising.

Once you overtake the competition, you can use the marketing systems that you’ve created plus a 3 million dollar marketing budget, now the competition has no hope in catching you.

Remember this: If you always do what you’ve always done, you can always expect the same results. Think big, think massive, then take a risk, it’s the only way to the top.

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Beware of online business listings and directories

July 14th, 2009
Angry Lady

You’ve probably heard of the old SEO (Search Engine Optimization) trick where you add your website to all of the directory listings you can find. Sorry to burst your bubble and your hard work but it’s not going to do you much good in terms of SEO. By listing your website in a business listing or directory website, you may even hinder your chances of having good search engine rankings because of some directories using unethical (according to Google) methods to gain better rankings in order to sell more advertising and sponsored listings.

If you are looking for more traffic you can still utilise some targeted directories that will drive traffic to your website. To find them, try searching for your ideal keywords in the main search engines and select the directories that appear close to the top of the organic search results. Once you find a directory, follow the link and check if the website is targeted to your industry or general topic, not a directory of everything. See what other websites in your industry have done there and then if you think it’s a decent and ethical place to have your website displayed for attracting traffic, fill out the form to list your website.

Beware, plenty of the directories will contact you after you have listed to ask if you want a premium or paid listing to get you up the top of the search results on their website. In most cases it’s really not necessary to have a paid listing, as long as your listing displays an active link to your website, that’s all you need. Having said that, some directories are very well respected in your industry and have a large amount of targeted traffic, in that case, you might want to consider a ‘paid’ or as they might call it ’sponsored’ listing.

Don’t fall for the hype, I’ve been through this situation countless times where the latest and greatest business directory calls me and takes me through Google results and other proof of why I should pay them. It doesn’t matter how much they want, usually about $300 to $800 per year to put you up the top of their list, but the problem is that the majority of people would rather use Google, Yahoo or Bing to find the best organic results that take them directly to a website. People don’t want to search Google, then click to a directory, then sift through a thousand listings in that directory to find the link that showed up on Google, which takes them to that single entry page which eventually contains a link to the website you were after (if you’re lucky).

Think of it this way, if you had about $600 to spend on Google AdWords you would get a greater amount of targeted hits compared to a general business directory listing. It doesn’t have to only be Google, you could try the Yahoo or Bing equivalents.

The most ridiculous thing is that there are already thousands of business directories available, yet there are new ones being created all the time. Why? Are they actually filling a market need? I don’t think so, how could they when there are already thousands of directories out there? Directories who don’t seem to be actively doing their job to support the (apparent) main reason they exist, which is to serve the people who are searching for a solution to their problem. Hello? We have Google, Yahoo and Bing, they’re all doing a great job, so don’t clutter up people’s lives by making them click and search more than they have to!

To most of those general business directories out there, have you heard of the yellow pages online? They beat you to it by many years! And even the yellow pages are struggling to maintain a grip on their market share.

So before you have a light bulb idea of making a new general online business directory, please trash the idea immediately and save yourself and many others the hassle of unnecessary extra searching and clicking, it’s not a light bulb idea, it’s a waste of time.

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Is newspaper advertising worth it?

July 10th, 2009
Old Newspapers - Mike McCaffrey

I was invited to a free event about newspaper advertising by a well-known speaker. At the time I was doing some advertising in the local newspaper and it was my account manager at the newspaper who sent me the invitation.

The speaker was very sure of his point that a business of any size could use the newspaper as a major advertising tool to attract a large audience because of the huge readership and repeated exposure of your ad.

Of course there were a few account managers from the newspaper there who were ready to sign you up for the ’special offer’ of 12 months advertising at a discounted price in the weekly newspaper.

To my surprise, at no stage did the speaker talk about spending time on the content or message within the ad (except a quick mention that the newspaper people will help you out with that). He went on to state some scientific proof about repeated exposure to the human mind which seemed quite ok, and them some talk about headlines. I agree with the idea of the scientific proof of repeated exposure, but do you really get repeated exposure to the individuals who read the newspaper? How big is your mainstream newspaper? Do people who read it, read it every week? How much of it do they actually see or take in?

There’s something about newspapers that I can’t understand, it’s the business classifieds section, or in some publications there is only one classifieds section that’s a mix of business and private ads. In all of my newspaper-reading experience, if I’m looking to purchase something I will look at the private advertisements, but as soon as I see a bunch of screaming business ads that are mostly not what I’m interested in, I turn away. Even if the subject of what I’m looking for has its own section full of business ads, I would much prefer to get that information on the internet by searching for exactly what I want. That way the perfect results are only a click away.

How can anyone stand to search through that clutter of messy screaming ads with each one trying the latest way of catching your eye? The moment I see a full page of business classifieds it’s a definite quick page-turn. This is the way it’s heading for many old-school advertising mediums, people no longer want to be bombarded with irrelevant ads, did they ever? And certainly not all in one hit like a page full of it.

Newspapers in general are so full of advertising that they have lost their value to the reader. Who wants to read a newspaper that’s grown in size so much that it’s hard to hold, has too many sections that you can’t find the ones you’re interested in, and basically is so generalised that you only want to read 2 to 5 pages of particular or interesting-to-you content but it comes with 120+ pages of content that’s useless to you, and on top of that another 60 pages of advertising inserts that fall out as you struggle to hold it.

The size being one thing, what about the mass of uninteresting gossip content that they have to load it up with to match the amount of advertising space they’ve sold? Maybe newspaper companies should think about how much advertising they sell and cap it instead of trying to be the biggest and sell the most of everything. That could be a key element to their prolonged survival, that and maybe they could split their publication into a few targeted groups so they can provide better content and maintain a better readership. I don’t know a great deal about the newspaper industry so I’m simply quoting my common-sense attitude towards it.

The point I’m trying to make here is that repeated exposure will have a deeper penetration to the mind but with that alone, you don’t have much hope. A massive advertising budget can get the repeated exposure you need with newspapers but there are some key elements that are much more important.

  • Target your audience: Without targeting your ideal market you are wasting your time and money with any advertising. I believe there are very few reasons to place advertising in any mainstream newspaper due to what they have become. Find the perfect publications and try online advertising instead.
  • Write at least 10 headlines and start knocking them off one by on for ineffectiveness or inability to portray an eye-catching statement. There’s so much to learn about choosing headlines so I’ll leave that for another article.
  • The content of your ad: If you haven’t had much ad-writing experience, either get some books and start learning or consider paying an experienced copywriter to write your ad. It really does make the word of difference when you find a good advertising copywriter. They will craft your ad to include emotional and persuasion tactics that will help your potential customers agree with your offer and proceed to taking action. I would highly recommend Scott Bywater. I’m not affiliated with Scott but I have been following his articles and newsletters for some time and it seems he really knows what he’s doing and has many happy customers and proof that his work gets results, so at least check him out.
  • Always bargain with the publication to get a better deal, and depending on the size of your ad or commitment to advertising in multiple issues you can ask for editorial or advertorial space – free space depending on the quality or newsworthiness of the story you submit. That’s something you will almost never find in a mainstream newspaper.

One common mistake people make (and I’ve made this one myself) is to use the concept of whitespace to catch the readers eye. Let me tell you from experience and from many other authoritative sources (not newspaper ad designers) that whitespace is a waste of space.

Your headline is what you use to grab attention, if the reader is interested in your headline they will read on. If the reader does read on they will be after some quality answers to remove any objections that they have. This means that if you’ve used the whitespace method, you’ve most likely left out all of that objection-removal text that the reader is looking for. Without removing the main objections from your readers’ thoughts, there’s very little chance they’ll take any further action to contact you or visit your store.

Long copy is the best method when it’s done right, only the most relevant information should be included in your ad and it should be mostly based around removing the readers’ objections about your product or service. Make sure you include a call to action and relevant contact information.

Following these instructions should give you a better ROI than placing an insignificant ad in a sea of many other insignificant ads. So to answer the question ‘Is newspaper advertising worth it?’ – In the majority of cases mainstream newspaper advertising is not worth it without a massive advertising budget.

Good luck with your advertising.

Photo – Mike McCaffrey

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Business Killer – Targeting the wrong customers

July 8th, 2009
Target Market

Every business needs to define their target market, without a defined group to target your marketing message to, all of the associated costs will be lost and your message will be sent out to a majority of people who are not interested.

One of the worst steps you can take in business is attracting and accepting the wrong type of customers. This situation takes me back to one of my previous businesses.

I was really excited about my new business, I had researched everything I needed to, made my plan and set out full steam ahead. In my marketing plan I had set a goal to get the ball rolling quickly. The idea behind it was to attract and take on any work I could get for a limited time on a quest to hit the ground running with almost instant income. To attract this type of customer meant that my pricing had to reflect what this type of customer was after which was the best price they could find in the local area.

Attracting the ‘any customer’ was not only a quest to get the ball rolling in my business quickly, but also to build up a great portfolio of work to show off to my potential customers (my real target market), and to show off that I had a long list of customers who like my work.

Of course I had in my plan that I wasn’t going to attract the ‘any customer’ forever as that would not be profitable. So my plan stated that once ‘the ball was rolling’ and I had plenty of work for my portfolio and a history to reflect on, I would change my target customer and my pricing and packages to match the new target market, and as such – become more profitable. It felt like I had it all worked out, it was a master plan hoohoohahahaaaaa, excellent.

My plan as you’ve heard so far might sound like a reasonable one, and to some – a good plan of attack to start out in business – as it was for me at the time. But now, I can’t believe I planned it that way and there’s no way I’d fall for it again, here’s why…

  • The products and services offered became more and more aligned with the low-priced ‘any customer’, and therefore not in line with my real target market.
  • The output or finished results of my services were not of a high enough quality to be attractive to those higher-priced clients (my real target market). That’s not because my work wasn’t up to scratch, it was because my existing customers were not willing to pay anything more than the bare essentials.
  • My pricing had attracted the type of customer who only wants the cheapest, and that type of customer will always shop around and get it elsewhere if it’s cheaper. I’m not saying that the higher-priced customers are very loyal, that’s a big enough topic for an entire article, I’m saying that the lower-priced customers are more likely to go elsewhere instead of making a repeat purchase.
  • The type of customer was always expecting me to do more work and produce more samples for no cost. Because these were the only customers I had at the time I didn’t want to lose them and so I would often give in to doing samples and extra product differentiations at little or no cost.

With all that extra work and less pay I had turned my business into an unprofitable work-horse for low-priced demanding customers. It was all based around a simple plan to attract any work to get things moving, and then change to attract my real target market with a great portfolio of existing work to back me up.

It’s that change that didn’t happen, I was so stuck in the moment that it was too difficult to change things around. There was not enough money to fend off new work from the low priced customers and not enough time to change the offerings, prices and structure in order to attract my real target customers.

More to the point, when you want the higher-priced clients you really need to seek them out one-by-one unless you have a multi-million dollar advertising budget. Finding the clients calls for other, more time consuming methods, methods of which I had no time for.

I’ve learned from my mistake of attracting the ‘any customer’ instead of going only for my real target market from day one. Don’t make the same mistake, define you target market, make sure it’s a good one that will bring you plenty of profits, and stick to it. Do not under any circumstances do any work for people outside of your target market with one exception – if you find a client that’s a step up from your target market, you might want to consider it, but beware that there could be some business killing problem that arises from taking on that work.

If it’s confidence you lack in getting those higher-priced clients, do something about it there’s plenty of self help media available. Lacking the confidence is no excuse, most people have at least a small confidence issue and plenty of people have big confidence issues, but they can get over it and plough through it, and you can too.

As for fear of inferior products or services, more research will help you with that, keep researching from multiple sources until you find the answers you seek and take it from there.

Wow, what a negative story, sorry about that but when I have information that could help my readers avoid costly mistakes I feel it’s my duty to let it out.

Do you have a similar story or anything to add? Please comment below…

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Your new business – The job from hell

July 6th, 2009
Stressed Man

I’ve seen plenty of people taking the wrong approach to starting their new business and it affects them so bad that their new venture turns into the job from hell.

These people are entering the world of business from a technical background e.g. an Electrician who worked for a large company and is now starting out in business doing electrical work. The problem is that they’re focusing mostly on the electrical work (the technical work).

So lets put that scenario into perspective, lets say you’re living that scenario right now, you have plenty of work on the go because you are good at what you do and your customers recognise that and call you back for repeat work. But now you have a problem, you have to answer calls and set appointments, keep the books, take care of all the marketing and advertising, maintain premises (if you’re not working from home), maintain vehicle and cover such costs as insurance, assets and consumables, and while you’re caught up doing that, oh yeah, the technical work.

You don’t have enough time to do everything and you have enough work to go full time in the technical trade so you decide to employ an office-all-rounder to take care of the day to day office duties.

Now you have all of those expenses mentioned earlier plus a new wage to pay, a wage that is not primarily doing the work that brings in the income. So your one job now has to support your wage, your employees wage, the expenses, and make a profit on top. You must be charging like a wounded bull to pull that off. In most cases, it’s not happening and you (the business owner) is the one who suffers.

The office-all-rounder is not going to take care of marketing, so what happens when your current workload reduces? Marketing is your job so you commit to doing it in your spare time. Oops, there’s not enough spare time to start learning all about marketing and so you are stuck further in a rut. When your workload reduces you spend some time on marketing, but what happens if your other current jobs are all finishing at the same time? Then you are stuck for a while with no jobs, no income, and you still have to support your family, your employee, your assets and consumables and various other maintenance and bills.

Let’s recap what you’ve done. You started out working for someone else where all of (or most of) your expenses were paid for and you had a regular weekly or fortnightly income without the worry of where your next job will be or whether your bills and general business activities are being taken care of. So you swapped your regular income job for the same thing but with a huge load of new worries stressing you out and probably the same amount of pay or less because of all those new expenses you have to cover and you’re stuck in that position. You swapped a regular job for a job from hell.

If you are stuck in that position or were thinking of going down that path, it’s not worth it. So what can you do if you’re already living that? You need to make a decision: Do you like doing the technical trade work, or would you rather be a leader (who probably spends most of the time indoors)? Let’s have a look at two options…

  1. You like the technical trade work and don’t want to be stuck in a cosy office. Your options are to continue working your business until something happens like you get sick and can’t work, then you have to let your office-all-rounder go as there’s not enough income, and it all goes pear-shaped from there as you could imagine. Or you could go back to working for someone else. You can then negotiate a better rate of pay than what you were getting in your previous employed position, so it’s not as bad, or…
  2. Employ a technical trade person to take over your work. Now you have given away a decent chunk of your income to the new employee but you have just freed up all of your time to bring in more work. Now, before you start thinking of doing the new work yourself, think about this… Do you want to get stuck into the same rut again of tying yourself up with too much work and not having anyone to take care of running the business? That’s like starting your car (the business) and setting it off down the road by itself, who’s at the wheel of your business? Who is driving your business forward on the road to success?

Here I have explained a working example of what you’ve most likely heard “You need to work ON your business, not IN your business”. That saying is very significant for almost all businesses. You need to get out of the ‘follower’ mindset, and become a ‘leader’. Start ‘leading’ your business to success, build a team and ‘lead’ your team to complete the technical work successfully. If you get very good at leading, you have every chance of becoming one of the biggest in your industry (with you at the top). Always set your sights high, make goals and see them through to completion.

This post has been about changing your mindset to work ON your business, not IN your business. Do you agree with what I’ve said? Do you have anything to add? Please comment below…

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Busted sales tactic, Repeating names

July 1st, 2009
Salesman

The well-known sales tactic that most people learned during their sales training – “regularly say the name of the person you’re talking to”. I’m taking a stand against this tactic and rejecting it for not only a sales situation, but for any normal conversation.

I’m not saying that the tactic has recently become obsolete, I’m saying that it was never a good tactic to use, not in sales, and not in any normal conversation.

Who actually came up with this tactic in the first place? I know the argument for its existence is – “People like to hear their own name, it’s the sweetest word they know, and the more they hear it, the better they feel”. That argument, for the majority of people is simply not true. In fact, quit a few people (including myself) have a negative reaction to it.

During my time in an employed sales position some years back, I was required to do this in my training and pushed to do it in the real sales situation. I didn’t like the feel of doing it, my customers or potential customers gave me weird looks when I did it, and being on the receiving end of it (as a customer) feels like the sales person is being condescending which I take as extremely rude behaviour.

I was in a situation as a customer once that was so bad, I had to stop the salesman mid-sentence and politely tell him to “stop repeating my name, I know who I am”.

There are some circumstances when you’re talking to multiple people where it’s quite natural to use a name when switching the focus to the other person. In general conversation with anyone at any time, you only need to say the person’s name at the beginning of the conversation (the greeting part), then upon completion of the conversation (the goodbye part).

It’s not natural to insert the person’s name at any other stage unless for technical reasons like filling out a form or switching the focus of conversation to a different person.

Do you agree? Or do you have a different view? – Please leave some comments below…

I’ve had some great comments when posting this topic as a question on LinkedIn, check it out at http://www.linkedin.com/answers/marketing-sales/sales/sales-techniques/MAR_SLS_STC/502528-31490816

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