Month: April 2010

Categories
Sales & Marketing

Three Marketing Methods for Three Types of Businesswomen

Traditionally, business owners may think of marketing as printing glossy brochures, placing advertising in print media, filming television commercials or recording radio ads. With the advent of the Internet and its continued ascent as a popular way to communicate, marketing has entered a whole new atmosphere. Whether a female business owner craves fast growth or desires a steady stream of income, she can take steps to put a marketing system in place to fit her needs.

A recent study from Jane Out of the Box, an authority on female entrepreneurs, reveals there are five distinct types of women in business. Based on professional market research of more than 1,000 women in business, this study shows that each type of business owner has a unique approach to running a business and therefore each one has a unique combination of needs. This article outlines three of the five types and provides tips for creating marketing strategies that meet the needs of the business, now and in the future.

Jane Dough is an entrepreneur who enjoys running her business and generally, she makes a nice living. 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 entrepreneurs fall in the category of Jane Dough.

Most Jane Dough business owners want their businesses to grow – and fast. Of all the five types, she’s the most likely to say she has a long-term vision of what she wants her company to be. Nearly all Jane Doughs say they have aggressive plans, and two-thirds of them want to deliver growth of 25 percent or more during the next few years. So what is Jane Dough looking for, in terms of marketing, and how can she get it?

* Return on Investment. Jane Dough is less worried about cash flow than her counterparts, even though she takes home less money than other successful entrepreneurs. This is because she reinvests more in her business to sustain high levels of growth. So she wants her investments to pay off. Therefore, Jane Dough is likely to invest only in marketing that she’s researched and that she believes will pay off. When she does invest, she’ll invest big. And because she has done the research, it will pay off.

* Systematic, measurable marketing. Jane Dough is thrilled to spend her time managing the business, fine-tuning the operations and marketing (as opposed to other types, who love “doing the work” of their business). Because she enjoys strategizing, she will want a marketing system she can track, so she can determine its success. For example, if she markets her web site and uses that to drive business, she may want a system in place to keep track of how many people visit the site, and how many of these visitors then make purchases from the site or call for services. She may consider a direct-mail campaign for people who visit the site and ask for more information but don’t buy – and could track those customers by using a coupon or special offer.  She sees running her business as a kind of game – while she takes it seriously, she is in this for the long-term and enjoys tweaking her systems here and there for increased success.

Merry Jane. This entrepreneur is usually building a part-time or “flexible time” business that gives her a creative outlet (whether she’s an ad agency consultant or she makes beautiful artwork) that she can manage within specific constraints around her schedule. She may have a day-job, or need to be fully present for family or other pursuits. She realizes she could make more money by working longer hours, but she’s happy with the tradeoff she has made because her business gives her tremendous freedom to work how and when she wants, around her other commitments.

Because Merry Jane so values her time freedom, she must consider marketing systems that don’t require her to put in much extra time but still drive work her way. Finding the right balance means maintaining that time freedom and growing her revenue. Here are some tips for doing just that:

* For maximum marketing efficiency, Merry Jane must determine exactly who her marketing will target, and why this population will purchase her product or services. In doing so, her marketing will be as efficient as possible –  so whatever time she does invest will produce a greater return. To easily and quickly determine her target market, Merry Jane can ask existing customers why they chose her and what they enjoy about working with her.

* Slow-growth strategies that build relationships over time. Many Merry Jane entrepreneurs juggle several responsibilities (such as taking care of the kids and household, taking care of aging parents or even working another full-time job).  They want to meet those obligations well and have smooth-running lives – so they must implement processes that maximize efficiency. Networking, affiliate marketing and referral marketing all utilize processes that could take up as much or as little of Merry Jane’s time as she wanted – and have the potential to produce new clients and to boost her bottom line.

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 then she 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. Although Accidental Jane may sometimes struggle with prioritizing what she needs to do next in her business, she enjoys what she does and is making good money. About 18% of all women business owners fit the Accidental Jane profile.

Most Accidental Jane business owners are satisfied with the lifestyles they’ve created. They enjoy the freedom of choosing who they’ll work with and what kinds of projects they’ll work on. They enjoy the flexibility of owning their own businesses and not being tied to employers or employees. Their biggest challenge: the ups and downs of business, which result from the proportional downs and ups in their marketing efforts. When Accidental Jane is busy, she doesn’t put much effort into marketing. When things slow down, she steps up the marketing efforts until she’s busy again. The cycle continues, causing stress when business is slow, and stress when it picks up so much that it becomes overwhelming. What’s the solution?

* Keep Up the Good Work. In many cases, Accidental Jane is successful because she is highly skilled and committed to excellence in her work and in customer service. Often, Accidental Jane left the corporate workforce and struck out on her own, and her sterling reputation followed her, attracting business through referral and word of mouth. This, in itself, is a great marketing technique and as long as Accidental Jane continues to do the good work she demands of herself, she will thrive.

* Despite a great reputation and a stream of word of mouth referrals, Accidental Janes we surveyed expressed that they would like to level out cash flow. When Accidental Jane becomes engrossed in a project, she rarely takes the time to follow up on leads. A few tips to even out cash flow: if work is almost too abundant, she can say “yes” to only projects that fit a list of specific criteria and consider delegating less important tasks to an assistant. To keep the work flowing in, she can create an effortless, automated marketing system, such as a weekly tips newsletter or a “tweet bank,” which allows entrepreneurs to create dozens of tweets at once and then send them out on an automated schedule of her choosing. Also, she should remember to gather testimonials as projects wrap up, so they’re always at hand for marketing materials or as references (a note on testimonials: they don’t have to be forced or formal. Just acknowledge someone who gives the company a compliment and ask if it can be used as a testimonial. Type it out and send it to them for review. Use these testimonials on a web site or brochure, or just mention them in casual conversation).

Whether a female entrepreneur is striving for fast growth or just looking to maintain what she’s built, she can use marketing to get exactly that. With today’s marketing options ranging from traditional materials to 140-character messages on mobile devices, anything is possible – and being a business owner is more challenging and more rewarding because of 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
Work Life

Shifting From A Victim of Circumstance To The Hero of Your Life Story

“When we come to the edge of all the light we have
And must take a step into the darkness of the unknown
We must believe one of two things
Either we will find something firm to stand on
Or, we will be taught to fly.”
by Patrick Overton Copyright © 1975 The Leaning Tree,

Have you ever heard the phrase, “Life happens when you’ve made other plans?” How often do you set your sights on a specific objective and goal, only to have your best intentions go awry? Things don’t always go the way you planned or hoped. Life…

When things seem to hit bumps or create undesirable experiences, how do you respond? Do you roll up your sleeves and focus on how to best dance with the situation to learn and grow? Or do you begin a downward spiral into your victim, feeling fear, overwhelm, a sense of defeat or depression?

I’ve always considered myself to be an optimistic, upbeat person. And yet, when life throws me an unexpected curve, my initial response can dip into the negative pretty fast especially when it requires me to do things I have never done before. I hear my small inner child cry, “I can’t do it! It’s too hard. I don’t know how. I don’t want to. What if I fail?” I can feel myself shifting into feeling like a victim in seconds.

Breathing, getting present, re-centering, and using my healing tools helps me to shift my energies and focus so I can feel my courage and power return.

We all have the capacity to shrink from our courage and power when we forget who we are. Our minds race in with worse case scenarios and what ifs as our imaginations run wild. Our egos create elaborate stories and dramas that cause us to feel at risk and frightened. We believe what we imagine as if it were real and certain. We collect evidence from the past as proof that life is unfair, unsafe, and painful. We expect the worst rather than expecting the best.

When we are in the throes of panic and dread, it can feel like you’re on a runaway train or drowning as you struggle to “get rid of the thoughts and feelings”. The key is moving through the experience rather than trying to avoid the pain and discomfort or taking up residence and making that situation the story of your life!

Every life experience offers a healing a growth opportunity. What you resist, persists.

Life is a journey of courage. Each day brings new experiences that create opportunities to say YES to who we are meant to be.

A new favorite mantra of mine is, “I am always safe. It is only change.”

No matter what is happening, one power you always retain is how you choose to show up to life. Your attitude is entirely up to you. In every moment, you choose your attitude. If you think you don’t, that’s where your victim steps in.

What makes identifying with a victim so compelling?

Some of the benefits of being a victim

  • Feeling owed or entitled to something
  • No personal accountability, responsibility or expectations
  • The right to blame, complain, judge, and criticize
  • “Poor me” gains support, pity, and sympathy
  • Don’t have to show up
  • Use of excuses, rationalizations, and reasons to avoid life situations
  • Deny your potential to play small and hide out from life experiences
  • Illusion of safety from hurt and upset

The irony is that staying in our victim causes us to experience a life full of pain and constriction. It’s a way many people become spectators of life rather than active participants and deliberate creators. Desiring more and feeling imprisoned by old fears, beliefs and habits that keep us stuck in the past while we long for a brighter future.

Who are your heroes?

Are there people in your life who model courage?

They may be people you see as heroes with qualities you wish to emulate. They might be people you personally know, public or historical figures that are alive or dead, religious or spiritual representations….

Consider the qualities they possess that you admire and respect: natural abilities, values, strengths, skills talents and gifts.

  • What qualities do they have that you might be denying in yourself?
  • In what ways are you suppressing or denying your own inner hero?
  • How would you and your life change if you embodied your inner hero?
  • What qualities do you share that you are open, ready, and willing to embrace within yourself?
  • What innate qualities and abilities would strengthen your faith, trust, and courage?

During the course of your life, you will take on many roles and identities that become part of who you  believe yourself to be. You might view certain parts of yourself with disdain and others with positive appreciation. Each part has served you in ways to help you thrive or survive.

Your life is a journey of faith, trust and courage; to claim the life you were born to. To be whole, you must embrace all parts of yourself with love and compassion, inviting the best of who you are to emerge and integrate as you awaken and evolve.

 

Categories
Sales & Marketing

Sales Coaching Tips To Minimize Distractions & Boost Results

As a sales professional, sales leader or business owner, distractions can often be the main obstacle for achieving great success.

If you have too many distractions, you will never achieve your full potential.

It is important to continue to evaluate what sales activities will be most important to reach your goals. Then, you must focus on those activities first, and make a commitment to complete them each and every day without failure.

You must remove and minimize your distractions. You will then have the time to focus on what you have determined is most important.

Here are some tips on how to minimize common distractions:

Limit your number of social networks. Determine which social networking sites are most valuable to you. You may be a member of multiple forums, on line groups, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and will be invited to join other networks as well. Pick a couple that are most helpful for you and drop the rest.

Do not log into social networking sites while you are working. Save social networking for times when you are not at work.

Block time to check your email. When you are working on a task, focus on the task. Emails constantly flying into your inbox can be a constant distraction. Schedule specific times during the day to read and send emails.

Send fewer, shorter emails. Also, don’t become dependent on emailing versus picking up the phone. There is value in the personal touch.

Shut off notifications. Are you constantly getting pinged with an email, or tweet, or text or IM? When are you actually focused and present in the moment? Don’t forget that the most important time you have is right now. Consider at times completely shutting off your computer or turning off your smartphone.

Clear off your desk. Only keep what you truly need on it. Keep it neat and tidy. Do the same for your computer desktop.

Do one thing at a time. Multitasking can be totally counterproductive.

Do the tough stuff first.

Have a cut off time. Make sure you have set times to complete your activities as well as set times to stop working. Have you ever planned a trip where you left work early at 12:00 noon? Remember how much you got done before 12:00 noon because you knew you had to leave early that day? Exactly.

The next step is to put these items into action and start minimizing your distractions today. Also, consider making a list of all other distractions you may have.

By minimizing my own distractions, I was able to be a #1 sales performer within multiple fortune 500 organizations. Now, as a sales coach, I help support my sales coaching clients achieve similar success by providing specific solutions to challenges that are holding them back from extraordinary results.

About the Author:
Sales Coaching Expert, Jeremy J. Ulmer, has helped hundreds of sales professionals, sales leaders, businesses and entrepreneurs overcome sales challenges to achieve breakthrough results. Jeremy has been ranked a #1 sales performer in the U.S. for 4 years at two Global Fortune 500 Companies, is the former Director of Sales at the #1 Outsourced Sales Company in the U.S., and is a Featured Presenter on Sales Skills and Entrepreneurship at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business. If you are ready to dramatically increase your sales results then subscribe for your Free Tips or Request a Free Coaching Consultation at: http://www.CoachWithJeremy.com/

Categories
Networking

Business Forums Offer A Bounty of Knowledge and Connections

Article Contributed by Tami Stodghill

Back in my professional life before working at home for myself, I was part of the desktop publishing and graphic design software industry for 20 years. I was a Press Relations Manager and my duties included, of course, writing press releases and working with editors and publications to circulate the news of new and updated software products, and working with the software developers to produce information about the upcoming or soon to ship products. To keep informed in the industry, I made it a point to read industry-related publications and to actively participate on the forums.

These forums produced a plethora of information in a number of different ways. There were users on there who had “wish lists” for products they would love to see developed, users who were having problems with products, and still others who had knowledge or tips based on their own experiences. It was the latter that I found most intriguing and the most valuable.

See, none of us are experts in all areas. And we all started somewhere on our quest to own a business or to work at home. We have – every one of us – developed knowledge and skills along the way that make our job easier, make us work more efficiently, assist us in marketing or to gain exposure, help us to better deal with clients or prospects, and more. But we developed or learned those skills over time, and so there will always be people out there that know things we don¹t. This is where the forums come in.

There are all kinds of forums that target businesses‹business owners, small business owners, entrepreneurs, home-based businesses, business start-ups, etc. And each of those forums has a variety of topics at any one time in which we can garner information and learn from others what has worked for them or not worked for them. Either way, it benefits us. There are all kinds of people on those forums. Some are specialists – writers, marketing professionals, advertising professionals, business advisors, etc – and in a lot of cases, they can provide some pretty valuable information.

Another important use of forums is to be able to see what people are asking and inquiring about. Many people turn to forums as a way to find out what opportunities are out there, how they worked for other people and what they would need to plan on to be successful themselves. In many cases, I respond to forum users by introducing myself and offer any helpful input I have. Sometimes I can provide them links to information that will better enable them to find the answers they are seeking, and other times, I can answer them directly. I put myself in their place, just starting out or trying to overcome a hurdle, and I offer whatever I can in the way of support.

Forums are made up of people from all types of businesses, in all kinds of places, from all walks of life, and with all kind of experience and backgrounds. If you find time on your hands, and you haven’t before, check them out. They are a superb collection of knowledge, sharing and inquiring minds that want to know, and your business may just be the answer they are looking for.

About the Author

Tami Stodghill was the Press-Relations manager, for a world-wide extensible-technology distributor based in London and the US for 20 years. She was also a freelance writer for several industry publications and is now a home-based business owner with WMI. She makes her home in Page-Lake Powell, Arizona, in the summers and Palm Harbor, Florida in the winters where she enjoys boating and reading, camping, hiking and meeting new people. She runs a blog site exclusively to offer tips for success for any small or home-based business.

Categories
Planning & Management

Talent Management: How to Retain Top Talent Without Derailing the Organization When Fast Tracking

Most people would not choose to build a house on a weak foundation. Why then do leaders risk the company’s future on an untested, inexperienced employee?

To keep them motivated?

To ensure they stay with the company?

But at what cost – to the employee, the employees who work for them and the company.

Yes, if you want to retain your top employees, you must…

1  Give them a reason to stay
2  Find a way to motivate them
3  Reward them.

But, if you reward too much, too fast – it can be dangerous for your entire organization.

In order for companies to retain top talent and stay competitive in today’s market they are engaging in fast tracking. This means they are moving selected employees quickly to or through managerial levels in an organization.

5 Reasons Why Fast Tracking is a Dangerous Strategy for Increasing Employee Retention

1  Skills can be learned quickly; experience takes time. In order to be an effective leader, your managers need to gain experience in:

*    Correctly identifying and solving problems
*    Framing and making good decisions
*    Dealing with the myriad of people-related issues that confront every manager in every organization
*    Organization course correction
*    Role-based leadership

2  Many times, when your organization engages in fast tracking, a new manager will set a new initiative in motion and then leave the position before the impact of the initiative is realized.They are missingthe day-to-day experience of interpersonal behaviors and interactions that come with any transition—the intangible. It’s these subtleties that are often missed. And it’s these subtleties and the way you handle them that hones a good leader.

3  Each managerial level brings new challenges and requires different skills and behaviors. Moving too quickly through an organization runs the risk of missing critical experiential learning. Experience is accretive and it is difficult to learn vicariously. What you learn today you use as a framework for how you behave and react tomorrow. Short changing this learning cycle can result in a leader derailing later.

4  When leaders derail because a company engaged in fast tracking in order to retain top talent, it creates a disastrous domino effect for the organization as a whole. We all know that the number one reason people leave a company is because of their immediate supervisor. We also know that poor decisions and poor problem solving skills can result in service and profitability deterioration for a company.

5  Fast tracking creates a winner / loser environment within the company. Unless you want to build a highly-competitive, stressful environment and internal culture that makes your employees hate Mondays because it is the start of a work week, creating winners and losers is not a good long term strategy.

Why Companies Engage in Fast Tracking Even Though It’s Dangerous to the Health of their Organization

Companies need to grow talent internally and insure smooth management transitions. And the reality is that some industries are disproportionally affected by talent shortages (such ashealthcare)and may have no other choice than to promote an employee who is truly not ready to handle the position.

(This is a common practice for technical and clinical staff promoted to management).

So what should you do?

7 Tips for Retaining Top Talent Without Hurting Your New Manager, Employees and the Company

1. Develop a succession plan for your company. This means get committed to a process or structure of internal management and talent development.

2. Identify individuals within the organization who have the potential to move into leadership positions. You should be identifying multiple candidates for each position. Don’t be afraid to take some risks in candidate identification. Not all high potential candidates initially present an outgoing and aggressive demeanor (and remember these qualities do not necessarily ensure a good manager.)

3. Provide the identified individuals with opportunities to take on additional projects to demonstrate their skills as well as their ability to learn and grow. The projectsshould create the opportunity for the candidates to “live” with the consequences and take responsibility for their actions and decisions.

4. Provide new managers with an internal mentor and an external coach to insure support during the transition process. This support should be for at least six months to one year. This process is referred to as: transition integration”.

5. Give all new managers a personality and job performance assessment. This is a valuable tool in identifying emerging leader attributes and potential risk areas. Now you will be able to enable early intervention and prevention and give the most effective support to the new manager.  This is better than the”sink or swim” approach to learning that new managers are often thrown into.

6. Provide all candidates with self-assessment tools and learning opportunities. Do this both within the organization in the form of added responsibilities and through outside learning opportunities such as conferences and executive education programs, professional memberships.

7. Monitor your new manager’s progress (through the supervisor andmentoring and coaching support) andreview your succession plan each year. Evaluate the success of the current program and the individuals in the program. Improve where necessary and identify and support new leadership candidates.

Be aware that some candidates simply may not be interested in this more protracted and performance based approach. They may feel threatened or choose to leave. That’s OK too. The risk of promoting too quicklyand the derailment that could occur is not worth the harm an unprepared manager can bring to the organization.

Talent is to be developed, not anointed.