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BIZNESS! Newsletter Issue 94

BIZNESS! Newsletter
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Cover Story
Successful Business Marketing: What Does Your Marketing Archetype Say About You?
When it comes to business marketing, most people brainstorm a billion different tag lines then wonder why none of them sound or feel like “the one.”
The problem is all that brainstorming isn’t every effective because it’s relying on the wrong information to start with. Crafting a tag line—or any of your marketing copy such as sales letters, email promos, flyers and titles—first starts with understanding your unique style and personality. The best way is to know your “Marketing Archetype.”….
Continued in BIZNESS! Newsletter Issue 94 >>>
Top Stories From CoolBusinessIdeas.com
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Continue reading these top stories in the BIZNESS! Newsletter >>>
Top Stories From GetEntrepreneurial.com
– Money and Marketing: Avoid 4 Business Model Blunders
– Celebrate Your Limitations for Life Success
– Women Entrepreneurs And Their Greatest Starting Lineups
– Improving Customer Experiences – Is It Still Important Or Is Price The Only Thing That Matters?
– Twables.com
– Opportunity Knocks, Jane Answers
– Close Too Quick and You Lose Profit
Continue reading these top stories in the BIZNESS! Newsletter >>>

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Categories
Entrepreneurs

Firing Clients: How Three Types of Female Entrepreneurs Handle it When Things Just Don’t Work Out

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No matter how a female entrepreneur runs her business, it’s possible that at some point, the relationship between her and a client will come to an end. Although most successful women will agree that they want to end things amicably, severing the working relationship may be tougher for some than for others.
A new study from Jane Out of the Box, an authority on women entrepreneurs, recently revealed there are five distinct types of women in business. Each of these five types has a unique approach to running a business—and as a consequence, each of them has a unique combination of characteristics that impact how she reacts to different situations. This article profiles three of the Jane “types” and the different ways they may handle firing a client – which can be difficult on many levels.
Jane Dough is an entrepreneur who enjoys running her business and makes good money. She is comfortable and determined in buying and selling, which may be why she’s five times more likely than the average female business owner to hit the million dollar mark. Jane Dough is clear in her priorities and may be intentionally and actively growing an asset-based or legacy business. It is estimated that 18% of women fall in the category of Jane Dough.
For Jane Dough, business is business. If a relationship isn’t working out, Jane Dough will end it – quickly and painlessly (for her). Because she is so clear in her priorities, if the results of a particular relationship aren’t lining up the way she wants them to, she’ll cut it off.
If you’re a Jane Dough, firing a “difficult” client won’t be personal. You won’t be upset about it, because you’d only fire a client if it wasn’t benefiting your business. You might even see the potential for staying friends with the client afterwards, because you’re very good at separating your business and personal lives.
Before you cut the cord, though, Jane Dough, make sure you really think about why the relationship isn’t working out. Perhaps the problem isn’t the client – there could be a flaw (big or small) in your system that makes it difficult for your business to serve him or her. Or perhaps you’ve been moving too fast to give this client the proper amount of attention and his or her need for higher levels of service is the problem. In this case, instead of firing the client, you might have an opportunity to upsell the client into a higher tier of service! You’re great at trusting the system you’ve created and the team you’ve put together. But when you’ve got a difficult client, and particularly if you have several, it’s worthwhile to take a closer look at what might be your company’s contribution to the dysfunction. After doing so, if you decide that, in fact, the problem is only on the client’s side of the equation, challenge yourself to be kind when you deliver the news. Not everyone is as direct as you are – and delivering bad news with grace can potentially turn a difficult situation into a positive experience of mutual understanding. Done well, “firing a client” can actually increase the client’s respect for you and your company.
Accidental Jane is a successful, confident business owner who never actually set out to start a business. Instead, she may have decided to start a business due to frustration with her job or a layoff and decided to use her business and personal contacts to strike out on her own. Or, she may have started making something that served her own unmet needs and found other customers with the same need, giving birth to a business. Accidental Jane enjoys what she does and is creating a satisfactory level of income.
As an Accidental Jane, you want to be in control of your own destiny, right? You are also a big believer in the importance of relationships in business. When you have a difficult client, you will take the time to think about the situation from multiple angles, considering whether the situation can be repaired, how it might be fixed, and the effort it will require to do so.
When the scenario is simply a poor fit or when the client is abusive, you will have no difficulty setting boundaries with them, establishing consequences, and ultimately parting ways. But when the client is a longer-term relationship that was successful in the past, letting the client go may be more difficult for you. This may happen in Accidental Jane’s relationships when demands for her services increase and she no longer has as much time available to serve a long-standing customer. Similarly, she may, out of loyalty, be offering better pricing to those who “gave her a chance” when she started. As her business increases and she raises her rates, she may find this good relationship no longer lucrative.
When this happens, be willing to have a candid conversation with your customer about what your business needs. When you outline what you need in order for the relationship to be a win/win, your client has the option to choose to meet your needs or not. If they are unable to do so, it is easier to part on amicable terms because they get to be a party to the decision.
Tenacity Jane is an entrepreneur with an undeniable passion for her business, but who tends to be struggling with cash flow. As a result, she’s working longer hours, and making less money than she’d like. Nevertheless, Tenacity Jane is determined to make her business a success. At 31% of women business owners, Tenacity Janes are the largest single Jane type.
As her name implies, Tenacity Jane doesn’t want to give up. She may postpone firing a difficult client. She may worry about letting go of the revenue the customer represents and be concerned about whether or not she’ll be able to replace that client. She may try a variety of different tactics to improve the situation, possibly overestimating her own contribution and blaming herself or having self-doubt. As a result, Tenacity Jane may attempt a several strategies to improve the situation, bending over backward – and some difficult clients will actually take advantage of that fact and abuse her sincere desire to provide a valuable product or service.
If you’re a Tenacity Jane it’s important to realize that difficult clients are not your fault! You should honestly assess the situation and then be willing to let go and move on. Many of the Tenacity Janes we’ve interviewed say that having the courage to fire a difficult client was a true turning point in their business and enabled them to move into a much more financially successful phase of their business.
No business owner wants to fire a client. It’s difficult to accept that something just isn’t working out. But sometimes all you can do is to get out, and it proves to be best for both parties involved. Whether you’re a Jane Dough, an Accidental Jane or a Tenacity Jane, when it’s time to cut and run, you can do it. And you’ll be better off for it.
About the Author:
Michele DeKinder-Smith is the founder of Jane out of the Box, an online resource dedicated to the women entrepreneur community. Discover more incredibly useful information for running a small business by taking the FREE Jane Types Assessment at Jane out of the Box. Offering networking and marketing opportunities, key resources and mentorship from successful women in business, Jane Out of the Box is online at www.janeoutofthebox.com

Categories
Sales & Marketing

Money and Marketing: 4 Business Model Blunders to Avoid

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What may be holding you back from reaching 6-figures (or even more) isn’t lack of ambition or desire, it may simply be your business model.
Think of your business model as the design of your various services, info products and programs. Too many entrepreneurs offer a bunch of “stuff” without any real thought as to how each offer will best leverage their time, plus create the maximum amount of revenue.
Naturally, they end up disappointed with the results, which is really a shame because anyone can create a winning 6- and 7-figure business model once they know a few simple tips.
Here are 4 simple tips to ensure your business model doesn’t have you making common blunders that will keep your income from growing.
Tip #1: Create a Plan for Moving Clients from 1-on-1 to High-End Programs
The blunder most entrepreneurs make is filling their time with lots of 1-on-1 clients (and often at a low price point), which leaves them feeling burned out. Treat your 1-on-1-client time as the most precious service you offer so that you’re only working with a few clients at a high dollar amount. You’ll love your clients more, you’ll make more money and you’ll free up tremendous amounts of your energy.
Tip #2: Include Life-Long Recurring Revenue in Your Model
It’s exhausting to constantly look for new clients. That’s why savvy entrepreneurs have at least one “continuous” revenue stream in their business model. Ideally, this income stream is one clients never want to give up, giving you consistent monthly income.
There are many creative ways you can design continuous revenue into your business. I recommend looking at what support your clients wish they had for your inspiration.
Tip #3: Think in Terms of a Series Rather than “One-Off” Programs

Every program, product or service you offer must include an option to upgrade to a next level. Waiting to figure this out will cost you a ton in lost revenue and ramp-up time!
For example, your free teleseminar can roll participants into a paid group or teleseminar program. In that program, upgrade a certain percentage of participants to a private virtual retreat day with you. Your virtual retreat day clients can then upgrade to a longer term coaching program. Never let your relationship with your clients end because you don’t have anything more to offer them.
Tip #4: If You Can’t Leverage It, Don’t Offer It
Once you shift your mindset to the leveraged business model, you’ll never again be tempted to offer a stand-alone program or service. It just isn’t worth your time and effort! Even something as simple as an ebook should consciously leverage your clients to upgrade to a higher-end service or program.
If Your Cash Flow Stops and Starts, Then Take a Critical Look at Your Business Model For the Solution
Unpredictable, up-and-down cash flow is frustrating to deal with. By redesigning your business model so that every offer flows effortlessly into the next, you’ll not only even out your income, you’ll dramatically increase it as well.
About the Author:
Kendall SummerHawk, the Million Dollar Marketing Coach, is an expert at helping women entrepreneurs at all levels design a business they love and charge what they’re worth and get it. Kendall delivers simple ways entrepreneurs can design and price their services to quickly move away from ‘dollars-for-hours work’ and create more money, time, and freedom in their businesses. For free articles, free resources and to sign up for a free subscription to Kendall’s Money, Marketing and Soul weekly articles, visit www.kendallsummerhawk.com.

Categories
Franchise

Owning A Restaurant Franchise

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If there’s one thing that everybody likes doing, it’s going out to a restaurant. Whether you have experience in the service industry or you’ve always been interested in owning a restaurant, a restaurant franchise might be right for you. Owning a restaurant franchise is one of the most sure-fire ways to have a successful business. People dine out based on brand recognition, and when you become a restaurant franchise owner you’ll be able to offer a familiar name and menu to customers.
When you’re looking for a restaurant franchise it’s easy to see the history of success that other people have had in different areas. By opening a restaurant business in a nearby area, you can capitalize on the success that the restaurant has seen elsewhere. This is especially true if you are opening your restaurant business in an area where there is a lot of passing traffic. Out-of-town diners are more likely to eat some place with a recognizable name than to try a local restaurant.
There are nearly a million restaurants nationwide and national sales for 2008 should reach $558 billion. Even in times of economic hardship, people still continue to eat at restaurants. 70% of adults surveyed say their favorite restaurant has dishes and flavors that are not reproducible in their home kitchens. Although there’s a large initial investment when opening a restaurant franchise, it’s not comparable to going into the restaurant business alone. When you’re independent of the franchise system you won’t have the added benefits of brand recognition and support from the home office.
As you probably know, there are many different types of restaurant franchises to choose from. You can choose based on cuisine, type of service offered or even focus on food specialties, like at Zoup. Zoup is a fast service soup restaurant franchise. It offers a healthy alternative to burgers, fries and normal fast service dining options. If you want a restaurant business like no other, this may be just the right one for you.
You may want to go with a more familiar restaurant franchise, like McDonald’s, Burger King or Carl’s Jr. These restaurant franchises offer a familiarity that come with an expensive price. If you’re married to the idea of owning a burger joint, Checkers may be right for you. Checkers is a drive-through restaurant franchise that focuses on burgers, fries and shakes. In a small but efficient space, your staff will work a double drive-through to provide quick service at a great price.
Restaurant franchises like La Salsa Fresh Mexican Grill offer ethnic food in a casual dining environment. In the industry since 1979, La Salsa is committed to providing fresh Mexican food with the added feature of a fresh salsa bar in each restaurant. Casual dining restaurants like La Salsa are growing in popularity and this type of restaurant franchise is sure to be a winner in your area.
About the Author:
FranchiseGenius.com is the largest, most comprehensive online directory of franchise concepts, with 1,700+ concepts summarized, and includes a franchise resource center full of objective and useful information.

Categories
Sales & Marketing

Facebook and Twitter Updates Now Searchable

Google search is going to start looking different in the next few months, as Google has signed a deal with Twitter.com to start indexing tweets.
Similarly, Microsoft has signed deals with Facebook and Twitter to start indexing updates in the search engine Bing.com.
These changes mean your wisdom won’t be shared just with those in your immediate tweetstream or newsfeed, but could, perhaps, be listed in the search engines and archived for the world at large.
These moves are good for those of you focused on providing unique content and topic relevant tweets – you will have more ways to be found and noticed.
The downside of this process may be two-fold, though. First, your tweets may not remain indexed as long, so your ranking won’t stay constant. The reason I think this is because the rate of tweeting is so high, and newer tweets will always be considered fresher (and therefore potentially more relevant) than older ones. So any ranking you get may not last that long.
The second downside would be for content that is repeated or duplicate- likely only 1 tweeter will get credit, so this may drive down the number of retweets. Some would say this is a good thing, especially for content like quotes, or #follow friday, but we’ll have to see how this shakes out.
In order to benefit from this new search engine capability, focus on providing good strong content (I know I said this already, but it bears repeating), and try to phrase your tweets uniquely. In the beginning, at least while the algorithm is being worked out, I imagine that unique languaging will be initially counted as unique content. Later on, we may see a shift in this as content and context is also considered. (Kind of like latent semantic indexing for tweets.)
It will be interesting to see if adding tweets to the search engines will improve user experience, or will be seen as just that much more noise.
RachnaJainPhoto.jpgDr. Rachna Jain is Chief Social Marketer at The Mindshare Corporation. Rachna works with speakers, consultants, authors, and small business owners to develop and execute effective social media marketing strategies. Her proprietary persuasive social media process (sm) focuses on building influence, credibility and visibility online. This translates into greater recognition, increased website traffic, faster lead generation, a shorter sales cycle, and more opportunity for her expert clientele. She blogs regularly at The Mindshare Blog