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By Joyce
Area 1: Identifying the Targets or Suspects, Marketing
Area 1 of your business includes marketing, referral partnerships, public relations, advertising, etc. It includes any and all efforts to get those individuals or companies who may be interested in your products and services to take action and connect with you.
Most companies, organizations, and industries don’t naturally have an abundance of targets. While a “hard” word, you can also call them suspects but they are in fact, the people who could benefit from your product or service. Marketing is a matter of educating them about the benefits of connecting with your company and getting them into position to work with you.
One of the most important principles to grasp that success in marketing, success in business , is governed by natural laws that affect all areas of life. I have a colleague who discovered over 110 of these natural laws to date. He never does anything small.
One of these laws is the Roller Coaster Principle. Inconsistent actions produce inconsistent results. Consistent actions produce consistent results. The real trick in any business is knowing which actions and systems produce consistent results.
Breaking the up-and-down cycle of the roller coaster requires an entire team who produces consistency.
In the book Good to Great, Jim Collins says it better than anyone:
“When I look over the good-to-great transformations, the one word that keeps coming to mind is consistency.”
Another word offered to me by physics professor R.J. Peterson is coherence.“What is one plus one?” he asks and then pauses for effect. “Four! In physics, we have been talking about the idea of coherence, the magnifying effect of one factor upon another. In reading about the flywheel, I couldn’t help but think of the principle of coherence.”
However you phrase it, the basic idea is the same: each piece of the system reinforces the other parts of the system to form an integrated whole that is much more powerful than the sum of the parts. It is only through consistency over time, through multiple generations, that you get maximum results.
“What would happen if you could get one referral from each of your prospects and/or clients?” Most people say, “It would increase my business.” Well, it not only would increase your business, but it would double your business indefinitely. We call this the “Cluster Principle.”
When the entire company culture embraces the Cluster Principle as well as other powerful laws and principles, it changes the way you do business forever.
By Joyce
I’m big on continuing effort, right actions in the right way over the right period of time. So, let’s dive into a series between now and Halloween! The 5 Areas of a business, of YOUR business.
5 Areas of Business
There are five areas of business. I don’t care what you are trying to sell online, if you are a realtor or have a barber shop, these same 5 areas exist for any person, company owner or Fortune 100 company.
• Area 1: Suspects/Marketing
• Area 2: Pre-Sales
• Area 3: The Sale
• Area 4: Servicing
• Area 5: Client for Life
By considering each of these five areas, you can more fully understand how and where a partner and/or a coaching team can provide the greatest assistance in the least amount of time with the smallest investment.
Area 1: Suspects/Marketing
This area covers how to generate more and better prospects. It covers marketing and getting referrals from current and past clients as well as other sources. One small adjustment in this area can double your profitability.
Area 2: Pre-Sales
Most companies invest hundreds of thousands of dollars into marketing (Area 1) and then only convert one out of ten leads. Why? There are many reasons, which is why it’s so difficult to know how to correct or change these numbers. By using our unique processes, systems, tools, and technology, we’re able to help you quickly identify where you may need to make key changes. If we can help you convert just one more lead out of those ten, you could double your sales with no additional work, leads, or efforts.
Area 3: The Sale
This area is an art and a science. It’s the hardest part to truly understand and duplicate. By improving Areas 1 and 2, Area 3 will automatically improve. By teaching you and your team how to identify an individual’s personality in 15 seconds, your sales people will experience a newfound excitement, energy, and effectiveness. By using systems, tools, and automated processes along with technology and media, the way you do business will be changed forever.
Area 4: Servicing
Most companies look at servicing as a cost center rather than a profit center. We know, by studying natural laws, that strong servicing of one’s business can actually produce more new sales opportunities
than Area 3: The Sale.
Area 5: Client for Life
This is the dream and passion of every entrepreneur and CEO. We must aim to keep our clients for life if we’re going to grow and maintain profitability. This is a combination of two key elements:
1. A company culture that believes and practices natural laws for success
2. The proper implementation of technology, training, tools, systems, and the development of people.
A “client for life” mentality will bring the other four areas into a symphony of success for our clients, vendors, employees, and stockholders/owners.
By Joyce
I find the hardest thing I do is help my business clients.
WHAT?
As each day passes, I admire my friends and colleagues who are doctors. Yes, I know, some of you know my opinions on doctors. However, I admire their capabilities to stay distant from the emotional aspects of working with people with dire health issues. People can die. If we are emotionally tied to them we can emotionally die with each one that does, too. Doctors, could shrivel and die within a few years if they could not insulate themselves.
So, could business coaches and trainers.
I find more and more, I care about the success of the business clients I work with. Moreover, I am finding I care more and more about the people behind the business, too. In doing so, it becomes more difficult, this could be age, perhaps, for me to keep a professional distance.
Death for me. Death for my clients. Certain death for friends. I have few close friends. The ones id do I cherish.
My business clients need a business skills trainer, not a friend. Friends are necessary. The two are separate. Business requires skill trainers. The two are diametrically opposed. Friends require shoulders to cry on some times. If I am your friend, I cannot remotely help you or your business.
So, in terms of business building, I am a bit focused, ruthless some say. I would rather help someone build their business then be a friend.
Business success is tied to intimately to one’s vision. There are better friends than me. There are no better business builders than me, however. IT is very, very difficult, but I’d rather help you realize your dreams and vision than be your “friend.”
Few understand it. Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a D _ _ m. You can’t live your dreams or unfold your vision unless you have the financial means to do so.
What do you need…..another friend or a business trainer that shows you how to attain and live your vision and purpose?
By Joyce
Business Masteries LIVE! in Denver this past week was a huge success. I met an incredible amount of wonderful people wanting to grow their business to the next level. I suspect in the end we will work together and a few of them may even become good friends……”synergy” as I call it.
The most curious thing is, I had a lot of people in Denver come up to me and want to discuss with me how they can take their business online so they can prospect better.
Why do they ask me this?
One, I know a lot of online marketers and entrepreneurs, some I consider close confidants. They teach me what they know. I apply it to offline business owners. I discovered this past week a really dangerous, radical new theory:
1. Business owners are intoxicated by the notion of Social Media and the hype about free or no cost online prospecting.
Heck, I am too!
2. Very few people are doing this successfully.
Dangerous. Many Internet marketers and online business owners will not agree. They will even get angry. I know most of them.
Radical? No. Its just “The Emperor Has No Clothes” and many are not telling him or her. I guess I will. (sigh)
If your business structure is flawed offline, say you are a real estate or mortgage professional, then going online to prospect is going to sap your time, focus and revenue generating activities with little results. If you are reactive, scattered, lacking a system of prospect generation and referral depth offline, you will not be able to put one in place effectively online.
Just a theory I have, not backed by data, just my observations.
If your business structure is solid, you can still go online to prospect with little results because you may not know the right actions to take in the right way at the right time.
It’s a shame really, as to the few that are doing it well are getting very good results. These are the results that can be duplicated, replicated and expanded at will with a logical pressure point analysis. This is rare.
For every single person I talked with I recommended some offline business strategies first. There was one man I actually encouraged to expand his LinkedIn exposure and do a few things with some targeted groups and connections.
I also told the others to put away their Internet Marketing “follow these easy steps” to traffic and money programs. They are the online equivalent of fast and easy “dreams come true,” what I call morphine shots or IMLM – Internet Marketing MLM’s.
Solid business, built a solid way takes time. The fastest I’ve seen it is 2-1/2 years. It’s not overnight but t is enduring and profitable for years.
By Joyce
I am a fan of Epictetus….are you of your own vision?
“You see yourself as a small, insignificant member of our society. Therefore you feel that you should try to be like everyone else, to conform, and to not distinguish yourself from the rest. But I wish to be exceptional, striving to realize my potential so that I may better serve others. Why would you want me to remain ordinary? And if I did, how could I be exceptional?”
Be exceptional with this tip: There are five major areas within every business. Most business owners, even the most successful ones, may not understand them or that they even exist. Ignore them, and you cannot sustain any long term success. Know them , honor them and work them as if they were your children and you can achieve anything you desire and dream of financially and business-wise.
Through an in-depth examination of your business, I can quickly identify which of the five areas will bring the greatest value with the least effort, investment, and time.
By considering each of these five areas, you can more fully understand how and where a partner and or a business coach or coaching team can provide the greatest assistance in the least amount of time with the smallest investment.
Here they are:
Area 1: Suspects/Marketing
This area covers how to generate more and better prospects. It covers marketing
and getting referrals from current and past clients as well as other sources. One small
adjustment in this area can double your profitability.
Area 2: Pre-Sales
Most companies invest hundreds of thousands of dollars into marketing (Area
and then only convert one out of ten leads.
Why?
There are many reasons, which is why it’s so difficult to know how to correct or change
these numbers. By using our unique processes, systems, tools, and technology, we’re able to help you quickly identify where you may need to make key changes. If we can help you convert just one more lead out of those ten, you could double your sales
with no additional work, leads, or efforts.
Area 3: The Sale
This area is an art and a science. It’s the hardest part to truly understand and duplicate.
By improving Areas 1 and 2, Area 3 will automatically improve. By teaching you and your team how to identify an individual’s personality in 15 seconds, your sales people will experience a new-found excitement, energy, and effectiveness. By using systems, tools, and automated processes along with technology and media, the way you do business will be changed forever.
Area 4: Servicing
Most companies look at servicing as a cost center rather than a profit center. I know,
by studying natural laws, that strong servicing of one’s business can actually
produce more new sales opportunities than Area 3: The Sale.
Area 5: Client for Life
This is the dream and passion of every entrepreneur and CEO. We must aim to keep our clients for life if we’re going to grow and maintain profitability. This is a combination of two key elements:
1. A company culture that believes and practices natural laws for success, and
2. The proper implementation of technology, training, tools, systems, and the
development of people.
A “client for life” mentality will bring the other four areas into a symphony of
success for our clients, vendors, employees, and stockholders/owners.
By Joyce
Now that you are clear, as a business owner, a CEO, that setting goals and having the proper motivation to go after them, is critical to your business success, I’m going to twist your head around today!
Goal setting is a tricky business.
This is especially true for the entrepreneur with huge goals in mind.
I have a theory that if you reach your goals all the time, you are not setting them high enough.
Ever fail? It’s the most painful time and the time that you will learn the most. What are you learning when you achieve your goals all the time?
Failure and success is a balancing act with a CEO. I love it when I fail. Do you? I learn from it, adjust, do it again with a different approach, and see if my efforts work. Try, fail, adjust, try, fail adjust, get lucky, adjust and succeed. This is really what goal setting is all about. It is, in my mind, what it means: always moving forward towards an end result.
You will have to set the goals high enough so some failure occurs. High goals mean you are in unchartered waters. The waters could be shark infested, too. In taking business owners into unchartered waters, they usually, not all the time, but usually, freak out. I like pushing them to their limits and then beyond because it tests their sincerity in reaching their goals and dreams. Many want it, few reach them, and so I just get right to it to see who I’m dealing with.
The correct method of goal setting is to set the bar so high you must fail. As a matter of fact, several failures are good. I find the large, stupendous goals are reached by the few business owners that get pummeled by their incredible failures along the way.
So, first step today: pick one goal you want to reach in the next 12 months. Make sure you then tie in some very real, tangible, almost scientific components to it:
- What does your goal feel like
- What does you goal look like
- What does you goal taste like
- What does your goal smell like
- What does your goal emotionally feel like
For those of you with NLP training, you’ll get it. For those of you new to this, you will get it.
Work this out on paper, with a pencil. There is a direct correlation between the pencil tip, your fingertips and the nerves that go up your arm and into your brain, I believe. It matters that you physically write this out.
When you’re finished, double your goal in size and scope. Or, half the time you think it will take to get there. Freaked out? Wait until next week’s tip…..you should be as lucky as to have me as your business trainer!
