by Admin | Feb 3, 2020 | Business Development, Goal Setting and Achievement, Success
My advice on working your way through a monstrous to-do list and making $ in your business. With every post I make, I’m asking myself, can someone read this and make an impact on their earning potential this month/week/day/minute. Today’s advice can do that for just about everyone. I’m setting a high bar here because this is a critically important topic that I know we all struggle with. Figuring out where to start with your prospecting is a task that is insurmountable to some and an afterthought for others. Today I would love to help you bring it to the forefront of your mind and ensure it has a regular spot in your calendar with an emphasis on the relationships that drive your success! Here are 5 Keys to making time for prospecting (or any other significant task in your business) Establish your Priorities – spending time planning is of critical importance in your business. This ensures you do the right things to bring your success instead of hoping for ‘happy accidents’ to come your way. I suggest when you do your planning you identify your top priorities and limit this to a manageable number. I have 3 in my business. Serve my clients and important professional relationships.Increase my audience.Promote my business and find attendees for my programs. When I have these priorities I can look at the opportunities that come my way and if they align in these areas, I consider them and figure out if they are good to pursue. If not, it’s an easy no. (More on that topic later in this post) Recognize your High...
by Admin | Sep 3, 2019 | Business Development, Networking, Prospecting, Referrals
This year my husband and I celebrate our 28th wedding anniversary. One key lesson I have learned in staying married to the same man for that long is that every day takes 100% investment of effort into our relationship. There is no 50/50 in a marriage, it’s all in for each partner. In the beginning it was much easier as we had a lot of hormones running amuck and were very young and immature about relationships. We didn’t realize the path to finding your happiness lay in helping someone else find their happiness. This lesson came to us after the second child and about ten years in when I realized that this man helped me be the best me I could be. And that every day he wakes up and asks me how he can make me happy today and I realize that I want the same thing for him. How does this relate to your prospecting effort? Too often we have a ‘routine’ we follow and it becomes something we ‘have to do’ instead of something we look forward to. We also fall into the routine and out of love with what connected us to our profession in the first place. Today we will take a bit of a different approach to see what has to shift to make it more enjoyable and yes, it can be the most fun part of your business! Align with your ‘why’ – Remember what an impact you actually make with your best clients. Devote a significant amount of your prospecting effort to engaging your great clients. If you have an account...
by Admin | Aug 26, 2019 | Business Development, Business Relationships, Networking, Prospecting, Referrals
Today’s buyers have so many more tools at their fingertips to find solutions for the problems they are experiencing. Thanks to social media influences, the magic of Google and remarketing, they may be aware of problems they have that before wouldn’t have even been recognized. In some cases they may have unfounded fears or skepticism that need to be addressed before they ever engage with you. Whatever the situation may look like, the buyer journey your best client has gone through with you to engage your solution, similar prospects also go through to solve their issues. Today I’d like to talk about how a few conversations with your top clients can help you design a nurturing process to help your best prospects recognize their need, create urgency to engage and build credibility in your solution. And close more business for you in the process! Let’s get to it! Start with figuring out who are your top prospects, if you struggle with how to profile your client base, here’s a short post on LinkedIn that talks about profiling your clients to recognize how you narrow your focus to serve these folks often and well. And avoid those that aren’t profitable. This will help with creating your perfect prospect profile. Once you figure out who the top clients are that you’d like to reproduce, you need to dig into what their approach was to working with you. I would like for you to interview them about their ENTIRE buyer journey. Not just once you met them. I want you to go back in time to when they realized they had something...
by Admin | Aug 19, 2019 | Business Development, Business Relationships, Influence, Networking, Prospecting
Hint – Like Most Things in life, it’s More about Listening than Talking My Grandma Mattie was a very wise woman. We lost her at the age of 97 several years back before social media had really arrived. I do remember wisdom she shared with me about life in general that I certainly think applies to best practices in social selling. She shared with me “God gave you two ears and one mouth to do more than twice as much listening as talking.” I think Grandma would have been a great sales trainer. The biggest lesson we teach is how to ask the right questions to help our prospect (and us) figure out if we have the solution to their problem. Today I will share with you 5 Do’s and a couple of Do Not’s to engage in social selling. Be clear about who you are talking to. The more crystal clear you can be with your prospect profile, the easier it is to align your messaging, create content and share insight. A big nugget here – the more narrow your prospect profile the better. Interview your clients that fit your perfect prospect profile, find out what their biggest goals are in the next 18 months and what obstacles they see in accomplishing those goals. Understand the challenges they face. This is another reason the narrower the vertical market segment, the easier it is to really engage in their world. Subscribe to their industry publications. Follow their thought leaders and truly become an ‘expert’ in their space. An easy example – I have never been in the manufacturing space...
by Admin | Mar 20, 2017 | Business Relationships, Referrals
When to move on in a referral relationship is a question that comes up often and I thought today was a good day to chat about it. In the past week alone I have had 3 clients make the decision to ‘move on’ from a potential partner or new relationship without really giving it a fair chance. I have hopefully talked them out of moving on, but want to open up this conversation with my ‘tribe’ on Linked In. Let’s start with why you would fire a referral partner: · Misrepresentation of their capabilities to deliver. There is no fake it til you make it with referral relationships. Your partners put their reputation at stake, it’s a risk that shouldn’t be rewarded with you practicing with a new marketpotentially at their expense. If you are taking a proven concept to a similar client that you have multitudes of experience with, that’s a different story. Be clear on what you can do and make sure you are overdelivering and underpromising with all introductions, otherwise, expect to get a pink slip from your partners. · Making bad introductions. Referral relationships invest their valuable time with you educating you on who they serve, what a good client looks like and even more importantly who’s not a fit. Time is precious and if you make introductions to ‘spiders’ and waste your partner’s time you deserve to go back to cold calling. · Bad Behavior. Sometimes people behave badly and you can’t afford to have your reputation tied to someone who doesn’t have the ethical standards to represent you or your brand, which is at stake with every...
