When you’ve gone to so much trouble to finally have the attention of your prospective client

The main reason for this is that we get nervous – understandably. As a result we sometimes talk too much, undoing the good work of the earlier part of the conversation or presentation. What’s going on?

First, let’s consider what’s happening for your prospective client. You’ve just given them a lot of information to take in, to understand, and to consider. They need time to go through this in their mind and process it thoroughly before they can move on to the next step. Processing takes time….

Meanwhile you’re waiting eagerly and impatiently for their response ….

Unable to bear the suspense any longer you start talking again, and even though you know you shouldn’t, keep on talking. Until you hear those heart-sink words, spoken in a tone that effectively ends the conversation, and the opportunity:

“Let me think about it and get back to you.”

 At which point you smile a bit too brightly, thank them for their time, pick up the remnants of your dignity and depart (or hang up the phone). What can you do to stop this from happening again?

Get comfortable with silence

The silence is necessary for your prospective client. Even though it feels prolonged and uncomfortable to you, as you wait for them to speak, it passes more quickly for them. They’re weighing up what you said and working out if they have enough information to make their decision. Given the full amount of time they may well come back with additional questions and perhaps some objections, which you’ll need to have prepared for.

Make the benefits of your offer clear

When you’ve lived and breathed your product or service passionately for any length of time, it’s easy to forget that the other person hasn’t been with you throughout that journey. They don’t know to what extent it will transform their lives or businesses.

So you need to take care to make the benefits of your offer crystal clear, giving as much detail as necessary for your prospective client to be able to make their decision.

Avoid cheapening yourself

This is where you find yourself offering a discount or special price BEFORE you’ve even made your first offer! This is usually another way that nerves get in the way as well as an over-eagerness to win the sale. Unfortunately it can have the opposite effect, as the prospect starts wondering what might be wrong with the product or service for you to need to reduce the price.

For a lot of service professionals, the whole process of selling is quite daunting and can feel uncomfortable. But thorough preparation can help, including learning a few key selling skills. Here’s the recording of a teleclass you might find helpful.

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Thank you for reading Talking yourself out of a sale is far too easy to do! which originally appeared on Simply Business Coaching on February 22, 2012.

During a long drive the other day, I listened to an inspiring recorded interview

Knowing how easy it is to constantly want to move on to the next exciting new project, and before starting to write this post, I thought I’d better check my own website. You guessed it, I found several things that need attention to bring it up to date. Oops!

Has this ever happened to you?

Obviously it’s important to keep all marketing materials up to date but there are other parts of your business that may be in need of updating too.

When was the last time you looked at your products and services? With the speed of technology, and especially the internet, it doesn’t take long for things to look dated.

If you’ve been in business for a few years, it may be time to check if they are actually still relevant to the work you do today.

• Check any reports, training manuals and other digital products for out of date or no longer valid information.
• Update and replace covers and packaging to bring it in line with your current branding. Sometimes all that’s needed is a bit of a spring clean to create a brighter and fresher feel, and it can be done at any time of year!
• What about your consulting or training services? Do they need to be repackaged or presented in a different way?
• Take a look at the articles or newsletters published on your website. Are they up-to-date or was the latest item added several months ago? This goes for blog posts too.
• If all you do is keep on adding new products or services and don’t do any housekeeping or updating of existing offerings, they will soon look out of date. One way to find out if this is happening in your business is to go through your entire range.
• For physical products, gather them together and go through page by page with a highlighter pen in your hand. Mark anything that is out of date or needs correcting. Do the same for digital products (the latest PDF readers let you highlight text & make notes).

As I go through this exercise for myself, I’m also taking the opportunity to update my ‘catalogue’ of products and services, and include a column showing the date of when each was last reviewed and brought up to date. I want to minimise the amount of virtual dust that collects here on the website!

What have I missed? Please share your updating tips in the comments. 

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Thank you for reading Watch Out for Signs your Business may be Stuck in the Past which originally appeared on Simply Business Coaching on February 15, 2012.

Do you ever get that sinking feeling when you look at your diary or to-do list?

This is where you basically have three choices. Number one is to dive back under the duvet and hope the list will miraculously get done by itself (score 0/10 for effectiveness); number two is to run around like a headless chicken, squawking a lot and pecking frantically at several jobs on the list throughout the day (score 2/10 for effectiveness but 8/10 for noise & energy). Choice number three is to keep calm, sit down with the list and prioritise it (score 10/10 for taking control) .

Deciding how to prioritise

I have a simple process filed away that I pull out on just such occasions for my coaching clients, as well as for myself.  I like to work through it over a cup of coffee to find out in which order to tackle all those urgent tasks.

Step 1 – Apply the Relevancy Test

Each item on the list has to pass the ‘Relevancy’ test. Only if they are a definite ‘Yes’ for one of the following questions can they be considered a true priority. Everything else is less urgent for your business and can wait a while.

Is this Work for current Clients? If it is, mark it ‘C’

Is this Marketing for new clients? If it is, mark it ‘M’

Is this Moving the business Forward? If it is, mark it ‘G’ (for Growth) 

Step 2 – Apply the ‘Money’ Test

If you have several ‘C’ (for current client) activities, how soon will you be able to invoice for them? The sooner you can invoice and bank the money, the sooner you can afford to hire some (or more) help.

For those remaining activities (not marked ‘C’) on your list, apply the ‘30 Day Money’ test.

How soon will this activity make money? 30 days or less makes it a top priority, so mark it with a Red star or asterisk (You are running a business after all!) 

You might argue that this next question should really be asked first, as Step 1, and in some cases it can be.

The reason I like to ask it after establishing which items are relevant, and in what way each is relevant, is so that I can see the whole picture and also so that nothing important is overlooked. And sometimes, unfortunately, there isn’t any client work on the urgent list.

Step 3 – Start Working on the Red Stars

Hopefully your list now looks less scary and you feel more in control. It’s time to take action.

All the Red Star activities are urgent so take the first one on the list and start working on it. Keep working on it until it’s finished, don’t be tempted to peck at another item on the list until it is. Then start working on the next on the list. Rinse and repeat as often as needed to get through the list and out of the ‘urgent’ overload.

How can you avoid getting into this situation again?

No matter how well organised you are in your small business, you can be sure that some situations will just defy the usual guidelines of time management. However, reviewing your business systems and processes will make those occasions less frequent. Let me know if I can help you with this.

And of course there’s always my ‘3 Step Priority’ process for when you really need it!  

Related Posts:

Systems for Effective Working

Is Your Business Running on Adrenaline 

If you found this post helpful, please share it using the the buttons below or, simply click here to tweet about it. Thank you.

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Thank you for reading What Do You Do When Everything Seems Equally Important? which originally appeared on Simply Business Coaching on February 8, 2012.

Have you noticed how many times you need to make decisions in your business these days?

I was looking through my emails at the weekend, and it seemed that every other one was offering me such opportunities, many of which were hard to ignore or simply delete without reading.

There were tempting opportunities

• Webinars, Teleseminars and other Training Programmes that I must sign up for or forever more be branded with a ‘D’ and sent to sit in the corner
• New Software to improve my time management, diary management, customer management and everything-you-can-think-of management.
• New Technology – usually ‘iThings’ that I’m going to feel inferior without or deprived if I don’t own them
• Books, Ezines and other reading matter – the sheer number of books, eBooks and Kindle (or Nook) books are hard to resist when you’re a bookworm like me … oh OK I confess that I did succumb to another Kindle book purchase!
• Networking Events, Trade Shows, Seminars and Conferences that I’ll kick myself if I don’t attend because ‘everyone else’ will be there.

What makes deciding which to say no to even more difficult, is that many are either free or very affordable. And who can resist a bargain?

The stark truth however is that for everything you say ‘yes’ to, there is something else you’ll have to say ‘no’ to. But what if you say ‘no’ to the very thing that might make a big difference to the profitability of your business? Help!

Knowing when to say ‘yes’ is important. Successful people make quick decisions – they know when to say ‘yes’ and when to say ‘no’, although how they arrive at the right decisions is less clear.

“Engage your emotions at work … For me, business is a ‘gut feeling’ … a natural aptitude, tempered by huge amounts of experience, that tends to point me in the right direction rather than the wrong one. As a result, it also give me the confidence to make better decisions.”  Business Stripped Bare: Adventures of a Global Entrepreneur by Richard Branson (aff)

Of course resources are finite – time, money, and energy are in very limited supply when you’re a small business owner. So even if you can afford the money part of the investment, ask yourself when you will have the time and energy to attend, learn or implement your purchase?

Asking the right questions can be helpful

And there are other questions that can help you decide if it’s going to be a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’. Such as:

Will this [              ] help with my current clients and projects needs?

Does [                ] fit in with the overall vision for my business?

Your answers will identify those distracting and tempting bright shiny objects which are, in effect, causing you to procrastinate or delay moving forward on your stated original goals. Being clear on the direction and aims of your business will make those decisions easier.

Most of us don’t have the luxury of waiting several months to see results in the bottom line, so any ‘opportunities’ that make it past the first two questions, need to be subjected to further scrutiny:

How will this [                ] increase my sales?

How quickly will I be able to recoup my investment?

These are what I call ‘cold shower’ questions and really separate the must-have from the would-be-nice purchases.

If you have found this article helpful, please take a couple of seconds to click here and  Tweet about it, or share with your favourite network using the buttons below. 

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Thank you for reading Do you know when to say yes? which originally appeared on Simply Business Coaching on February 1, 2012.

I thought that setting the target of just one action to achieve each day for my business

OK so I was wrong!

The concept seemed easy enough when I first read about it several years ago in Mark Forster’s wonderfully titled and insightful book: Get Everything Done and Still Have Time to Play (aff link), but on the occasions when I try it (usually to kick-start productivity or when I feel myself procrastinating and generally faffing around too much), I find it surprisingly difficult to do.

The idea is that this is an exercise to help build mental strength. I’ve also suggested it to clients so they can build up daily achievements, but now I feel I may not have really been helping them at all…..

Here’s the simple premise

Each evening, you choose one action you are 100% committed to completing the next day, and then the next day, you do it. Even if you achieve nothing else of note during that day, you will at least get that one action completed.

The reality unfortunately doesn’t live up to the plan, at least not for me. And as Mark says “If you haven’t done it, then you have failed – period.” Ouch!

One reason this doesn’t work for some people is that they pick an action that is too difficult or big to realistically achieve. I’ve certainly found that what seems like a sure-thing to choose in the evening can actually be a huge mountain to attempt to climb the next day.

In this case a possible solution could be to choose a very simple action to start off with. Make it so simple and tiny that it’s impossible for you not to succeed in doing it!

Then, once you’ve achieved a few of those simple actions successfully, you can increase the ‘difficulty’ rating, but only a little at a time. If you find your failure rate rising, revert back to the smaller tasks again.

Distractions are the enemy of productivity

Another reason I believe this deceptively easy action target may not always work is the number of online distractions we now face. When Mark’s book was published back in 2000, he suggests some people may find the exercise difficult because: ‘they are so used to reacting to what is going on around them and acting on impulse …’ – and this was back in the days before social networking!

My business means I’m connected to the internet all day – every day, although yours may well be different. Only by turning off all alerts for emails and social media updates on my computer and mobile phone am I able to focus on, for example, writing this article. If I find myself clicking on browser tabs to see what’s happening on Twitter and Facebook when I should be working on my daily action, then I close down the tabs too.

This is a powerful exercise to help build mental strength and develop the muscle of achievement. In order for it to work, we need to start small, minimise distractions, and keep on taking action. I’m going back to the drawing board to make each day’s action smaller until they consistently get done.

Have you tried this one-action exercise? I’d love to know how it worked for you!

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Thank you for reading Take One Action Each Day – How Hard Can It Be? which originally appeared on Simply Business Coaching on January 25, 2012.

Two of the things I love most about working from home

However, there can also be challenges if you work from home, or spend a lot of the day on your own. You may have come across the following:

Stay Focused on Work-Related Tasks

If you run a business that provides your main income then you will need some self-discipline, sometimes quite a lot! The freedom to do what you want, when you want is wonderful – but it can be easy to get carried away! You may find yourself tempted to ‘pop out’ to the supermarket, the gym, or even the golf course – because it’s quieter during the day. And those little jobs around the house start beckoning now that you see them all the time. Before you know it, big chunks of your day have disappeared in non-work activities and you’re struggling to get enough clients or sales to make your business viable.

Just as if you were working for an employer, you need to have regular working hours – but you can be flexible! You don’t have to be ‘at work’ from 9-5, if you work better early in the morning, you might choose 6am-2pm. Or, if you’re a night owl you might prefer 2pm-10pm. Find out what works best for you

Set a time to ‘go home’

Some people have the opposite problem to #1 above, and would work around the clock if they could! If this is you, then you need to set yourself a time to stop work and ‘go home’. It can be very tempting to tell yourself you’ll do ‘just one more thing’ but all those extra hours will count for nothing if you make yourself ill by pushing too hard.

Having a proper break point at the end of the working day will actually help you to get more done. When you work from home, the lines between work and rest can easily get blurred. Setting a ‘going home’ time will encourage you to fit all work-related tasks in before that deadline.

Minimise Interruptions by family and friends

This can be a particularly sensitive and tricky area. When you work from home, friends and family will often phone for a chat or drop in for coffee – just because they know you’re in. They don’t understand that you have a living to make and deadlines to meet. To a lot of people, working from home doesn’t count as a ‘proper job’. So you have to tell them, and teach them about your hours of business.

If you don’t set firm boundaries, you’ll end up feeling resentful and not enjoy their company so much when you are ‘off duty’. They may be a bit surprised at first but will soon get the message if you continue to stand firm.

Create a working environment conducive to working!

If you’re cramped in a tiny space under the stairs, or perched on the end of the dining table, you will struggle to make headway with your business. It’s important that you have enough space to work, room to keep your papers tidily and to make and take phone calls in a business-like way.

Turning up to client meetings with coffee rings or jam on a proposal is not professional. Keep telling your little ones to ‘be careful’ around your papers or laptop, and the result will be nervous dispositions all round. Just as you need to be able to separate work time from home time, so you need to have somewhere that is just for your business and won’t interfere with family life.

Make a Plan to avoid feeling lonely

I’m fortunate to enjoy working from home and it doesn’t bother me to spend several hours on my own.

But I know of many home-based business owners who discover they don’t like the isolation. If they were used to having people around them in previous employment, it can come as a bit of a shock to suddenly only have the cat to talk to.

So it’s important to regularly interact and meet up with people. For example:

• A bit of Online Networking (obviously no substitute for face-to-face, but it can be a fun way to start the day)
• Network locally with fellow business owners
• Join a Mastermind Group
• Arrange One-to-One Meetings over coffee or lunch
• Attend Workshops and Seminars

I’m sure you’ll find that once there are a few events and meetings in the diary, it will help to dispel those feelings of isolation.

What have I missed? Do you have any challenges to add? I’d love to know.

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Thank you for reading 5 Ways to Get More Done when you Work from Home which originally appeared on Simply Business Coaching on January 18, 2012.

I know I have, except with my sweet tooth I’d probably end up eating far too many

The problem when you’re the owner of a business that provides services, whether that’s coaching, training, or some other consultancy, is that trying to explain the results clients can expect to see from working with you can feel a bit like describing a colour, using only words. At least that has been my experience over the past decade.

Cupcakes on the other hand are much easier to describe!

Anyhow, I started thinking about some of the marketing lessons we service businesses could learn from the cupcake business, for example:

With cupcakes you know exactly what you’re getting – a small sponge cake in a paper case, topped with piped butter icing and decorations (with variations in flavour and colour).

What do people get when they hire you?

Cupcakes are so attractively packaged and lend themselves beautifully to being photographed. Somehow I’m on a mailing list to receive promotional emails from a cupcake maker – and the only reason I haven’t marked them as spam is that I love looking at the photos!! (Yes, I know I should get out more).

How can you package your services attractively?

For most of the smaller cupcake businesses, I would imagine local customers are easiest to deliver to. I meet quite a few cupcake makers (bakers?) at local networking meetings, especially at some of the women-only groups. Several are backing this up with online marketing so they can share the photos (especially on their blogs and Facebook Pages).

Do you know where to reach your ideal customer base? 

Cupcake businesses can give out yummy samples! I’ve recently seen a few enterprising cupcake business owners provide free cupcakes at tradeshows, exhibitions and conferences (and enjoyed the samples very much), accompanied by business cards or leaflets.

What samples could you provide, and where? 

Cupcakes are generally associated with happy events. Birthdays, Weddings, Valentine’s Day and many other celebrations on the calendar are suitable occasions for cupcake business owners to promote their products.

What special dates or events could your services be associated with? 

What else would you add? If you own a cupcake business, feel free to post a link to your website or blog in the comments below.

(Any off topic promotional links will be removed)

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Thank you for reading Have you ever wished you were in the CupCake business? which originally appeared on Simply Business Coaching on January 11, 2012.

Like many people I did some reflecting over the festive holiday break

I’m not a believer in making resolutions as experience has shown me that the optimism fizzing away happily on new year’s eve can quickly go flat when the realities of day to day pressures arrive, rather like the champagne bubbles. One of the reasons I’ve found for this is we tend to make too many resolutions, far more than can realistically be followed up with.

Making too many resolutions is basically trying to change (or create) too many habits all at the same time. With the best will in the world, you cannot expect yourself to be able to do that. If you have several changes you’d like to make in 2012, try working on just one for a month and when that is going well, tackle the next change, and so on.

However, while I haven’t made any resolutions, I do find it helpful to have a roadmap or blueprint to follow. For me, that’s taking the form of the following four simple elements this year.

1. For the twelve months ahead I have set myself a few main goals (four to be precise), two are personal and two business – I’m sure you have done something similar. My goals are ambitious; I believe they need to be, or else where’s the sense of achievement going to come from? But they are grounded in reality … at least I hope so. I have written them down and outlined a plan of how to reach them. Time will tell.

2. This year I’ve also been inspired by Mari Smith and decided on a one-word theme for my business in 2012 to help guide the decisions I make, and everything I do. My theme for this year is: Results. I can’t quite decide how or where best to keep a visual reminder until I get the hang of this new practice, so for now a note on the cork board in front of my desk will do.

3. A new habit, which I hope will help keep me on track with the above two elements, is to record progress in my personal journal at the end of every day. To stop me from rambling on (I know it’s hard to believe I do that ) I’m going to record one achievement (towards my goals and leading to a result) and also list five gratitudes. Writing down things you’re grateful for is a great way to reflect on the day’s good points and avoid dwelling on those you need to move on from.

4. At the same time as reflecting on the day’s activities, I will also plan which one action I want to take the following day. I already do this and of course, (usually) get through much more than just one action in a day, but I find deciding, planning, doing, and then achieving is an excellent formula to stay motivated.

My hope is that by keeping things simple in 2012 – 4 goals, 1 theme and 1 new habit to focus on – it will be easier to keep on track and achieve more. I’ll let you know how it goes

If you’ve done something similar this year, or in previous years, I’d love it if you’d share your experience in the comments below

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Thank you for reading Keeping 2012 Simple which originally appeared on Simply Business Coaching on January 4, 2012.

Many coaches, trainers and other consultants who rely heavily on being paid for their time, are finding work harder and harder to come by.

As we get to that time of year when the festive holiday break actually gives you time to step back from your business, you may want to think about supplementing your consultation fees with extra income streams by building a better business model for yourself. And when work picks up again, you may even be able to use it to cut back on the number of consulting or coaching hours.

Your new business model will partly depend on what it is that you do. Does it lend itself to being demonstrated on video, listened to as audio, or read in written format? Perhaps even, all three! The chances are that it does.

You see, you have specialist knowledge that you pass on to others. At the moment you do that by working one to one, in small groups, in person, or over the phone. But every time you do what you do, you have to be there, or it doesn’t happen.

Creating a new model for your business would entail building a range of information products around what you teach, and selling them on your website. You’d be able to reach many more people than you currently have time to work with and you could literally be earning money while you sleep!!

When I first heard about this, I thought it was hype and too good to be true. I also didn’t believe it could be applied to what I did, that it was far too technical and would cost more to set up than I could possibly afford. I was wrong on all counts! And I now have a growing number of affordable information products for sale on my website.

Here’s an example that you might be able to apply to your own business:

Let’s say you’re a Website developer or a Graphic Designer. You may be brilliant at making beautiful graphics or creating clever code that fades and changes images, but to your clients it’s a total mystery. They want to hire you but the problem is that they’re holding back because cash is tight. What you could do is to build up an additional income stream by creating a series of ‘how to’ tutorials on, for example, all the steps that go into building a website – how it all fits together, common mistakes to avoid, that kind of thing.

You’d be surprised how many people will pay to find out how to do something they really want to. Or it may prove without doubt why they need to employ you to do it for them!

Creating additional income streams to supplement your coaching or consulting services revenue isn’t hard to do and I urge you to give it a go. Let me know if I can help you get started

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Thank you for reading Are you working smart in your business? which originally appeared on Simply Business Coaching on December 21, 2011.

It’s that time of year again!

What’s the first thing you should write in your brand new diary? Before client meetings, project work, networking events – even before writing your name at the front?

The very first thing you should write in your diary is when you’re planning to take your holidays!! If you already do this, congratulations . You obviously understand how important it is to look after yourself, to recharge your batteries at regular intervals and to take time away from your business occasionally.

Unless you block out that time in your diary and set it in stone, something is bound to crop up. A week off becomes a day off, then you decide to squeeze in an urgent client meeting (plus associated work), followed by another couple of days off, then dealing with an enquiry…. Before you know it, you’re back to work feeling you haven’t really benefited from the break you were supposed to have had!

Action – Book next year’s holidays in your diary before anything else.

Marketing Campaigns

If you stop marketing, people will forget about you. You may have the greatest [your product/service here] in the world, but no-one will know about it unless you do the marketing!

The ‘feast or famine’ cycle of business usually happens because you get so engrossed with client work that you forget to market – until you need more clients! And then you market like mad – until you become too busy with client work. And so the cycle goes on.

Having a marketing plan, and following it, will help to even things out. Your plan doesn’t have to be complicated nor does it have to cost a lot of money. But it does need to be done regularly, and to the right people, ie. those people who want what you’re selling.

What should you include in your marketing plan? Have a look back at what has worked for you this year and include that. Don’t waste your time including activities that you know from past experience don’t work.

Once you’ve put your plan together, schedule the activities into your diary as if they were client appointments. Honour them as if they were client appointments – they are just as important to the future of your business after all!

Action – Plan your Marketing Activities

Personal Development

If you think that taking time to go to seminars, listening to classes, working with a coach or investing in training materials is self-indulgent, that you can’t afford it, or even that you’re too busy – please think again!

Unless you’re just about to retire from your business, you simply must stay up to date and continue to learn if you want to keep up with your competitors – and hopefully ahead of them. If you neglect your own personal development, you’ll soon be at a disadvantage and your business will suffer.

Check out what’s new in your trade and professional publications; keep an eye on emerging trends that will affect your business. What do you need to learn and to do?

Is there a gap in your knowledge that needs plugging, or a skill to brush up that would make a real difference to the future of your business?

Find out what you need to learn, where and when you can learn it and plan for it now. Budget for the expense and block out the time in your diary.

Action – Plan your personal & professional development

The Financials

Planning an annual budget for marketing will stop you from being tempted by seemingly irresistible special offers that you really can’t afford. Planning will also put you in a position to take advantage of low prices when you know you do have the funds available.

Planning to replace ageing equipment in advance avoids the panic of scrambling to find funds when it finally ceases to work.

Planning your cash flow projections means that you’ll quickly be able to see if there’s going to be a shortfall, before it happens, and giving you time to do something about it.

Action – Plan the Financials 

In keeping with the spirit of the festive season, here’s a ‘Planning for Success in 2012′ template for you to download, fill in and then track your progress throughout the year.  No charge & no sign up – enjoy

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Thank you for reading It’s Time to Start Planning for Success! which originally appeared on Simply Business Coaching on December 14, 2011.