Dec

Wrapping Up The 30 Days

I finally completed the series “How To Grow Your Business In 30 Days”. It ended up being a lot more work than I expected, but it was really enjoyable overall. I learned a lot. I’ll share some of the lessons I learned during the 30 days in future posts. Here I’ve summarized the Grow Your Business In 30 Days using the original outline I created so that you have one easy place to review them and find each post.

Find someone to hold you accountable: Day One
1. Business coach
2. Spouse
3. Friend/mentor
Get control of your finances – expenses: Day Two
1. Do you know what you cost each minute, hour, day, week, month, year?
2. Cut out the fat
3. Do more with less
Get control of your finances – Accounts Receivable
1. It’s OK to lose 20% to get 80%
2. Build a system that improves speed of payments
3. Automate monthly fees
Get back on track – pickup the phone and call vendors
1. Thank your vendors
2. Tell them what you are up to
3. Ask them what they need from you
Get back on track – pickup the phone and call old customers
1. Keep your name fresh in their mind
2. Ask them how you can help
3. Be willing to face old problems
Find a new lead source
1. Start somewhere fresh
2. Measure the quality and cost of the leads
Adjust the lead source to meet YOUR needs
1. Is it your exact market?
2. Does it apply to the product or service you sell?
3. How can you swing the bat more often?
Fine tune your prospecting approach
1. Write a thesis statement that explains your approach
2. Draw out each step sequentially and study it
3. Ask your peers and mentors how the think you should do it
Review your successes – magnify them
1. What worked?
2. Why did it work?
3. How can you replicate that?
Review your failures – minimize them
1. Where did it fall apart?
2. How can you prevent this from happening again?
3. What did you learn from your mistake?
Improve your sales process – what works?
1. Do you understand your open, middle, and closing steps?
2. Study good sales behaviors
3. Persistence is the key factor
Improve your sales process – automate it and refine it.
1. Write it once, and re-use it
2. Get a direct line
3. Get in the solutions business
Practice honesty
1. With yourself
2. With your customers
3. With your team
Build a strong team
1. Outsource effectively
2. Hire in temp to full time
3. Learn to give consistent effective feedback
Build strong partners
1. Groom your vendors
2. Set expectations
3. Prepare plan B and C and D
Put killer marketing in place
1. Email marketing
2. Person to person marketing
3. The I need you, Do you need me? Approach
Be available
1. Open your schedule for your customers
2. Expect an appointment
3. Explain the use of your communication channels
Write an FAQ
1. Save yourself time and read through the FAQ’s you receive
2. Write an FAQ and provide it automatically
3. Ask your customers to provide input
Provide a support portal
1. Queue and handle requests
2. Automate responses and include your FAQ and tools to download
3. Remember that every time you reach a customer it’s an opportunity to build value
Don’t focus on today’s dollars – look long term
1. Monthly services are relationship builders
2. Learn to provide solutions to problems
3. Help others succeed and the money will follow
Schedule your way to success
1. Build your to do into your calendar
2. Make sure you are meeting someone to accomplish the to do list
3. Never leave a meeting without scheduling the next
Put A Project Management System in Place
1. Tag and prioritize products
2. Mark the date the project entered your system
3. Daily choose to update and manage the system
Take time to relax and think
1. Lay on your back and wonder
2. Don’t be afraid to consider change
3. Stop doing things you don’t enjoy
Ask for feedback
1. From your Team
2. From your Customers
3. From your Vendors
Have Fun
1. Enjoy the challenges
2. Express your excitement
3. Don’t take it too seriously
Examine your model
1. What is your model?
2. Does it work well?
3. How soon will you have to adjust your model?
Invest in good technology
1. What really improves work-flow?
2. What can save you time?
3. What can save you money?
Learn faster than everyone else
1. Read constantly
2. Listen to pod-casts
3. Ask the right questions
Serve those around you
1. Do what is right for your team
2. Lead from your heart
3. Communicate that you care
Consider vertical and horizontal growth
1. How can you grow your business larger? (vertical)
2. How can you expand into new sectors (horizontal)
3. How fast should you grow?

Now with everything in one place here in this post you can simply review the general thought process I had behind the 30 days or you can read each post at your convenience. I’m sure that this doesn’t cover everything that you’ll encounter over the years in business, but I have tried to give you some tools that will make a difference in the short term.

How can I help you? Please feel free to ask me any questions in the comments or by contacting me. Here’s to your increased growth and success in 2011!

Entrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States. ~ Ronald Reagan

Nov

How To Build Strong Partnerships – Day Fifteen

Build Strong Partners Day fifteen in growing your small business is about building strong partnerships. As you know it takes a strong team around you to build up a winning operation. Strong partnerships with those around you are key to your growth and success as a small business owner.

Build Strong Partners

Strong partners come in the form of vendors you can depend on. When you enter the relationship properly and maintain it wisely you can depend on your vendors to be there for you when you need them. Every small business owner needs solid partners on their team.

1. Groom Your Vendors

From the beginning of the relationship to the end you are responsible to give your vendors the tools they need to succeed for you. Before diving head first into dealing with a new vendor think through what you expect, the work you’ll need done, and the best form of communication for the project. Remember you are responsible for their performance as much as they are.

2. Set Expectations

In general all of us work about as hard as we are expected to work, show up when we are expected to, and complete as much work as we expect ourselves too. Setting proper expectations is important for vendors. When you hand off a project, set a deadline. When you ask for an update set an expectation of what kind of update you are to receive and when. Don’t leave things to chance or leave them unexplained. Be explicitly clear about what you want and need. If you don’t set expectations then your vendors will perform at whatever “normal” is inside their organization.

3. Prepare Plan B, C, And D!

I’ve learned one thing from my many mistakes and that is plan B might not be enough. Plan C and D are generally a good idea. Even though you can’t guarantee success every time, you can guarantee that mistakes will happen in the course of your efforts toward success. Don’t be so arrogant to think that you can pull it off every time without a hitch. Don’t believe that your vendor is perfect even though they’ve delivered every time so far. Be wise and have one or two contingency plans in place. Even if you only use them once or twice a year you’ll be thankful when you do.

Those are just a few keys to building strong vendor partners around your small business. Take a few minutes and sit back to review what you’ve put in place in your current partnerships. Take the time to raise the bar, expect more, and prepare a backup plan or two. You’ll be thankful that you did.

543 days ago Short URL 1 Comment

Grow Your Business In 30 Days/Leadership/Small Business Resources

partners/success/vendors

Oct

Win Win

Ever heard the term “Win Win”? What heck does that mean?

I’m pretty sure that was my reaction to the term Win Win when I first heard it. Like a lot of other people that I know I grew up in a fairly competitive environment that taught me that winning was important. When we’re youngsters the concept of both people winning is a little foreign. As a kid “Win Win” just meant I was dancing around yelling “I win! I win!” after striking it rich in monopoly world domination. No one else won, just me.

What does Win Win mean in business?

win win - winning with others

I think that understanding “Win Win” in business is critical to our success. It’s the missing piece in making things strong and stable. Over the course of the years I’ve slowly started to realize that when I approach another partner in my industry it’s not about winning or losing, it’s about winning together. A competitive nature can be valuable in many aspects but it can also lead us down the wrong path if we aren’t careful. Win Win is about competing together with those that want to win the race with you. I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have some hugely successful winners in my life. Some of them are new and some of them have been helping me win for years now. Rather than explain the theory of Win Win any further I’d like to just explain what it means by sharing how I win with just a few of my incredible partners personally and with my business ZigZap.

What does it look like?

Win Win with a vendor partner can mean that they make the profits they need and my company gets on time quality delivery of the product or service we need. Eric Eckman at US Signal has set a new standard of winning in the circuit delivery field for me this year. I love winning with Eric. He understands what it takes to deliver what a customer wants and needs.

Win Win with a customer partner can mean that I can provide them a solution in an efficient and timely manner and out of that they gain stability and growth. I believe it also means taking the time to educate each other about how our businesses work so that we can effectively partner together to make solutions work well. David Valrose at DC Data Corporation chooses to win with ZigZap and I find that to be incredibly valuable both personally and professionally. Winning with David is always rewarding. His honesty in dealing with me and his drive to deliver on time solutions to his clients is inspiring.

Win Win with your business partner means consistent and real honesty about challenges, frustrations, and positives in your business so that you can continue building and growing together. It means being willing to work hard at the relationship even when it’s hard. Lane Campbell has taught me this lesson very patiently and consistently in ZigZap and I’m honored to work with such an incredible man.

Win Win with another vendor partner may mean that they are willing to invest in educating you about their product or trade extensively. As a vendor education of your clients can feel very risky because it often seems like your customer could walk away from you. Once they have the knowledge you impart to them what’s stopping them? You must be wise in who you educate, but contrary to what I expected, I’ve found that every time I invest heavily in education of a client they are even more loyal to me. Chris Buechler at BSD Perimeter is not only a networking genius but an incredibly patient teacher. Since Chris has chosen to win with ZigZap the Win Win between our companies has created some incredibly opportunities. Winning with Chris is incredibly satisfying to me and my whole team.

Win Win with an affiliate partner can mean that even if you aren’t in the same industry you can refer some work back and forth and expand your market indirectly. When you find a reliable team member in another business sector it’s well worth the time it takes to work out an understanding and a clear relationship. Once you have that in place the opportunities are endless. Having someone like Brandon Cohen to send clients to when they need merchant processing setup or need their current costs reviewed is invaluable. I know that Donate Your Processing is good for my clients and our world. I know that my clients will be treated incredibly well by Brandon, and that they won’t find anyone more honest and sincere. Winning with Brandon is very rewarding.

Win Win Is Teamwork

Those are just a few examples of what Win Win looks like to me. The great thing about winning with others is that it never gets old. The more you strategize on how you can put a Win Win plan in place the more you and your whole team can benefit.

What does Win Win look like for you? Share your thoughts in the comment section. Thanks for reading, I’m honored that you’ve taken the time and I hope this post just like all the others has proven valuable to you.

575 days ago Short URL 1 Comment

Inspirational/Leadership/Small Business Resources

clients/customers/partners/teamwork/vendors/win win/winning

Sep

How Much Should I Charge? – Part Two

How Much Should I Charge? Is a two part series where I’ll be sharing on two components of the question. In part one we covered raising or lowering prices on services and regular fees to customers. In part two today we’ll discuss how to get a feel for what a customer is willing to spend on a project so you can accurately quote the right solution for their needs and not end up way off track.

How Much Should I Charge – Part Two:

When Preparing A Quote How Do I Find Out What My Customer Is Willing To Pay?

As a small business owner who wears many hats, it’s often difficult to transition into the sales person’s role seamlessly. One thing I have found to be effective is to create ‘tool sets’ that I pull out mentally before changing roles. When it comes to pricing a project properly I try to focus on what the customers wants, needs, and budget is. In order to determine their budget I usually use a technique I like to call the ‘trial close price feeler’.

Any easy way to learn more about your customers budget is to attempt to trial close using a “price feeler” early in the sales process. This is a very important step that is skipped by most novice sales people. The last time I used this approach I asked my customer if they wanted the Cadillac version of our service with all the add ons and features for $12,000.00 or if they wanted to start with the basics at $6,000.00 which is was the entry level for the service. When I asked them this I carefully gauged there facial expressions, words, and response to the question. After I asked them they explained that they did have more that $6,000.00 but did not want to spend more than $9,000.00. With that KEY information in hand I was able to craft a proposal that met their needs and budget.

Another way to ask the question indirectly is to tell the story of the last customer you worked with who spent $6,000.00 on your services. You then can lead into a second example about a customer who spent everything on the full package price of $12,000.00. I’ve found that if I pause after sharing these stories customers often very quickly volunteer what their budget is in clear terms. At worst they will give you more general feedback on prices that will steer you in the right direction.

Don’t Let The Big Sticker Kill The Deal

When I have products that are high dollar items for my customer I am careful to mention that my company is able to phase in changes in an affordable and flexible time frame. This way the project is open for discussion if they want to make payment or implementation arrangements that better serve their projects financial needs. No matter what, keep the conversation going. Creative hard working partners can always find a way to do business together.

That concludes part two of “How Much Should I Charge?”. Please comment with your experiences on discovering how much you should charge. I look forward to hearing from you.

597 days ago Short URL 2 Comments

Marketing/sales/Small Business Resources

customers/marketing/partners/proposals/sales

Gabe Arnold

Tagged with partners …