April 15th, 2010 | No Comments »
101 Tips To Improve Your Business – Tips 71 to 75 (training, pride, motivation, treat staff well, trade shows, customer acquisition)
101 tips continued:
71. Ongoing training and nurturing of skills creates highly professional people – staff development etc
72. Remember – pride is more of a motivating factor than money – this is an interesting point. As long as staff know how much money there is in the pot and how much of it can go around, then they will also respond well to encouragement.
73. Treat your staff well as these are the people with your future success in their hands – ditto to tip 71
74. Use trade related shows and exhibitions as an opportunity to acquire new customers- this is worthwhile considering, however, you need to look at the opportunity cost. I think the same sort of money invested in this type of promotion could well be spent in building a very localised (parochial) business with flyers etc.
75. Source new customers through industry related publications such as newspapers, magazines and other literature – ditto to tip 74. However, it would help to see if you can get some publicity (this is Free advertising) via this media.
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April 12th, 2010 | No Comments »
101 Tips To Improve Your Business – Tips 66 to 70 (procrastination, strategy, tell the truth, staff bonuses, the right employees)
101 tips continued:
66. Procrastination is the enemy to growth – Procrastination, or just putting off things to a later date, is plain stupid. A business cannot run with procrastinators.
67. Engage others in both developing and employing strategies – your business strategy is like the motor of your business.
68. Always say it as it is – just tell the truth. If you cannot make promises, then just don’t make them!
69. Provide bonuses to your key staff – this will encourage optimum performance and loyalty – reward good behaviour.
70. Get the right person for the job – makes sense!
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April 8th, 2010 | No Comments »
101 Tips To Improve Your Business – Tips 61 to 65 (customer referrals, sales techniques, the sky is the limit, success growth)
101 tips continued:
61. See your customers as your sales team. Allow them to generate business for you through referrals- this needs systematising…you need to make sure that customers will give you the right referrals. No point them telling their friends that you do gardening, when the only thing you actually do and want to do is just lawnmowing.
62. Educate others in strong selling techniques. This will strengthen your future – “strong selling techniques” – yes, there are techniques to selling! In other words, you can actually sell to people without looking like a slick sales man!
63. Encourage those around you to never place a ceiling on themselves – I guess you can say to people that the sky is the limit!
64. The sky is the limit – oops, see tip 63.
65. Challenge others to grow and coach them to achieve success – Allow others to have success more to the point. If you facilitate success in others they will go out of their way to help – it’s called giver’s gain! It’s called being generous or having a generous spirit.
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April 5th, 2010 | No Comments »
101 Tips To Improve Your Business – Tips 56 to 60 (networking, goals, dreams, service potential, customer feedback, popular people)
101 Tips continued:
56. Networking is the key to success. Always look for opportunities to make contacts – I think their are plenty of networking opportunities…trouble is that a lot of people try too hard when networking! These people appear to be desperate when they go networking. Better for them to go with the attitude of having a good time and then leads and customers will follow.
57. Encourage your prospective customers to expand their professional goals and dreams, this will ensure that you too expand – this makes sense.
58. Encourage your existing customers to use and maximise the potential of your product or service as this will benefit you – this also makes sense.
59. Always listen to feedback from your customers – set systems in place for your customers to give feedback. Make it easy for them to give feedback. And thank them for feedback.
60. People like to be around popular people. By honing your relationship and communication skills with others you too can be a popular person – this is a bit like the networking tip. Once again, people can try too hard on trying to be popular. Just be yourself, it usually works!
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April 1st, 2010 | No Comments »
101 Tips To Improve Your Business – Tips 51 to 55 (mail order, point of purchase, telemarketing, example of your own service, serve not sell)
101 Tips continued:
51. Design a mail order campaign – snail mail, slow mail or the old mail is still a good medium to market through. All successful marketing campaigns rely on good copywriting, correct target marketing etc.
52. Design a point of purchase display for your product – doesn’t really apply to contractors unless you have a shop front with passing trade.
53. Design a telemarketing campaign – don’t write this one off either. Telemarketing has its place, once again not sure if mass telemarketing is right for contractors.
54. Be a walking example of how effective your product or service can be – The old expression is “A cobbler’s children are poorly shod” or something like that. Make sure your home address is a good example of your workmanship.
55. Seek to serve instead of just seeking to sell – Customers want to know that you care, and they don’t care what you know.
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March 31st, 2010 | No Comments »
Official Launch for The “Zero To A Hundred K in 30 Days” Blueprint – on 1st May, 2010
Look out for The Blueprint below!
It’s coming soon, in fact we may even launch ahead of 1st May, 2010
Other reports to be released to The Blueprint subscribers include:
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March 29th, 2010 | No Comments »
101 Tips To Improve Your Business – Tips 46 to 50 (learn to delegate, persistence, customer contact, image, brochure selling benefits)
101 Tips continued:
46. Learn to delegate. You might be the key to everything but you cannot do everything and grow at the same time – whether you have employees or sub-contractors, you need to be able to let go of the jobs that can be easily done by others.
47. Never give up – if you have a belief that your business is a go-er, and you do believe in the business and yourself, then never give up.
48. Build and maintain a customer mailing and contact list on database – very important to have some sort of mailing list (either snail mail or email) so you can stay in touch with your customers at least every 90 days, and more often if you can work it. Just remember that your customers are your competitors’ prospects!
49. Build your image with well designed letterhead and business cards – a well designed letterhead, business card and logo does not mean expensive. The key here is to get your logo designed, digitised and away you go. My Lawn Green logo was designed (by hand, not computer) by an artist/signwriter neighbour of mine. Once you have a nice logo done, then you can set your letterhead up on your own word doc, business cards can be done for $200-$300 for 1,000. Another tip: utilise the rear side of the business card to tell customers more of what you can do.
50. Design a brochure that best explains the benefits of your services- you know that a brochure, flyer or leaflet can be as simple as black ink on Yellow paper. Black ink on Yellow reads best according to the advertising experts. The words etc that you put on the paper is called “Copy”. Good copywriting should include lots of benefits (to the customer). The customer does not care about whether you have the biggest machine or whatever, but cares about whether they get a good job done. The customer only cares about “What Is In It For Me!”. Focus on the things the customer wants!
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March 25th, 2010 | No Comments »
101 Tips To Improve Your Business – Tips 41 to 45 (includes listening to customers, maintain focus, staff morale, ideas, sales planning)
101 Tips continued:
41. Listen to your customers, they are your lifeblood – when customers ring to say they want you to jump, then ask them how high? Respond quickly to your customers’ request. Have a system in place – where a customer rings and you can give them a definitive answer there and then.
42. Focus. Focus. Focus. You must be disciplined enough to create your business – you can only focus on an end result. Know what the end result looks like, that could be 10, 100 or 500 customers, whatever, then you can see what you need to focus on.
43. Motivating, coaching and managing your staff morale, productivity and profits can easily be destroyed without ongoing involvement – stay in touch with staff, even if this is once a week contact.
44. The successful entrepreneur lives in a world of likelihood but spends money in the world of reality – keep dreaming the ideas, but only spend on what you can afford
45. Create a sales plan. You need a realistic map of where the sales will come from how and from whom- what targets do have for sales? How many customers do you want to service this month? How many new leads from your flyers, website etc? More importantly, what is your conversion rate from leads to new customers? Is this conversion rate high (maybe you are cheap!)? Or, is this conversion rate too low (maybe you have priced yourself out of the market!)?
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March 22nd, 2010 | No Comments »
101 Tips To Improve Your Business – Tips 36 to 40 (leasing office equipment, happy staff, customer service, marketing sales planning)
101 Tips continued:
36. Leasing computers and office equipment is a great way of justifying the expenditure. However, be careful because every lease you sign is a long term overhead – we can get carried away with our successes on the field, you know with getting new jobs and everything! Perhaps we should delay that purchase, or better still talk to your accountant or someone you trust, before going ahead. There are no guarantees, that is, you could lose that big contract – the one that would support your leases. Like a good carpenter, “Measure twice, cut once!”
37. Happier staff give better customer service- another NO Brainer. Look after your staff, attract happy staff and the customer service will just happen!
38. Enthusiasm is contagious – have a bit of fun with work, let others know you’re comfortable with yourself, and the enthusiasm will rub off on others!
39. Don’t stick to one single idea. Play with many ideas and see which ones bring money and success- brainstorm with others, and give encouragement to other people’s ideas. Never say never! As silly as someone’s idea may be, still write it down as a possibility.
40. Create a marketing plan. Failing to plan is planning to fail – so true! You know what, your marketing plan can be drawn up in 1 page! Yep, that’s all. In fact I think at some stage I will show you that.
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March 18th, 2010 | No Comments »
101 Tips To Improve Your Business – Tips 31 to 35 (tell the truth, staff meetings, tool talk, get personal, business development)
101 Tips Continued:
31. Never go back on your word, even if it hurts- this is just one of life’s basic skills that my parents (from the old school of taking responsibility for your own actions) instilled in us kids from toddler-hood. It appalls me the number of people these days that think it is OK to tell untruths to get what they want.
32. Have weekly meetings with your staff – or even just a regular “tool talk” session, that is, stay in touch. Another good way to stay in touch is to work with your employees on the job.
33. Make a point of getting personal, but not personal enough to get involved with problems – you don’t want to become their Doctor Phil, you’re not getting paid to hear people’s problems! But certainly take an interest in their life, interests and hobbies.
34. Spend less time on penny pinching and more time on business development – this is so true. I grew up with my father following us 5 kids around the house telling us to turn of the light in a room we weren’t using. I think you get conditioned to focus on negatives and not positives. I have a friend with 8 kids, he owns a telecommunications business (they supply the corporate market with mobiles etc), and I have heard him say “Oh well, another child to feed, I better go and find ways to earn more income!” – so his focus is on his business and how he can make it earn more for him! Think the positives!
35. Get excited about your product, business or service – think the positives, dream about how your business or service can solve people’s products.
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