Author: Ethan Theo

Abe WalkingBear Sanchez is an International Speaker / Trainer / Consultant on the subject of cash flow / sales enhancement and business knowledge organization and use. Founder and President of www.armg-usa.com, WalkingBear has authored hundreds of business articles, has worked with numerous companies in a wide range of industries since 1982 and has spoken at many venues including the Shakespeare Globe Theater in London.

Categories
Online Business

Is Your Website Like A Jungle?

Article Contributed by Erin Ferree

The jungle is dark, humid and dense. Birds of all kinds sing and call, while other animals rustle through the underbrush. The adventurers hack through the plants with their machetes to blaze a passable trail. It’s hard work, and it had to be done so they have a clear path to get where they’re going.

Is your website like that jungle?

Recently, I met someone at a conference and wanted to learn more about them while following up. So, I carved out a few minutes to check out their website.

I was totally and completely unprepared for what I found there. 87 pages of information about their services. Not 10, not 20… 87.

This is a common mistake that small businesses make – they put all the information they possibly can about their businesses on their website, and make a mega-huge website!

They think that if they just make the information available, then maybe someone… anyone… will stumble upon it and hire them. That they have to put everything they have out there in order to get attention.

And then they’re surprised when their mega-website doesn’t bring them a flood of clients. But here’s what happens: their site becomes dense and thick, and people who come to the site get overwhelmed by all of the information available.

They take one look at your menu – with all the pages and sub-pages (and sometimes even sub-pages) and then they have to make a decision. Will they start to hack their way through the jungle of your website, or will they click away from your site?

You don’t want your client to have to make that decision.

Like those adventurers in the jungle that we talked about earlier, your website visitors need a passable trail through your website. They need that clear path to get them into conversation with you.

When your visitors come to your site, they need to make the transition from finding you, to learning the information they need to know, to contacting you and connecting further. And you want to do this simply and quickly as possible… while keeping their desire and need to talk to you high.

Here are a few quick tips to clear a path through your website that will make it easier for people to go deeper with you:

  • Create your website with your ideal clients’ questions and needs in mind – what do they most want to know when they arrive?
  • Dedicate some time at least every 6 months to review and prune your site as needed – and to identify areas where you could improve what’s there.
  • Remove old offerings that don’t apply to your current genius or your clients’ needs.
  • Strive for relevance – don’t treat your website as a trophy case for all you’ve done and developed.
  • Keep page counts low, and navigation simple.
  • Test shorter-form sales pages against long ones and see what works better for your audience (short is working well these days).
  • Swap long ebooks and dense copy for short and snappy video.
  • Choose a first step that you’d like people to take in your business and direct the bulk of your website’s energy towards making that happen.
  • Be discerning with your copy – if it’s not impactful and interesting, then ditch it (if you don’t want to delete it forever, you can switch the page to a “draft” in WordPress).
  • Put only your best work in your blog and/or portfolio. Weed out the rest.
  • Focus your efforts on getting visitors to sign up for your mailing list so you can take your conversations further there.

Which of these tips will you start using today to create more connection with your website visitors, and to clear their path to working with you?

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
Success Attitude

10 Ways to Realize Hidden Opportunities

Article by Jeff Beals

“Great moments are born from great opportunities,” said the late Herb Brooks, one of the world’s most famous hockey coaches.

Brooks certainly seized opportunity during his career.  He agreed to coach the 1980 U.S. Olympic team that beat the “unbeatable” Soviet Union in Lake Placid, New York during the famous “Miracle on Ice” game on the way to winning the gold medal.  It was a modern-day “David vs. Goliath” matchup. Many coaches would refuse such an overwhelmingly difficult job.  In fact, several did.

But Brooks saw opportunity in the monumental challenge of leading a bunch of young, amateur, college all-stars against the essentially professional players of the Soviet Union and other European hockey powers.

That opportunity paid off, to say the least.

Whether you’re talking about sports, business or any other subject matter, seeking, finding and capitalizing on opportunity are among the most important things a professional must do.

There’s one big problem with opportunity, however.  It is often hard to find and even harder to harness.

“We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations,” said Charles Swindoll, an American religious author.

I agree wholeheartedly with Swindoll’s characterization.  The best opportunities are often hidden.  They are often located in places we least expect to find them and are presented by people we least expect to provide them.

That reminds me of the old story that sales managers like to share with their young trainees: “On his way back from a three-day fishing trip, a multi-millionaire visits the showroom of an upscale, luxury car dealer.  The salespersons, seeing an unshaven, disheveled, poorly dressed man, essentially ignore him.  Offended, the multi-millionaire buys a top-of-the-line model the next day from a direct competitor.”  There are a lot of ways to tell that classic missed-sales-opportunity story, but they all sound something like that.

If opportunity is so important to our success, and so difficult to find and recognize, we need to focus more of our energy on it.  Unless you’re naturally good at it, finding and capitalizing on opportunity needs to be a deliberate focus:

Open your eyes and ears – we can no longer afford to be indifferent, or even worse, oblivious to the world around us.  Be on the lookout for ideas that could lead to new opportunities.  Even more important than eyes and ears, keep your mind open too.  Many of us miss opportunities, because they don’t fit into our pre-existing paradigms.

Remember that all people count – sometimes we get so obsessed with the “right” people, we miss out on valuable opportunities from people, who on the surface, can do seemingly nothing for us.

Fight through the fear – one of the biggest reasons we miss out on extraordinary opportunities is because we are too afraid to leap.  Herb Brooks wasn’t too afraid to leap; we shouldn’t be either.

Let your creative juices flow – the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Albert Szent-Gyorgi once said, “Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.”  The more creative you are, the more opportunity you will discover.  See the world in a different way, and doing things like nobody else, and just watch the opportunities that manifest.

Take risks – As the old saying goes, “nothing risked, nothing gained.”  Unless you take a chance and do something new, you’ll keep running into the same old opportunities.

Work really hard – “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work,” said the great inventor Thomas Edison.

Set meaningful goals – make those goals specific too.  The more you clarify what you really want, the quicker you will recognize it when it shows up.

Find quiet time – many people have found great opportunities, because they prayed for them or spent time meditating about them.  Such activity creates focus in your mind, and a focused mind is a powerful mind.

Believe – visualize success and tell yourself that good things will come.  A positive mind is more receptive to hidden opportunity.

Prepare – as the old Boy Scout motto says, “be prepared.”  You never know when the perfect opportunity will open up.  If you’re not prepared, you might not act on it quickly enough.  In his autobiography, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said he believes in “relentless preparation.”  He constantly prepares for crisis, so he will perform properly.  Same thing applies to opportunity.

About the Author:   

Jeff Beals is an award-winning author, who helps professionals do more business and have a greater impact on the world through effective sales, marketing and personal branding techniques. As a professional speaker, he delivers energetic and humorous keynote speeches and workshops to audiences worldwide. You can learn more and follow his “Business Motivation Blog” at JeffBeals.com.

Categories
People & Relationships

Three Reasons to Do Business Face-to-Face

Article by Dr. Joey Faucette

Recently, I delivered a keynote presentation about business growth, “Fence Posts to Trees,” to the top forty emerging leaders of a U.K.-based pharmaceutical company. I ate with one of their five senior VPs during the meal that preceded. He lives in Scotland, commutes to London weekly, and travels to other countries.

We talked about his travel schedule a bit and I asked, “How much do you employ technology to conduct virtual meetings?”

To my surprise he answered, “More than I like. When we’re doing business in other countries, it’s difficult to virtually communicate some things.”

As we talked more, here’s what I heard him saying. Think of them as three reasons to do business face-to-face.

A face-to-face meeting:

Powers business

Let’s face it—there are a lot of companies out there that you can do business with.  What separates the companies you choose from the companies you don’t select is about the business transaction, but it’s more than that.  There is the human connection.

There are some aspects of the human connection that don’t communicate well even if you use video. The myopic view of the camera misses gestures, body language, some vocal intonations, and the je ne sais quoi of human interaction. It takes the total package of the human experience to transform a business transaction into a business experience. Such experiences break the ice in a different direction that captures our interest and imagination. It’s the most important “why” of closing a deal.

Builds trust

As my senior VP friend talked about communicating corporate core values internationally and how they take expression in the manufacturing of pharmaceuticals, I realized he was talking about trust.

Getting in front of a manufacturing partner meant he could insure that the high standards by which his company produces viable health solutions is more likely to happen. By meeting face-to-face, he could validate the necessary protocols and procedures were followed, therefore building trust in the relationship.

Exchanges idea more effectively

Doing business in the global village means there are certain cultural assumptions we all make based on our background. Those assumptions don’t translate without explicit statements.

On site, my friend could not only impart knowledge, but receive ideas from the new partner. These ideas are more effectively exchanged person-to-person; looking someone in the eye, listening carefully for vocal nuances, and experiencing the total communication process. By meeting face-to-face, he was in a better position to give and receive information that improved the business relationship.

While technology certainly empowers us to do business in markets and manners previously unavailable, the desire for human interaction still exists deep within us.

To Conceive a Work Positive lifestyle and greatly improve your productivity and profitability, be sure to meet face-to-face whenever possible.

About the Author:

Dr. Joey Faucette is the founder of Listen to Life, a business-coaching and speaking firm, and creator of “7 Weeks to Work Positive” and the “Work Positive Master Coaching Program.” His latest #1 Amazon best-seller is Work Positive in a Negative World.

Categories
Success Attitude

The Profitability of “Thank You”—Three Great Ways to Give Thanks from Your Business

Article by Dr. Joey Faucette

Study after study in which we say “Thank you” to our customers reveals that they both spend more money with us and tell their friends about the exceptional service and products we deliver. Volumes of books chronicle how employee productivity zooms skyward when appreciation is expressed. (The best of which I’ve read recently is Shawn Achor’s The Happiness Advantage.) Vendors go the extra mile to extend credit and deliver “just in time” when they hear gratitude regularly.

But you’re already doing more with less and the last thing you want is another item on your to-do list. So what are the most effective and efficient ways for you to express gratitude to these important players in your business’ success?

Here are my three great ways to give thanks from your business. Think of them as the profitability keys of “thank you”:

Handwritten Notes to Customers

Handwritten notes are the most powerful expression of “Thank you” today. They are intimate, authentic, and sincere.

When everyone else is emailing and texting, tweeting and posting, the three minutes you take pen, not pixel, in hand and write “I know you could buy (your products and services) from lots of other stores. Thank you for choosing to do business with us. Sincerely…” connect you with your customers so tightly that they spend more with you and tell their friends about your exceptional care.

Yes, three minutes. I timed myself.

You are memorable for the right reasons when you say “Thank you” with a handwritten note to your customers.

Donations for Employees

“Thank you” to employees equals giving a raise for some business owners. Do it as you can, but you see more productivity and increased morale when you do something that speaks into the employee’s life like giving an end-of-year gift to the employee’s favorite charity. If your mother died of breast cancer and your boss gives a donation in her memory, that says “Thank you” in a vastly more personal way.

Another opportunity to consider besides memory donations is an honorary gift. For instance, an employee has an autistic child. Give a donation to the school he attends or to an Autism Society. Such an expression of gratitude deepens your employee’s commitment to the company thus increasing productivity and your profitability.

Lifestyle Gifts to Vendors

When your vendor calls on you, I’m sure your conversation includes family, sports, and other lifestyle topics.

Maybe he says something about a new grandchild. Say “Thank you” by going to Amazon and sending a copy of a children’s book like “Goodnight Moon” or “Love You Forever.” Attach a note to it. Get your associate to do it.

Or, perhaps your supplier is from St. Louis, loves the Cardinals, and the two of you discussed the World Series. Send her a replica Albert Pujols jersey…while they last.

Something personal makes you a stand-out client worthy of your vendor going the extra mile for you when you need product overnight or credit extended.

Your business can say “Thank you” efficiently—without a great deal of effort—and effectively—increasing your bottom line.

Who knew giving thanks was so profitable?

About the Author:

Dr. Joey Faucette is an international speaker, business coach, and best-selling author of the #1 Amazon book Work Positive in a Negative World: Redefine Your Reality and Achieve Your Business Dreams. Get your free chapter excerpts at www.WorkPositiveBook.com. Follow him on Twitter @DrJoey.

Categories
Customer Service

The Business of Loyalty: Bringing Your Customers Back

Article by Scott Hersh

Companies the world over spend countless dollars on print ads, commercials, social media and other promotional endeavors to expand their market-base and ultimately gain new customers. But in all this marketing frenzy, investment in loyalty-building strategies can sometimes fall by the wayside.

Even of those businesses owners who understand the importance of customer retention, many surprisingly never go beyond offering discounts to their repeat customers. Not only may this strategy on its own be ineffective in bringing customers back, but it may cut deeply into profit margins that are already taking a beating from rising costs on everything from gas to health care.

If you are running a small business within a defined niche and are facing limited resources then investing in customer retention could be vital to your business’ health and long-term success. Here are a few points to consider:

Stay in touch with your current customers. When was the last time you attempted to contact your prior customers- whether as a follow-up on a completed sale or to offer future promotions or services? Depending on the kind of product or services you provide, these customers may forget about your business and the next time they are need of that same product or service, they could just as easily look for a different vendor.

I had my house painted almost five years back and now it needs another coating. Though I was very happy with the painter’s job and could have used his services again, he never contacted me since the job was completed. This time around, I got an attractive bid from a different contractor and moved on.

Whether you send newsletters, emails, or promotional coupons, make follow-up phone calls, or maintain an active social media presence, just making an extra effort to stay in touch with your customers can increase retention. But make sure that you don’t cross that fine line where “communications” become spam. Just because a customer “opted in” to receive emails or a newsletter, etc, doesn’t mean that you now have free reign to flood them with “helpful” suggestions, information, or promotions.

Focus on the customer experience. Common business sense dictates that if you consistently strive to offer your customers a great service and deliver value for the money they spend in your business then they will be more likely to return in the future. Sounds good, except these days it’s not enough. Today, the “customer experience” is getting a lot of sound bytes.

Though a customer’s experience may be hard to tangibly measure and define, the thoughts and feelings your customers attach to doing with doing business with your company can affect who returns and who doesn’t.

A friend of mine recently purchased a pair of boots from an online supplier. The company’s customer service staff was courteous and helpful throughout the buying process. Moreover, when my friend received his boots he saw that they were sent along with a whole bunch of “extras” like shoe polish and an additional set of laces. The company also had someone call shortly after the shipment arrived to make sure my friend was satisfied with his purchase. All these little actions created a satisfied customer who will no doubt seek the same address the next time he needs footwear.

Invest in your employees. Your employees are your best marketers, and this goes for the back-end employees as well as those working on the “front lines,” such as sales representatives and technicians. When employees feel valued, when they feel that their input is being properly appreciated and compensated, then they will be more likely to give it their best on the job. Moreover, employee satisfaction can be so infectious that it can lead to satisfied customers as well, and those satisfied customers are the ones who will be more likely to return.

In short, in the drive to improve sales in your business don’t forget those you are already serving. You want to keep your customers coming back for more, not kicking them out the door.

About the Author:

Article Provided by Scott Hersh, business author for http://bcablog.com – the official blog of Business Cash Advance .COM providers of fast working capital financing.