Action Coach Portsmouth

Action Coach Portsmouth

Steve Mullins

Selecting Your Strategies

By

Once you have decided on the target market you are approaching and how you are truly different to your competitor in that market place (both covered in previous blogs), it is then time to evaluate and choose the marketing strategies you are going to use. One of the biggest frustrations we find when speaking to business owners is that they choose the next marketing strategy based on gut feeling or the best offer they can find, in some cases even reacting to a great offer over the phone or online without considering if it gets them to their desired target markets. We work the opposite way, once you know your target market you then need to research which strategies will get you in front of them in the best way possible.

When selecting your next strategy there is a few points to consider:

Start where your chance of success is best – Start your marketing on more direct strategies. Getting you in front of your customer with a more direct approach should create more awareness for you and use strategies that are different but compliment other strategies that are already working.

What are you looking to achieve – What results are you looking to get from the new strategy? Are you looking to attract people to your showroom/website or are you looking for them to purchase directly? The different outcomes will require different marketing strategies, for example using a leaflet to attract your prospects to your showroom or website could be great, however getting them to buy directly from the leaflet could be a tall task. Be clear on your objectives. If you have a high value product or service you need to demonstrate this through your marketing.

Multiple strategies to convert a customer – Start to understand how your customers buy from you. Do they need to see you multiple times before they start to notice and trust the message you are portraying to them? On average, a customer needs 7 touches before they will buy. Build your marketing around this. You should have a different marketing plan with multiple strategies for each target. Where does your target go to shop? What media do they use to find the products and services they want to buy? Make sure you cover all bases that are relevant to your target market.

Visibility marketing – A lot of business owners that we meet ask us about ‘Visibility Marketing’, and although I believe in multiple touches, some visibility marketing I see is questionable. The best way to know if it is working is to test and measure the results from each strategy. I do however believe that visibility marketing, if done correctly, can add to the number of touches your prospects receive. Social media is a great example; it is very cost effective and can produce some great results, however this needs to be approached in the same way as all other marketing activities – be specific and direct it to the audience you are looking to attract. Radio is another great example. It can build great visibility if done correctly but your message must be right. Don’t buy into any strategy on the basis it will improve your visibility, do your homework. For example, does your target audience listen to the station you are looking to advertise on?

Your Marketing Mix – When looking at any marketing plan make sure your build a number of different strategies into your plan. This should allow you to get better consistency and not become reliant on one type of marketing to build your customer base.

As always remember with any new strategy you run or edit testing and measuring is the only sure way to know if it truly is working and getting a great return on investment.

Building Strategic Alliances To Grow Your Business

By

Screen Shot 2016-01-13 at 22.06.05A strategic alliance is when your company enters into a loose partnership with another business to help each other make extra profits.

Here are four strategies for building effective strategic alliances:

  1. Define your target market. This is a fundamental when it comes to any form of marketing. Failure to define your target market will result in failed marketing efforts every time. Who are the people most likely to buy your product or service? Think about your average customer in terms of age, sex, income, where they live and what their interests are. Once you understand who your customers are, you’ll have a much better idea of what they need and how you can sell the solution.
  2. Decide whether a strategic alliance makes sense for your business. If your target market is very broad and your offer is very appealing, you may be better off advertising in the newspaper. Strategic alliances tend to work in situations where there is a particular group of people you want to target and there are other non-competitive businesses already dealing with them. For example, your company might offer corporate training services. You could consider partnering with a stationery supplier with a predominantly corporate client base.
  3. Identify businesses that would make good strategic allies. You need to partner with businesses that are not competing with your in terms of products or services. For example, a carpet dealer might partner with a lighting store. Both appeal to customers moving into new homes, but they’re not competitors. Each business could give out discount vouchers for the other, and both would get new clients.

Ensure that companies you partner with are positioned at the same end of the price and quality spectrum – you need to share the same target market. Partner with businesses who treat their customers well and whose customers like them.

  1. Decide what you can offer. Commission is a good basic option. You could give 10% of every sale made based on a referral from your ally. Or, if the referral will result in regular repeat business for you (for example, if you’re a hairdresser as opposed to a car salesperson), you could give the ally more or even all of the profit from the first sale. It will certainly boost the number of clients they send your way. You could even try the approach of just giving the ally business a good reason to refer you. The only thing you’re offering the ally here is the security of knowing they’re sending their customers to the best business possible. This works well for businesses that have to refer clients somewhere. For example, an optometrist has to give people an idea of where to buy glasses.
  2. Find a system that works for you. You can choose a referral system, where you partner with one or two other businesses and refer business to each other. Or you could form a collective. This works well for people in the service industry. For example, if you’re a graphic designer, partner with a copy writer and a web developer to take on website projects together.

Another option is to give gifts to your customers to keep them loyal to you. For example, if you sell cars, you want to stay top of mind, even three years down the line when the customer is eventually looking for a new car. You might approach a day spa and say, “Most of my customers are executives you can afford and would enjoy a massage. If you give me a discount voucher for £50 off a massage, I’ll email it to all my clients and write a personal recommendation for you.” That way, the customer gets a great offer, you get to be the good guy and stay top of mind, and the day spa gets potential new customers.

You can also do the reverse – gift other businesses whose clients you want to target. For example, if you’re a management coach, you might approach a stationery supplier and say, “I’d like to offer you a gift to pass on to your top clients. It will make them love you and offer them genuine benefits. I’m a management consultant and I normally charge £500 an hour, but for your clients, I’ll do a full one-hour appraisal and performance evaluation free of charge.” The stationery supplier now has something to offer that differentiates it from competitors, and you have a personal recommendation from a supplier that your prospect already trusts. Win-win!

 

Stop All Prospecting Today!

By

Screen Shot 2016-01-13 at 21.58.40How much time do you or your sales staff spend looking for new prospects rather than developing a stronger relationship with your best clients?

At this point I typically hear “I’ve already gotten my current clients to buy, it’s time to move on to the next prospect!”

OK, but how do you get that next prospect?

There’s newspaper advertising, cold calling, networking, trade shows, radio, TV, the list goes on and on.

What’s missing?

Asking current clients for qualified referrals.

A few months ago, I was talking to a business owner whose company had serviced the Hampshire community for more than 50 years.

He spent nearly an hour discussing the difficulties of identifying and landing new business in today’s market. He informed me that the yellow pages aren’t as effective as they used to be, most print advertising doesn’t work and that most salespeople were terrible at finding new leads.

After he was finished, I asked him if he provided his customers with a good service/product.

He was proud to say that he did, and also mentioned that he had between 175 and 200 current customers. In addition, he hadn’t received a complaint for any reason in more than 6 months.

The next question I asked would tell me what I really wanted to know, and what I probably already knew. I asked him if he asked current customers for more business or for referrals.

He explained that he was much too busy taking care of current orders and managing his sales staff to bother his current customers with that type of request.

So he has 200 satisfied customers that took him years to find, and he thinks that the best way to grow his business is to continue working on strategies that he already admits don’t work very well?

I explained to him that it would make more sense to go and ask those satisfied customers if they wouldn’t mind helping him find a new client.

Haven’t you earned the right to ask after years of great service?

For the first time during our meeting he was silent. Although a little embarrassed, he admitted that I was right.

In the bestselling book, The Power of Focus the authors recommend the following steps to growing your business:

  • Create a list of your most valuable ‘core clients.’
  • Take a close look at this list and review the amount of time you spend with these people. Is it sufficient? Do you enjoy quality time with them, or just a few seconds on the telephone?”

So, how do you identify and stay in touch with these core clients?

  • Determine the characteristics of your best clients.  These clients typically bring you the most business (and profit), appreciate your product/service, regularly refer you to others and are strategically related to your target market.
  • Compile a simple strategy for keeping in touch with these clients.  This will include a phone call, lunch, stopping buy to visit their staff, etc. The key is making sure that you have regular and meaningful contact – tickets to the big game every 6 months aren’t good enough. Remember, the stronger these relationships and the more satisfied these core clients are, the better and more qualified referrals will be.
  • Once you are satisfied that you have adequately developed a solid relationship with your clients, it is time to ask for that referral.  Don’t just send them an email or mention it in passing!  Remember, you have earned the right (through the delivery of a good product/service) to ask for this referral.  Schedule a meeting to talk about your request and remember to be specific about the perfect candidate for your services.

Now, I am not saying that prospecting is a bad idea. Every business needs new customers and prospecting has to be a key component in your growth strategy.

But, before you hire a new salesperson or send out another direct mail piece, make sure that you have a solid strategy for developing meaningful relationships with your best customers. These relationships will result in your most qualified and profitable prospects.

I encourage you to spend the next few minutes thinking about your best customers. Who are they? And more importantly, when is the last time you spoke to them? Start your list today!

What’s Your WHY?

By

Businessman superhero

When I hit the three year mark in my own business, I did what many business owners and entrepreneurs do, I hit a wall.  No matter what I did, I couldn’t seem to find my way around it, over it, or through it.  It wasn’t my sales or marketing skills, it wasn’t the delivery of my services, it was something bigger that I could not figure out.  It’s funny how the world works, but I ended up at a coaches conference at about this time and in the first hour of the first day of a 3 day conference, I learned what my wall was all about.  What was missing was that deep something inside of each of us that inspires and motivates us to keep going, to want to achieve more – I had lost contact with my WHY.

Your WHY is that internal motivator that keeps you going when the going gets tough – it is your personal inspiration that drives you to stay the extra hour, run the extra mile, make the hard decisions.  So let’s take a look at what goes into your “why”.

The formula that I use is (T/G) + (Pa) + (Pu) + (F) + (B) + (V) +(C) = WHY, which can be defined as follows.

 Talents/Gifts – What are your God given talents and gifts?  How do you use them to make the world a better place?  We are all born with certain talents and gifts, and we are expected to use them for the benefit of all around us. 

Passion – What are you passionate about?  What is your favorite cause, what stirs up your emotions and fills you with energy?  What makes you want to jump out of bed and get going in the morning?

Purpose – Your purpose is your intended outcome that guides your decisions and actions.  What is it that you intend to achieve in the end? 

Faith – Faith can be expressed in many ways, and includes both belief in a higher power and belief in your fellow man/woman.  It is also described as complete confidence in a person, plan, power, etc…

Beliefs – Your beliefs are those ideas that you hold to be true.  They are not necessarily factually true, but they are the truth in your mind.  They can range from simple beliefs about yourself and your capacity to learn or achieve, to more complex beliefs about money and family.  We are all limited by our beliefs, and rarely achieve beyond them.

Values – Your values are those things and ideas which you hold to be important.  What are the concepts that are important to your core?

Courage – Courage is defined as “a quality of spirit that enables you to face danger or pain without showing fear”.  It is the ability to rise above those around you who shrink at the slightest hint of risk to do what you know is right and good, to act with conviction of purpose and in accordance with your values, no matter how difficult it seems.

So take a look inside of yourself and rate yourself in each of the categories.  Spend some time acknowledging your talents and gifts, rediscover your passions.  Define your intended outcomes, your purpose.  Revisit your faith, identify actions to strengthen it, regardless of its source or destination.  Identify your positive beliefs about yourself and reinforce them, make a concerted effort to overcome your negative beliefs, replacing them with new positive beliefs to work towards.  Gain clarity about your values, and make sure that your actions and decisions are congruent with them.  Lastly, have courage, and continue to take the high road, do what you know is right whether it is popular or not, and never look back on what might have been.  Our futures are in front of us, not behind us.

Thinking like a Business Owner or an Employee?

By

bossemployerI meet too may business owners who still have an employee mentality. For some its because they were employees before starting their own businesses and can’t change the habit and for others they fall into it and then can’t get out of it.

Its time to remind yourself of why you started your business.

The dream…

  • More freedom
  • Could do it better than your old boss
  • Financial security
  • Choice
  • Autonomy
  • Work life balance
  • Because you didn’t just want a job!

However the reality is often…

  • Lowest paid in the business
  • Guilty when not there
  • Longest hours in the business
  • No freedom
  • Doing work that doesn’t add value or you don’t enjoy
 Too many business owners undervalue their worth and do what they have employees for. So try this exercise below.

Write out all the things you do but put them in boxes of skill level high to low and value to the business high to low.

Simon Buck

I increasingly find there are business owners who can earn the business £1000’s an hour when they are out meeting customers or strategically working on the business but can’t spend the time because they are doing administrative tasks that they could outsource for £10 an hour or give to the team. How crazy is that!?

Sometimes we need to stop and look where we add value and what we need to do more of and what we need to stop altogether to ensure we are in that space. Stop feeling guilty about leaving your team to it while you grow the business, after all that’s why you built a team around you, right?

Its time to fall back in love with your business and start thinking like a business owner focused on adding value and not being drawn into the business for the sake of saving a wage.

Setting Your Goals

By

Setting_Your_GoalsSetting Your Goals. It’s ok to admit it, most business owners go through the entire year without a real clear picture of the goals they have for their business. Just going through the paces, week after week, without a clue whether they are ahead or behind. I think the reason most business owners do this is because if they never commit to a specific goal, then they can’t be disappointed when they miss it. It keeps them from feeling worse about their lack of a real plan to succeed.

Are you going to make 2016 different? Let’s start by setting very specific goals. Then make sure everyone on the team knows your goals and then measure your progress towards your goals on a regular basis.

Write down your goals for this year’s race in the following categories: Revenue Growth and Profitability, Customer Satisfaction, New Market Expansion, and Operational Efficiency. If you have other specific areas that are critical to your success, then write down a goal in those areas as well. Be specific. What do you want to accomplish in each particular area of your business? When do you want to be at that goal? Who is going to take the lead in this specific area?

Now, if your goals are for where you want to be by the end of the year then I want you to go back and break them up into quarterly goals. Rather than staring at a huge, seemingly unachievable goal, it will be more motivating, more achievable if you state it in quarterly terms. Where do you want to be by the end of March? How about the end of June? How about the end of September?

Making the goals more timely and achievable will motivate you and your team to accomplish them. If yours is a manufacturing business or is dependent on daily, repetitive processes, then you may wan to state your goals on a monthly or even weekly basis. We can all learn from Lawrence of Arabia who led an army across the Sahara Desert, a feat never before accomplished, by keeping them focused on small, achievable goals which each led to the larger ultimate goal. We need this and our team members do as well.

Now that you have your goals written, determine how you are going to share them with your partners, your team and the person who is going to hold you accountable to them – your business coach. You must go public with your goals if you intend to achieve them. Shine a light on them. Don’t hide them just in case you do not achieve them or you can be certain that is exactly what will happen!

Lastly, begin measuring your progress against your goals. This is critical. Having a goal is one thing, but having a measurement system so you can see your progress on a regular basis is the key to victory! Keep it simple. Find a place to record your progress on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Share the results. Celebrate the small wins. Make corrections and adjustments on a regular basis. These tactics will keep you and your team focused and will give you the highest probability setting your goals for success!