Do Your Choices Support Your Business?
February 28, 2009
I met with a woman this week who feels desperate to bring more income into her business. She is a hard worker, but the money she has in hand to show for her constant activity is not enough to cover the bills. The stress and pressure she feels right now is extreme.
Our conversation led to a pretty clear picture of someone who is smart, has her heart in her business, and truly wants to have her business succeed. As I listened to her, though, I also saw that her business is failing because she doesn’t stay focused throughout her day, making consistent choices that support her business.
Entrepreneurs are active and energetic. We have a tendency to say yes to too many activities, though, and this waters down our effectiveness, energy, and success. Here is what I noticed about this woman:
· She has no uninterrupted focus time each day, but rather she lurches from crisis to crisis throughout her day.
· This behavior exhausts her and leaves her little brain power or energy to give to work that supports future income.
· She sits on boards that she has been on for many years, left over from a volunteer position she held over 15 years ago. Much of the energy for that volunteer group is gone, and she is the only active participant.
· She makes choices that keep her rushed, tense, and lacking in time to invest in herself.
· She has no awareness at all that she continually makes choices that leave her pressed for time, and unwilling then to invest in the time it will take to pull herself out of her misery.
Sometimes we have to make tough choices to pull ourselves out of the mud we’ve gotten ourselves into. I wondered if this woman would see how her own choices are making her unsuccessful and miserable. By the end of our meeting she had decided to attend an upcoming half day workshop that would give her time to focus on what she truly wanted, and she had asked for an available appointment time. But within 24 hours of making these choices, she cancelled them both. The workshop disappeared, giving way to a volunteer opportunity at her church on the same day. The consulting time disappeared into packing for an upcoming trip, because her other activities had pushed her to having to pack only a few hours before she actually had to catch her plane.
The truth is, this woman’s business will not succeed unless she consistently and persistently says no to most activities that take her focus and time onto something else. She’s in a crisis. While volunteering at her church is admirable, it isn’t admirable to lose focus on what amounts to saving her business. She cannot see that she has a choice, and that lack of vision is what will kill her business in the end. She feels she “has” to volunteer because she always has.
Her two-step process for saving herself before she spends time saving someone else is to admit that she has choices and start to exercise them in support of the business she is desperate to have. I don’t know if this woman will see her path. As with most entrepreneurs, she is strong-willed and thinks that because she wants to do something it is the right thing to do.
Even entrepreneurs have to work at being humble. We can only do so much and be effective and successful. Knowing when to make the choice to say no, and committing to doing what our businesses need at this moment in time to survive are behaviors we can’t go without. These are two critical skills to make your business thrive.
© Sue Painter
Turn a Business Dilemma into a Marketing Opportunity
February 7, 2009
One of my colleagues in Ali Brown’s Millionaire Protegee Club had a dilemma. Another person she knew slightly, in a similar coaching business, asked for her $350 information product for free, saying she would use it with her clients and recommend it. My colleague had a bad feeling about it, and didn’t want to give her product away so that this coach could use it free with her own clients.
Here’s how to turn that dilemma into a marketing opportunity. First of all, realize that this person has an interested in your product – even though she wants it free, she DOES want it. That’s a start. Here are the steps to take:
· Get a face-to-face meeting if distance isn’t an issue, otherwise, use phone
· Thank her for her interest and tell her you are complimented that she is so positive about the product
· Tell her that you would like to create a win-win for you both
· You won’t give your product away, but you would like to offer an affiliate relationship
· The terms are that she buy your product at full price, offers it to her clients personally (through her e-zine, on her website, etc.). For every unit she sells, she gets a 50% commission.
This strategy goes a long way toward solving the dilemma.
1. From an attraction standpoint, 50% is a very high commission; the coach will be intrigued with the opportunity to earn some decent money. Be sure to point out that with only two sales she has repaid herself the full cost of your product.
2. It keeps the coach from using your product in an underhanded way, and keeps her honest.
3. It gives YOU 50% of your product sales to a market (hers) that you otherwise would probably never reach.
4. It puts that coach’s recommendation on your product, which you can turn around and use in your own marketing materials “recommended by XXXX.”
5. You can even as part of the deal get that coach to do a video testimonial of your product and place that on your website (the coach will do this; it gives HER exposure, too!).
All in all, this strategy lets you make a customer and a salesperson out of a potential problem person. You have offered good terms, so there is a very high likelihood that she’ll go for it. If she turns it down, you have made your position clear and have still solved your dilemma.
I love solving marketing dilemmas like this. Try using this strategy when you have a similar issue, and let me know how it goes.
© Sue Painter
Marketing 101 – Watch Your Words!
February 3, 2009
This morning I ran through a long list of media queries from reporters who are looking for sources for their stories. I do this for my marketing clients and myself, so to say I’ve read through a few thousand queries is no exaggeration. This morning I found one that is a perfect example of how NOT to phrase things. Here it is:
We’re looking for 10 entrepreneurs who started businesses beyond the age of 50. We’d like to know what inspired them at such an advanced age, what they brought with them from their former careers, how they keep up with younger entrepreneurs, etc.
I’m not sure of the age of this writer, but I would bet he isn’t anywhere close to the “advanced age” of 50. That phrasing more than likely turned off many responders who would have made interesting subjects for the story. And if that phrase didn’t do it, the implication that a 50 year old entrepreneur can’t match the energy of a younger business owner just might have.
There’s quite a bit in the media about young workers versus older workers – something I dislike seeing because frankly, right now, I think we need every single worker of any age, race, or creed we can get to help us out of our economic funk. Queries are advertisements, in effect. Writers need to find the subjects for their stories, just as business owners need to find customers for their products and services. I doubt you would write an advertisement that said something like, “we sell comfortable shoes for those over the advanced age of 50 who still manage to find the energy to walk.” I chuckle just thinking about it. Watch your phrasing – I feel sure this writer was totally oblivious to the tone of his query (which tells me something about him as a writer) but still, the bet is that he limited the responses to his query.
© Sue Painter