Can You Really Describe Your Ultimate Target Market?
February 7, 2010
One of the real “rookie” mistakes made by new entrepreneurs is to completely fail to know her target market. This is something that is very easy to spot. A few of the signs are:
- Her business is not thriving, meaning she needs more customers and she is not financially successful.
- When asked who she works with, she replies “Oh, I work with just about anyone.”
- If asked to thoroughly and completely describe her target market, she is flustered and can’t give more than a sentence.
The “Oh, I work with just about anyone” response is one I’ve heard from both new and not-so-new entrepreneurs many times. So many times, in fact, that it now drives me a little nuts. When someone says that, they are setting no boundaries for who they work with, which is a deadly thing. Let me ask the “just about anyone” entrepreneurs these questions:
1. Does it matter to you if a customer stiffs you?
2. Are you open 24/7?
3. If you were, for instance, a seller of curtains and blinds, would you drive 400 miles to sell a set of blinds to someone?
Of course, the answer to each of these is almost always NO! And that’s a good, thing, because that entrepreneur has just started on a path of better describing her target market. Her target market are people who have the money to pay for her products or services, she works with those who contact her during specific days and hours of business, and she has a limited geographical area in which to sell her blinds. This isn’t a complete description of her target market, but it is a start.
You can picture the creation of your target market as setting fences and gates around a specific group of people with whom you really want to work. You might not be as blatantly obvious about it as the gatekeepers are at hot night clubs, where one must stand outside on the sidewalk and get personally picked to go inside, but that is one very good example of a business who is very picky about who they want to serve.
I’ve learned about finding your niche and describing your target market from 3 or 4 of my coaches and mentors, but the one who made me work the hardest to describe my market, hands down, was Suzanne Falter-Barnes. She has a very long list of questions that one must answer to get through one of her platform building classes. The first time I saw that fat list of questions I just about fainted. In fact, the document she proposed I fill out to describe my market was 17 pages long! Still, Suzanne knows her stuff and I was there to learn, so I plowed into the questions. At the end, I felt like I’d invented something akin to a kid’s secret playmate. I started getting actual pictures of how my target market person looked, how she dressed, what she spent her money on, and more. I got so familiar with her in that 17 pages of ruthless questioning that I decided I knew her well enough to name her, for Pete’s sake! And that is what I strongly suggest you do, too.
My suggestion is to sit down with your computer or a piece of paper and describe a “sample” person from your target market as if she (or he) is a character in a book you are writing, and it’s up to you to fill your reader’s head with a detailed, specific, colorful image of the character you are writing about. Describe age, education, the kind of work she does, where she lives, her likes and dislikes – anything you can think of that will add to the picture in your head. This may lead you to dig around on the web for demographic or other information.
Spend quality time here, for it pays off in the end. Ask yourself (with pen and paper or keyboard nearby) “who is the most perfect customer for me?” If you have a hard time doing that, prime the pump by listing the characteristics of your most favorite or best customer so far. From there, dream on. Who would be delightful to work with? Who would you dread working with? What characteristics drive you crazy? Who have you worked with who bugs you so much you hope she never calls you again? You get the picture – and that’s whole point. For here is a secret about financially successful entrepreneurs:
Those who describe and visualize their target market well have started the process of manifesting exactly that type of customer for themselves. You now have a vision of who you want to attract, in detail. Put that right on your business vision board and keep it in your mind’s eye, for who you focus on tends to come your way.
Having this vision and description on hand also makes it easier to walk away from business that isn’t right for you, doesn’t truly interest you, and has a downside to it. (The downside being that while you are spending time with uninteresting client A, you cannot very well be also working with or running into very interesting and exciting client B. This is called “opportunity cost.”) Realize that it actually COSTS YOU to work with the wrong customer, for you are giving up the opportunity to work with who is just right for you.
Taking the time to dream up your ideal target market person makes finding that type of person much easier. You now know where to focus your efforts. If you are spending a lot of time and money networking in a group of direct marketers, and these are not your target market, it’s time to make a change. Pull your time and money from the wrong group, and go find the right group. You’ll find more and better business in the new group and waste less of your precious time.
When you are creating marketing plans, writing sales copy, or pulling together a presentation you’ll be able to keep your secret target market person right with you, writing to them. There will be less agony over creating these things.
And finally, when you have the opportunity to build a relationship with a potential customer, you will be much more at ease because, after all, you will pretty much feel as if you know that person in a way. You’ll be confident that you’ve spent time with someone who has a much higher chance of needing what you offer. This will shorten your sales cycle and make you more money faster. I don’t know of any entrepreneur who doesn’t want that!
So, get that blank paper or computer screen and get going. Breath some life into your target market, and you’ll breath new life into your business, as well. It’s a win-win for every entrepreneur.
(c) Sue Painter
Who Is In Your Entrepreneurial Community?
February 6, 2010
For the past few years now I’ve experimented with just about every method of coaching and mentoring that is available to solo professional and entrepreneurs. All of them have their pros and cons. But one thing that I’ve come to know for sure is that if you are in your own business, you need a great community of like-minded entrepreneurs around you. Why?
- Running your own business is a solitary endeavor. Decisions are up to you and you alone. You need the perspective of other business owners to round out your own thoughts. The perspective of your employees (if you have any) isn’t the same thing.
- Your own energy waxes and wanes. I’m not talking about the moon or hormones, either. The best business owners know that their own energy has to attract others to them – good staff, great customers, good deals for rents or whatever else. And it is very hard to keep your own energy up where it needs to be without sometimes drawing from the good energy of others.
- Time inevitably puts you in the box. What do I mean by this? When you created your business you did it to put forward a new, not previously done type of business. You felt what you had to offer was unique and special. In other words, you were out of the box. But as time rocks on, your own thinking gets boxed in by the very dailiness of what you do, by your own fatigue, and by the fact that others will emulate you. To keep on re-creating a business that continually pleases and serves your customers, you need to keep yourself out of the box.
- Your ideas, although they are great, can be sharpened and improved by your entrepreneurial community. Simply put, multiple heads are better than one. Here’s a quick example of this. In one of my own communities, a woman had a deal with a book publisher for her very first book. But she was balking about what the publisher wanted to title the book, taking issue with both the main title and the tagline. She brought it up in our next get together, only to find that her adamant opinion was not shared by a single one of us! We all though the title was good and that, furthermore, the publisher knew what would sell much more than the author did. As I pointed out, the author is the subject matter expert but her publisher is the marketing and sales expert for her book. All but one of the entire community basically told her to suck it up. And after she listened to us, she did! She ended up coming all the way back around to what the publisher had suggested, with only a very minor one-word change. Which leads me to my next point about the benefit of being in an entrepreneurial community….
- It helps you get your own ego out of the way, and think about what you offer from your customer’s point of view. Believe you me, you will ONLY be successful if you offer what your customers want and need, not what you in all your wisdom think they need.
I could probably come up with a few more good reasons, but I think you, smart as you are, get the point. It may take a village to raise a child, but it takes a community to foster a solo business. I cannot even begin to list for you all that I have learned from constantly participating in my own communities. I’ve gotten both wonderful, gentle, loving support and a sharp kick in the pants….and both have been beneficial to me. It will be the same for you.
I’m excited to tell you that I’m forming a new community for solo business owners that will offer these benefits ( and more) in just about a month. I’m calling it Private Matters because I’m creating a group to which you can bring your most private thoughts and worries. These deeply affect your business, they matter. So….in a nutshell….Private Matters. It will be small, full of sharp thinkers and dedicated solo business owners, and it will change you and your business in ways that you can only dream of. If you feel you are a good match for Private Matters, you can e-mail me and I’ll make sure you get the application and information.
Meanwhile, keep your business focused on who you serve, what those people need, and how you can best offer products and services that meet those needs. And remember to reach out for community regularly. Both you and your customers will benefit.
(c) Sue Painter
How To Set A Goal And Make It Stick
January 30, 2010
When I speak, I often engage the audience, working interactively. Why? Because I know that the more we engage all our senses (not just our ears) when we hear new material, the more it helps us to anchor that new material within us. I also know that anchored information will more likely be used when we return to our offices. Instructional designers call this “transfer of training.” Proving that what we teach is actually taken and used in someone’s work is the holy grail of professional training.
When you decide to set a new goal for yourself, how do you do it? Do you sit down and make a list? Do you write out an affirmation? Do you simply think to yourself one day while you’re in the car “I need to do thus-and-such” and set out to do it? Whatever your method, you can have a higher degree of sticking to your new goal if you include as many of your senses as you can to help you along.
There are several ways of doing this, and most of the methods I know work pretty well. One that is popular right now is called Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). EFT is often used to change our emotional reaction to a certain situation. For instance, if you get nervous speaking in front of people, you can learn to use EFT to say affirmations and tap yourself on specific points of the body. EFT is nicknamed “tapping” because you actually do tap yourself repeatedly at specific spots as you are saying the sentences you construct about your goal — the change you desire. I’ve used EFT more than once and if it is used consistently, it has worked for me. To learn more about EFT, you can contact my friend Annie Wills, at Full Circle Coaching.
I’m going to give you another way to involve your senses and make your new goal stick, though. It is often called VAK, which stands for Visual/Auditory/Kinesthetic. I like VAK because it is another way to become an embodied entrepreneur. Simply put, that means that you are engaged in your work with your heart, soul, mind AND body – and you are sure to be quite successful if you can achieve that!
So, to set a goal and put the power of VAK behind it, here’s what you do:
- Write your goal down.
- Close your eyes, and ask yourself “what will you see that will let you know you’ve attained your goal?” Even better, you can give this question and the following ones to a friend and ask them to walk you through this and answer to her, out loud. Take a breath or two, and see what pictures you get, what you’ll see when your goal is met. You will probably get more than one vision. Open your eyes, and write each of them down.
- Again, close your eyes and ask yourself “what will people say to you once you’ve reached the goal?” After you’ve recorded your answer (or had your friend record it for you), try asking yourself “what will people say about you once you’ve reached your goal?” And finally, ask what you would say to yourself when your goal is reached. Record your answers, or have your friend do it for you.
- (This is my favorite part!) Now, close your eyes again. Ask yourself how you will feel when you’ve reached this new goal. Really take some time to let this sink in, and see what feelings arise in you. Once you have a good strong feeling going, ask yourself about the color, shape, texture, and even the temperature of that feeling. Finally, ask yourself where the feeling is located in your body. Record all your answers. Don’t rush yourself, give yourself time to really get into the feeling of reaching this goal.
- Finally, ask yourself what belief you could state about yourself that will help you get this goal. For instance, if you want to lose weight but always snack at night, could you create a belief about yourself that you are able to easily turn your attention from eating after 8:00 PM? Work on this replacing your current belief that it is “impossible not to eat” or “I must eat because I get too fatigued, too bored, or too scared not to eat at night.” In other words, replace your negative self-talk with a positive belief in yourself as someone who is capable of doing what you want to do.
- Be sure to ask yourself if you foresee any reason NOT to reach this goal. If you secretly think that being thinner will be bad in some way you will not reach your goal until you have put that belief to bed. We almost always have a secret reason that we don’t want to do what we say we want to do. I say I want to improve my auditory Spanish skills, but secretly I don’t want to put in the extra half hour a day to do that. So, of course, I don’t! Bring your secret reasons up into your consciousness, and you’ll go a long way to helping yourself get that goal.
The point here is to create a framework around you that helps support you in all your senses. If you have a goal to grow a rose garden, you can close your eyes and envision the layout, the sunshine, the colors, and the smells for sure. The more you can embody your goals, the more you’ll be able to make it stick. Let me know how it works for you.
Does Your Business Suffer From Perfection Syndrome?
January 28, 2010
Perfectionism will kill your business. The goal that you have as a solo professional is to provide a service that solves the problem your customer has. If you do that, you’ll succeed. Notice that I don’t say you have to PERFECTLY solve your customer’s problem. In fact, if you push for a perfect solution you run the risk of putting your customer off, because you will begin to nit pick at tiny little things you are offering, and you’ll lose focus on the big picture.
This thing about perfectionism is controversial to talk about. We are taught to find the “perfect solution” to our customers’ problems. But here’s the thing, and it’s important to remember. Life changes for that customer almost daily. The customer herself can’t really articulate a “perfect” solution. She may think she can, but once her “perfect solution” is in place, things will change and she’ll find that she needs to tweak it a little bit over time.
The big truth is that there IS no ongoing, perfect solution for your own business or for your customer’s business, either. You plan a resolution to an issue and execute it, and after that you see what worked and what didn’t work. You change it around the edges a little bit and go again. Finding what works for yourself or for a customer is not a straight line. It’s a curving line, sometimes curling back on itself, sometimes meandering where you never dreamed it will go. To hold that as true and faithfully watch when changes are needed is the best practice for a solo professional. It’s the best practice for larger businesses, too, but they often become too inflexible and stodgy to execute in that way.
Here are two big problems I see with solo professionals who are trying to establish a business that makes enough money to be viable.
1. Fear of making mistakes, which manifests as failure to take timely action.
2. Trying to decide everything by logic rather than feeling into what might be best for their business or their customer’s business.
I’d much rather see a solo professional try something and fail, and then learn from what went wrong, than to be paralyzed from the fear of failure. Almost all successful business owners have made mistakes, and there’s no sin it in. The sin is in burying the mistake and failing to look at it closely so that one learns. I literally have to re-train a good portion of the clients I work with to actually tell me when something goes wrong! We get into this practice of trying to hide our mistakes, which doesn’t help us in the end.
Additionally, there is a great benefit to using your feeling sense to help make decisions for yourself and your customers. You might also think of this as using your intuitive sense of things rather than depending solely on logic. You can ask yourself a question, close your eyes, and get a gut feel or sense of the best answer. The more you practice this, the better you will get. It is a great addition (and sometimes a replacement) for deciding only by logic alone. In fact, most of the millionaire entrepreneurs I’ve interviewed over the past years tell me that when the chips are down and it’s decision-making time, they trust their gut. Not the figures, but the gut. That’s a great confirmation of using your feeling sense to help you made decisions. Sometimes things will not seem logical at all, but you have a strong sense it is the right path to take.
The truth is that there IS no perfection in this life, so trying to run our businesses from that place will never work. That is the wisdom that successful solo professionals have come to know. the next time you feel yourself fearful over making a business decision, take a breath, check your gut, and move forward. You’ll find that you will do better in the end than waiting for perfection to come.
Add Fun To Your Entrepreneurial Endeavors
January 24, 2010
Lately I’ve run across more than one budding entrepreneur who makes building a business out to be nothing but serious and a lot of 
hard work. I’ve been pondering this a lot. Our energy follows our thoughts. When we hold only serious energy toward anything, it BECOMES hard to us. We fulfill our own expectations. We start believing that there is too much to do, too much to learn, and that we are overwhelmed. Here are just a few examples I’ve run across in the past months:
- It’s no fun to pay attention to weekly income and expenses.
- It’s no fun to carve out the time needed to work on my business, not in it.
The truth is, your business will flourish the more you weave fun into it. When we look forward to learning something new rather than thinking it will be overwhelmingly difficult, we create energy toward our own success. When we hold our work lightly, it feels much less burdensome and hard. We end up with a more positive energy toward the things we have to do. We all know this, but when it comes to our work we sometimes tend to forget it. We think we have to labor at our work, or keep it separate from our fun.
Dread has no place in your life as an entrepreneur. You didn’t set yourself up to be the boss of you just to feel dread toward your work, did you? 
One way to handle feeling too burdened or overwhelmed is to make sure you inject some fun and things you truly enjoy into your business. Tiny pleasures or large ones, they all help you succeed in your work.
Here’s just a small example. I’ve always loved the color turquoise, so to inject a little bit of fun into the work of updating one of my websites, I used it and asked Facebook friends what color to pair it with. I ended up with a dynamic combo of my fav turquoise paired with peach. I love it, and I had fun I had pulling it together. (You can check out the result at suepainter.com.) How fun it was to read the other day that turquoise has been named “color of the year.”
Often I encourage my clients to plan personal retreats to work out their stuck places and to work on their business planning. These are fun despite being productive. Go where you’ve been wanting to go, or return to a place you enjoy. Not only does the prospect of a trip create a welcoming energy, you are so easily able to work on your business rather than in it, getting away from the day-to-day routine. Go by yourself, or pair up with another entrepreneur who also wants to hammer out some work. You can weave breaks into your day, walk on the beach, get a nice dinner, shop. But for the most part, you are giving yourself uninterrupted time to invest in your business. Don’t sabotage yourself by making this a family vacation, either. It’s not – it’s for YOU.
You can also form a small Mastermind group with people you truly enjoy, and meet by phone or in person to help each other with business issues. Make it fun – meet over a good bottle of wine, take a walk, whatever you enjoy. For a while last year, I did this with another entrepreneur by meeting her to water walk and swim together. We’d do that, then get into the warm therapy pool and stretch both our bodies and our views of our businesses.
Do you have staff or employees in your business? In nice weather, try meeting outdoors with a picnic lunch. Just think about ways to bring joy and pleasure into your endeavor. You’ll benefit both in your spirit and your bottom line. Think easy-peasy, not hard. Think mastery, not failure. Think simple steps, not big overwhelming project. You didn’t put yourself in business to feel fearful, down or out. You put yourself in business to serve others and create a world of work that meets your income and lifestyle wishes. Fun will help you get there, even in small doses!
(c) Sue Painter
Is It Time To Tear Your Business Apart?
December 17, 2009
Change is uncomfortable and scary for most of us. Although we have varying levels of tolerance to change and risk, all of us have 
some point where we avoid these things. I’ve been a risk taker most of my life – I love exploration and adventure, and I know that my willingness to try new things, or do old things in a new way, has brought me much delight and success.
Still, like everyone else, I have my limits. So it was with a great deal of fear, dread, trepidation and tears that I let Bill drive me to a hospital early Monday morning, where in a few short hours my left knee would be amputated out of my leg, and if things went well a new knee would be put in. There was a chance that my knee was so injured that a new knee would not work. So I had to let the haze of anesthesia settled over me, not knowing what I would wake up to. Honestly, this was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do in my life.
Both in business and personal life, there comes time when we need to tear things apart, blow things up, be destructive. And the truth is that we do not know what the outcome will be at these times. What we do know is that the current situation and the road we are on is not working. Plain and simple, we need to stop.
I’ve put together a road map that will help you to know when it’s time to tear things apart, and how best to prepare for it. Here are some of the rules of the road we are on that simply won’t take us where we want to go.
- We tend to fear completely deconstructing things so much that we stay on the wrong road far too long.
- The longer we stay on the wrong road, the more we lessen our chances of a good outcome once we’ve finally torn things up.
- We spend too much time, energy, and resources trying to make the road we’ve been on work. We make ridiculous accommodations that do not serve us, and we engage in more wishful and magical thinking. Denial gains super-sized strength from our fears.
- We assign fear to those around us, assuming they will dislike what will happen when things are torn completely apart, and using that as an excuse for keeping ourselves on the wrong road.
In both our personal and business worlds, however, we can ruin ourselves and our opportunities to have what we desire by refusing the “blow it up, tear it up, deconstruct it” path. Our secret ambitions or dreams for ourselves languish. The outward signs of “living wrong” can include anger, bitterness, depression, constant excuses, wishful thinking (if only), blame, totally buying in to beliefs and stories we tell ourselves about why we can’t do something, being cynical, jealousy, and dishonesty with ourselves and others. Ugh!
No matter what “it” is, force yourself to have the curiosity and honesty to consider what might happen after deconstructing what you have right now. Don’t just list the “bad” things you immediately think about. List all the possibilities you can think of, too. Energy follows thought, so keep yourself on the possibility side of the list as much as you can. Rule number one? You don’t have enough foresight and knowledge to deconstruct something alone. Get help, give it time and attention, and move through the steps without continuing to tell yourself how scary or wrong it is once you’ve made up your mind.
- Consider the alternatives with at least three people.
- Find the very best people to help you.
- Make sure you like the way they approach things and their energy.
- Enroll your significant others – friends, business partners, family members, support staff.
- Ask these people to tell you their own fears about the deconstruction. This helps clear the air and prevent sabotage.
- Set up a timetable for when you will end the old and what all the steps are for the new.
- Make it as easy as you can on yourself. Clear the calendar of other demands. Whatever else you do, hire it done or stop it for a few days. Maybe you get someone to shop, cook, and clean for a few weeks so that’s totally off your mind.
- Gather up your courage, quit listening to the “backtalk” from yourself and others, and take one step.
- Keep going through your steps with determination, even when you begin to doubt or run into an unexpected hurdle.
- Remind yourself that what you have been doing DOES NOT WORK and that you are now creating a new order of things. You are not reaching for perfection, you’re reaching toward a solution that will actually get you what you want.
- Be honest to yourself and others when you have “doubt days” – get it out of yourself to prevent self-sabotage.
- Once a day, look at the big picture. Remind yourself that the road you have been on DOES NOT WORK. Give yourself credit for each step along the way.
- Work diligently on the new road. Don’t go back and wonder if you’ve done the right thing. Whatever you are doing, it’s probably more right than the wrong thing you were doing.
As I write this, I’m in a rehab hospital learning how to use my new knee. Yes, I did get one! It’s been painful and hard, and it’s easy to fall into doubt that I’ll ever get the pain to stop or that I will be able to bend my knee very well. Like everyone else who goes through this, I’ve had my few days of “hitting the wall” and wondering why in the world I ever did this to myself. But my surgeon is expert at his craft and at reminding me where this can take me. My teachers and friends remind me of the truth about how things were just a short week ago. My new “knee friends” share every setback and success with me over meals and in the hallways. And the hospital staff support me completely, from helping me get a shower to making sure my pain medications are delivered right on time. I’m off the road that was getting me nowhere, and would have never gotten me where I want to go. This road is “more right” than the road I was on.
No matter how big it is in your business or personal life, have the courage to say aloud “this road is over.” You might find out that tearing something up is actually the way to create what you’ve always wanted.
(c) Sue Painter
How To Craft Sales Offers That Work Easily and Often
December 4, 2009
You might recall the old saying “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.” I’m not sure that holds true for everything, but I do know that it’s the truth when it comes to crafting your sales offer. Many different studies using split testing have proven that changing the marketing message changes the number of sales. So what’s the secret to crafting sales offers that work easily and often?
The biggest mistake that I see business owners make is trying to sell on logic rather than emotion. Logic tells but emotion sells. When people say they buy on logic they are almost always mistaken. We buy based on our emotions, and then we proceed to justify what we’ve just bought based on logic.
I saw a great example of this just recently when I was in Mexico with some friends. They have long held negative feelings about the many timeshare offers proffered along Mexico’s beaches, stating over and over again that they would absolutely never do a timeshare deal. For at least 4 years now they have visited Mexico’s beautiful beaches and attended numerous timeshare presentations, taking the free gifts offered but never biting on the presentation. But this time around, they bought! I was shocked at first, but then I began to apply what I know about sales offers to what happened with them. Why they bought then became crystal clear.
The couple attended a presentation and were asked a question they’d never been asked before. “How do you feel about the hotel you normally stay in when you are here?” That simple question unleashed a torrent of frustrations and complaints from the couple, who had seen their favorite hotel at the beach change from a great resort to an ill-maintained and understaffed property. The crowning blow was the outdoor hot tub, which had been broken the entire two weeks of their stay.
What did the sales agent’s question do? It brought up the couple’s emotions. All he did was sit and listen – and then he led the couple to a five-star, brand-new timeshare unit. Talking to them about the property’s seven-year maintenance program while he showed them brand-new pools, and gorgeous two-bedroom units with big closets and full kitchens, he only had to structure a price and payment schedule that met their financial circumstances to do the deal.
What I noticed, though, was that once our friends came back to the hotel to join us, they didn’t quite know how to explain what they’d done. After all, they’d adamantly told us for many years that no one in their right mind would purchase a timeshare. So, they started telling us all the logical reasons they bought, which to me was comical. This couple did not buy based on logic. They bought on emotion and then tried to justify with logic what they had done. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with buying a timeshare (or anything else) if that’s what one wants and what one can afford. The point is, this was an emotional purchase – and almost all purchases are exactly that.
A second mistake I see business owners make is related to the first. I so often see business owners talk about what they have to offer from a logical standpoint, trying to be professional and without emotion. It just won’t work! You want to make an offer that does one of two things. It either helps the person get what he is passionate about, or it solves what the person is in pain over. Simply, your offer must do one or the other. The most compelling offers do both. An example? Think of a parent whose child is sick. The parent is passionate in their love for their child, and is in a great deal of emotional pain that the child is hurting. Whatever that parent is offered that will feed their passion and cure their pain will be a winning offer!
Often, a business owner can talk about passion or pain from their own perspective, telling their own story and how they came to be offering what they do. “I once had an Internet business that made no money at all, and I was determined to figure out what I was not doing right. I’ve studied, gone to workshops, and spent hours changing things around. I can quickly and easily tell you what you need to know so that your website makes money, too.” That’s an example of a story that evokes pain.
A third mistake I see business owners make is creating vastly different copy (or script) for their offers depending on how the offer is made. But if you stop to think about it, you want to make your offers fit what the prospect wants or needs (their passion or pain) more than you want to change it around based on how you make your offer. If your sales copy “bones” are good, they will work no matter if you are selling one-on-one, from the platform, in a teleclass or teleseminar, or from an Internet sales page. You might change the length of the offer, but the sales copy can remain much the same. If you make the mistake of writing completely different copy for each type of sell, you run the risk of making the simple hard and losing sight of what your prospect’s passion or pain is. It’s important for all your sales methods to showcase a consistent message.
Here’s an easy way to get started writing (or speaking) sales copy. I owe this to John Carlton, who taught me this in a sales copy workshop. Begin by filling in the blanks of this sentence:
I help _____________ to do _________________ even though _______________________.
For example, I help solo professionals build six-figure businesses, even though they have been in business a while and not been profitable yet. Or, I help bald men grow more hair, even if they have been bald for a long time. Or, I help overweight women get fit, even though they may never have exercised before in their lives. The beauty of this sentence is that you already highlight what a prospect may have in his head as an objection, and take it away. Additionally, you begin to evoke emotion! Emotion sells, remember?
Sometimes I work with clients who insist they cannot find any emotional triggers that apply to the product or service they are offering. This tells me one of three things:
1) You don’t have something that is saleable.
2) You are looking at what you have to offer from the wrong angle, and need to change your perspective completely to come at it from the prospect’s point of view.
3) You need help in understanding what you offer and the problem it solves, quickly!
If you are using the right emotional triggers for what you have to offer, sales will move right along. You can check this by thinking about why your most recent customers bought. If they’ve done testimonials for you, review them and make a list of the underlying emotions . Change your sales copy to reflect these emotions and test it out – you will probably increase your sales! Remember to talk about the problem you solve in terms of passion or pain relief, and you are on your way to frequent and easy sales.
(c) Sue Painter
What Should You Promise Not To Do Today?
November 1, 2009
I was talking with another Book Yourself Solid coach the other day, Lou Bortone. He made the comment that he actually puts on his To-Do list a column for NOT To-do. This got me thinking about delegation, letting go, and knowing when to quit doing a part of your business. I think about this a lot, because it is often a place that my coaching clients get stuck. Seeing the goodness of NOT doing, when you have been used to doing it all, is often hard to get. But, if an entrepreneur doesn’t get this vital piece of business savvy she will not grow her business.
One great way to get a bird’s eye view of what you can let go of is to list out all your business systems. (For more about how to get a bird’s eye view of your biz, see my recent video on the topic. This can be enlightening for many reasons, but let’s stick to the topic of what you should not be doing. If you don’t have a ready list of your business systems, you can get a start by reading this recent blog post. Print it out, and go through each with an eagle eye. Be honest! Sort out what your tasks should be, focusing on those that will make you money in the future. Any daily tasks you more than likely should be handing off. Why? Because administrative details don’t make you money – they maintain the business and they are important, but they are not building toward future income.
What I find is that entrepreneurs and solo professionals tend to hang on to administrative tasks because, frankly, they are comfortable doing these things. It’s easier to hide behind these little details than it is to step out and create the new business that will cause you to bring in future income. The truth is, your two highest priorities must always be to market your business and create new income streams. Maintenance of current income streams comes from your managing the systems that keep things going – managing, not doing these thing. Worked ON your business rather than IN your business is what will keep you ahead of the game.
My recommendation is to make use of Lou’s tip until delegating and managing are second nature to you. Before you do any task or take on a new task, ask yourself “should I really be spending my precious time doing this?” Make your To-Do list, and out to the side make your “Not-To-Do” list – and promise yourself to stay away from those things you should not be doing today.
(c) Sue Painter
Four Great Ways To Keep Your Business On Track
October 29, 2009
Solo professionals need a strong vision of where they’re headed and an internal warning system that tells them when they are getting off their game. Here are four ways to make sure you are keeping on track.
1. Take a look at your to-do list. Put a star by anything that has been on that list for more than two weeks, and look at those starred items with an eagle eye. Chances are, you are procrastinating on those items. Take the starred items and list them out on a separate sheet of paper, and out beside each one note what the very next step is to move that item forward. Now, either schedule it in your calendar for THIS week, or hand it off to an assistant. Often, entrepreneurs procrastinate because they are unsure how to proceed. If that’s the issue, call a friend, talk to your Mastermind group, put it on your coaching agenda – take an action that will get you out of “not knowing how.”
If you get into the habit of regularly scanning your to-do list and noticing what hangs on there for several weeks or more, you’ll develop the strong habit of pushing yourself out of procrastination.
2. Get yourself a timer. As you sit down to work on the task at hand, set the timer for half an hour and pledge to work ONLY on that task, with no interruptions. I often tell my clients that the world actually can live without them for 30 minutes at a time! Don’t check e-mail, answer the phone, Tweet about what you are doing. Stay right on task until the timer goes off. Using a timer to create concentrated periods of work teaches you focus. Entrepreneurs are well-known for having “bright shiny object syndrome” (also called fuzzy focus.) The more you train yourself to focus for short bursts of time, the more productive you will be.
3. Remind yourself of your big vision at least once a day, and tell someone else at least once a week. It’s easy to get discouraged when obstacles get in the way, and discouragement can lead to self-doubt. Regularly reminding yourself that you are doing your business for an important reason, and that you have every capability to succeed is critical. And about once a week, it’s good to hear that from someone else who is a supporter. Creating the habit of keeping your vision in the top of your mind fosters a strong faith in yourself and what you’re doing. It drives self-doubt out the door.
4. Get yourself into a Mastermind group, meet regularly, and don’t skip. You didn’t decide to be in business for yourself to play small, did you? Developing a strong relationship with other solo business owners who can encourage and support you creates a habit of thinking big. And that’s what you want to be doing, thinking big, thinking out of the box, thinking in ways that most people don’t think. A good Mastermind group will both encourage and challenge you to get out of your comfort zone, keeping you from thinking too small about yourself and your business. It’s a safe place to test out your most outrageous business ideas and get help in shaping those into reality. Develop the habit of thinking big and out of the box! It will help ensure that your business flourishes.
Using these four systems fosters four good habits that keep you right on track. And in the end, those habits lead directly to a better bottom line.
(c) Sue Painter
How Putting Off Planning Costs You $$
October 25, 2009
Something I often encounter from budding entrepreneurs is strong resistance to spending the time and money to slow down, sit down, and seriously dig into their financial situation and future planning. Two people I worked with not long ago give me great examples of the high cost of putting off “taking a good look” at how things are and could be.
Entrepreneur Number One (we’ll call her Melinda) has been in business a few years now but finds herself unwilling to face the new skills she needs to learn in order to handle the big growth that could come her way. Eventually, the pain of not looking became stronger than the pain to look, so Melinda booked a day with me, fearful though she was. One of the costs of her waiting was that her energy, enthusiasm, and belief in her business success had flatlined. Melinda had taken on some debt to grow her business, but then because she felt guilty about the debt and didn’t really want to face it, she’d failed to keep up her bookkeeping and had no idea where she was in terms of sales, expenses, and accounts receivable. Her guilt drove her to describe herself as “in debt and making no money.” Yet she really didn’t know if that were true or not. As we talked about this, her emotions came to the surface and she realized that constantly telling herself that she was in debt and a failure had drained her faith in herself – a far greater cost than actual financial debt. Melinda needed to step up and act like the successful entrepreneur she is. In her case, that means getting a weekly cash flow statement from her bookkeeper, keeping her pulse on her true operating costs, and letting go of trying to do everything herself in a wrong-headed effort to save money. As we developed a comprehensive list of business systems that Melinda will put in place, she came up with an idea that not only would save her own staff production time, it could easily be a product that she could sell to others in her industry. This one idea will more than reimburse Melinda for the day she spent with me – and more to the point, with sales to others she can probably erase at least half of her debt. Melinda paid dearly for putting off this day – in energy, self-doubt, overhead that was increasing because it wasn’t being watched, production time for her staff, and a missed opportunity to sell to others.
Entrepreneur Number Two (we’ll call her Amy) mentioned to me that she had been wanting to go on a personal retreat to do business planning for a long time. “How long,” I wondered out loud to her. “Six months, at least,” she replied. Amy’s willingness to let everything else come first before she took personal time for herself and her business came close to costing her the chance to more than double her income. It’s not what you will SPEND on your personal retreat, it’s how much it costs you to remain in the same place and fail to take action for moving ahead. Amy tole me that she wants to hit six figures in a year. She has the capability to do that, but not if she doesn’t change her mindset and her business model quickly and drastically. For instance, one reason she has put off going for a 3 day personal retreat is that she doesn’t want to lose work that in essence pays her about $25 per hour. But during her “business makeover” retreat time, she can easily generate ideas and plans that pull her up to an average hourly fee of $100. Until she plans it, that higher hourly fee won’t happen, and neither will her six figure income. It COSTS MONEY to stay stuck. Doing what you have always been doing is only going to get you the very same result you are getting now. So, if you want a different result in your business, take the time for that personal retreat. Set your goals, make your plans, and get on down the road. Your bank account will thank you in the end!
(c) Sue Painter