2016-05 MAY
Grow Your Business Fast Using Another Company’s Clients!
Today you’re going to learn how to find a target market of potential customers so you aren’t wasting precious resources on trying to find more customers using hit and miss blitz marketing programs. There is an more effective strategy and there are only two questions you have to ask yourself to take advantage of it are:
- What do people really want to buy from me?
- What related products are they already buying?
Learn how to find potential customers without wasting precious resources on hit-and-miss blitz marketing programs. There is a more effective strategy and the only two questions you have to answer to take advantage of it are:
- What do people really want to buy from me?
- What related products are they already buying?
With these answers, you can find other businesses with the same customer base that you can customer share with. You then strike up a relationship with those business owners to work out an incentive for customers to purchase from both businesses.
The trick is to make sure you’re getting enough lifetime value from these new customers to justify your incentive. Here’s the formula for figuring that out: LV = (P x F) x N – MC.
- LV is the life time value of a customer
- P is the average profit margin from each sale
- F is the number of times a customer buys each year
- N is the number of years customers stay with you
- MC is the marketing cost per customer (total costs/number of customers)
If you need help working through this process, check out our FREE test drive for the most comprehensive system of marketing tools and resources.
- By Coach Phil Gilkes
Saving the Family Business: How to Balance People and Profits
Too few family businesses survive into the second and third generations of ownership because the emotions of family members conflict with the demands of the bottom line.
Consider, for example, the damage that results when siblings compete for the position of company president. Sadly, parents often opt to ignore these issues.
“There needs to be a shared understanding of the purpose of the business, beyond just making money. People who possess a shared vision will be willing to make the necessary tradeoffs,” says Kathyann Kessler Overbeke, principal of GPS: Generation Planning Strategies.
Further, “Consideration has to be given to not just family members but all stakeholders,” says Paul Karofsky, Founder of Transition Consulting Group. “That means in-laws, bankers, suppliers, customers, and the cadre of non-family employees who are impacted by any business decision.” It may well be unclear if the second generation is capable of taking on the reins of management, or if they might be able to do the job with some additional education.
“The transition needs to be an exceedingly cautious, well played out scenario,” says Karofsky. Time must also be sufficient to recruit where necessary, to assess candidates, to create professional development plans, and to help the senior generation move to roles of significance.
Read the article's in-depth advice on what you need to address and resolve to keep the family business afloat - and in the family.
Winning in Life and Business: Understanding The Right Ratio of Attitude, Skill and Knowledge
I received a call from a client in the oil and gas drilling sector. He asked me how I was doing; I think he was expecting me to go down the “ain’t it awful” rabbit hole.
I answered, “It’s never been a better time to be in business, granted maybe not so great in the oil and gas exploration business these days, but in the business performance coaching and training profession it surely is.”
I talked with him about the Carnegie Triangle and how it identified the common traits of highly successful people in virtually every endeavor: skill, knowledge and attitude.
The Carnegie report said that 85 percent of a person’s success is due to interpersonal skills or attitude; only 15 percent of their success is the result of technical knowledge or skills. This 15 percent was split in half between knowledge and skills at 7.5 percent each.
Attitude plays the biggest part in the effectiveness for all of us. A good attitude equals a better life. You can train for skill and educate for knowledge, but if your attitude is negative you are not going to be able to have sustained change.
- by Coach Phil Gilkes
3 Ways To Positively Motivate In Safety
Instead of focusing on negative outcomes, re-frame communications to be more positive in safety.
Safety, like any other message or idea, needs to be marketed to employees. Safety needs reminding. The more a safety message is repeated, the more employees become comfortable with the message.
The overwhelming focus of safety marketing in past has been wrong. Scare tactics, sad stories and data charts do not provide inspiration or motivation to buy-in to safety. They create fear and accident avoidance. That's a short-term result that needs to be constantly fed and reinforced.
Safety is focused on achieving compliance instead of developing an affinity with personal values. A cop at the side of the highway causes short-term compliance. Values alignment creates safety buy-in so that cops become unnecessary.
Instead of focusing on negative outcomes, re-frame communications to be more positive in safety. Here are three ways you can begin to re-frame how you communicate your safety message:
1 Shift away from behavior-avoidance. Negative-based safety messages of “don’t do this” focus on behavior-avoidance. People want to know what they should do - not what they shouldn’t do. “Don’t do this” is not a complete set of instructions.
You don’t go to the grocery store with a list of things not to buy. You don't buy-in to a financial plan because of what you might lose. You don't buy-in to a healthy lifestyle because of what you might lose. You do those things because of what you will gain. But safety is focused on reminding workers of what they might lose if they don't comply.
Broke people don’t get invited to speak at financial planner conferences. Fat people don’t get to offer their “don’t do what I did” advice to fitness trainers. People don’t want to know what NOT to do. They want a plan and strategy for success - one that builds on strengths and teamwork - not negativity and fear. Show your people how safety makes life better.
What exactly would you like your people to do better? Be specific about what you want them to do. Point all of your energies at accomplishing that.
2 Remove irrelevant messages. At a safety meeting, the safety manager ended with a gut-wrenching video of injury. After the video, one employee stood up and asked why they shown the video?
The employee pointed out its irrelevance. The story happened twenty years ago. The events depicted in the video could not happen at this company because there are too many checks and balances. The safety manager was embarrassed.
Employees know what makes them respond positively. They know when they're being manipulated. You don’t build a solid safety culture by appealing to a fear of failure. So remove the negatively-reinforced and irrelevant messages from your workplace. Especially from your PowerPoint slide deck. Be relevant.
Lay out your specific plan of what you want your people to do. Then sell only that message. Do not try to add shock-value or scare tactics. It confuses what you’re trying to do.
3 Ask them to take ownership of the safety program. In sales, the person who doesn’t ask the customer for the sale rarely gets it.
Safety is the one thing that everyone can agree on. No one wants to see someone else get hurt. Your people are on the same page as you in that regard. So, you assume that you shouldn’t have to ask them to “buy” in to safety, right? But, because they’ve never been asked, they treat safety as rules they are forced to follow.
So ask. Show them how safety makes their lives better. Your people may have plans for when they retire but how many have a plan to make it safely to retirement age? I mean, a real plan that they execute each day? The safety plan, when worked properly, will get your people successfully to retirement age.
If your people want to enjoy their golden years healthy and happy, then they are going to need a plan to safely get there. Ask them to buy-in to the safety plan.
7 Nuts n Bolts Strategies for Safety Communications:
- Inspire your people and value them.
- Trust them, involve them and engage them in all aspects of safety.
- Allow them to buy-in to safety for the long-term.
- Don’t forget to ask them though.
- Show them that safety is enjoyable.
- Keep it positive.
- Once you get buy-in, it lasts a lifetime.
- Kevin Burns is a management consultant, safety speaker and author. He believes that the best place to work is always the safest place to work. Kevin helps organizations integrate caring for and valuing employees through their safety programs. For more info and to reach Kevin, www.KevBurns.com. -reprinted with permission.
The Law of Futurity - Don't outsmart yourself
The Law of Futurity says: The purpose of a negotiation is to enter into an agreement such that both parties have their needs satisfied and are motivated to fulfill their agreements and enter into further negotiations with the same party in the future.
Let’s break this law down into its parts. First, “The purpose of a negotiation is to enter into an agreement….” It is assumed that both parties want to do business together. If one does not and is negotiating for some other purpose, the other party can be at a considerable disadvantage.
The second part says, “…such that both parties have their needs satisfied.” An agreement where one party feels that he or she has lost is not a successful negotiation. Both must feel that they have come out ahead.
This law then says, “…and are motivated to fulfill their agreements and enter into further negotiations with the same party in the future.” It’s your job in every negotiation to assure that the other party will want to continue doing business with you in the future.
- "THE 100 ABSOLUTELY UNBREAKABLE LAWS OF BUSINESS SUCCESS" – Brian Tracy
How to Test Market Your Product or Service the Smart Way
How do you test market a product or service? How do you find out if people are actually going to buy it? Try these strategies.
First, make or get a prototype. Create or get a sample so that you can show it, demonstrate it, photograph it.
Determine the Correct Prices. Get prices and delivery dates from your suppliers so you have accurate answers when asked.
Ask a Buyer. Get a buyer's personal opinion. Go to somebody who you will want to buy the product or service and get their personal opinion.
Compare Your Product to Others on the Market. Be sure to ask this question, "Why would someone buy from you instead of from someone else?"
Try a 1-store test. Go and see if you can find a store that will carry the product on a limited basis. If it's a product or service, try to find one customer who will use the product or service.
Take It to a Trade Show. There are 15,000 trade shows each year. Sophisticated buyers there will tell you if you have a winner.
Why Not Have an Employee Benefits Program That Delivers a Positive ROI?
Hiring and retaining top performers is never easy and requires a company do many things right, including offering the right employee benefit plan. This is true whether you are in Canada or the United States.
Aside from basic compensation, most companies offer some form of employee benefits, such as top-up health and dental insurance. However, few employers have a strategic approach to this.
Do you need to attract and retain talent in a specific field? If so, does your benefits package support this? Think of it as making a marketing strategy: Create a “persona” and use it to create a benefits package that attracts this kind of talent. It may include benefits such as:
- Flexible schedules, job sharing or telecommuting,
- Non-job related education and training,
- Sabbaticals,
- Paternity leave for new dads, and
- Paid gym memberships or other sports activities.
Canada doesn’t have the same number of employee benefit providers as the U.S. but some that may have packages available to businesses as small as just three employees include: Manulife Financial, Sun Life, Great West, Equitable Life and The Cooperators.
Need Investment Financing? Here’s What You Need to Know!
Growing a successful business takes money. Business owners seeking growth financing need policies and management processes to be in tip-top shape to convince investors that they are worth taking a chance on. Here’s how to do that.
Know Where You’re Going. It’s not just about having a sound, long-term strategic plan in place (although you need that, too) – it’s also about being comfortable with the idea of growth.
Find the Right Type of Investor. Identify the type of investors you need, and make sure your company fits the profile they prefer.
Be Ready for Investment. Investors typically look for opportunities that are in the commercialization stage, rather than the concept stage.
Have Your Policies and Procedures in Place. Few investors are likely to fund a company with haphazard accounting processes, inadequate governance and poorly maintained operations.
Structure Correctly. Planning for business growth requires your company structure to be streamlined and efficient if you’re to optimize your profit margins and deliver effective results.
If you’d like to discuss how we can assist you in getting ready for funding, let’s talk. We are experts at structuring businesses that investors love.