The Lone Ranger had support; do YOU have enough?

We all know that life as a Business Owner can be tough going. This recognised reality actually works in your favour, as it lessens the competition you face in the market, for your product or service. It also provides you with the opportunity to do well financially, if you are able to surmount the hurdles that you will inevitably face, as you develop and grow your own business.

One of the critical elements, that will determine whether or not you will be successful as a business owner, is the degree of support you can engender from others as you travel along the path to eventual success.

This external support is absolutely necessary to keep you buoyant and focussed on your objectives, despite the difficulties you will encounter on a daily basis. The various types of support you will need from others include;

a) Someone to act as a sounding board for you to bounce ideas off and to assist you to evaluate the validity of your ideas before you act on them impetuously, or erroneously,

b) Someone to help you with brainstorming ideas for problem resolution, promoting and marketing your business, development of new products or services, and effectively managing your available resources,

c) Someone who will provide you with continual encouragement to continue to persevere with facing the daily challenges that need to be met to make your business a success,

d) Someone in the same boat as yourself as a business owner to share information, share leads, share celebrations of the small wins you make each week, share the emotional ups and downs that only a fellow business owner will understand, and share the pain when everything doesn’t go as well as planned.

e) Someone who can introduce you into appropriate networks that you need to be part of to gain the required level of exposure in your market, in order to be highly visible to your customers or clients,

f) Someone who is willing to allow you access to their similar business so that you can benchmark your operations against theirs to determine areas for improvement in your own, and

g) Someone who can act as your businesses financial guardian angel to point you in the right direction and to ensure that you don’t make any terminal mistakes in the management of the cash flow of your business.

It is likely that you will need support from a number of different people to ensure you have the support that you require.

If you are very lucky, you will find two or three people, who between them, can give you the level of support you need to get your business to the stage where it can then afford to engage professional firms or individual professionals, to provide the support systems that every successful business needs, to enable it to continue to thrive and prosper.

So where do you find the people you need to provide the support to you that can make your difficult role a little easier and provide a greater chance for you to become a successful business owner?

The following list highlights great places to look for the people you can turn to for the necessary levels of support for yourself, as you grow your business;

a) Members of your immediate and extended family,

b) Members of clubs, associations and groups that you belong to or have had previous associations with,

c) Programs for business owners established by your Local Council, State Government Instrumentalities and National Government Departments,

d) Networking Groups specifically set up to support SME business owners,

e) Informal networks of non-competing local business owners in your immediate vicinity, and

f) Social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter that have a business focus.

To garnish the support you need you must be passionate about your business and the outcomes you are trying to achieve, and use the right approach when sounding others out for the level of support you require.

You will usually find that if you approach the right people in the right way, even if you have not had a really strong previous relationship with them, most will, within the bounds of reasonableness, go out of the way to help others, especially if there is any form of reciprocity involved.

Are you acting a little like a modern day Robinson Crusoe?

Do you understand the benefits that the types of support outlined above can deliver to your business?

Will you now develop a plan to ensure you get the level of support you deserve and need?

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Posted via web from Unique Insights

Sell like a Pre-Schooler

Pre-schoolers never stop asking until they get what they need but unfortunately, most people tend to lose that ability to ask for what they need as they grow up and subsequently conform to external pressures from parents, teachers, early employers, social peers, and the general community in which they live.

As a business owner, the loss of this skill, to ask for what you need from those who control what you require, can have a highly detrimental effect on your businesses’ ability to increase its sales revenue.

Your business will therefore reap the benefits if you relearn the ability to ask for what you need in order to grow your business. So how do you start relearning what you once did intuitively as a pre-schooler?

Until you ask someone specifically to take an action, exchange something for something else, or subscribe to a different point of view, you might be selling hard, but you are not gaining any real ground. Therefore, if you have lost the ability to ask for specific outcomes that help you to advance your own agenda, you need to reprogram your brain back to that of a pre-schooler.

In a nutshell, you need to practice, and practice again, the art of asking for the outrageous, until you can do it without cracking up, flinching, sweating, or shaking uncontrollably, and can do it with utter conviction.

Try practicing to ask a prospect to pay $50,000.00 for the privilege of buying a clapped out second hand car, until you can do it in the expectation that you might just be able to pull it off one day.

When you can do this, you are ready to effectively ask for the small things you need your prospects to do in order for you to help them, and at the same time significantly increase the number of sales you make for your business, in any given time frame.

It may surprise you, but most people are happy to give you what you need if you ask in the right way at the right moment. Unfortunately, business owners struggling with making sufficient sales tend to telegraph that they are squeamish about asking for what they need, and as a consequence, their prospects feel the same way about giving and the sales never get booked.

Once you have determined exactly what it is that you and your business need your prospects to do for you, and you have a compelling reason (the future of your business) to ask for what you need, you should then be able to successfully apply what you have relearned, and you should then be rewarded by seeing a significant increase in your sales revenue.

When was the last time you really asked for exactly what you needed from your sales prospects?

A better question perhaps is, when was the last time you asked yourself what you want?

What will you now do differently?

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Good Questions Equal Great Business Strategy

Reviewing your existing business strategy, or creating a business strategy for a new business venture, should not be seen as a complex and difficult task by any business owner or business manager. In fact, the process itself can be invigorating and exciting, and if done well, will certainly make your business and personal life somewhat easier, over the next twelve months.

Unfortunately, most readily accessible literature on this subject is focused on the development of business strategies by large corporate entities or similar sized public enterprises, and what little guidance is around for the SME business owner is still overly theoretical, and in my view far more complex than it needs to be, or the simplicity of suggested methodologies is far from adequate in being able to make a real difference to business outcomes.

In reality, the process of reviewing an existing business strategy, or creating one for a new business, can be distilled into an easy three part process. Firstly, asking and answering the right questions in respect of your business, secondly, collating all of the answers and grouping them into a small number of specific strategies, and thirdly, identifying all of the tasks which need to be performed to successfully implement each strategy.

So what are the right questions that you firstly need to answer? I suggest that the following nine questions should always be asked, and answered in a comprehensive manner, as the first part of the process of developing a new business strategy.

1) What business arena are we really operating in, and is this the business arena we want to operate in?
2) What market(s) do we want to serve with this business and which particular customers/clients?
3) What outcomes do we want to achieve in the next 3, 6, 9, &12 months, and by year 2, year 3 etc?
4) What resources will we need to progressively apply in the business to achieve these specific outcomes?
5) What actions need to be taken and by whom to gather these resources so they are available as needed?
6) What management and support structures will we need to initially have, and progressively upgrade?
7) What tools will we need to put in place to measure and report progress?
8)  What external reporting requirements will we need to comply with, and how important are each of these?
9) What don’t we know, that we need to know, to manage known and unknown future risks?

Robust analysis of the answers that flow forth from the above process, and the grouping of these into relevant subject headings, will allow the second phase of the development of your business strategy to be finalised.

Ideally, the information so gathered, will allow you to quickly prepare a range of specific tasks for each of the following strategic areas;

1) Customer/Client Acquisition and Retention Strategies
2) People Acquisition and People Management Strategies
3) Resource Acquisition and Resource Management Strategies
4) Organisation Capability and Organisation Structure Strategies
5) Financial and Capital Management Strategies
6) Legal and Regulatory Compliance Strategies
7) Public Relations and Stakeholder Communication Strategies.

Once the full range of tasks has been identified for each of the strategic areas it is an easy matter to complete the third of the processes involved. That is the placing of timelines, costs or budgets, and responsibility for completion of each task to an individual or a team, against each specific task.

When this is completed your new business strategy is ready to be pulled together, documented, disseminated and put into action.

Do you have a strategic plan for your business?

If so, is it time you reviewed it and looked at it from a new angle?

If not, will this article provide you with the impetus to create one and run your business within its structured boundaries?

Are you missing out in the new business race?

The question really should be; what is it that you are not doing, that if you did it, you would see a dramatic upswing in the fortunes of your business through the regular acquisition of new customers or clients?

Whether you like it or not, if you own a business of any kind, you are primarily in the sales business and despite the array of social media tools available today, the greatest and most effective tool anyone in the sales business has at their disposal, is still the telephone.

In the right hands, the telephone is the cheapest and most time effective means of introducing any offering to a target market and making appointments to present directly to the key decision maker.

To succeed in virtually any business, you need to have a consistent flow of appointments, to get appointments you need to talk to decision makers or their gatekeepers, to do this effectively you need to master the telephone and use it frequently to contact potential prospects who you want to become your customers or clients.

You can engineer a dramatic upswing in the fortunes of your business if you master the telephone, and make a minimum of twelve (12) calls to targeted business owners each and every business day, without fail.

After doing so for a few weeks, refining your pitch as you go along, you will find that at a minimum you should be converting at least 5 to 10 percent of the 60 weekly calls to appointments, where you will have the opportunity to make a sale. Covert a reasonable percentage of these appointments into new customers or clients, and you will be well rewarded.

The trick to succeeding in this endeavour is to set aside a minimum of 45 minutes each day, find a place where you can work free of any distractions, and do nothing in this time but make the calls. It works even better if you assign the same block of time each day to this activity.

Any business owner who adopts this discipline, sticks to it religiously on a permanent basis and at the same time works assiduously at refining and improving their pitch to the targets involved, cannot help  being successful at the key task of getting in front of as many prospects as possible, in the time they have available.

To maximise the effectiveness of this simple solution, business owners need to learn the art of the three minute telephone call. Buy an egg timer and if you see the sand has run out, and you have not arranged an appointment, terminate the conversation and move on to the next prospect.

It also helps if you keep daily records of the number of calls made, the number of appointments gained, the conversion rate of calls to appointments, and then track this ratio on an ongoing basis as you develop your skills in this area.

Who to call? You call anyone that you wish to make a customer or client within the niche you wish to create for yourself. The best sources of business leads for cold telemarketing have always been the yellow pages, local business directories, local newspaper advertisements, businesses letter drops in your local area, your local government authority, and the local chamber of commerce.

What to say? Prepare a very well crafted mini sales pitch for your product or service which will quickly grab the attention of the prospect you call, which focuses on the benefits for the customer or client, and which allows you to quickly uncover whether or not the prospect has a need for your offering.

Overcome your reluctance to pick up the telephone and then commit to simply making 12 calls each and every day to make appointments with prospective customers or clients, and before long, you will see the results and your business will be more successful.

Remember, that to make this a habitual activity and to ensure that you refine your sales pitch until it works brilliantly, you need to commit to this discipline for a minimum of 21 business days.

Is your business acquiring as many customers or clients that your product or service deserves?

Do you have a disciplined approach to telephone prospecting?

Will you devote a minimum of 5 hours per week to producing an upswing in the fortunes of your business?

Are You Fishing with Blunt Hooks?

An extremely important component of growing any business to the point where it becomes self sustaining is prospecting for suitable clients or customers. As a business owner, you need to set the lead for others to follow if you want to elevate the importance of prospecting for future business to its rightful place as a key component of your business plan.

All business owners have to prospect, and some are far better at it than others. If you, and those you employ, avoid the seven common mistakes that others frequently make when prospecting, you will become very good at it, and your business will grow quickly.

The first and most common mistake in prospecting is simply not doing enough of it. As a business owner, you must understand that the work you do today, in uncovering suitable prospects, represents your income for weeks or months down the track. The absence of constant prospecting activity equals no constant income in the future, and creates the real and dangerous potential for cash flow problems to develop in your business.

The second mistake is prospecting with the wrong attitude towards the job. When you prospect with a positive attitude towards the work which needs to be done, and you expect that work to generate good business leads, you will usually prove yourself to be absolutely right.

The third mistake is not having a good system in place to ensure that all leads generated are followed through with, and all income potential is maximised. Without systems, too much falls through the cracks and unproductive activity will prevail. Before you commence any prospecting activity make sure that your business has a CRM package in place, and that all involved in the prospecting activities are familiar with it, and understand the importance of recording all activity and outcomes.

The fourth mistake is prospecting the wrong people in the first place. Are your potential prospects going to deliver your business a high enough return on the investment made, are they geographically positioned to make servicing them a cost effective option, do they actually want what or need what you are offering, are you face to face with the decision maker or a key advisor to the decision maker?

The fifth, and a killer of a mistake, is not asking the prospects you do get in front of, for referrals. It is vital for all business owners to remember that when you are prospecting, you are not only prospecting the prospect, but anyone else they know, who may have a need for your offering. Always remember, if you don’t ask – you don’t get.

The sixth mistake in prospecting is a reluctance to invest in direct mailing to potential prospects that you have on any database you own or control. Mail them monthly at a minimum, and the frequency of touches will eventually deliver a regular stream of people wanting to take up what you are offering, and who will also be willing to give you referrals.

The final, and an all too common mistake made by business owners, is to stop regular and consistent heavy prospecting just because they have a few good weeks or months flowing on from previous prospecting activities. Never forget, that a drop off in prospecting will inevitably result in a drop off in income for your business in the coming months.

How does your business measure up in terms of the returns from your prospecting activities?

Does your business have a program of activities which constitute a constant and effective prospecting machine?

Do you need to sharpen your hooks?

Two Magic Pills for Business Success

To be successful as a business owner, regardless of the type of business you operate, you need to insulate yourself from the negative aspects of selling yourself, your business, and your product or service, and at the same time, fully commit yourself to the ongoing development of the vital skills you need to have, in order to be truly successful.

This can be easier said than done, but with the right approach, you can achieving realistic outcomes in financial terms, from your investment of capital and time, in your business. This approach does, however, requires you to pop a pill or two for the overall good of your business.

The pills you need to swallow are the Two Magic Pills for Business Success. These Magic Pills are the tonic required to ensure a healthy future for your business. Taken daily, these Magic Pills will make a significant difference to the outcomes that you are able to achieve in your business. life.

As with all such magic remedies, there is a trick involved. The trick here is to develop the habit of taking these Magic Pills daily, for as long as you are in business. If you do, over time they will reduce or completely obviate, your need to call on others to help you to be successful.

The first Magic Pill is to take whatever steps that are necessary to develop and continually reinforce your faith in yourself. That is, you need to cultivate and feed a very strong self image. This is vitally important, as without one, you will find life as a business owner extremely tough.

A Google search on Self Image reveals in excess of 6,000,000 references, so there is no shortage of information available on this subject, and the sheer volume of references indicates the importance of the subject matter to all aspects of life, not only business.

This first Magic Pill needs to be accompanied by both the determination to never quit regardless of how tough the road to success may become, and having enough faith in yourself to repeat the right disciplines and actions until they become ingrained, and continue them for as long as it takes for you to eventually achieve success.

The second Magic Pill is to develop a strong ability to focus, that is, to become extremely efficient in your use of the time available to you, to conduct your business each day.

Focus is the most powerful tool a business owner can possess, so it is imperative that you develop your skills in this area. Focus allows you to accomplish more in less time by staying in the moment, and being completely attuned to the task at hand. See prevous posting titled Focus is everything in Business to see if you may be guilty of lack of focus.

A quick Google search for "ability to focus" will take you to a wealth of resources that you can tap into to improve your performance in this area. Find what works for you and put it into practice, and persist practicing until lack of focus is no longer an issue for you.

If your business is not doing as well as you had anticipated, ask yourself the following questions; Do you have stong faith in yourself and your abilities? Is your self image as strong as it must be if you want to succeed in the tough world that is today's business environment? Are you as focussed on the success of your business as you need to be? Is your focus in the right area?

Take these Two Magic Pills for Business Success everyday for an extended period, and you can virtually guarantee yourself, that your business will improve out of sight.

Will your Business Survive and Prosper?

As a business owner, you have chosen to invest both your capital and your valuable time into an enterprise that operates in an environment which is highly competitive, very personally demanding, and constantly changing.

Quite rightly, one of your highest priorities should be to protect your investment and nurture it for long enough to build, from the proceeds of your ongoing business endeavours, a strong asset base to support your future plans.

In order to protect your investment, you need to develop a fundamental understanding as to why SME businesses often fail to meet their owner's initial expectations, and why many businesses actually fail.

The list of reasons for failure is long, but the more significant factors include;

• lack of a cohesive strategy for continuous improvement and innovation
• lack of systems for business accounting and control of business expenses
• lack of understanding of working capital needs and cash flow management
• lack of general business acumen and core business management skills
• lack of understanding of the market demand for the product or service offered
• lack of understanding of the value of family and other support mechanisms
• lack of well developed negotiation, influencing and sales skills
• lack of understanding of the importance of choice of location to the business
• lack of ability to handle the challenges of growing the business
• lack of focus, energy and persistence in the face of all types of challenges and
• lack of acceptance of personal responsibility for the success of the business.

Looking at this somewhat truncated list, it is easy to see that running and operating a successful business requires a lot of skill and effort, and it is not for the faint of heart.

Another key stepping stone on the road to protecting your investment of capital and time into your business is to learn to work on your business, as much, if not more than working in the business.

To this end, the ability to focus your mind and your best energy, on the areas where they will have the greatest effect, is extremely important.

Many business owners try to do everything themselves and are reluctant to rely on others, be they employees, contractors, outsourced service providers, or other business professionals such as accountants, lawyers, and business consultants, to perform roles for which these people are far better qualified.

Do you have a clear picture of where your strengths lie? If not, perhaps it is time for the good of your business, to explore who you are, and in doing so, develop a clear understanding of your major strengths and identify the areas in which you face strong challenges.

People often say that business is not rocket science, however what they generally neglect to say, is that all businesses require someone powered by rocket fuel, in order to get lift off, move into orbit, and stay afloat for long enough to enjoy the ride and the view, from on high.

As a business owner, that person needs to be you. Are you up to the challenge?

Get Personally Organised for Business Success

Successful business owners have the ability to efficiently multi-task, an ability which they most likely developed through focused action on improving their level of of personal organisation.

This week's article offers advice on how to develop a higher level of personal organisation so that you can better handle the variety of tasks, problems, issues, professional and personal responsibilities, and the day to day challenges, you face in growing your business.

The keys to developing a high level of personal organisation include the following elements;

• Have a plan which outlines what you want to achieve and more importantly - why you want to achieve it.
• Set your priorities on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis.
• Be totally focused - concentrate on only one thing at a time.
• De-clutter, get organised, know where everything you need is, and make sure it is readily accessible.
• Don't allow any distractions into your work time.
• If you are no longer passionate about a particular role find someone else to do it.
• Have set routines for your regular activities.
• Organise your own work space to be as efficient as it possibly can be given your particular environment.
• Learn and practice how to say NO and then do it more frequently.
• Don't say YES to anything unless you mean it.
• Don't make commitments you can't guarantee you will be able to keep.
• Learn to respect and value your own time.
• There is a time to work and a time to play. Don't mix these two up.
• Use technology simply as a business tool not as a crutch to hide from the world.
• Create an environment in which you can work surrounded by the things which make you the most productive person you can be.
• Pack more into your day - Get up earlier and go to bed later.
• When you find yourself procrastinating ask yourself WHY?
• Before you venture out into the world have a list of everything you can possibly do whilst you are out, and which can be done along either the route to or from your destination.
• Have access to one or two trusted mentors to give you an injection of support when times are tough or the challenges appear too great.

The above is not an exhaustive list, but if you quickly and critically assess your own level of personal organisation against each element, you may discover one or two areas where, with a little effort, you can improve your own skills and help your business on its path to greater success.

Core Skills required for Revenue Generation

As a business owner, and whether you like it or not, you are in the business of selling.

It is therefore important, that you have a clear and complete understanding of the core competencies required of any person responsible for revenue generation in your business, including yourself.

It goes without saying that understanding alone is not enough, you also need to ensure your own and your employee's skills, are developed to the level necessary for sales success, and then you need to diligently apply those skills, and sure others are applying them as diligently as yourself.

The key skills required in any sales role are; presentation skills, influencing skills, negotiation skills, communication skills, problem solving skills, marketing skills, personal management skills and critically in this day and age, information technology skills.

If your sales are not at the level where they need to be, a good solution is to firstly put in place structured plans for yourself and key employees to become more competent in every one of these skills, with a priority being placed on the skill sets that are most lacking, in those engaged in selling for your business.

These skills alone will not necessarily guarantee success in revenue generation, as a clear understanding of the key attributes that the individuals concerned also need to possess, and their ability to persistently apply these attributes, is the second part of the solution.

These key attributes include; the need and the will to succeed, ability to think and act quickly, ability to focus on goals, a strong belief in the products and services offered, high energy levels, high self esteem, the ability to act independently, an optimistic outlook on life, the ability to see the bigger picture, a willingness to accept responsibility for personal outcomes, and an ability to empathise with others.

As you can see, a revenue generating role is not for the untrained or marginally competent; selling is actually a profession, and a professional approach is needed by anyone who has a responsibility for revenue generation.

You must also remember that a poorly trained and far from competent salesperson, can do more damage to your business in a short time, than almost any other role not performed to its optimal level, in your business.

Unless you develop your own and your employees sales skills to an optimum level, revenue generation will always be harder for your business than it needs to be, and in tough times your cash flow may be severely challenged.

How do you and your key employees measure up in terms of sales skills and personal attributes that support effective revenue generation?

Do all relevant personnel have personal development plans specifically tailored to improve the level of revenue generation in your business?

Have you led by example in demonstrating your own commitment to upgrading your selling skills?

Have you allowed adequate funds in your budget to support the development of all of the necessary skills in your employees?

Do you ensure that you select the right people with the necessary attributes to succeeed in sales, to participate in your sales training programs, and eventually in revenue generating activities for your business?

If you answer all of these questions truthfully, and reflect on what the answers mean for your future revenue, it may pave the way for you to make the changes you possibly need to make, to give your business a good shot in the arm.