Achieving Goals: The Remaining 90% - Sheer Persistence
October 14, 2007
Achieving goals requires persistence. Here’s the proof: In 1915 Ty Cobb set up an amazing baseball record of stealing 96 bases. Seven years later Max Carey set the second-best record with 51 stolen bases.
Was Cobb twice as good as Carey?
Consider this: Cobb made 134 attempts. Carey made 53.
So Carey’s average was much better.
Cobb however made 81 more tries and was rewarded with 44 more stolen bases.
Frank Bettger makes this strong point on page 238 of his fascinating classic: How I Raised Myself From Failure To Success In Selling
When you get behind the big success stories in any given field, you often find the most successful have made more attempts and spent longer hours at the given task than anyone else.
In other words, they give the law of averages a chance to work in their favor! They just keep on striking out, often against all odds.
With achieving goals, this sterling quality of persistence and its bed-fellow perseverance, is absolutely essential.
Yes the previous six steps are also essential and crucial BUT, if you do not persist, your wonderful plan can go down the drain. Your vivid mental images can just evaporate into thin air. Achieving goals simply becomes wishful thinking.
7 Ways to Evaluate Your Marketing Plan
October 13, 2007
Business owners often find it difficult to know whether their marketing tactics are working. This can be especially tricky when you use a combination of marketing activities simultaneously, or if using personal-contact tactics such as networking.
No matter what business you’re in, your marketing should be accountable. So here’s a few ways to evaluate how well you’re doing.
1) Look at your sales (or fee income). They should be going up! But be careful about what you measure. Some firms have a longer sales cycle than others. To get an accurate picture you might need to also measure the number of new leads being generated, or the number of appointments, or the number of billable hours achieved. Remember discounts or variances in fees will affect total sales values.
2) Ask your clients. Check to find out where they heard of you. Most businesses never ask this question and miss out on gleaning valuable insights into how clients select a service provider.
3) Does your advertising and/or promotional activity produce direct responses?It should. If your answer is “I don’t know” then you’ve got some work to do. In addition to 2) above, there are some things you can do to improve response rates.
Avoiding the Small Business Cash Flow Roller Coaster
October 12, 2007
A solopreneur I know disappears from my radar screen for weeks on end when she’s actively engaged on a project for a client. During this time she is heads down, totally focused, and immersed in delivering her service to her current client. She works long hours each week, sacrificing her personal life, relationships, and self-care to meet her commitments to her client.
Laudable, but a destructive way to run her business.
After working all hours of the day and night to complete her project, she’ll hand in the final deliverables and suddenly find she doesn’t have another client lined up. Then she panics. That’s when she starts returning phone calls and getting in touch her network, her former clients, and any prospects she might have ignored during her “work period.”
She rides the feast-or-famine revenue roller coaster continuously. During her “work periods” she has cash coming in; during her “marketing periods” she has cash flowing out. And she has no idea how long her “marketing periods” will last or how much of her revenue she’ll need to live on before she gets her next client signed up.
Does this sound familiar?
12 Steps to Targeting Success in Your Career or Job Search
October 12, 2007
Is your job search sagging? Are you still looking for that ideal next job? Or are you about to begin looking for new work and are not sure of the best way to go about it? What you need is a way to evaluate your job search strategies to see whether or not they are working effectively for you.
Ready to get started? Here are 12 building blocks to a successful job search and the goals that will help you get to where you really want to be in the world of work:
1.) Making networking phone calls: Effective job searches begin and end with networking. Start by making a list of everyone you know: family members, extended family, friends, present & past co-workers, faith community colleagues, barber/hairdresser, dog groomer, neighbors. Even list the clerks who work in your favorite grocery or video store, bank tellers and gas station attendants. Everyone! Call or talk to each person on your list (most people can easily produce a list of 50-100 people). Target: Make 3-5 new networking phone calls weekly.
Internet Advertising Methods
October 11, 2007
Internet Advertising Methods
by: Wade Whitehurst
Would you like to find out what those-in-the-know have to say about Advertising? The information in the article below comes straight from well-informed experts with special knowledge about Advertising.
Your online business will likely require more advertising than a contemporary business downtown, yet some new to the world of online business do not spend the time and money to advertise their business appropriately and are, in turn, losing money. Your online business is crammed into the world wide web along with thousands of others selling the same product or service as yourself. Consider this scenario: In your hometown you want to open an art supply store. In that same town there are thousands of art supply stores. In order for your business to be successful, it will have to stand out in some way from the others. This is exactly what is happening when a business is opened online. There is so much competition, that you must take drastic measures to ensure that you are getting noticed. Advertising can be done in so many ways online. These are some of the most successful ways that you can promote your online business.
Less is More: Quick Tips to Improve Your Sales
October 10, 2007
I’ll be brief. If not ? I’ll negate my own point. Got time to read a 12-page essay on sales improvement? You want to get back to making sales and money. Let’s go then.
Less time more pressure.
You prospects have less time and feel more pressure. Just like you, I’m sure. As a sales professional, you need to be sensitive to this. For your own good, have a clear, short and concise benefit statement. Don’t waste a prospect’s time or yours with lengthy (and boring) introductions. Observe people who go on and on at networking events when asked what they do or introducing themselves to the group. Is that you?
Less resources to get more done.
Your sales increase when you better demonstrate how much ‘leverage’ your product provides. Have prepared proof of substantial Return On Investment for prospects. The best ROI support is customer testimonials containing real numbers. If you don’t have any, use industry data and 3rd party research, or statistics, and proactively collecting your own. Start today.
Less contact more voice mail.
Increase Your Sales - Accept Credit Cards
October 9, 2007
Many people today simply prefer the convenience of paying by credit card. If you want their business, you must be able to accept their credit-card payments.
In part one of this series we will discuss why you should accept credit cards, and the basics of getting merchant status. Part two will deal with objections you might get, which credit cards to accept, and the check paying option.
Obtaining merchant status, which allows you to accept credit-card payments, might seem like an unnecessary hassle, especially for those in business where the majority of their customers pay by cash or check. But by not accepting credit-card payments, you lose sales. This is especially true if yours is a mail order business, or consulting business. Just look at the majority of business today, all of them accept credit cards, and becoming more and more popular all the time are debit cards.
As many businesses have found, up to 70 percent of people never mail the check, so accepting credit cards is crucial. When the customer places an order, he’s excited and eager to buy. Faced with the prospect of sending a check, waiting for it to clear and then awaiting shipment, his interest is likely to wane. In the meantime, you lose sales.
Good Marketing is Like a Bad Habit
October 8, 2007
You know those bad habits we get. Like raiding the chocolate biscuits during late night TV shows. Or slouching we when we sit. Or biting our fingernails.
Before we know it we’ve let a new behaviour creep into our routine. Now we’re a slave to the bad habit. It’s hard to resist. We’re tempted. We get that short-lived surge of satisfaction when we do it.
Well, marketing is pretty much the same. Except you can get into good marketing habits that will actually help you. And it won’t hurt. Good marketing habits can make you feel really great.
Think about this.
* When you introduce yourself, are you in a good habit? Do you have an easy-to-understand introductory statement, or maybe a snappy 30-second intro?
* When you meet people do you follow up? Are you in the habit of sending them a thank-you note for meeting with you? Or maybe you could send them a useful article (written by you or some other authority).
* Do you have good sales habits? Are you in the habit of asking the right questions? Can you automatically lead prospects towards doing business with you?
Plans & Goal Setting - Kicking winning Goals
October 7, 2007
Kicking Winning Business Goals
The competition for business is hotting up. The advances in new technology, ease of communication, and increasing expectations from customers have combined to make the marketplace more competitive than ever. In this world it is critical for small and medium businesses to be proactive about creating their future. Without proactivity, things just seem to ‘happen’ without your control.
A management system that is centred around goals is one tool that the business can use to craft its future. This is a system of deciding what you are going to do everyday based on the goals you are working toward.
It sounds simple enough, but the research clearly shows that most businesses don’t set goals ? at all. The goal setting process can seem daunting if it’s unfamiliar territory, or if you have so much on your mind that you don’t know where to start. This process will help you to sort through your key issues and create forwards momentum by setting goals that are innovative, resolve problems and improve results.
A goal-centred management system has 3 elements:1. The goal or the objective you want to achieve2. The activities required to achieve the goals, and3. The review or evaluation process.
Home Business - Online Opportunity
October 7, 2007
Home Business - Online Opportunity
by: Alice Nero
If you have a fantastic idea you can gross it up with profits and make a fortune, beginning with a small online home business. It’s better to be a dreamer (not a day dreamer) and realize the dreams steadily.
Individuals from all walks of life are turning towards ‘work from home’. There are unlimited numbers of home based business ideas (http://www.milanodirect.biz/home-business-career.asp). However, the internet has proved to be the most potential of those ideas. Now, a well planned personal site may generate money. Consider the following points with respect to online home business opportunity:
• Judge yourself - what you enjoy doing and what you are really good at. If you are going to do what you enjoy the most, then there is no problem. Unless, you need the help of an expert mentor. Never go with the hype that everything will be outsourced, though, modern online home based businesses automate many processes. You are still required to be well aware of the different web tools to manage the system or to be in line with the affiliates.
