I need you take another deep breath of reality – your business is to sell the products and services and then maybe deliver them (depending on how you set up your business).  Unless you have a huge sales force already in place, this falls on your shoulders.  It is your responsibility.  Repeat after me – “I am responsible for meeting prospects, offering them my product and closing the sale.” 

I work with a lot of entrepreneurs and the majority of the time they just don’t know how to sell.  If you fall in that category, don’t worry.  We are going to talk about a few important aspects of selling.  I encourage you to become a student of sales from this point forward.  This is a skill that will come in handy for the rest of your life.

When you are moving someone through the sales process there are so many parts:

• Making the connection or finding that common ground.
• Finding their fear or desire that your product will fix or transform.
• Moving them to a point of emotion so that they feel they must have it.
• Making an irresistible offer that they just can’t pass up.
• Helping to move them to a decision point – yes or no.

And once you make the sale it doesn’t end there.  You still have an important part of holding the sale.  Buyer’s remorse does happen and you have to take steps to avoid that early.  Then there is the follow up after the sale, which is an area that many of us really fall short in.

There are so many things we could talk about here but I want to ask you one question:  Are you making your offers apologetically?  You know what I mean, it’s almost like you are sorry to have to ask them to buy from you or work with you.  If you are having these feelings internally, the other person can sense it.  They may not know why but they just know that this isn’t the right fit.

To be honest I had a problem with this for a long time.  Until one day when I had an ah-ha moment and realized that I can’t help you build a 6 figure business unless you hire me to work with you.  I have nothing to apologize for.  My clients and I have built successful businesses and I know how to do it.  The only way I can help you is to get you to understand that we need to work together and the only way you can help your clients is for them to become clients!

Did you like this tip?  Get my free e-book on how to cash in on your expertise for many more tips and tools to help you build your six figure business.

As one of the authors, I am authorized (no pun intended) to give you a copy of this book at no charge, please enjoy it and let me know what you think. Please get your complimentary review copy here: www.LittleGiantBook.com.

I’ve read through many of the chapters, and there is a lot of great information in the book.  To give you a taste of the type of information in the book, here is an excerpt of my chapter on Information Products and Your Cash Flow

How to Turn a $12 E-book into a $97 Information Product

Let’s say you wrote a book about gardening. Here’s how to use that content to build a valuable product:

• You could turn that into an e-book that could be delivered electronically.
• You could record a series of three to five minute videos that show you using certain gardening tools. Four or five of these videos would be fabulous.
• You could create a chart that shows people what time of the year to plant certain plants.
• You could create a private Facebook group that only those who purchase the package can become members of, giving them the ability to speak to other want-to-be gardeners about their gardening issues.
• You could top that off with three mp3 recordings of you interviewing the world’s leading gardening experts.  You could interview an expert on roses, an expert on soil and an expert on organic gardening.

By the way, since I am definitely not a gardener, I got these ideas by researching Google to see what people were looking for in the gardening arena.  So, you have an idea that would make a good e-book?   Reply in the comments and let me know.

And, forget to pick up your free copy of my new book at www.LittleGiantBook.com.

I have a client named Peggy.  She had a morning routine that included cleaning the house, working out and quiet reflective time before she started her work day.  Peggy was driving herself crazy because she never got started before 10 am but always intended to start working much earlier in the day.  The end result was she worked far past her desired workday and felt constantly pulled in 50 different directions at any given time.

How many of you can relate to this?  When you started your business, did you dream of freedom?   Did you imagine having all the time in the world to spend with your family and friends?

Is the reality different from what you expected?  Most business owners have a tough time moving from employee to entrepreneur.

Making that step comes from understanding what you do best and focusing on doing just that.  And then, DELEGATING the rest.  There it is that nasty 8 letter word – delegate.

I would like to say I am a master delegater – I am really good at it.   I am also a recovering control freak so while I do delegate, I sometimes end up double checking when I don’t need to.

So here is my question for you – how much can YOU really get done?  We set unrealistic expectations and then get irritated because we don’t get everything done.

Peggy was driving herself crazy because she never got out her workday started before 10am.  Well, how could she – her morning routine just took that long?  Her expectations simply didn’t match her reality.

In business it’s the same thing – we need a website, we need to write our free report, we need to create and implement a marketing plan.  We need to figure out what it is we are even doing.

We have to learn to delegate – and even more than that we have to step up to the plate and realize that starting and running a business costs money – and delegation is a business expense that is necessary for massive action and implementation.

So…. if you:

• Need help with strategy and accountability – hire a business coach

• Need help with your website, autoresponders, and customer service –hire a virtual assistant

And, the list goes on and on – bookkeepers, housekeepers, social media managers…

The way I look at it, you should be focused on just three things in your business:

• Developing plans/strategies

• Income Producing Activities – sales, networking, speaking

• Working with clients.

Those are my strengths (and probably yours too) – not fiddling with your website or  creating an opt in page for your next call.

And, if you are working on all the “doing” that need to be done – you are not going to have time to do your most important work during the work day.

You need to work from your strengths.  But, that still doesn’t give you permission to spend all day redesigning your site if your strength happens to be web design.  You still need to prioritize working with clients and creating strategies to build your business.

Now, get delegating…

You won’t want to miss all the tips and strategies to connect and engage your ideal clients!

The beauty of this summit is that it is a virtual event which means you can listen to it from the comfort of your home. Once you register to will receive full access to all the calls. You will be able to listen via your phone or access through the Internet via your computer. During the event, all recordings will be available for participants to listen to for Free – as many times as you like while the event is on – and also during the follow up challenge program.

BUT, you don’t want to miss the live calls and Round Table Sessions because that’s where you get the opportunity to ask questions and get Free coaching from our experts! If you like, you can upgrade to VIP and download the audio files and listen to them whenever you like.

The Summit is going to be set out in three parts -

• Part 1 – Set Your Mindset & Plan – Get clear on your vision and Define Your Big Purpose and Plan
• Part 2 – Discover New Strategies - Find out the best strategies and decide on how you want to use social media and content marketing to attract your ideal clients.
• Part 3 – Find Out the Best Tactics – What are the best ways to attract and engage clients with social media and content marketing? You’ll learn how to improve your marketing with Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, and blogs.

Sound good?  It is certainly an opportunity not to be missed with so much great information AND the chance to ask questions of our experts.

Check out who will be giving the training and be sure to reserve your spot today for this great FREE training:

http://decisiveminds.com/contentmarketingsummit/

Without a strong first impression, all your hard work could be going to waste.

You know that old saying “you only get to make a first impression once”?

That is still true in the online world.  The first impression your website and welcome email make are indelible in the mind of your prospects.

How many times have you clicked a link that took you to a horrible website and immediately left, regardless of how great the content was?

Your copy could be amazing and your content can be spot on, but without that strong first impression it is unlikely that people are going to stay and find out.  The same is true of your welcome email.  If your welcome email or series comes across as spammy, what does a new subscriber do?  Open, cringe, delete, and unsubscribe!

The best way to avoid this is to take a look at your welcome email with fresh eyes.  Examine your welcome email and/or series from the perspective of a new subscriber that knows little to nothing about your business.  What impression is this material making?  Is that impression you want to make?

Sounds easy right?  Well, we all know that isn’t always the case when we’re committed to the material.  Ask someone else to look at it for you and tell them to be completely honest, brutally honest if necessary!  A friend or a paid collaborator can look at the email or series in a way that you may not be able to.  The feedback they give may hurt, but better it come from them than have all your list building efforts be wasted.

Here’s some things that can help to determine if your first impression needs some work:

Unsubscribe rates – Are you getting a lot of unsubscribes right after the welcome email goes out?  Or somewhere in the middle of your welcome campaign?  Add a step to your unsubscribe process that asks people why they’re unsubscribing.  This may help you pinpoint the issue a little faster.

Open rates – How many people are actually opening your welcome email?  How many people are opening your ongoing messages?  You may have a completely different problem if people aren’t opening your emails at all than if they’re opening and immediately unsubscribing.  Without the information, it is hard to identify what the issue is – your subject lines, your list description, your copy, who knows?

Take the time to test your websites, welcome emails, copy and content to make sure they are  all functioning properly.  Ask for feedback from others to see what you may be missing.  You’ll be glad you did!

Michele Scism & Suzanne Evans

Big Ticket Social Media Secrets: How to Fill Your Big Ticket Programs Using Social Media

Welcome to all my Be The Change friends.  I wanted to say Thank You for being in my breakout session with a few additional notes.

There is no doubt that social media has been a hot topic for a couple of years now. And no wonder, given its capacity to create meaningful connections with people in your customer or client profile.

For example, if Facebook were a country it would be home to 1 in 7 of the world population! Can you believe that? There are actually now over 1 Billion Facebook users!

Another example – YouTube – did you know that more than 72 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute?! Over 4 Billion hours of video are viewed on YouTube each month – 5 million hours of video viewed by people – per hour!

Did you know that YouTube is the second most used search engine after Google? Compelling reasons for YOU to be there.

Images are also very powerful in terms of content – over 200 Million of them are uploaded everyday – to just Facebook and Pinterest alone.

There are a lot of different social networks and for the busy entrepreneur with limited time and capacity, it can all seem overwhelming – do you need to be on Facebook? Twitter? LinkedIn? YouTube? Google Plus? Pinterest? Flickr? Some of them? ALL of them? How can I cope?

My intention is NOT to overwhelm you – but to inspire YOU to action! Remove your frustrations with social media.

Today I want to talk about the 3 Big Ticket Secrets to converting social media CONTACTS into paying CLIENTS!

Big Ticket Social Media Secret #1

Images! Images! Images! According to Facebook, a post with an image gets 120% more engagement on Facebook than one without. That’s a huge difference! Remember the old saying “A picture paints a thousand words”? Well it is true. It draws the viewer into your story. See how much more compelling the information is in image form than if it was just written in text?

I worked with Terry Zwierzynski, CEO of Solo-E to help her increase her followers and engagement on Facebook and increasing her use of images was part of the strategy we used to increase her page Likes by 366%.

Would you like to know where I am creating these images?  I use the free image editor at Pixlr.com which allows me to add text, boarders and so much more.  Of course you have to start with an image so I purchase images from Fotolia.com.  Quick note: Recently Facebook changed the rules on images.  To use an image to promote something you can not have more than 20% text on that image.

Big Ticket Social Media Secret #2

The second Big Ticket Secret is to use different tools to promote your products and offers.  These may include Facebook offers, contests, assessments, and even video series.  Another powerful tool is your blog so you could create 2 or 3 blog posts about the offer, or contest etc.  Again, the use of images is a really vital part of your content promotional strategy.

Big Ticket Social Media Secret #3

The third Big Ticket Secret is almost deceptively obvious – make sure you get your promotion out and seen by your community. Let’s say for example you are promoting a teleseminar, you could…..

- Post your image to Facebook and Pinterest with the url to drive people to your opt-in page.

- You can create further engagement by creating and inviting your Facebook followers to an event specific to your promotion.

- Then you can post the blog posts you created which has a link to your opt-in page and is using the same image for continuity.  Blog post are easily shared through social media.  Remember all these pieces are directing your contacts to the same place – your opt-in page.

A great example of this strategy in action was with one of my coaching clients, Cindy Schulson. With my social media strategy and this image, she had over 600 people register for her teleseminar and sold 35 people into her own new coaching program.

So now it is your turn.  Develop your tools and your strategy and start sharing through social media.

Would YOU like to get clear about YOUR audience building strategy?

Would you like to feel confident about your launch strategy?

A great place for you to start is by completing the Decisive Minds Business Assessment.

2013 Word Calendar – click here to get a copy of the editable calendar that we use to schedule our strategy.

The PowerPoint I used from this presentation:

Is Your ROI a roll of the dice?

It is definitely a tedious task, but it is so important to take the time to measure the results of campaigns that you’re sending out.  It isn’t enough to just send them out, you have to know if they’re working too!

The key think you want to look at is conversions.  This can be sales, newsletter signups, or form submission but you want to look at the goal of the campaign and see if you’re converting sends to that goal.  Look at those conversions and then ask yourself some questions.  How much time did you spend on that conversion?  How much money did you spend on the conversion?  If you were selling a product, what was your return on investment (ROI)?

Now, sometimes conversions take time so another thing to look at is clicks.  Not every person is going to buy or sign up the first time they click on your link, but the fact that they’re clicking means there is some engagement.  Look at how many clicks you had from the campaign compared to how many conversions.  Something else to consider with clicks is the bounce rate.  How many clicks did you get compared to how many actual page views?  If you’re having a huge bounce rate there could be something wrong with your sales page, your copy, or your links.  You won’t know though if you don’t take the time to look.

There’s nothing worse than having a beautiful campaign that is drawing in clicks that can’t convert because the technology isn’t working.  The sooner you figure that out, the faster you can resolve the issue to get people converting.  By tracking both the bounce rate and the page errors, you can see what’s going on.

Another thing to consider is whether or not your shopping cart is effective.  Take a look at how many people are putting items in their shopping cart but not actually completing the sale.  Could it be something wrong with the shopping cart?  Or are they seeing something in the cart that is changing their mind – like the price?  Or maybe they just can’t figure out how to use the shopping cart.  Again, you won’t know to even investigate these things if you aren’t measure your results!

Take some time this week to measure the results of your most recent campaign and stop by my Facebook page to let me know what you discovered.

Can you tell what you’re signing up for?

Getting people to sign up for your list(s) is only half the battle.  Once they’re signed up, you want to be sure to keep them interested and engaged.  One way to do that is to ensure you’re staying relevant!

Here’s 3 tips to help you stay relevant to your subscribers:

Make sure they know what they’re getting: When someone initially subscribes, be sure that you tell them exactly what to expect.  This helps them determine if they really do want to sign up.  You also have to stick to what your description says (or change the description to match what you’re doing now).  If you’re newsletter is not supposed to contain product promotions or endorsements, don’t include them.  Be very clear as to what you’re subscribers will be getting so as to avoid confusion.  Use paragraph descriptions and bullet points to provide clarity.  Educate your subscribers on what they can expect to get from you by joining your list.  You can also point out that white-listing your email address will ensure they get every email you send!

Segment Where Appropriate:  There’s nothing worse than getting a promotion for a product you’ve already purchased.  Be sure that you segment your lists to target the right groups.  If you’re promoting a coaching program, you don’t want to include people who are already enrolled in that program!  Be sure to segment by product at the very least so you don’t include people who have already bought it!  You can get much more detailed with your segments too so that you’re targeting the groups most likely to be interested in what you’re sending.  Think about whether a profession, location, or business type might benefit most from the specific mailing and use that to segment.

No spam: Before you recommend anything to your subscribers, be sure to check it out thoroughly.  You should use any product yourself and verify as much as you can whether the product does what it says it will.  It might be tempting to just pass something from a colleague along, but you want to be sure that it will provide value to your reader.  Plus, by recommending it you are putting your reputation on the line with your subscribers!  Also, keep in mind that the further from your niche the product or service is, the more likely it is to be classified as spam by your readers.

So take some time this week to think about staying relevant to your audience, your subscriber list will certainly thank you!  Stop by my Facebook page and let me know what worked.

A Guest Post by Shontaye Hawkins

Do you know how much money you need to make in your business to be profitable?

Do you know what it’s costing you to be in business?

Do you know how much you should charge for your services?

The most successful business owners know this information. They know exactly how much money they need to make to break-even and to be profitable. This information is the basis of their business decisions, financial goals, monthly budget and business financials. When you’re in business to make money, as I suspect you are, it’s important to have a system in place to monitor and track your numbers. There’s no avoiding it, if you intend to succeed in business. Additionally, if you’re telling yourself that you don’t like numbers those words alone could very well be the source of why your business results are lagging.

Putting key foundational systems in place is a proactive approach to building a successful business. With 85% of small businesses failing in the first year, it’s critical to put a business finance system in place to monitor and track your results. Your roadmap for success begins with putting systems in place to ensure you reach your goals.

If you’re unsure about how much money you need to make to be profitable, what it’s costing you to be in business or what you should be charging for your services the questions below will help you outline your business goals, action plan and systems.

1. Where are you now? What are your current business revenues and expenses?
2. Where do you want your revenues and expenses to be?
3. How do you intend to get there? What actions are you committed to take to get there?
4. What tools, systems and resources will you need to get there?
5. What’s going to stop you from getting there?

Want to learn more about building a profitable business, raising your fees and ensuring you achieve your financial goals? Then I invite you to join me for my upcoming complimentary teleseminar, “Explosive Profits: 3 Profit Boosting Secrets Revealed, happening on April 25th at 7 pm CST / 8 pm EST. This is one profit building teleseminar you don’t want to miss. Plus, there’s a bonus giveaway but you must be on the line to win!

Click here to register and get all the details

© Shontaye Hawkins, MBA ~ Business Success Coach, 2013