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...
by Admin | Mar 13, 2017 | Business Relationships, Culture, Mindset, Prospecting
Are opportunities plentiful for you with your relationships? Or are you experiencing a ‘drought’? “In like a lamb, out like a lion” is the phrase commonly used to describe March weather and we can certainly identify with that in Kansas. This is a state where you can literally experience all four seasons in one week, from blizzard to spring thunderstorms – we affectionately call this ‘Thundersnow’ (cue AC/DC playing Thunderstruck in the background). I think these crazy weather patterns really provide great insight into the rhythms we adopt in our prospecting effort. We start and are gung ho with tornadic breeze levels of effort, lightning fast execution of basic ideas and then it fades into a gentle breeze that doesn’t even move a leaf along. I had the distinct pleasure of sitting in on a presentation on innovation given by 9 Steps grad Jon McGraw of Vision Pursue and Jose Pires of Black & Veatch Leadership Institute of Business Excellence. During this presentation, Jose spoke about how ideas are everywhere, discipline to execute however, is very rare. I see this so often with professionals I engage with in the community and recognize that the majority of the value I bring as a coach/mentor is to remind them to identify the right level of activity and follow it EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. of EVERY. SINGLE. WEEK. of EVERY. SINGLE. YEAR. Yes I raised my voice. The biggest lesson you learn when embarking on any journey is to stay the course and recognize it is a very long, arduous journey full of fun pit stops and distractions that can divert you from...
by Admin | Jun 26, 2015 | thought leadership
TED Talks, Ignite, and Steve Jobs created a new art form—the thought leader talk. While we tend to idolize our favorite TEDx speakers, the real news is that you—yes, YOU!—can be a thought leader in your industry. In fact, investing the time into crafting provocative presentations might be the most worthwhile thing you can do to bolster your business to new heights. Thought leader talks are a little different than a persuasive or educational speech. It’s not a sales pitch, a motivational speech, or an informational presentation, but something completely different. A thought leader talk can be a story, or an exploration of new ideas. Thought leader talks can be very personal. Above all, a thought leader talk needs to offer your audience new insights and challenge conventional thinking. Creating talks like this can be challenging, but the rewards for putting the time and energy are incredible. Here are just a few ways that thought leader presentations can expand your influence and supercharge your business. Increased opportunities: Thought leader talks can position you as an expert in your field. The more you demonstrate your knowledge, the more you can attract bigger clients and larger opportunities. In effect, you’re probably not going to make bank as a speaker or generate millions from your YouTube channel. But by creating useful, intriguing content, you’ll be building up your credibility and professional reputation, all of which is great bait for attracting those bigger fish. Connection: Attracting clients is one thing, but it’s just as important to attract other like-minded people who can help you along your way. It’s not just about getting “likes”...
by Admin | Apr 28, 2015 | Business Relationships, Prospecting
When can landing new business be a dangerous thing? We work diligently in our prospecting effort to land the next BIG ONE. I wrote a previous post on how to land your biggest client ever. It’s a topic that is often discussed as a primary goal to your business development action plan. Let’s talk about when it can be a disastrous move for your business. Size matters in your prospecting effort. Bigger is better. More is Good. It’s all about Excess in Prospecting. Every workshop I teach my participants are all about bagging Bear. Not always is it a good idea to go find a big client, let’s talk about why this can be a bad thing. You have a limited reservoir of the most critical aspect of relationship building and management – time. Every client relationship you bring in – even if someone else does the actual work in delivering your product, requires an ongoing investment of time with you. People buy you, they don’t buy your company. Your reputation and referrability is tied directly to the quality of experience your client has, if it’s stinky, you won’t get referred by them or used by them again. This means you need to know the different transition points within a client engagement – when does the relationship mature. Think of it like dating. There’s the initial attraction stage, the chase, engagement and finally marriage. I’ve been married for more of my life than not married so as the years pass, it’s harder to remember that initial moment when I fell in lust with how he looked in a pair of...
by Admin | Apr 19, 2015 | Business Relationships, Mindset
Are there days you ask yourself why you do what you do? I know many of the professionals I coach will stop and ask themselves this question. Often when they are experiencing not so great results from a lot of hard work. We spend 1/3rd of our days at work, sometimes more. And that’s ½ of our waking hours. We enter the workforce when we are 20 (sometimes sooner) and we exit at 70+ (remember the ‘new normal’ with retirement planning and social security- don’t get me started) that’s 50+ years you devote to a professional career. God promises us 3 score and 10 (translates to 70 years in non-Bible math) in our life. So if we are promised a lifespan of 70 years and more than 2/3rds of that is devoted to our profession, shouldn’t it be something worthwhile? I ask you these questions to get you thinking about what you do in sales. I was visiting with a group of sales professionals who thought by expanding their relationship with their clients it would appear as if they were ‘just selling more stuff’. Is that really what you consider a career of sales? People buy solutions from people they know, like and trust. I don’t know about you, but if someone is ‘just selling something’ they don’t fit into the ‘know, like and trust’ category. There are a few really smart people I know that are always seeking innovation. They adopt new habits, buy new technology and hire the best service providers. I call them when I am looking for a solution. I do this because I –...
by Admin | Feb 4, 2015 | Business Relationships, Prospecting
In an introductory meeting this morning I had a potential referral partner make a profound statement. He said ‘my number for my clients needs to be 1-800- HELP – ME’. This was shared as he related the position he consistently worked to achieve with his clients. He wanted to be the first call they made when they had an issue and his role was to serve as a gateway to whatever solution his clients needed. He just happened to be a financial advisor. Note he didn’t say he wanted to be the gateway to whatever financial solution his clients had, but any issue they had. What this highly successful professional recognized is that to earn a position of trust with your relationships, you need to invest effort in building emotional capital through serving their needs, beyond his self-interest. What advice do you provide? Are you strictly a subject matter expert about your field? Or are you smart about business and an avenue to resources needed? One of the first areas of self discovery to explore with your clients is how do they view you. This is one of the most important discussions you can have with them. You notice the conversation needs to take place with your clients – this is not an exercise in contemplation of your navel. I don’t care about what youthink your clients think about you, I care about what they actually think. Their perception is your reality. Like it or not. By interviewing your clients you gain insight into your true value proposition and also this gives you the chance to explore all of the issues on the periphery of you...
