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Monday

01Mar2010

Not to Be Missed: Sale for Bye-Bye Boring Bio Action Guide

Is your bio doing you and your business justice? Now's the time to do something about it! Share your story to earn expert status and media attention for your business!

This week only (March 1-7, 2010), Nancy Juetten, publicity and media extrodinaire, is hosting her 9-year business anniversary sale and offering an extraordinary bundle of her top-selling, do-it-yourself publicity tools.

Purchase the Bye-Bye Boring Bio Action Guide during this sale and receive the Publici-Tea™ Express Digital Workshop, which features both Nancy and best-seller publishing expert Patrick Snow sharing essential how-to information about do-it-yourself publicity and book publishing to build expert status, as a high value gift!

Treat yourself and your business to the Bye-Bye Boring Bio Action Guide and receive the Publici-Tea™ Express Digital Workshop as a high value gift!

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Please be sure to share this news with anyone in your world who wants to know more about DIY publicity, book publishing, and bio writing!

Don't forget, the sale runs March 1-7, 2010, so make this the week that you kick your boring bio to the curb!

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Lori Richardson on Increasing Sales

Amber Singleton Riviere in

Smart Growth

I had the opportunity to talk with sales super star Lori Richardson of Score More Sales about how business owners could increase sales and revenue. Here's what she had to say.

What are some of the things that people can do to increase sales and revenue to their businesses?

A lot of business owners, they just have this idea for a business, and they don't know how to sell, and often they don't like to sell. I think the keys are to have really a well thought-out plan and then to figure out how to execute it and to find the right people or tools that can help you. There's a tremendous amount of information available on the Web.

Right, and then you have to take daily action. We tend to fumble that for some reason. We get a plan. We sit down and for several days plan things out, and then we don't actually implement it.

I agree, and I think it's important [to have], with the start of the week and the end of the week, kind of a check-in with yourself or if you have other people that you're working with. It's critically important that you don't let things go too far out of hand, because that's when you realize months out, "Hey, we're not making any money. This strategy isn't working." Look in the mirror, pretty much, and say, "What have I done this week to grow the business?" Not just, "How busy was I?" People say that like it's a badge of honor, "Oh, I'm so busy!" That's great. How are you building your business? What are you doing that's leading to more revenue, that's making your company more sustainable?

You're absolutely right, and I like the bi-weekly check-ins. For whatever reason, we feel like we can't take the time to do that. We can't take the time to see where we stand or think we just don't have time at the start of the week and end of the week to do that, but if you do it, you spend your time more effectively and more efficiently.

It's like the Franklin Covey quadrants of time. Everything you do falls into one of those quadrants, and we tend to do those things that are urgent that may or may not be important. I think it's really powerful to be thinking about, "What am I doing that's helping to pave the way for the future? Maybe it's not going to generate cash today, but I'm setting the foundation for the future," and those are the things that are really, really important to do on a regular basis.

As part of your "Fabulous 50 Project," you say that business owners should "declare their big and audacious revenue goals." Explain that and why you believe business owners should think big.

You can set a goal that doesn't represent your entire revenue, but is maybe a project that you're working on like, "I'm working to get $100,000 in new client business," or something, and that can be separate from what you already have going. For me, I picked a goal of fifty new client projects averaging $2,000 each. I did that because I wanted to walk my talk, and I wanted to actually demonstrate how many prospects I need in my pipeline to do that, how easy or hard, or how I feel about it as I'm going forward and really working that accountability plan as if I was reporting to a corporate boss. I think that's something that, as small business owners, we go, "Ah well, that didn't work, so next week I'm going to try something else." We don't really hold ourselves to the same standard as we did when we had to report something by Friday.

Well, and like you said, it is a pipeline. You have this goal of fifty clients, but that starts with a much larger number in order to generate that. You have to keep that momentum going around meeting new people and networking, all these different things that you do. You have to keep those numbers up first in order to meet that ultimate goal.

Exactly, and being innovative. I actually had a client come to me and ask me to start a mastermind group in our area, and I thought, "That could be one of my revenue projects," so I turned it into something we call "The Million Dollar Club" for local people, and we get together quarterly. That was an innovative idea that I've never done that particular thing before, and I set up a business model and a way to make it profitable for me. Then I get to black out a couple of my boxes for doing that, so it's a very rewarding feeling to know, "Yeah, I'm working off that goal!" It feels really good to have a measure, because you can't really improve what you don't measure.

Absolutely. I think a lot of times we chase the wrong things, the wrong metrics. We follow things that don't matter in the big scheme of things, like maybe Twitter followers. What does that really relate to in the big scheme of things? It's not to say that for certain people that's not an important thing, but for the average business owner, does that really matter? Really, is the number you should be concentrating on the number of leads you have coming into your business or the number of contracts or projects or clients you're taking on and how you can fluctuate those numbers?

Yeah, and maybe it's, "Have I gotten any leads related to growing my business through Twitter?" If you are making contacts that are valuable, people who could refer you business, and you follow up with them and get to know them, all of a sudden, boom, there's your referral business.

Right, it's keeping it all in perspective. I can think of an example, just to say Twitter, there's a VA that I know who gets most of her business from Twitter, but she's not worried about Twitter followers. She's worried about how she uses that tool to grow her business.

Absolutely, and how do you know what metrics to follow? I think you need to get outside of yourself and ask trusted advisers, people who are successful in business, because success leaves clues. That's something I remember from Tony Robbins. Find people that are building a successful business and see what they measure.

It reminds me of a quote from Julie Morgenstern's book Never Check E-Mail in the Morning where she says to stay close to the revenue line, never more than two or three steps away from the revenue line. That's really what all of us need to be focusing on is, "What is directly impacting my revenue?" That gives you the hints. Like you said, success leaves clues.

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Are You Neglecting Training in Your Business?

Amber Singleton Riviere in

Smart Management

I recently spoke with Cheryl McNeil of GC Learning Services about the details and benefits of her training and e-learning services.

Tell me a bit about your business, what it is that you do and how your help your clients.

My business is a custom, business-to-business instructional design and e-learning training solution. We provide services for any business. It's really about improving their bottom line. Everyone always thinks about training as an after-thought. Most of the time, people don't put a lot of effort into training. It's not really a top priority. Most of the time, employees think about it as boring, they have to do it, and we want to get away from that and make it fun and interactive and make it a top priority.

Most of the businesses, how we help them is by aligning their strategic goals with their training goals. If their customer service department is having a lot of complaints, dropping a lot of calls, or taking too long to answer the calls and they see that that's affecting their bottom line, then they might take a look at their learning and development needs for that specific department. We try to figure out a way to help them. It might be that they just need a quick reference sheet or a job aid at their desks to remind them of the important key points that they're missing. Maybe they need to start doing quarterly reviews, so that would be a new policy.

Whatever the needs are, they come to us, and we do a needs analysis and come up with a solution that works for their budget.

So, you actually create the materials for the business owner, whether that be a training program, an e-learning program, a new policy or training manual, whatever the case may be?

That's correct. We do everything from the project management to the design and the development, and it's not necessarily hard-copy materials. Our biggest niche right now is e-learning.

Do you actually help the business owner come up with or create the content for those materials and programs?

There are instances where we have to create or research to come up with the source material or maybe we even need to interview a subject-matter expert within the company, but for the most part, I would say 90% of the time, the client already has some documentation. Maybe it was a PowerPoint presentation. Maybe it was an employee handbook. Something is out there within the organization.

What about things like systems creation and documentation? Do you help with that?

Absolutely. We have many organizations that need to train their employees or their customers and clients on their product or service, or they need to provide access to information or training on their system through a public website. We can address all three of those.

I know that every project can vary tremendously in scale, but how do you charge for your services?

We start with our free thirty-minute consult, where we gather enough information to estimate the hours of work that it's going to take to complete the project. We add that up and bill at our hourly rate, which is $75. Our pricing is very unique to other e-learning vendors. They most of the time bill hourly, accumulating time weekly or monthly. We do flat-rate project pricing.

This is something that really can impact a business owner's bottom line. If operations are not running smoothly, it can really cost in the way of productivity. What would you recommend as the first steps to someone who thinks they might need this type of service?

I'm glad you mentioned operations, because a lot of people, when they think of training, they always think software, but 90% of the stuff that's come in in the last twelve months has been soft skills, policies and procedures, new hire training, customer service, conflict resolution, a lot of law stuff like labor laws and sexual harassment laws. It's not just software.

The main thing that you want to think about when you're approaching any type of training initiative is determining that you have a need, "Okay, I definitely see a need here. Let's figure out what we can do to understand the problem and the benefit that we could get, the return on investment," so you want to understand the benefit that you're going to get. You also have to define your budget. Maybe you need to start small and just re-write your classroom materials.

Then you need to make sure you're reviewing all your options. See what's out there. You might even want to issue an RFP. Like I said, we offer free consults. Your training dollars are really valuable, so you want to make sure you research. We have an e-learning checklist on our downloads page that's proven very helpful for determining whether you're ready or not.

You made a very good point about the benefits, when you can figure out how this is going to help your business and why it's so important to the success of your business and the satisfaction of your customers and employees, and I think this is one of the areas that we tend to neglect in our businesses. We don't really understand the impact it can have when these things are in order and things are streamlined and working smoothly.

And, you know, people like to feel like they understand as well. It makes them feel confident. I'm talking about a consumer with a product, a client with a service. I have a blinds manufacturer who is one of our clients who actually took this blinds for roman shades training that we did for them and took the module and put it on their website, and their actual customers go through the entire module and learn all about the roman shades, and they said that sales have gone way up just from putting that on their website.

Right, and you know, these are things that you just don't think about. If you put something on your website that shows potential customers and clients how you work or how the process might go or how the product works, that might impact sales.

Image from Flickr by shinealight

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