Simply Business Coaching

How do you communicate with your clients?

I was working with some clients recently, explaining how to get started with email marketing campaigns and introducing them to social networking.  Because I’m constantly immersed in these topics, it’s easy to forget that they may be completely new to many people!  A recent blog post from Seth Godin explains this well.

The meetings also reminded me of other useful business lessons which I’d like to share with you here.

• People like to receive information in different ways.  Some like to just have a broad outline, others prefer to know the smallest detail.  By adapting your presentation to suit them once you find out their preference, you will help them to learn.
• Keep your message simple.  If you try to appear too clever, use jargon and long words, especially in your marketing materials, you’ll intimidate and put off the very people you want to attract. 
• Don’t try to cover too many points in each meeting.  People need time to absorb, process and try out what they learn.  Too much at a time will simply lead to overwhelm and reluctance to continue.
• Establish expectations at the outset, and write them down.  I do this with my coaching clients and students.  You need to understand what people want to achieve or learn so you can pick up straight away if they have misunderstood the training content or coaching process.  You can also use those expectations to keep you on track during meetings or workshops and, of course, to check that you have delivered what they wanted.
• Don’t take what you know for granted.  Just because you know your products or services upside down and back to front, it doesn’t follow that everyone else does.  Your knowledge, expertise and experience are what make you special, and they are the reasons why people are prepared to pay you to either teach them or do the work for them. 

How will this information affect how you communicate with your clients?

Lessons from another former 'Dragon'

This video contains so many lessons for budding and established entrepreneurs alike.  Rachel Elnaugh takes us on the rollercoaster she rode with her former company ‘Red Letter Days’.   The insights are sometimes uncomfortable – but always important.

Information Overwhelm Project Update

Here’s the latest on how I’m getting on with this project (see here and here for previous posts). For the most part I’ve been successful in completing the first few steps. 

The main spring-clean of no longer needed subscriptions to newsletters and blogs is done, although this will be an ongoing exercise.  In addition I’ve made use of the ‘rules’ function in Outlook to separate out unimportant reading material and notifications from social networking sites.  I’m pleased to say this has dramatically cut down the number of emails collecting in my inbox and requiring attention.

The ‘one out before another one in’ policy has been put to the test!  A few days ago I decided to join an online group providing a monthly teleclass and newsletter.  It was very affordable, but that wasn’t the point!  So I looked through my other paid subscriptions and found two that I didn’t mind cancelling. 

There was another lesson here. 

Have you ever found that low-cost subscriptions set up to take recurring payments by direct debit or via credit card, can continue almost unnoticed month after month?  Because there isn’t such an impact on your bank account, you don’t cancel them as quickly as you would a higher cost subscription.  I’ll bet if you take a look at your bank and credit card statements, you’ll find a recurring payment or two that could be stopped!

I didn’t get around to the third step from last week’s post, which was to make a list of all current & proposed projects, and prioritise them by ROI (return on investment).  This is what I’ll be focusing on now and will let you know how it goes next week.

If this has been useful, or if you’d like to share your own tips to help me out, please leave a comment below!

Be First Class

If you’re going to raise your prices, then you’re going to have to deliver the goods.  Make sure that you give a first class service to each and every one of your customers, for each and every purchase they make.  Go further still, and delight them with great follow up, adding value wherever you can – you can afford to do this now as it is more than covered by your higher price.  

I experienced this when I bought my car.  The young salesman was very eager to please and personally made sure all my requests (including enough petrol to get home!) were carried out.  As I drove away, I thought that was the last I’d hear from him. 

But the very next day, he called to make sure everything was OK and said to be sure to call him if I had any problems.  He rang again after a week and yet again after 4 weeks – just to check that I was still completely happy with the car.  Now I know I paid for this service in the price of the car but how often do you actually get it?  I was and still am a delighted customer.

What can you do to delight your customers, and when are you going to raise your prices to reflect what you’re worth?

What should you charge?

The answer is simple – you should charge what you’re worth!  To explain will take a little longer.

Many businesses bump along the break-even line because they don’t charge enough and many go out of business for the same reason.

Whether you’re selling products or services, you have to believe in what you have to offer – or you’ll have an uphill struggle expecting people to buy.  If your prices are too low, the perception of your products/services is that they are inferior in quality and durability to those with a higher price tag.  In other words, cheap.

If you’re tired of customers trying to beat you down in price or saying you’re too expensive, try something radical – raise your prices!  Let me explain a bit more ….

What sort of customers do you want?  Those who are just looking for the best price deal or those who appreciate the quality you can offer?

Something most of us forget when setting prices is how many years of studying, building expertise and experience has gone into creating our products and services.  They cost you time and money to acquire and therefore need to be factored in.  Be proud of what you have to offer and charge what you’re worth - you’ve worked hard for it.

Are you trying to be all things to all people?

Now, I’m the first to agree that it’s important not to put all your eggs in one basket in terms of what you offer to clients.  However, it’s also a good idea to specialise in an area you’re really good at (known as a niche in marketing speak).

Let’s face it, if you had a medical condition, you’d want to consult someone who specialises in that condition – you wouldn’t feel as confident with a general practitioner who doesn’t have the experience or expertise to help you.

What I’m seeing a lot at the moment is ‘knee-jerk’ reaction by some business owners to chase the latest trends – and indeed, I’m a great fan of social media and love teaching clients how to use it in their businesses.  However, I haven’t abandoned my core business of coaching and mentoring.

Trends come and go – some of the social networks will probably disappear just as quickly as they arrived on the scene.

If you have a product or service that people are buying and that is making you good money, for goodness sake keep on offering it!  Rather than jump on the latest bandwagon and jostle for business in a crowded market, stay true to what you’re brilliant at.

Being a specialist – rather than a generalist – will also help you to stand out from the crowd and your marketing message will be easy to communicate. 

The Information Overwhelm Project

In this second post on reducing overwhelm & increasing productivity, I’m publicly going to start work on curing my addiction to new information (here's the first post if you missed it.)

I’ve been thinking hard about what the first steps need to be.  Thanks to Shona for her suggestion to spring clean newsletter subscriptions.  That makes a lot of sense although, interestingly, made me worry about what information I might be missing out on (obviously the addiction is pretty strong!).

One of the problems with digital information is that storage is not a problem.  If I had to find space in my office for physical products, I’d be much more aware of just how much was accumulating!  So, another step could be to have to cancel a subscription, or delete one product, before ordering or subscribing to anything new.

Because I’ve been falling behind on business building tasks (shame on me!), finding out which projects need immediate attention and focusing on getting them completed makes a lot of sense.

So here’s a summary of the first three steps I’m going to implement immediately:

1.    Spring clean subscriptions to newsletters and blogs
2.    Put into place a ‘one out before another one in’ policy
3.    Make a list of all current & proposed projects, and prioritise them by ROI, in other words those that will bring in the money the quickest!

I’ll report back on progress.  Do you have any ideas or suggestions?  What has worked well for you?  I’d love to know!

Will things ever be the same again?

When I’ve been out networking and chatting with fellow business owners, it’s interesting to hear what they believe the next 12 months will mean for small businesses.  The general consensus is that things are tough and, in the b2b market, businesses are spending less and are being especially cautious about what they do spend money on.

Some business owners seem to have gone into what can best be described as hibernation!  They’ve cut back on all unnecessary expenses and are waiting for the economy to come out of recession.  They’re assuming that things will then go back to how they were before.

But that isn’t going to happen.  We can never go back, even by one day.  The scientists are still working on a time travel machine!

The financial and economic events of the last few months mean that business owners have to do things differently now, and will have to continue doing things differently in future, if they are to survive.

There is some good news though.  Right now is a fantastic opportunity for business owners prepared to take action in a few key areas and

•    Keep a close eye on cashflow.  Regular (daily or weekly) checks will ensure no nasty surprises lying in wait.  Think about putting in place penalties for late payers and bonuses for early payment.
•    Streamline systems & procedures.  Is the way things are being done the most efficient and cost effective? 
•    Make better use of marketing budgets.  There are many ways of making those budgets stretch further, especially by using the internet and social media effectively.
•    Invest in skills & personal development training.  Stay up to date with the latest technology and thinking.  Just one new idea may bring many benefits.

We need to be ready to do business in the world as it will be tomorrow, not as it was yesterday – because things will never be the same again!

Are you overwhelmed yet?

I love learning, and am fascinated by all the possibilities the internet provides for small businesses.  There is more free information out there than ever before, some of it very good, and certainly more than enough to satisfy my curiosity.  And that’s causing me a bit of a problem that I’d like to discuss with you.

The internet provides me with more information than I can possibly take in. Not even a lifetime will give me enough hours to read all the blog posts, articles, eBooks that attract my attention and cause me to lose track of time!

When I fall behind with other work because I’ve been reading, watching or listening to yet another great piece of content, I make excuses (mostly to myself) that it’s research to help my coaching clients.

While the information was available just to read, I was largely able to contain it by downloading and storing until I had finished my working day, and then read it in my ‘free’ time.  That worked, and continued to work reasonably well when audio information came along. 

But my self-discipline seems to desert me when it comes to how-to videos and I find myself irresistibly drawn to watch them.  Even when I know they’re ultimately trying to sell me something!

So now, I’m not only falling behind with work, I’m also putting off launching my own products!  What a crazy situation!  And that’s before I own up to the time spent on Twitter, Facebook, etc.

I’m not blaming anyone here – this overwhelm is totally a problem of my own making.  So what’s the solution?

Well, just as email was once the enemy of business productivity and needed to be put in its place, now the overload of available information has become my personal ‘bête noire’. 

As an experiment, over the next few weeks, I’m going to try different ways to tame my addiction to new information, sharing my findings and results in this blog.  I’d also welcome suggestions and comments from you!  What have you tried that has helped stop you being overwhelmed by information and increased your productivity?

Who's stealing your time?

Do you ever reach the end of the day and wonder where the time went?  Have you been trying to get a task completed or a project started and never seem to get round to it?

If so, you could have some time thieves lurking.  Time thieves will thwart your best intentions.  They sometimes wear different disguises to make them hard to catch but really they are all interruptions or distractions to your precious working time.  They could be unexpected phone calls (from colleagues as well as telemarketing companies); people calling by ‘just for a chat’; time spent looking for a file or document; letting emails take top priority as soon as they ping in; or spending valuable time clicking links instead of doing what you should be doing!

One way of finding out how many time thieves you have is to monitor how you spend your working day.  If you’re interested, I have a form all ready for you to use – just email me and I’ll send it to you.  Try it for a week and unmask your time thieves!