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Gold Coast Business Coach GOLD ALERT!

Announcer: Balance Business Coaching. More time. More control. More
growth.

Hi, Anthony here. In this post, I really want to give a tip about executing
your business plan weekly. I really want to ask you: Was I a micromanager,
or was it smart to give it a bit of structure and then get out of the way?
I don’t know the answer, but anyway, I want to run you through the business
planning process I used and then also how I executed the business plan when
I was overseas.

So, we had a present situation. We had a vision. There’s a whole lot more
down here. But what really what I want to talk to you about is not so much
the business plan itself. In terms of a process, we worked with, oops,
showing some of our figures here. We worked with the entire team to come up
with what are the critical strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and
threats in the business. We took the most important ones, and then we put
them up on the wall, by terms of impact to the business and our ability to
influence, from low to high. You can see each Post-It note has a different
colour. Green was an opportunity. Pink was a threat. Yellow was a weakness,
and blue is a strength.

So we worked out what were the important projects, and we actually drew a
line of factors to say that these are the ones that we’re really going to
work on, because we don’t have the ability to control some of the
weaknesses and the threats that we had in the business. That’s how it is.
If you want to a SWOT table, that’s pretty much where it comes to.

But you ultimately end up with a business plan that says these are the
projects that we’re going to take on, and these projects need to get done.
So, how do you do that? Well, for me, it’s about, again, it’s project
management and working with a team. We’ve come up with a set of project
plans, and then me, as the general manager of the business running a lead
team, I’d be asking the people on my lead team who are responsible for one
of my business plan projects: “Last week you said you’d do this. Did you
do it? Yes or no?” You see, in that case, that was me, I didn’t do one of
the actions that I said I was going to do. But at least I knew what
everyone was up to week by week, and as a team, we had some standards where
we wanted to achieve 80% of our actions each week. We made a commitment to
each other and so I could track commitment. I was fully aware of what was
going on.

So, after I’d asked them, “What did you do last week,” I’d ask them, “What
are you going to do this week? Just let me know what you want to do. What
is it that’s got to be done for your project?” So all my projects are
moving along weekly.

I got a bit smarter as I went along after this first six months. The
subsequent ones I actually built in four quarters into a year, where I put
a buffer. After every 12 weeks, I’d have a week off, just as a buffer and
run the team in issues of 4 quarters. But anyway, it’s still the same
process of week by week. Did you do what you said you were going to do, and
what are you going to do this week?

So that’s how I went about developing and executing a business plan. I want
to know from you: Do you think that that is micromanaging? Or is it just
holding focus, setting some structure and getting out of the way. I’m not
sure about the answer. But that’s how I did it and that’s how I’d do it
again. The benefits were tremendous.

Anyway, it’s a business tip, I guess, for you to ponder. Please leave me a
comment down below, and I’ll talk to you soon. Thanks.

Announcer: Thanks for watching. Why not call Anthony from Balance Business
Coaching now on 0400 639 899, or e-mail anthony@balancecoach.com.au.

Announcer: Balance Business Coaching. More time. More control. More
growth.

Anthony here. This is just a very quick post to talk about how do you
select the right keywords for your business if you’re competing online. I’m
just going to cover three things: what are keywords, how do you choose the
right ones, and what tools can help.

I’m just going to do a little demonstration while we go, but first I have
to explain what they are. To give you an example, let’s just say I’m
interested in selling, I’m a clown and I want to get hired to go to kids
birthday parties. The first thing would be I’m in the business of
children’s entertainment, and that’s really the top end seed keyword,
rather than a keyword, a keyword that you would target developing content
for. But if you’re thinking children’s entertainment, is it party hire or
else I could go singing lessons. Really down in where my business is, it’s
entertainers. But there’s lots of different entertainers. There could be
fairies. There could be clowns. It could be magicians or it could be the
farmyard pets that come along to kids birthday parties.

Keywords are the ones down at the bottom here. What do people actually type
into the Google search bar when they are looking for someone? Are they
looking for a clown for a kids party, or is it a clown for a children’s
party? It’s a different keyword phrase. Or is it a children’s party clown?
There are lots and lots of different keywords, and you need to know which
are the right ones.

Let me just hit the Generate Keywords button here for my seed keyword,
which was “kids entertainment.”

Let’s talk about how do you choose the right ones. First of all, they have
got to be relevant. If you’re attending children’s events, you don’t want
to go to, say here on the Gold Coast, there’s a Gold Coast Convention
Centre that has lots of events, but they’re business events. They’re trade
shows. So, if you’re targeting anything that’s to do with trade show
events, then you’ve got the wrong thing. It’s just not relevant to your
market.

The next thing you want to think about is competition. Which of the
keywords have the least competition? You’ve got to have a look. If there is
a fair bit of competition for your keywords that you choose, what is your
expectation in being able to take that competition down? You want to choose
the ones where you have a good chance of success beating the competition.

Then commerciality would be, if people are searching for free
entertainment, that’s not going to be as commercial as, say, a clown for a
children’s birthday party. They are already looking for a low-cost/free
search term. So the value of the people searching there is not going to be
as high as other ones. Which of your keywords have higher commercial value?

Lastly, about the traffic. How many people are actually searching for those
keywords? You want to, obviously, have as high a traffic as you can get, so
that you’ve got a much higher chance of success.

Just to give you an idea, I’m using a tool to the right here called Market
Samurai. For just that one seed keyword, which was “kids entertainment,”
I’ve come up with 801 different keyword phrases down here at the bottom
end. There are lots and lots as you can see. Just to make the point, kids
entertainment in Michigan is not going to be relevant if you’re in
Melbourne or if you’re in Sydney. You’ve got to knock out things that
aren’t relevant.

Just to speak on tools a little bit, I think a couple of free ones that you
should look at. Let me just roll through these. First of all, Google has
its own keyword tool that comes back with different search terms. That list
of 800 comes from Google’s AdWord tool. There’s also a couple of ones here.
YouTube has a different keyword tool, because what people plug into the
Google search bar might be different into the YouTube search bar. So be
aware of which ones are right there.

For the keywords that you’re picking, you want to know are they trending up
or trending down. Are they seasonal? Google Trends can tell you what’s
going on with certain search terms. You can also compare different search
terms. How do they rate to one another in terms of traffic over time as
well?

There’s a couple of free tools. The one that I use here is fantastic, and
it does a whole lot more than just keyword research, is Market Samurai and
that’s a paid tool. I’ll put the link below the post so if anyone is
interested in having a look at that, they can explore more there.

I hope that gives you an insight into keywords, what are they, how do you
choose the right ones, and what tools can help. I’ll look forward to
talking to you soon. Thanks very much. Bye-bye.

Announcer: Thanks for watching. Why not call Anthony from Balance Business
Coaching now on 0400 639 899 or email Anthony@balancecoach.com.au.

Announcer: Balance Business Coaching. More time. More control. More
growth.

Anthony: Hi, Anthony here. In this post, I want to talk to you about how
do you justify your services to your client. I want to talk to
you about the conversations that go on in people’s heads, who
they’re talking to, and I really hope that by watching this
video that you’re able to stop competing on price alone and
value becomes part of the conversation, and hopefully that leads
you to win more deals.

So, first of all, in terms of the conversations that go on
inside people’s heads, they’re rehearsing already who they’re
going to justify the purchase to. Are they justifying it to
their wife, their husband? Or are they justifying it to their
peer group, their friends? Or do they have financial backers? Do
they need to have a conversation with their accountant?
Potentially their customers and their employees, and you need to
think about what those conversations are and how you might shape
them beforehand.

Look, just to give you an example, for business coaching, I’ve
got a couple here on the board that I’m just going to run
through. Look, the first one might be to your business partner,
if you’re a partnership. And it might be, “Look, we really need
to get the business coach on board because our competition are
using them, and I want to match the competition. I also want to
accelerate our program so that we can get ahead of our
competition, and I think the time is right.” So that’s how I
might justify it to a business partner.

To your life partner, you might be, “Look, I’m working so hard
in the business that I just don’t ever get the time, and I
really think that I’m missing out. I need some help, and I want
to give this a go so that I can re-establish some balance back
in my life and reengage back with the family.”

For the customers, it might be, “Look, we’re constantly looking
for new ideas to bring better service to you. At the moment,
we’re going through a change process to find new ways to deliver
service to you and create better products, and that’s why we’re
engaging a coach.”

To an employee, it might be, “Look, we’re engaging a coach
because we really want to engage you and bring out your best. So
we’re going to have a look at ways that we can use your talents
to the best effect to help the business, and that’s a good thing
for all of us.”

And lastly, the last one there is about yourself. You might want
to justify it to yourself. You might say, “Look, I’ve been
working so hard. I’m always helping everyone else. I think
everyone else gets a far better deal out of the business than I
do. It’s time that I step back and I did something for myself.”
So that might be a justification for yourself.

One last point is about these conversations that go on inside
people’s heads, that they rehearse, none of them are really
about your financial reasons. No one really gives rats about how
you justify, I guess, the price that you offer. Sure, they’ll
think your price is too high, too low, but it’s not a
justification. Like a financial justification might be, “Oh
look, for business coaching it’s $350 an hour. Oh that’s so
expensive.” But in reality, there’s an hour before, there’s two
hours in the session, there’s about an hour’s worth of work
afterwards. So it actually works out to less than $100 an hour.
But no one cares. It doesn’t matter. That’s not the conversation
that goes on inside someone’s head, and it isn’t part of the
conversation that goes on with all the peers that people
[inaudible 3:58].

So you might want to think about how you stop, if you’re always
just giving financial justifications, you’ve got to consider the
broader range.

I hope that’s been of some help, and it gives you something to
think about. Could you please leave me a comment down below and
let me know what justifications you’ve used for your services.
Thanks very much. I’ll talk to you soon.

Announcer: Thanks for watching. Why not call Anthony from Balance Business
Coaching now on 0400 639 899 or email
Anthony@balancecoach.com.au.

Hello, Anthony here. In this video I want to talk to you about fourth
generation sales. I’m going to cover some of the elements that we discuss
in the sales training for front-line sales staff, and then I want to really
prompt you to think about how you could apply that in your own business.
The thing I hope you get from this video is some techniques that you can
use straightaway, and you might be able to share this with some other
people and get some conversation going in your organisation. So let’s move
into it.

So, in 2010, the Sales Executive Council did a survey of 2,400 companies,
and they’re asked what drove them to return to a provider. You can have a
look at the different areas of response on the right-hand side and ask for
yourself: What do you think really drives customers back to your business?
Is it the quality of your products? Is it the brand and reputation of your
company? Is it your pricing, or is it your sales experience? The results
were quite astounding, and it turns out that it was 53% of companies rated
sales experience as the number one loyalty driver. So you need to think
about what is the experience people are having when they’re buying from
you?

Now, just to recap a bit of sales history. I think in the old days we used
to get a shingle and nail it up above our shops and expect people to walk
in the door. Then we started moving into product knowledge, all about
features and benefits and I guess pushing those at customers. Then came a
consultative approach, which was about smart questioning techniques that
would drive and motivate a customer toward your solution. So spin selling
is classically about pressing the bruise or scratching the scab to make
someone buy your product, but the solution already exists.

The fourth generation is a behavioural approach, where we’re trying to
create trust with our clients, and we don’t necessarily have to sell. We
want our clients to buy from us when they have the need. I’ll explain a
little bit more about how we go about that.

So the new role of the salesperson is to be able to provide a more valuable
interaction than anyone else. This is about differentiation. This is about
making sure that you stand out from the crowd and you’re not just a
salesperson. You’re someone who is a business partner that the client
trusts.

So, in talking about the types of client relationship, IOU International
have identified four different types. Just to explain those, say an ad-hoc
relationship, you might have bid for a job and you’ve won that job
recently, and as soon as that job’s over, your relationship is gone with
your client. That was an ad-hoc relationship. It only existed while there
was a need.

You might have a client that keeps coming back to use your services based
on technical expertise. Say if you’re a web developer or if you have a
highly engineered product, people want to use your technical expertise.
They don’t actually have an emotional relationship with you, and the risk
is as soon as the expertise is outdated, you’re no longer needed.

The third type is a social relationship, and I guess the classic here is
where the purpose of the primary area of relationship is around social
events and having a great time together. The problem with this type of
relationship is that people expect to get mates rates.

Now, the fourth type that we’re hoping that you’ll develop with your
clients is the partner relationship. It does have aspects of a technical
and aspects of social in the mix, but it is much, much more than this. It
exists to help the client, and you want to be the business partner in areas
other than just the traditional area of your product or product solution.

So let’s talk about how we build a partner relationship. David Meister, I
think it was in 2002, defined trust as equalling credibility plus
reliability plus intimacy, divided by self-orientation. The point here is
the more that you talk about your products, you, your company, the less
that your client or prospect will trust you. So it’s really important that
you focus on your customer’s needs and them.

Now, before we get into a sales meeting, we want to do a little bit of
analysis of who the buyers are and understand a little bit about them so
that we can tailor our approach. The economic buyer type is the person who
will pay for the service. In the example of sales training, it might be the
owner of the business, the general manager, the person with the budget. The
user of the services could be the salesperson in the field, the front-line
salesperson. The person who is the technical buyer type is the one who
evaluates a program to see whether it’s any good. That could be the sales
manager.

Next up, we want to talk about the buyer’s motivation. If we know a little
bit about that person, we might know whether they’re a price-buster, a deal-
hunter, or a value-buyer. What’s important here is the different things
that different types of buyers focus on. So, if you have a price-buster,
clearly they’re orientated towards price. We’ve got to make a conscious
decision about whether we continue to focus on price-busters all the time,
or do we try and find different buyers, someone who’s more interested in
reliability and quality, such as a deal-hunter. Or can we shift them
through our behaviour to become a value-buyer, where they have much more
trust and price becomes less of a factor?

Understanding a little bit about ourselves helps us build rapport quickly
with a customer, and we can learn to identify different behaviours or
preferences in our clients. Now, to give you an example, I might run
through these. I particularly like to lead rather than to follow. I am much
more driven with facts than I am about feelings, and I’m very organised. So
I understand that there are things in my natural sales style that I need to
be aware of. So I need to allow my customers, if they have a preference to
lead, then I also need to be aware of what their needs are and adapt my
style to suit theirs.

There are eight different areas here that we teach in the training, and a
classic one is big picture versus detail. If you’re dealing with a detail
client and you’re talking about big picture, you’ve lost rapport very
quickly. You’re not giving that customer what they want. So you need to be
able to identify different preferences in your clients and tailor your
sales approach to them.

Just on that big picture versus detail, we train four different levels of
thinking that goes with particular buyers, so that if you have a detail
specific person, and the example here is building a house, a detailed level
person might be thinking about what’s a refrigerator do they put inside the
kitchen, whereas a big picture person might be thinking about what
lifestyle do I have where I build this new home? So you need to understand
what level your client is at before you get into the meeting.

Then, I guess we move into what to do actually when you get face-to-face
with the customer. So the next step when we’re in front of the customer is
we’ve got to open up the meeting, and it’s really important to get off on
the right foot. So there’s a technique that we call an “I We U” statement,
and it’s about: What is the purpose of the meeting? Who will discuss what
in what order? Then, what is the value to the customer that they will get
as a result of this meeting? It’s all focused on them. The self-orientation
is not on you at all. It’s got to be about them and asking permission for
having that conversation.

Then once we’ve moved through the opening, we move to a thing called the
SHAPE questioning technique. This isn’t a linear process. It’s five
different types of questions that reveal different types of information.
You can see here surface, hunt, adjust, paint, and engage questions, all of
which form the acronym SHAPE, SHAPE questioning. Really, we need to be
mindful when we’re selling to a customer, we don’t know what they really
want, and by asking adjust and paint questions, we can find out what their
priorities are and also how much they value a particular facet. So really
important to be able to ask the right sorts of questions and get that
information out. Through that, customers actually enjoy buying rather than
being sold to. So it’s very much about them.

When it gets to the point of they do want us to present to them what our
solutions are, then we teach two different techniques. It’s the Need-
Feature-Benefit approach, very much like the traditional sales, but at the
right time and place directed to the right priority, and also using
stories, testimonials with our clients, focusing around what they want to
hear. So having an understanding of that upfront, we then can tell the
right story.

Next, we talk about in the training there’s a number of tools that we will
use to go past the initial meeting. It can be the CRM system, assessing
your actual performance in an individual meeting. What sort of
communication? We have specific communication tools for post-meeting
communication, and there’s also client account management tools that we
discuss.

So just to wrap up, thank you for watching this video. I hope it gives you
some ideas that you could put into practice straightaway and it starts a
conversation with yourself and other members of your team if you’re sharing
this video. So the next step for you is really to click on the Two-Days
Sales Training Workshop More Information button below. Or if you have an
inquiry about a sales program or about coaching specific behaviours in your
sales process, please hit the Contact Us link and get in contact and we’ll
go from there.

Thanks very much for watching. Bye-bye.

Announcer:  Balance Business Coaching. More time. More control. More
growth.

Anthony:    Hi. Anthony here, and I just want to talk about why is business
planning necessary.

The first reason is it establishes the vision for the business.
It’s really a strategic matter of whereabouts am I going to
position the business in the marketplace. Also, considering what
sort of risk versus return will I be looking for. If you think
about your business in terms of a portfolio, the process of
business planning sets where you’re going to position yourself.
That’s particularly important, and a lot of that comes down to
leadership. You need to have a vision of where you’re going. You
need to set a direction so that the people in the business can
follow you. That vision part is extremely important.

The second reason would be peace of mind. I think for business
owners, you really want to know that you’re doing all that you
can and you’re focused on the most important things in your
business so that you stop asking yourself, “What about this?
What about that?” The little voice in your mind that says maybe
you can do this better. If you go through a business planning
process and you actually make rational decisions about what it
is you’re going to focus on for the next 12 months, then you can
sleep easier at night and that gives you great peace of mind. So
I think that’s a nice outcome from a business planning process.

I think the third reason is really about creating some budget
benchmarks. If you don’t work out what the projects are that
you’re going to be focus on, you really don’t know what money
you’re going to be spending and what capital projects might
involve, something that creates a whole lot more revenue. You
need to think about the projects, come up with a budget
projection, and from there you then have a set of benchmarks
that you can use for the 12 months. That’s a really important
thing to know. How well are you going?

If you try to coach someone to a standard, there needs to be a
standard. You can’t see what the gap is without having a
standard. So that is a particularly important thing that comes
from a business planning process.

I hope that’s been of some use to you. If it stimulates some
ideas for you, could you please leave a comment for me down
below. Thanks very much. I’ll talk to you soon. Bye.

Announcer:  Thanks for watching. Why not call Anthony from Balance Business
Coaching now on 0400 639 899, or email
anthony@balancecoach.com.au.

Announcer:  Balance Business Coaching. More time. More control. More
growth.

Anthony:    Hi, Anthony here. In this video, I want to talk to you about
business planning common mistakes. I’ve just got four things I
want to run through with you, and I think the first of those is
using the wrong plan.

So if you’re in an existing business, you really want to be
focused on the most important things for you to achieve inside
the next 12 months. You’ve already started up, you’ve chosen the
industry, the markets that you’re going to serve, and you’ve
positioned your business. You’re really sharpening it up. You
don’t need 20 pages of text plus 20 pages of financials to
present to a bank. You’re doing a business plan for yourself to
maximise your growth and your control. So make sure that you get
the right format plan.

The second most important thing I think is really biting off
more then you can chew. So, if you’ve only got a limited amount
of resources, inside the next 12 months you really need to
choose to focus on what are the priority projects and just do
those well. If you say that you’re going to work on 40 different
projects throughout the next 12 months, I think you’ve made a
mistake. I think that you’ve bitten of more then you can chew.
So try to hone it down to something that you can really focus on
and do it well. So, is it 12, is it 15 projects? I’m not sure
what your resources are. So I can’t tell you exactly what the
right number is, but try to be focused on doing a fewer number
of things and doing them really, really well so you get great
results from it.

The third most common problem is about starting a business plan
and then not finishing it, and really that’s about
accountability. I will tell you to try and do one section of
your business plan per week. Have someone holding you
accountable. It might be your partner in business, or it could
be your partner in life. But please try to be accountable for
someone and just aim for making small bites. I think that’s a
good approach to getting it done.

And then the fourth one would really be about fudging research.
I’ve seen some real doozies of business plans, and I think
what’s fundamentally lacking is proper research based on
statistical data. Lots of people make grand assumptions in their
business plans, and there are all of these sales projections
that come off that. So get the foundations right. Look at
sources like your local council data. They have census data. A&T
Bank have a great insights package. Look at Google. Google will
tell you what keywords are trending. Google Trends and Google
Insights are particularly of good use. Just get out there and
talk to prospective clients and customers and talk to them what
do they want. So try to get some real research done and don’t
make your assumptions rubbery.

So I hope that gives you some good ideas for business planning.
Please leave me a comment down below if that’s been of some help
to you, and I look forward to talking to you soon. Thanks very
much. Bye-bye.

Announcer:  Thanks for watching. Why not call Anthony from Balance Business
Coaching now on 0400 639 899, or email
anthony@balancecoach.com.au.

Announcer: Balance Business Coaching. More time. More control. More
growth.

Anthony: Anthony here. In this video, I just want to talk to you about
how to write a business plan. I’m just going to cover off I
guess the steps involved and where you go to get some help.

The first thing I’d say to you is go and grab a template off a free
government site. Look, Business.gov.au has a fantastic template
that should be well and truly all that you need in terms of a
template. I guess the way that you should go about approaching
your business plan writing is to try to take a section per week
and try and do the analysis first, and then write out the
results, what you’ve learned from doing the research and the
analysis.

What’s really important is the research and analysis, much more
than the documentation. As the business owner, you need to be
clear on that. I guess if you’re working in a medium sized
business, you might be doing it as a team approach, and
hopefully you can get different people to do some parts of that
research and analysis and then put it together. So that’s a
particularly good way of going about it.

The third point I would like to say is really about making sure
you have the right plan. A lot of people, if you’re a startup
business, then you probably want a 20 plus 20 start format.
That’s 20 pages of the results of the analysis and 20 pages of
financials. You might be trying to seek funding for startup or
for a bank loan or something like that. Then you’re going to
want to use a Business.gov.au type template, business plan
template.

Otherwise you might be more interested in doing a SWOT analysis
and working out what, of all the strengths, weaknesses,
opportunities, and threats that you have in your business, which
have the most impact on your business. What are the ones that
you should really pursue in terms of they’re really going to
make a positive difference to your business.

Alternatively, in addition to that, you also need to ask which
of those projects or particular strengths, weaknesses,
opportunities, or threats do you have ability to influence. If
you have things that you have high ability to influence and
they’re going to make a high impact on your business, then very
much you should be working on those ahead of things that you
have no control and they have no impact on your business.

So have a think about that in terms of your business planning
approach. I hope it gives you some ideas. Please leave me a
comment down below to let me know what you think about that
approach. Thanks very much.

Announcer: Thanks for watching. Why not call Anthony from Balance Business
Coaching now on 0400 639 899, or email
anthony@balancecoach.com.au.