Action Coach Portsmouth

Action Coach Portsmouth

Steve Mullins

Persistence Always Pays Off

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Persistence_Always_Pays_OffWhat do you do when that big project, contract, or opportunity you’ve been hoping for, even counting on doesn’t come through? Do you hang back to lick your wounds, feeling too shy or afraid to move forward confidently?

Sometimes we triumph over great odds to achieve our goals, and sometimes “fate” intervenes to give us tremendous failure. Persistence is the ability to keep moving forward in the wake of failure, in the midst of intense fear or fatigue, or even after reaching the summit of a long sought-after peak.

Persistence says, “When I have failed, I will use my remaining strength to take one step forward.” Persistence calls on you to ask for a referral from the client who didn’t give you the big contract. Persistence asks you to “strive, to seek, to find, and never to yield.” And, persistence invites you to do as Michael Jordan…who once said:

“I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot… and I missed. And I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is precisely… why I succeed”

Wanted More Leads

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Wanted_More_LeadsMost business owners assume that they must invest big amounts in new marketing campaigns in order to increase their lead generation. However, there are some very easy, cost-effective ways to exponentially increase your leads.

  1. Contact your existing customers:
    It is six times easier to sell to an existing customer than to sell a new customer. If you concentrate on and stay in contact with your existing customers, they are more likely to do more business with you. Think about new or complementary products that they may be interested in. Give them a call just to say hello and ask them how it is going. They will greatly appreciate your interest and will become your advocates.
  2. Ask for referrals:
    Your satisfied customers, happy employees and devoted friends/family will want you to succeed in your business endeavors. Ask them if they know of other like-minded customers who may be interested in your services. If you ask most people for help, they are usually willing to work with you. When asking for referrals, be specific with your associates. For example, ask them, “I am looking for people interested in getting in better health through new exercise programs”, or “My ideal client is a business owner with revenues between £1million and £10 million.

    • Identify a number of potential referral sources for the next year.
    • Schedule a lunch/breakfast with each referral, each month.
    • That will result in 12+ meetings and exponentially more new business contacts.
  3. Cold Calling:
    Want to know a quick and low-cost strategy that can generate massive results in your business, if practiced regularly? Simple techniques, like old-fashioned phone calls to suspects, warm leads or referrals, are usually used. The chief excuse of business owners for not using cold calling is lack of time. If you can’t (or won’t) do it, identify a resource within your team to handle this important task.

      Discipline yourself to stop what you’re doing for five minutes a day, and make calls. Just two calls per hour, every business day, will yield hundreds of calls over a year. If you have a target list, you could place a call to each, once every quarter to let them know you’re there and you care! Remember, even if today they are buying what you’re selling from someone else, you can position yourself to be the second choice for when things change!
      Focus on results, and set a daily goal; make calls until you reach the goal. This may be to get an appointment, sale or new referral (as appropriate.) In no time, this will become an effective habit/tool for growing your business. Once you’ve achieved your goal for the day, congratulate yourself and then go about doing the other tasks that confront you.

Always go by the equation: Massive action equals massive results or ma=mr.

 

Converting Leads into Customers

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Converting_Leads_into_CustomersOne of the biggest tragedies I see in business is watching a business owner spend significant time and effort generating leads for their business, but then not acting on them in a logical, methodical, repeatable way to convert those leads into paying customers.

You haven’t done that in your business have you? But I’ll bet you know someone (better to keep them nameless) who has a stack of business cards on their desk that they have collected through their networking activities but they have not been added to their customer database, no follow up has taken place, and they are essentially growing colder by the day. If that is you, no need to raise your hand. But it is time to get out of the trap and start turning those leads into paying customers- wouldn’t you agree?

To make improvements in this area, you simply have to start doing one thing- MEASURE your current conversion success rate! Most business owners have no clue what their conversion rate is. By simply measuring where you are, you will improve. It happens every time. Once you start measuring, you realize what you should be doing that you are not, and your results begin to improve.

Add to that a specific, focused approach to handling your leads and your conversion rate will go through the roof! And, the best part is, you can grow your business without spending one more dollar! You’ve already invested marketing dollars to generate the leads. Now, make the most of that investment by defining your specific, repeatable sales steps that will convert your leads into customers.

To get started, take a few minutes and write down the specific steps that you take each and every lead through to get them familiar with you and your business. Each business has a different set of steps in their selling process. Some have just a few steps- most often where the average item price for a transaction is relatively small. Others have many steps- most often where the average item price is relatively large. You must decide how familiar a new prospect needs to be with you and your business in order to pull out their wallet and make a purchase. If it is a complicated product or service, you will likely need more steps in your selling process.

Once you have your current process steps written down, ask yourself, is everyone in my business doing it the same way? If not, why not? How can you have a “best in class” approach if you allow each individual to “roll their own”? How can you test and measure new approaches if you don’t first start with a standard? How can you improve and predict your outcome if there are multiple approaches? The answer to all of these questions is you cannot!

I often hear business owners say they would lose their best sales person if they made them follow a standard sales process. Let me ask you- whose business it? Is it yours’ or your sales person’s? Who has all the risk in the deal? Who is setting the expectations and limitations? My hope is that it is you- the business owner. Don’t let the personal preferences of others dictate how you will run your business- unless you like working for them!

Establish your specific selling process steps, train your team to follow the selling process, support it with the necessary materials, and measure the results of each specific step. Make changes to your sales process based on the results of your measurements. Test and Measure. Test and Measure. Again and again. Make incremental improvements and hold yourself and your team accountable for the results. This is the recipe for success.

One last thought. As you build your step by step sales process, be mindful of the thought that in every sales process there is a point where your prospect will do some specific physical something to indicate they are ready to buy. If you can identify that “physical something” for your business, then point all of your efforts to make that happen, your conversion rate will improve. I call this the “get on the boat” moment. One of my clients has a 100 person catamaran on a local lake and does corporate events, private parties, wedding, etc. His specific physical something for his prospects is to get them to step foot on his boat. Once they do that, they are so impressed that they are very likely to sign a contract. What is your “get on the boat” moment?

Stay focused. Stay determined. Be determined. Build a repeatable process for converting leads into customers. Your business success will become a certainty.

Retaining Your Customers

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Retaining_Your_CustomersCustomer loyalty should be a key focus in any business, with good reason. Estimates suggest it can cost six times as much to get a new customer as it does to keep an existing one.

A business that is not paying proper attention to this is like a farmer milking a cow with a hole in the bucket. You have to work even harder at milking while the leak continues. Working out how big the hole is for your business is the first step to take in improving your customer loyalty, the next is understanding how and why they are leaving.

Working out how many customers leaked out is not just simply comparing the No. of customers you have now as compared to how many you had this time last year; that would give you your net gain/loss of customers.

The formula for working out how many customers you have lost in a given period is:

Total No. of Customers =
(No. of Customers at the start of the measuring pd.) X (No. of Customers at the end of the measuring pd.) + (No. of new customers added over the pd.)

So to measure how many customers you have lost, you really have to measure how many you have gained!

It is important to find out why do customers leave? The six main reasons for customers taking their business elsewhere are:

* 1 % Death
* 3% move away
* 5% buy from a friend
* 9% sold by a competitor
* 14% product/price
* 68% perceived indifference

The biggest reason of all is perceived indifference i.e. the customers don’t think that you care about them or that they matter to you. If this is the reason for them leaving, then it is a really tough job to win them back. The key focus should be to keep them happy while they are a customer very much a case of prevention being better than the cure.

These days with the abundance of alternative options available to customers, you really have to focus on keeping them satisfied. Simply providing them with the product or service is not good enough

Here are seven tips for providing that extra bit of attention that will make your customers want to keep coming back:

  • Master delivery. Deliver on time every time. Inform you customer if there is a problem and explain how you are going to be dealing with it. And then follow up and make sure that everything turned out ok. Make sure your invoices are correct and delivered in a timely fashion.
  • Thank you notes thanking them for their order or business.
  • Follow up calls to find out if everything is ok (like they do when you have a meal in a restaurant)
  • Prior notice of new products or of an upcoming sale.
  • Deliver your product with an unexpected gift.
  • Send cards. Birthday, anniversary or any other date relevant to the customer.
  • Depending on the product, a follow up call to offer them another or a refill or an add-on.

Most of these things are not difficult to do. Yet very few businesses do them. Make them a part of the way you do business and you will have made a very important and valuable improvement to your business.

9 Effective Marketing Techniques You Can Afford

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9_Effective_Marketing_Techniques_You_Can_AffordMarketing is paramount in these times of economic change.

So how do you keep your marketing efforts alive despite a dwindling fund?

There are many marketing initiatives available that are free of cost or have a minimal cash outlay with a relatively high return that small businesses can effectively employ to remain competitive.

Here are 9 such techniques to help you survive and thrive through the present tough times:

 1. Networking – Networking with local business groups, local ‘service’ groups such as Round Table, Lions etc, or even at your children’s school or the church, etc. can be a great marketing technique that does not cost a thing.

2. Referral Policy– Ask your existing customers to recommend you to a friend and, if necessary, give them some form of reward (high perceived value to them, low cost to you) for doing this.

3. Targeted Direct Mail– A carefully written letter sent to a targeted list and then followed up to increase response rate can work wonders for your business.

4. “A” Board– An “A” board in front of your premises.

  5. Improved Signage– Improve your signage to cover the services you offer.

 6. Marketing Collateral– Leaflets promoting all your services sent out with invoices or direct to your customer base is a cost-effective marketing technique.

7. Email Newsletters– While it can cost a bit to set up a template, email newsletters come with only a small cost to use as long as you have the time to write the content yourself. There is no postage associated and these are free to send.

  8. Free Poster Signs– Post signs on your vehicles – you have a free poster site, why not use it!

9. Internet/Online Marketing– There are a  plethora of free/low cost options available online, such as blogs, social media, membership communities like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc. where you can market your products and services. YouTube can be used effectively to demonstrate your product and with the help of social media tools, these videos can reach a newer, wider audience.

It is important to remember that axing your marketing budget does not mean that you also minimize your marketing initiatives.

The biggest mistake businesses make during a recession is to cut down on their marketing activities. Using these free, low cost marketing techniques will help your company stay afloat during these tumultuous times.