Month: November 2011

Categories
People & Relationships

2 Traits To Create Relationship Through Your Brand – With People You’ve Never Met

Article Contributed by Erin Ferree

Are you “marketing at” your precious potential clients or connecting with them? In other words, do your marketing efforts feel more like you’re shouting at them with a megaphone, or like you’re having a two-way conversation?

We all have a craving for connection and conversation – for that rich, recognition-filled two-way exchange of thoughts and information.

That goes for both YOU and your potential clients… in fact, the effect can be multiplied many times over for your clients.

Feel into how much you want to be in conversation with your potential clients. How much you’d like to be on the phone with them, or talking face-to-face.

Now, imagine how much they want to be in conversation with you. After all, they’re already listening to you. I suspect many of them are yearning to be heard, to have their questions answered and to really talk to you.

Here are two traits you can use to open the conversation in a refreshing way…

Curiosity:
Have you ever really stopped to wonder about, listen to and ask your potential clients about what’s going on for them?

This goes beyond a casual, “Hi, how are you?” at the beginning of your newsletter – where you’re not actually expecting an answer.

It’s time to think about who your potential clients are, ask about what they’re up to, and explore their thoughts and feelings.

Look at them as more than just a potential project. Open up a conversation with the full intent of simply learning more about them and getting to know them – not seeing how you could help them, or looking for a need.

What you can do – ask real, specific questions in your newsletter and assure people that you really do want to know the answer. Offer opportunities for your potential clients to speak with you on Q&A calls, during call-in “office hours” or even by appointment for a short, focused session – where you’re asking them questions.

Generosity:
When was the last time you gave your clients a truly free and fantastic gift?

People love presents – when they’re real, useful, desirable gifts. Too many “free gifts” in the internet marketing world are not really gifts at all, but thinly veiled sales pitches that people have to sign up for.

I realize this has become common practice… and there’s certainly a time and place for that in a marketing strategy… and, at the same time…

Why not give a valuable, amazing free gift that they really want, that they can use immediately and digest fully, and get deep value from? They’ll really notice and be impressed by a gift that fills a real need – that doesn’t simply open them up to a new need or shine the light on some gap or deficiency in their approach.

And, when was the last time that you gave something away that was really free? I mean that there’s no hoops to jump through and no forms to fill out. That you are giving to them with the true energy of gifting. Because you have created this gift especially for them, and you want them to have it – not because you want anything in return.

Try this – create a short and impactful free report. Tell your clients all about how to do one small, specific task. Give them resources or point them to tools. Package that gift lovingly. And then send it to all of your clients and invite them to send it to everyone they know. Include a two-line invitation to learn more at the end, plus a one-paragraph bio so that new people can get to know you. See what happens!

There is one final thought I’d love to leave you with – both of these traits need to be backed by genuine interest and attention, of course.

About the Author
Erin Ferree is a branding coach, design genius and strategic thinker. She loves connecting the dots between passion and profit, mixing strategy and inspiration and shaking things up. She’s branded over 450 small businesses in the last 10 years. Erin works with entrepreneurs who want to help more people and create an open, honest, inviting brand with integrity – instead of using icky, pushy, sleazy marketing tactics and trickery. Learn more at http://brandstyledesign.com

Categories
People & Relationships

Working Hand-in-Hand: The Importance of People in Your Business

Article Contributed by Gary Jordan

It seems to go without saying – people are the most important part of any business. Their strengths, their contributions, their ideas, are essential. But working with those strengths, recognizing those contributions and ideas, isn’t always easy. Every person is different, but when it comes to business, we all have the same goal – to succeed. You want your business to succeed, your client wants to succeed and anyone vested in your business – your support team – is rooting for success as well.

The question is, how do we all come together in the most productive, effective way? How do we put everyone’s strengths to the forefront of a particular goal or task to get the desired results? We come together. We work hand in hand. We recognize every person’s natural abilities and we work with those abilities to get the best results.

The importance of YOU

YOU are the center of your business. You are its heart and soul, its pulse, its reason for being. Your contributions, your ideas, your ambitions and dreams are set to reality only by YOU. So how do you put your best foot forward and keep it there? With our help. Our goal is to help you recognize your fullest potential by unveiling your hidden talents and discovering your abilities. Learning who you truly are, connecting with your strengths and using them in every aspect of your business can only result in success. And once you discover who you naturally are, the way you communicate, the things that inspire and motivate you, then you are on the right track to reaching out the most helpful hand possible to your client, and that is the first link to success.

The importance of your CLIENT

The second link to success is your client. They are the reason you are in business. While they look to you for leadership and guidance, they also have a lot to offer, and you will also see the benefit of determining their qualities and incorporating them into your business. Once you discover your true you, you can successfully connect with your client to establish and maintain the always-important know, like and trust factor that must exist in any business/client relationship. Effective communication with your client  allows irreplaceable connection and interaction, and while embracing their contributions does the same, developing a deep understand of who they are guarantees the greatest success. And with the unity of you and your client comes the third link in success – your support team.

The importance of your SUPPORT TEAM

Once you and your client have linked hands, the most powerful connection left is reaching out to your support team, the people who complete the circle – the people you hire. While understanding who you are, and understanding who your clients are, is the best start to establishing the most effective communication and interaction between all parties, hiring the right people should not be left to chance. Running a successful business is both an art and a science, and once we have helped you to thrive in the most effective way possible, success rolls right into place – guaranteed.

Establishing all the right connections – between you, your client and your support team – is easy with the help of ACI for Entrepreneurs. Connection between people is the element, the true core, of success. Communicating clearly and accentuating the strength of everyone involved results in a successful business that makes more money in less time.

About the Author:

Gary Jordan, Ph.D., has over 27 years of experience in clinical psychology, behavioral assessment, individual development, and coaching. He earned his doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology – Berkeley.  He is co-creator of Perceptual Style Theory, a revolutionary psychological assessment system that teaches people how to unleash their deepest potentials for success. He’s a partner at Vega Behavioral Consulting, Ltd., a consulting firm that specializes in helping people discover their true skills and talents.  For free information on how to succeed as an entrepreneur or coach, create a thriving business and build your bottom line doing more of what you love, visit www.yourtalentadvantage.com.

 

 

Categories
Entrepreneurship

Getting to the Middle of it: Building a Business From its Core

Article Contributed by Lynda-Ross Vega

Just as in the human body, the strength of a business comes from its core. A strong core facilitates growth and endurance, and in business, that growth equals success, and that endurance equals longevity. Naturally, a successful, long-living business is what we all want and strive for!

You are the core of your business. You are its strength, its heartbeat, its reason for being. As its core, your strength comes from understanding your skills and talents and applying them in everything you do. That’s where we come in. We call it strengths-based business building – a process of helping you develop your natural entrepreneurial skills.

Imagine the core of your business becoming as strong as the core of your body: the muscles that provide you with power and stability are essential in everything you do. As the core of your business, you are just as essential to its success as those muscles are to your body. You are the reason for your business’s success, and it is only as strong as you are.

Understanding that you are at the core of your business is the easy part; the challenge is making sure that the core is as strong as it needs to be for your business to succeed. The technique of strengths-based business building involves accentuating the your strengths, and those of your team, the two most essential parts of your business.

Your strengths – your talents, abilities, ideas and skills – are what we call your “genius,” and as a business owner, you want and need your “genius” to come first. That’s what differentiates you in the market place; that’s why your clients seek you out. It’s a waste of your time and talent for you to focus on mastering parts of your business that are not based on your natural strengths. You want to do (and should do) what you love to do, what you’re good at doing. We help the rest fall into place by showing you what skills your team members must have that compliment you and keep the core of your business strong and vibrant.

Building a business around its core, around you, is essential and easy with the right tools. Our guaranteed system combines science and psychology, and while we’ve done the hard part of creating this approach, it’s now your turn to do the easy part and let us help you implement it.

About the Author

A partner at Vega Behavioral Consulting, Ltd., Lynda-Ross specializes in helping entrepreneurs and coaches build dynamite teams and systems that WORK. She is co-creator of Perceptual Style Theory, a revolutionary psychological assessment system that teaches people how to unleash their deepest potentials for success. For free information on how to succeed as an entrepreneur or coach, create a thriving business and build your bottom line doing more of what you love, visit www.YourTalentAdvantage.com

Categories
Sales & Marketing

Everyone Needs a Soapbox!

Article Contributed by Lisa Cherney

I was kicked out of corporate America. Literally. I was let go three times in two years! It was difficult at the time, but now I see – the struggle had a purpose. Because of that trial, I found my true calling: helping business owners find their voice, get on that soapbox, and attract their ideal clients like moths to light.

When I started my business, I have to admit I thought it would be easy. After all, I had marketed for some of the biggest players out there! But I quickly learned that marketing for a major corporation and marketing for entrepreneurs require two very different approaches. Through this experience, I found my forte’: I had a way of asking just the right question to bring out someone’s brilliance and guide their marketing.

In truth, many people are insecure when talking about what they do. Consequently, they’re not “out there” like they need to be. They need more clients, but they hate speaking in public. They have a website, but the message isn’t representing their abilities in the best possible way. They don’t like pumping up their accomplishments because it feels like bragging. Or, they feel that no one really cares about all that anyway. They couldn’t be more wrong!

People want to know all that about you. And how are you going to be “out there” if you don’t feel comfortable talking about yourself and your unique way of helping people? I realized I needed to find a way for people to find their own words. And it had to start with me. This was like a glitch with a purpose for me! The purpose was to show me that all of the marketing strategies I had learned from the corporate world don’t work for the entrepreneur. And this went for me, too.

It’s easy to feel like you’re making progress when you are busy all day. But when you don’t get results, and your bank account is at an all-time low, it’s easier to blame something other than yourself, like the economy. When you only look at the external cause, you overlook the true source of the problem – your marketing message is not clear!

Every entrepreneur needs a soapbox. You need to know how to access words that you can utilize in any marketing situation. They should roll off your tongue with passion as their source. That is a true soapbox! Use these words anytime someone asks you what you do. When you do, you will know exactly what to say when you encounter your Ideal Clients, and you will in turn begin to love working with every client you have!

You know who your non-ideal clients are. If you market to everybody, you’re marketing to nobody. So get on your soapbox, deliver the right message to the right audience, and find the people who want the transformation that you offer. Find the clients who want what you have!

About the Author
Lisa Cherney, a.k.a. the Juicy Marketing Expert, founded Conscious Marketing 12 years ago to help small business owners find their authentic marketing voice, attract their ideal clients and increase their sales. Following her own Stand Out & Be Juicy program, which centers on owning your unique self and laser-focus marketing, Lisa has tripled her income while working part-time.

Prior to Conscious Marketing, Lisa worked with many Fortune 500 companies, including AT&T, Lipton, Nissan, Blue Cross and Equal. She is a highly sought after speaker and often shares the stage with experts such as Jack Assaraf (The Secret), Jack Canfield and Jill Lublin. Learn more about Lisa at www.consciousmarketing.com or call 887-771-0156.

Categories
Technology

Adapting to Technology

Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking once said “Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.”  This is very true in the educational field as educators and students alike have been forced to adapt to things like the internet, smartphone technology, and e-books.  It also can translate to the business world.

In most cases consumers do not consider the changes a business must adapt to in order to remain competitive.  Things like offering wifi service and outlets for consumers to charge electronic devices on was not in a business’ thought process five years ago, but are now things consumers seek out when looking for things like coffee shops to go to.   Consumers enjoy these luxuries, but in most cases have not considered the culture coercion it places on small business owners.

Businesses fear losing their customers so they adapt to their needs to provide them with a pleasurable experience, even if their risk to reward is questionable.  Airlines offer seating in airport terminals with USB adaptors attached to them that allow riders to charge their smartphones before boarding, McDonalds offers free wifi for anyone eating in their restaurants, and Starbucks recently launched an application that lets users pay for their order with their iPhone.

These businesses all show their intelligence by adapting to technology and the consumer demands that they come with.  None of the businesses knew what the level of success was going to be for these launched campaigns, but it is safe to say they generated more come-back customers out of them.  Not every advancement a business must adjust to is in best interest of their customers, rather some decision’s in the past were made based on the interest of the business.  Location to open is the oldest and most universal decision an entrepreneur has to make.  But once you decide that other decisions also need to be made.

The old way was not convenient to a business, especially a small one, as funds often took days to receive. This could be potentially harmful to a small business who is awaiting a reimbursement for a large transaction. This caused a tough decision to be made for any small business owner.

Since 1979, businesses of all types were faced with the same decision on credit card acceptance.  It was in that year that Visa created the first electronic data capturing credit card terminal. It was a huge advancement from the manual card imprinters as it sped up the transaction and made it more secure and easier for businesses to accept credit card payments.  The time it took for funds to get into an account was shortened, allowing smaller businesses that were on a tighter budget to explore the benefits of accepting credit cards.

There have been a variety of credit card terminals since the first imprinter. They have gone from slow dialup connections that required a cashier to manually enter the credit card number to tap and go machines. The range of machines offered from companies such as North American Bancard makes it easy for a business to adapt to accepting credit cards.  They offer machines that run through dialup, high speed and wireless connections. These advancements make it easier for any industry to accept credit cards.

It wasn’t until recently that companies like Pay Anywhere developed a device that turns a smartphone into a credit card terminal.  Pay Anywhere is backed by North American Bancard who is currently helping over 100,000 merchants with their credit card processing needs.

Thanks to developments like Pay Anywere, businesses have more choices than ever to process credit cards and need to adapt to this industry before it’s too late.  This advancement in the industry makes accepting credit cards more cost and energy efficient.  Mobile credit card processing makes it easier for a business to adapt to the change in the merchant account industry.