Did you know that your business growth is all about choices?

Some of you will understand that question, while others won’t.

Many of the choices made in our business mainly are up to the management or the owners. Sadly after a number of years in business, many owners get comfortable with their successes. Things are going along very good and they don’t want to rock the boat.

The key choice that all business owners make is whether to be innovative or stick doing the old ways. If you don’t want to rock the boat, you probably aren’t that innovative.

If you don’t want to be innovative, rest assured that some up Start-up Company is going to come into your area and market their service or product better and you are the one that will pay the price for your lack of improvement or innovation.

The choice is yours.

Is the image of your business sustainable?

Yes, is the image that your business portrays able to carry on as the business world changes? I believe that this is something that we need to keep in our minds at all times.

Remember the ad "When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen," this was the well-known slogan from the respected broker's ads in the 70’s and 80’s. After the stock market crash of 1987 and bad press along with the E.F. Hutton’s deep debt many people had stopped listening to what they were promoting.

Could this happen to your business, of course? If a very large broker can disappear from view - you can to. So how are you going to make your business sustainable? This is only going to happen if you become more innovative. This will be covered in my next blog.

Will a Social Media campaign work for your business?

Social Media campaigns based on a flawed understanding of your potential clients will never work. I state that because if you don’t understand what media your potential clients are reading or viewing or listening to, you could be spending an excessive amount of time and money on a media that is not getting to those who may buy what you offer.

For example; social media doesn’t work by itself. Before you enter the social media area of marketing you need to research. So, will social media work for your business? The difficulty with this type of question is you first have to decide what you want social media to do for you. Social media is great for raising your profile, improving the visibility for your business, attracting an audience and even doing some market research.

I don’t believe that it is effective at making direct sales pitches. I’ve read that the percentage of social media visitors that will buy anything is ridiculously small. Social media is a great source of traffic for a few days, but the traffic will eventually fade away unless you can keep publishing new content that draws readers.

Although social media traffic is typically very short-term, there are some powerful long-term results if you have a solid plan. I mentioned earlier that you need to use the media that your potential buyers use. In order to achieve this you’ll need a broader plan than just using social media. Don’t ignore other priorities like building a search engine friendly website. If you do go to a web-site make sure it is actively changing site not a cob-web site. Remember social media is just one aspect of a complete marketing plan.

Are you using ‘just in time’ marketing regarding the Royal Wedding?

This is part of an article from the ‘Canadian’ Globe and Mail Published Saturday, Apr. 23, 2011.

It stated that “Business has also been brisk for Leith, the 24-year-old illustrator who has moved more than 5,000 of her limited-edition hand-screen printed barf bags at £3 each since February. The Carlisle, England native says that she came up with the idea after friends bemoaned the excessive media coverage of William and Middleton back in November, when their engagement was announced. “Throne up,” the bags read. “Sick Bag. Keep this handy on April 29th 2011.”

Depending on who you are this is either tacky or enjoyable. I am not going to express my opinion, although I will say this marketing has great timing.

Is there a way you can time the marketing of a new product or service you offer to coincide with a prominent event?

Are you dating material for your prospective clients?

I hope the title of this blog got your attention. In my opinion we all need to examine how we connect with our prospective clients. Let me use dating to give you a few examples;

• Are you needy and desperate? If you are why would anyone want to become your client? They probably think that you are not that confident enough in your product or service to fulfill their needs or wants.
• When you are asked an opinion, do you have trouble giving an answer? If you do that you are giving the impression that you would accept anything in order to make the sale.
• Do you talk about past relationships? If so, this is not the way to start a new business relationship. If you talk about past clients and the trouble they have given you, the prospect may be thinking that there is nothing to stop you from complaining about them?
• Are speaking openly about your good qualities?  By doing that you have forgot that you have two ears and one mouth – use them in proportion.
• Are you into dropping everything in your life in order to be with this special person? If you constantly re-arrange your schedule to fit in this one client you are asking for trouble. This is because business is a two-way street it is all about give and take on both sides. If this isn’t happening the potential client will realize that they can use you for information and then spit you out.

It is very important to examine the above examples; after all you want the relationship to be a long-term one don’t you? The reason I say that is because as it takes less money to keep a client happy that to get a new one. This is what marketing is all about.

Did you know that there are 6 keys to being excellent at anything?

These keys are taken from a Harvard Business Review article. It was written by Tony Schwartz who is the president and CEO of The Energy Project and the author of The Way We're Working Isn't Working.

Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scientist and Physician Aristotle stated that "We are what we repeatedly do." So if you are what you repeatedly do - then who are you? Are you a technology wizard who should be seeing more potential clients? Are you the ‘want to be’ creative genius who should be focusing on managing the business? Are you the customer service ‘guru’ who should be watching the finances of the business closer?

No matter what you are, here are the six keys to achieving excellence that The Energy Project found are most effective for their clients:

1. Pursue what you love. Passion is an incredible motivator. It fuels focus, resilience, and perseverance.
2. Do the hardest work first. We all move instinctively toward pleasure and away from pain. Most great performers, Ericsson and others have found, delay gratification and take on the difficult work of practice in the mornings, before they do anything else. That's when most of us have the most energy and the fewest distractions.
3. Practice intensely, without interruption for short periods of no longer than 90 minutes and then take a break. Ninety minutes appears to be the maximum amount of time that we can bring the highest level of focus to any given activity. The evidence is equally strong that great performers practice no more than 4 ½ hours a day.
4. Seek expert feedback, in intermittent doses. The simpler and more precise the feedback, the more equipped you are to make adjustments. Too much feedback, too continuously can create cognitive overload, increase anxiety, and interfere with learning.
5. Take regular renewal breaks. Relaxing after intense effort not only provides an opportunity to rejuvenate, but also to metabolize and embed learning. It's also during rest that the right hemisphere becomes more dominant, which can lead to creative breakthroughs.
6. Ritualize practice. Will and discipline are wildly overrated. As the researcher Roy Baumeister has found, none of us have very much of it. The best way to insure you'll take on difficult tasks is to build rituals — specific, inviolable times at which you do them, so that over time you do them without having to squander energy thinking about them.

Does a company name make a difference?

The National Hockey League started their playoffs last week. In one of the series the Montreal Canadiens are playing the Boston Bruins. Due to this some very good marketing was shown in Montreal this week.

There is a Canadian based food outlet called Boston Pizza and they have many outlets all over Canada. The interesting thing about this situation is that they have over 20 restaurants in Montreal. So what does the management do? 

They re-named their restaurants Montreal Pizza, but they do it a unique way. They hung a banner over their regular sign and put a slash through the word ‘Boston’ and inserted ‘Montreal’ in its place.Yes, it is an inexpensive method, but it is making national news coverage. You can’t pay enough money for this type of marketing!

My question for you is – is there a way that you can get free press coverage for your business by considering the local situation?

Have you heard the latest from Australia?

Yes it appears that shoppers are being hit with 'try-on' charges as retailers fight online rivals. It appears that many shoppers will go into their favorite stores and try on or try out what they are interested in, say they are not interested and then go home to buy it on line.

The challenge I see it as is that too many retailers in Australia are focused on the ‘price’. By only being concerned about the price, the retailers are forgetting that they have direct contact with the shoppers and have not used their marketing skills to take ‘price’ out of the equation.

Yes, price can be important to some buyers. But is it really important for all buyers? If you want to really compete in the business world it just can’t be about price! What about the personal service that you can offer? What about the unique advice you could give?

I believe that sometimes as business people we get hypnotized by what the potential client is talking about. If you and your business have an effective marketing and sales plan, you can avoid the majority of pricing concerns.

If you would like help in improving your marketing and sales plans, email me today at timothygibney@sympatico.ca.

Do you know what prompts people to buy from you?

The book ‘The Tipping Point’ was written by Malcolm Gladwell it was first published in the year 2000.  In order to write this blog I looked up the word tipping, which means to tilt, slant, prompt and predispose.

It is the last word that I want to focus on. To predispose means to give an inclination beforehand. So my question for you becomes; what are you doing in your business to give an inclination to your potential clients beforehand of the type of business service you can provide to them?

In your promotions do you talk about your low pricing? In your advertising you do promote your craftsmanship? In your marketing do you stress the length of time your business has been in existence?

If you are committing any of those actions you have forgot the one key question that all potential clients are asking – ‘What will this product or service do for me?’ Why would you focus on your low pricing, your craftsmanship or the length of time the business has existed?

All that you are stating is something that you are proud of. That is not ‘Expressive Marketing’. In future blogs I will discuss this type of marketing further.

Have you ever been in a store that was not easy to navigate?

For the past 15 or so years I have had the ‘opportunity’ to shop at IKEA for selected items. I was always intrigued by the tangled web of their shopping aisles.

Recently I read an article that talks about a Professor of Architectural Computing at University College in London England named Alan Penn. According to Professor Penn, the feeling of getting lost in the IKEA store leaves shoppers feeling "licensed to impulse purchase." Amazingly this strategy works, as 60 per cent of purchases at IKEA weren't on shoppers' lists.

Why do I address this? IKEA has come up with a sales plan that does work. Has your company set up a plan that influences your clients to make purchases? In fact has your company set up a sales plan that help clients buy easily?

Either way, if you haven’t set up a sales plan you are leaving too much up to chance.

Are you really passionate about your work?

I found the following questions on the Karmichael Group web-site (www.karmichaelgroup.com). According to this site they offer executive coaching and consulting services that help to advance people's careers. I think they have hit the nail on the head with the following questions.

Why do I share this with you? If you want to be successful and promote you or your business you need to be passionate and turned on to what you can do for your potential clients.

So as they have stated “Be Your Own Career Coach and Answer These Questions.

·   Does your bookcase or web surfing reveal any topics of interest or themes of passion? List whatever subjects you discover.

·   What did you really want to be as a child? 

·   What career idea is rattling around your head that never seems to go away?

·   What life changing events have sparked a sense of mission for you?

·   Any situations that make you feel alive and invigorated?

·   Think about people you know.  Write down six things that other people are doing that excite you. 

·   What do you genuinely love to do?

·   What are the projects you have truly enjoyed in your life so far?

·   Is there anything you do where you lose a sense of time because you feel so engaged?

·   Any activities or situations that make you feel alive and invigorated?”

How much is your product or service worth?

Every once and a while I come across a small business person who in my opinion appears to be under pricing what they are selling.

Sometime ago this happened when I went to buy a gift for my wife. I had met this young woman at a business meeting and the way she explained what she was doing with such enthusiasm really got my interest.

About a month later I called her up and told her what I was looking for. She said she would put a few samples together and I could see them in a couple of days. Now remember that these products are hand-crafted. When I got there I was surprised at how low her samples were priced. This made me wonder about the value and quality of the product.

Are you lowering the perceived value of your product or service by your lower price?

Did you know that a recent Yahoo survey indicated some very important information for your business?

The question asked in the survey was - What is your preferred way to stay informed on Canada's federal election campaign? The responses were Television - 17%, Newspapers - 5%, On-line news sites - 18%, On-line social networks - 2%, A little bit of each - 21% and I’m tuning it out! - 37%.

You may wonder why this has anything to do with your business. Just look at the numbers and relate it to your business. The highest percentage of people who were actively interested was 21%. They are getting informed by television, newspapers and on-line sites. In other words to become better known by your prospective clients you need to be actively marketing in all aspects of the media. The key point I need to make is that you need to find out what media your key prospects are using. How do you find that out? Simply by asking your past and present clients how they heard about you.

Once you’ve decided which media you want to use, let me help you fine tune what you are saying to make it more effective.

How fast should you communicate to others?

This was a concern for a client of mine recently regarding a radio ad. The company is from the southern United States and he believed that in a 30 second ad you should not have that many words.

I questioned him on his premise. My question is based on research done by Richard Lee and Delmar Hatesohl of the University of Missouri. They have come to the conclusion that thought speed is greater than speaking speed. Now considering that people in the southern U.S. are known for speaking slower this seems to go against the norm.

There is a reason for poor listening skills. It is that you can think faster than someone can speak. Most of us speak at the speed of about 125 words per minute. However, we have the mental ability to understand someone speaking at 400 words per minute (if that were doable).

This difference between our speaking speed and our listeners thought speed means that when we listen to the average speaker, we're using only 25 percent of our mental ability. We still have 75 percent of our mental ability to do something else with our thoughts. So, our minds will wander. This means people need to make a real effort to listen carefully and concentrate. If they don’t, you soon find that their minds have turned to other ideas.

So my question to you is; do you want people really attentive to what you are communicating or do you want their minds wandering?

Do you really understand how you can be influenced by a question?

If you are still reading, you have proved my point.

The other day I took part in an on-line survey. What surprised me was how slanted or directed to the way the organization wanted the questions answered.

To give you an example here is one of them; ‘Violent young offenders should be sentenced as adults.’ When I read that my first indication was – of course. Upon further thought I began to second guess as I wondered if there was more background a person should know before the question is answered.

I would suggest to you that the next time you ask a question, please consider the words you use. Yes, the way you phrase a question can have a tremendous impact on the answer you are going to get?

Do you know how to keep your employees happy?

At least one of the readers of this blog will state; ‘They are lucky to have a job.’ Whereas the majority of you will state; ‘Tell me more.’

First of all, the ones that think that their employees are ‘lucky’ need to wake up. I state that because if you don’t treat your employees with dignity, they will tell all their friends about what a crappy organization they work for and they can’t wait to leave it.

Your employees are a key part of your marketing plan. If they are sold on what you are doing product or service wise, they will tell all that they meet. If you are treating them bad, they will degrade all that you do on a regular basis.

The answer to how you keep your employees happy is to recognize each one in a way that suits their personality and attitude. Some people are motivated by awards and some people would just appreciate some extra time off to be with their families. The choice is yours, but choose wisely.

Would your clients miss you, if you weren’t around any more?

If your company was to close today, would your customers miss you or your company? This is especially true if you have provided a service. Are you doing a good job of reminding your clients of the value you provide? Do your customers comprehend how important you are to them? Are your clients aware how much better you have made their lives?

Now let’s consider this, how would you act if you knew you had only a few months to actively seek those clients that really needed your assistance?

The reason I state that is because those are the actions you should be doing now. There is no time like the present!

Do you know how to learn through action?

Yesterday in my blog I wrote about ‘learning through action’, it is based loosely on the Scientific Method. I write that because it is built on asking yourself questions after you’ve completed some action.

First of all you review what happened and write a brief account of the main events. In other words you ask yourself what happened and write a summary.

Next you list your conclusions and the lessons learned. By doing this in writing you are not assuming your conclusions as you are both thinking about the conclusions and visualizing them, thus giving you feelings about those conclusions.

Finally you write what you plan to do in the future to put your conclusions into practice. This is when the learning takes place as when you plan to do something to improve a situation, you have learned.

When you take action the next time, you are testing your theory of your conclusions and will see if your learning was enough to make a difference.

Are you now committed to learning through action now?

Are you a person of action?

I hope you said ‘yes’ to that, as if you didn’t you are probably watching things happen.

The biggest challenge in business is paradoxical though. We know that actions gets results, but the challenge is that too many times we don’t evaluate the results of our actions. I wonder at times why people satisfied with their lives and do not want to improve. They just hope things do not get worse. As you know this will lead to a very unfulfilled life.

In order to overcome this challenge I would suggest you follow this plan;

• Take action
• Observe the results
• Ponder or contemplate the results you’ve achieved
• Decide what is working and what isn’t, then
• Continue the process again and again

Can you see how this will jump start your learning through action process?

What is the life-blood of your organization?

I ask this question because at times businesses you will try to do anything in order to survive. While survival is key to any business, doing activities that take you away from your core message will hurt your business in the long-term.

Let me give you an example. In 2002 Volkswagen introduced a luxury car more expensive than some of its upscale Audi models, the Phaeton. In 2004 the U.S. market sales were only 1,433 in 2005 there were just 820 sold, which lead Volkswagen to announce that sales in the American market would end after the 2006 model year. “The Phaeton proved to be what the automaker hoped it would be----the 'Best'--- but amidst its perfection it has somewhat brought a dark cloud over Volkswagen.” www.pressbox.co.uk

The interesting part to my story is that as of January 2011, Volkswagen is considering bringing the Phaeton back to the U.S. in the car's next product cycle.

My point is that back in the early 2000’s Volkswagen forgot what their core message was. That message being that car-buyers had no interest in buying a Volkswagen that cost over $60,000. The fact is Volkswagen was trying to be everything to everybody and this does not work. You need to always stick to your core message because then you will never make decisions that suck the life blood out of your organization.