Define, Define and Find!

I was at our 1-day Exposure Warrior recently and really took note of how many business owners don’t really understand how to create an effective message to tell people what they do in their business. When someone approaches you at a networking meeting or some such kind of social function, you need to be able to tell them what you do in a very short punchy sentence. In fact, you need to be able to write down what you do on the back of a matchbox. That means it has to be short to the point and informative so people do not to spend large amounts of time understanding what you do!

I’ve put this into a very simple to understand process!

It’s called define, define and find…

The reason why most business owners cannot tell people exactly what they do is because they really don’t know themselves exactly what they do. This is the first define! You need to be very confident and clearly define what product or service that you are delivering, it needs to be crystal clear in your mind so that when somebody else asks what you do, you can accurately portray and let them know what you do without having to spend minutes describing or convincing them of what you do. If they have a confused look on their face after you have introduced your business – then you have a lot of work to do to get your message crystal clear!

Is your business well defined and do you know exactly what product and/or service that you are delivering? It is critical that you get this done in order to define exactly who your customers are and your target audience is?

This is the second define! Once you know what product or service you are delivering and have it well defined, what you want to do for them, and what solutions your products or services deliver to them, then you can go out and find the markets that you are after!

Most business owners and entrepreneurs never accurately define their product or service, the market that they are after and where their market hangs out. In many cases it is like going out from your business every day and looking for clients in all the wrong places – you may be networking, attending meetings, education groups, etc., yet you do not even know if you market that you are targeting even attends these events.

I had a student yesterday sit down and write out exactly who they were targeting. Once they had completed this I asked him what kind of events he was attending, and what the demographics of the people at those events were. He was amazed and realized that the events that he was attending were not where his target market hangs out.

Take the time to define your products and services, which markets you are targeting with them, and go out and find them and hang out in the right areas where your target market hangs out.

There is no such things as “Having a BAD Day”

Taking things personally is one thing, but how long you hold onto these things is 100% your choice!

You’ve heard many people say I am having a bad day. My question is does it have to be a bad day or can it just be a bad moment, a bad hour or a bad half day? It is truly your choice of how long you hold onto these given situations. In fact, you should be looking at it as not “bad” but what can I LEARN from these given situations?

A good example is when you got to visit a client and you anticipate taking their order or signing the contract, and things do not go the way you thought they would. The client ends up beating you down on price, not giving you the terms that you want, or possibly just not signing the contract and you walk away with no order. For many people they take these situations extremely personally, when you should be truly be asking yourself, what can I learn from the situation and what was my contribution to the given situation? Simple things like the following:

• How can I prepare more effective the next time?
• What research could I have done to improve the situation?
• What needs to be done to ensure it happens next time?

If you have done all of the above and you still don’t get the contract, do not beat yourself up but rather say “NEXT” and move onto somebody who has the greater potential of becoming your customer.

What I really want you to get from this, is that how you approach every situation will determine the outcome and results you achieve. You can either look at everything as a learning situation or experience, take what you need and decide to move on or you can let it destroy your day, week, month, etc! From my experience this will be the demise of your business, the sooner you understand that every situation that arises in your business is because of the choices that you have made the better!

Holding onto things and taking them personally kills productivity, creativity and profitability!

One KEY item often missed in the SALES process!

Do you have the Success MINDSET?

Your WORDS!

It is really important as you start out your journey as an entrepreneur to really have your mindset in the right place. When I talk about your mindset I’m talking about the way that you think, because the way that you think will dictate the results that you get in your business. 95% of the failures that I see in business or with people who are entrepreneurs is that they have stinking thinking. There are some simple things that you can change in the way that you approach things and the most important one is to look at all the experiences or the choices that you make in a positive light. Let’s look at the three words below:

• Right
• Success
• Good

What are the opposites or antonyms of these three words? Yes; wrong, failure and bad! There is one thing that I can guarantee you as you go out and start building your business there will be challenges along the way. It’s how you look at these challenges and the choices that you make from them that will dictate the results and success in every given situation!

So why not look at instead of using the words wrong, failure and bad, replace them with the word learning! You do not know everything when you first start out in business and it’s good to understand that you should not chastise yourself for every learning experience that you have. The most important part is to make sure that they are learning experiences, and you figure out what you have learnt from them in order not to make the same mistake twice.

Taking Things Personally

This is the most important skill that I had to learn in my own business. Recently, I had a few clients write to me that had some challenges with the groups that they belonged to as part of our company. You could simply say that they were disgruntled clients, which to me are one of the most important assets that you have in your business when you are first starting out. A client who voices their opinion is an asset because so many of them never voice their opinions directly to you, but yet they do it in front of other people and this harms your reputation and that of your business. If they voice their opinions directly to you, you could take the corrective action to put the steps in place to improve your business, improve your systems and overall make your client experience excellent.

I could have gotten very upset and have taking things very personally because of what these people had to say. It was also at the start of 2012 and my mind seems to automatically go to the place of WOW! What a way to start the New Year! I started to take things personally, and then I took a step back and said to myself “what am I meant to learn from these amazing clients voicing their opinions to me?”. The learning experiences I took from the situations have allowed me to make structural enhancements, improve selection criteria and systemization of our groups to a new level for 2012, and for that I thank them.

You see it is the way that you think and the thoughts that you have, that will either grow your business substantially or have it struggling and at worst run it into the ground. The above concept is very simple and sounds very easy to implement, my challenge to you is that you catch yourself in the process of negative thoughts and ask yourself what am I meant to learn from this experience, situation or choice that I made, in order to make my business stronger and dramatically improve my relationships with my customers?

Your customers can teach you a lot and one of the most important things to understand is that you need to take your own ego out of the equation, put it aside and listen to your prospects and clients. By listening to them you will grow your business faster and stronger and more sustainable than by not listening and not caring for your clients.

How Long You Hold Onto Things!

Taking things personally is one thing, but how long you hold onto these things is 100% your choice! You’ve heard many people say I am having a bad day. My question is does it have to be a bad day or can it just be a bad moment, a bad hour? It is truly your choice of how long you hold onto these given situations. In fact, taking the advice from earlier in the chapter you should be looking at it as not “bad” but what can I LEARN from these given situations?

A good example is when you got to visit a client and you anticipate taking their order or signing the contract, and things go not the way you thought they would. The client ends up beating you down on price, not giving you the terms that you want, or possibly just not signing the contract and you walk away with no order. For many people they take these situations extremely personally, when you should truly be asking yourself what can I learn from the situation and what was my contribution to the given situation? Simple things like the following:

• How can I prepare more effective the next time?
• What research could I have done to improve the situation?
• What needs to be done to ensure it happens next time?

If you have done all of the above and you still don’t get the contract, do not beat yourself up but rather say “NEXT” and move onto somebody who has the greater potential of becoming your customer.

Well we really want you to get from this, is that how you approach every situation will determine the outcome and results you achieve. You can either look at everything as a learning situation or experience, or let your ego kick in and arrogance take over and not caring about what anybody has to say! From my experience this will be the demise of your business, because without clients you have nothing.

What are your plans for 2012?

Do you have set week-by-week and month-by-month plans for the entire year ahead or are you hoping that you can just fly by your seat of your pants again?

You have heard many times that if  you fail to plan then you plan to fail. This is a very true statement as many people seldom plan the year ahead and wonder why when they get to the end of the year that they have not achieved the results that they were wanting!

A study was conducted recently at Harvard School of Business where they took a group of MBA graduates and divide them up into two separate groups; one group was to set goals and plans for the next five years and the other group was to do no planning or no goal setting. They went back five years later and interviewed the two separate groups to their amazement they found the group that did the planning and goal setting were earning nearly double that of their counterparts that had done no goal setting or planning.

This demonstrates how important it is to plan and set goals for the year ahead. Yes, you may not achieve all of them throughout the year but at least you have something to aim for. Having no goals or plans for 2012 is like going to a archery range with your crossbow in hand, loading in your arrow and setting up to shoot at something yet there is no target in front of you! So, what do you aim for? There is no bull’s-eye or any surrounding piece of the target for you to judge your results by, you might as well just shoot the arrow in the air and hope that you hit something! This is not the way to operate your business no matter how big or small it is!

Do you see how this relates to your business?

The most important thing you can do is sit down and plan your year ahead. In fact, in my business we have a very specialized 1-page business plan that we use to operate and manage our business by for the year ahead. It is constructed from a number of different documents, and then summarized onto a single page so that you have a document that is easy to follow, simple to understand and that can guide you for the year ahead.

There are many theories out there about the perfect business plan. The way I look at things is that I would rather have a 1-page business plan and a five year vision for my business. Yes, if you’re going to a bank for financing or looking for investors then you need substantially more than a 1-page business plan, but for managing your business and growing substantially in 2012 and monitoring your success, a 1-page business plan is more than adequate for you to guide your success by!

On January 19, 2012 from 9 AM to 2 PM I will be running a 1-page business plan course called Business Plan 101. I will be looking at all aspects of your business and completing very specific documents pertaining to marketing, sales, exposure, operations, systematization, focus and financial. I’ll be sharing all the details of how to take all the supporting documents and summarize them into a 1-page business plan. You will leave the event with a detailed plan of what you need to do for 2012, and your own personalized target knowing what you need to aim for in order to monitor and judge your success from month-to-month for the year ahead!

This course is only done in January of each year and if you’re interested in attending, please contact Karly at our office on 778 – 565 – 4090 or via e-mail at KarlyB@MYMsuccess.com.We have limited space available, at the time of writing this article there were only 8 seats available as the event is limited to a maximum of 30 people. Call now to ensure that you have a plan for 2012 for your business.

Here is the pricing for the event:

1. Non-Make your Mark students: $199.

2. Make Your Mark students: $149.

3. Make Your Mark Pinnacle Students: $99.

[Make Your Mark students are those people who have completed at least a full one-day event offered by Make Your Mark Training and Consulting Inc.]

Do You Have Challenges Managing Your Time?

Let me tell you one thing, “You are not alone!”

The #1 complaint of most Business Owners and Entrepreneurs is that they have no time and wish they could have more hours in the day… is this you?

If so, this post is something that will assist you in getting your time management back on track.

The joke of the whole thing is that you cannot manage time. There are only so many hours, minutes and seconds in a day, it’s what you do with them that is important!

You can truly only manage your commitments!

Here are a few major suggestions as we head into 2012:

1. Office Hours: If you work from home set office hours and only do income producing work during these hours! Print them out and put them up on the outside of your office door. I joke about it with my kids as I often work from home and I tell them that the only time they can disturb me is outside of office hours or if they have one of the following situations: blood, water, fire or wind.

2: Friendship or Personal Hours: Having lunch and tea with personal friends and not business opportunities during office hours is a loss of income producing time for your business. Book friendship times for evening and weekends – just like you would do if you worked in a standard office environment in a job.

3. Meetings: There are many people that will monopolize your time if you allow them. Ask people that want to meet with you to send you an agenda of what they want to talk about – you will be amazed at how short and focused your meeting become! Some people do get irritated when you ask for an agenda – it’s your right as your time is extremely valuable.

4. Saying NO more often: Often you say “YES” to all meeting and opportunities without understanding why you are meeting. If something does not interest you or someone will not send you an agenda, you have the right to say “Thank you for wanting to meet, and maybe we can do it another time”. There will always be opportunities out there, focus on meetings that can bring you results in your business. Learn to say “NO” more often and free up a ton of time in your business for growth and income generating meetings.

5. Set Intentions & Expected Results: Before you go to any meeting do you set intentions of what you want from the meeting? What results are you looking for; take the order, book the next appointment, have a demo, what are you after? You can sit and chit chat and have a meal or a tea meeting, but why are you there in the first place?

6. Set Your Commitments:

a. Take a weekly calendar and sit down on a Sunday evening and plan your week ahead.

b. Fill in all your commitments – eating, gym, yoga, kids to school, etc. All the activities that you have to do! Not your business activities.

c.  Now, fill in your weekly business activities you know you have to get done: blogging, marketing, emails, social media, follow-up, etc.

d. Now you will see the time you have left in the week to get all the other items on your to-do list done. Often, you will see that the time left over is a lot less than the number of items on your list. Great, you now know what you have to get done and what will have to wait for next week – this truly does assist you with prioritizing what needs to get done from week to week.

Planning your week and realizing that COMMITMENTS are your issue, not TIME MANAGEMENT!!!

In business we have limited time every day and by implementing the items above as you go into 2012 you will start to see that TIME is NOT an ISSUE!

The ISSUE is YOU and the commitments you make that uses up tons of your time doing activities that are not focused on growing your business.

I meet 1,000s of business owners throughout the year and it amazes me how many of them want to be successful, yet they are not prepared to do what ever it takes to achieve the results that they desire.

There is a huge difference between you having a DESIRE to be successful and having a HUNGER to achieve outrageous results.

You may ask what is the difference between DESIRE and HUNGER?

DESIRE is a nostalgic feeling that we get when we really want something – we can visualize it and feel it and that’s about how far it goes…

HUNGER is a deep seated core feeling that you will do whatever it takes to achieve the result you are after and you will not stop until you achieve it. In fact, you will not listen to people around you that are naysayers or have not built a successful business – you just go out and build until the result is achieved.

I often ask people if they want to be successful and they always reply “Of course I do!!!” then I say great, there is a networking event in Vancouver tonight where they expect 100s of business owners and potential customers… let’s go!

Then all the excuses start… I can’t, I have prior engagements, I am tired, I have had a long day already, I have to organize a sitter and it costs money… blah blah blah blah blah!

If you want success you have to cut the excuses and get off your butt and do whatever it takes – Cut the DESIRE and get a HUNGER for what you are doing!

People who are full of excuses & reasons & justifications are the ones who DESIRE to have success – and who bubble along and years down the line are still in the same place they were a few years back.

One of the key ingredients to convert you from DESIRE to HUNGER is making sure you are PASSIONATE about what you are doing. If you do not jump out of bed with a bounce in your step to go and do your business every day then how can you expect to have a HUNGER to do whatever it takes?

Are you prepared to do whatever it takes? And, I mean do whatever it takes?

You only have to be extreme for 6 – 12 months and you will be amazed by the results you will achieve! Let your loved ones know that you are going to be scarce and that it’s part of achieving results for the entire family!

This is a topic that I am hugely passionate about and it drives me crazy when people do not get out of their own way!

It’s really simple!

Cut the Excuses, Justifications and Reasons… convert DESIRE to HUNGER and you will be amazed by the RESULTS!

Making Money is One Thing… Keeping it is Another!

Are you making the money you want in your business and when you are making it do you know how to keep it and ensure your business is growing?

You are no alone, this is like most business owners – even some seasoned business owners could be significantly more successful if they just had processes in place for ensuring they had complete control over the money they are making, and ensuring that they achieve their goals of making tons of money and having lots of time off.

When you manage Cash Flow and know where your business is going to be in the next 12 – 24 months in detail, you get to understand the following:

1. HOW, WHEN and WHY to find financing for your business long before you need it!

2. How to truly understand all aspects of PROFITABILITY in your business.

3. HOW to make key financial decisions with minimal impact on your business.

4. How to work with your VENDORS to benefit your business and Cash Flow.

5. How to accurately determine your break-even point and what each dollar spent truly costs you!

6.) How to keep an eye on your dollars to ensure you know what your bookkeeper and accountant are doing.

7. How to stop financial disaster in your business… and smooth out the HUGE economic swings.

If you would like a basic Cash Flow Predictor to assist you with managing your Business and Personal finances for 2012, yes, the same sheet can be used for your personal financial management – please Contact me via our Make Your Mark Training and Consulting Inc FaceBook Page or send an email to Social@MYMSuccess.com with “Send Me My Cash Flow Predictor” in the subject line.

To learn more about how to build a powerful Cash Flow Predictor for your business you can come and attend PROFIT WARRIOR, a 1-day event for 9am – 5pm. Call the office (778-565-4090) to learn more from Karly and if you mention you saw this on our BLOG she will give you a BLOG SPECIAL price.

Be the EXPERT is really getting YOU to realize that you need to sell your products and/or services with confidence and RIGHTSELL the customer.

What’s RIGHT-SELLING?

Some people call this upselling, at Make Your Mark Training, we call it right-selling – making sure you sell your customer the right products and/or services to ensure they get the results or the solution that they want.

At Make Your Mark we say, “When you have a great product or service, you owe it to your customer to sell it to them well!”

In many instances we do not think about the opposite of not selling somebody the most appropriate combination of products and/or services that best suits their needs, and have clients returning or going somewhere else disgruntled because you did not deliver the RESULTS or SOLUTIONS they were looking for!

A few good examples to get your creative juices flowing:

A SERVICE: Chiropractor

When you go to see a Chiropractor and they do their evaluation and give you only the one treatment you are looking for and then let you leave their rooms, knowing that according to the injury you had, that 5 treatments would be ideal to get you back on track, they are doing you a disservice by allowing you to leave their practice. If you ask the Chiropractor WHEN should I book next and they say… maybe 1 – 2 weeks from now… they have done you a disservice.

They know what is ideal for you and should be informing you that according to your injury and after the initial treatment  that you need to return each week for the next 5 weeks to ensure the injury is easily overcome and that no further damage is done.

If they demand only one treatment and that’s it. It’s your choice to treat them knowing that it’s your reputation on the line. You may turn them away or convince them otherwise, but if you do just a single treatment and let them go… you have done them a disservice that could hurt your businesses reputation.

Of course this has to be done with integrity and heart – you only sell a package when you know it’s the RIGHT thing to sell your clients!

What packages can you sell in your business?

A PRODUCT: Migraine Product

If you sell a migraine product and only sell customers what they ask for, you are not right-selling them, especially if you know that people that suffer from migraines often suffer from insomnia and lethargy. By packaging products in groups you can let them know you are the expert by selling them the Migraine Relief Package that consists of 3 products; Migraine, Sleep and Energy – this is truly being the EXPERT and RIGHT-SELLING the clients.

A SERVICE: Bookkeeper/Accountant

As a bookkeeper you know that it’s best for a client to have their books done weekly or monthly or daily dependent on the size and type of business. If you ask a client how frequently they would like their books checked and updated, and you know it should be weekly, you are doing them a disservice.

What are some of the KEY things to focus on – starting NOW!

1. What can you do to RIGHT-SELL your clients?
2. What packages can you create that you believe you can sell? Remember to keep your packages simple, create VALUE and make them a better price than individual units, sessions, etc.
3. It’s also recommended to keep the number of packages to 3 – too many creates confusion.
4. Think about what your product or service does for the customer in terms of days/weeks/months after they have used it. What could they be experiencing that you could call and check-in with them about? Example: If you start a body cleanse and you drink a lot of coffee you will possibly experience headaches – you can call 48 hours after the start of the program and check-in with the client. Let them know you are the expert and what they may be experiencing. It’s amazing.

What can you do to increase your CONFIDENCE in what you sell?

1. You are an EXPERTS in your own right – own it!

Finally, remember that packages, programs, etc. do not sell themselves… FOLLOW-UP is critical!