27

Dec

What’s Next on GabeArnold.com

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Around this time of the year I like to take time to reflect on what I’ve done and look forward to the coming year.  I lay out my goals and take time away to think.  That’s why you haven’t heard from me in a few days.  I hope you had a terrific holiday and that you are coming back to a productive and profitable week.  Here’s what’s coming next (my rough outline of the next few weeks of posts):

Setting and Achieving Goals:

1. What is the goal?

  • Describe it clearly
  • What will it take?
  • What is the time frame

2. What objectives will it take to reach the goal?

  • Break down the steps
  • Daily review
  • Weekly review

3. Accountability

  • Be public about your goal
  • Track it publicly
  • Ask someone to personally hold you accountable

What is an Entrepreneur?

1. Thinking Large From the Beginning

  • Building with systems
  • Building to scale
  • Mass market appeal

2. Someone Who Provides for Others

  • Grow your business for others
  • Grow other leaders around you
  • Impact your community

3. Resilience

  • Mistakes are our education
  • We know businesses fail
  • We can remake ourselves

Small Business Financial Success

1. Five Things I Wish I’d Known About Finances

  • Pay yourself first – no one else will
  • It’s your money, you decide when and where it goes
  • Monthly expenses will eat you alive
  • You don’t have to pay your bills on time
  • You don’t have to pay “prevailing wage”

2. How Much is My Business Worth?

  • It’s not worth much unless you have systems
  • Rule of thumb 1.5 times revenue
  • Are you building to sell?

3. Five Ways To Save More Money In Your Business

  • Review Your Checking Account Thoroughly
  • Eliminate Services You Haven’t Used Within 30 Days
  • Trim Down Existing Services
  • Turn Down the Heat
  • Eliminate Wasted Labor

4. In Depth Cash Flow Analysis

  • Review Your Statements and Categorize Expenses
  • Look at Actual Collection Amounts
  • Build a Spreadsheet
  • Split Revenue Into Categories
  • Check Your Pulse Monthly

5. Make More Money Without New Products, Services, or Customers

  • Negotiate better pricing from vendors
  • Ask customers if they need more
  • Ask Your Team How To Make

That’s your sneak peak!  If you have any thoughts on one of these points specifically, or if you have something else you’d like me to cover, please let me know.

Here’s to your continued growth and success in 2011!

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508 days ago Short URL Comments

goals/Small Business Resources

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10

Dec

Wrapping Up The 30 Days

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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.

  1. Find someone to hold you accountable: Day One
    1. Business coach
    2. Spouse
    3. Friend/mentor
  2. 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
  3. 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
  4. 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
  5. 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
  6. Find a new lead source
    1. Start somewhere fresh
    2. Measure the quality and cost of the leads
  7. 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?
  8. 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
  9. Review your successes – magnify them
    1. What worked?
    2. Why did it work?
    3. How can you replicate that?
  10. 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?
  11. 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
  12. 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
  13. Practice honesty
    1. With yourself
    2. With your customers
    3. With your team
  14. Build a strong team
    1. Outsource effectively
    2. Hire in temp to full time
    3. Learn to give consistent effective feedback
  15. Build strong partners
    1. Groom your vendors
    2. Set expectations
    3. Prepare plan B and C and D
  16. Put killer marketing in place
    1. Email marketing
    2. Person to person marketing
    3. The I need you, Do you need me? Approach
  17. Be available
    1. Open your schedule for your customers
    2. Expect an appointment
    3. Explain the use of your communication channels
  18. 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
  19. 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
  20. 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
  21. 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
  22. 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
  23. 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
  24. Ask for feedback
    1. From your Team
    2. From your Customers
    3. From your Vendors
  25. Have Fun
    1. Enjoy the challenges
    2. Express your excitement
    3. Don’t take it too seriously
  26. Examine your model
    1. What is your model?
    2. Does it work well?
    3. How soon will you have to adjust your model?
  27. Invest in good technology
    1. What really improves work-flow?
    2. What can save you time?
    3. What can save you money?
  28. Learn faster than everyone else
    1. Read constantly
    2. Listen to pod-casts
    3. Ask the right questions
  29. Serve those around you
    1. Do what is right for your team
    2. Lead from your heart
    3. Communicate that you care
  30. 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

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526 days ago Short URL 2 Comments

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

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23

Nov

Killer Small Business Marketing – Day Sixteen

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Small Business Marketing“My small business can’t compete with the big guys, I can’t do niche marketing as effectively as the rest.  I don’t even know what my marketing strategies should be.  I’ve tried to come up with a marketing plan and I don’t know where to begin.”  If you’ve ever said anything like this to yourself then you just need a little perspective.  Day sixteen on how to grow your small business is on marketing!  You can take some simple steps to grow your business in the marketing department.

Put Killer Marketing In Place

I’ve heard the excuse many times that a small business owner doesn’t have the time or the budget that the big players do.  I find that to be a big excuse.  When you are smaller you are more agile.  As a small business owner you can be more unique and faster in delivery.  Don’t let size or budget set you back.  Be creative and find away to hit a home run with what you do have.

1. Email Marketing

Email marketing is probably the number one overlooked tool that small business owners have at their disposal.  Services like Constant Contact and other email marketing platforms offer free trials for you to be able to try out their service and learn how it works.  If I could summarize the value if email marketing in one line it would be: “The ability to be consistently familiar to your customers”.  Just like large corporations brand their images all over every television and billboard you can get in front of your captive demographic with well written, tasteful email marketing.  If you aren’t already collecting email addresses then you need to do that immediately!

2. Person To Person Marketing

What are you doing when you wear your company shirt and walk down main street?  Person to person marketing.  If you look at your past you may have succeeded in selling your services to your neighbor who you bumped into down town or outside your office.  Instead of making this accidental, plan a weekly trip to the places where you can interact with your customers.  People buy from people.  Don’t ever undervalue traditional marketing.  If you are intentional about the time you spend in and around your customers you will see the results more consistently.

3. I Need You, Do You Need Me?

One of the simplest approaches to marketing is calling up vendors who’s services you could use.  Reaching out to vendors who can connect you with more customers is a strong strategic move.  Find vendors who you can partner with and refer work too.  Be straightforward about your interest in using their services and also in referring work back and forth.  If you are able to reach out to one new vendor each month you’ll see this marketing approach succeed quickly.

What is killer small business marketing?  The main component is consistency.  The second important key is creativity.  Combine those two aspects and you can run with the big boys.  What marketing approaches have worked for you?  Share your tips with all of us in the comments.

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543 days ago Short URL Comments

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05

Nov

Grow Your Business In 30 Days: Day Five

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Grow Your Business In 30 Days

Today is day five in my series of 30 tips on how to grow your small business.  My goal here today is for you to be able to apply this step in roughly 30 minutes or less. I know that even if you just apply one step out of the 30 steps I’m sharing you’ll see positive results!  Today’s step has made me over $250,000 in my career so far and in one day alone I made over $20,000 when I applied this step.  If you haven’t called old customers yet in your business, today is the day!

Day Five: Pickup The Phone And Call Old Customers

Just like all the steps so far, today’s small business growth step requires that you take action.  All of us get into the mindset where we think that things will move onward without our involvement.  Stop thinking something so foolish.  That is an incredibly lazy mindset that creeps up on us when we are discouraged or even possibly satisfied with our current surroundings.  Today you need to pickup the phone and call the customer that you haven’t spoken to for the longest amount of time.  Here’s why:

1. The Goal Is To Keep Your Name Fresh In Their Minds

Your goal is to always be the first person that comes to mind when they consider a need that relates to your product or service.  The only way that is going to be possible is if you constantly reach out and brand yourself in their mind.  You may not have the marketing budget of Coke or Pizza Hut but your small business does have a phone right?  One of my old bosses a few years ago always used to walk into my office and ask me “Are you dialing for dollars?”.  He was completely right about that question.  The more time that you can spend interacting with your customer the more money you can make for your small business.  Don’t ever underestimate the power of that phone call.  Once you get them on the phone there are a few things you can address.

2. Ask Them How You Can Help Them Succeed

First and foremost ask them how they are doing.  Once they begin to share with you what’s going on you will quickly be able to ascertain the current state of their company.  When you have a basic understanding of how they are feeling about their current projects, revenue, and other conditions of their business, ask them how you can help them succeed.  You’ll be surprised at how much this question really does for your conversation.

When you are willing and able to communicate to your customers that your goal is to help them succeed then you have most likely expressed something that they haven’t heard from the majority of their other vendor partners.  In my experience people often forget to simply tell their customers this basic truth.  When a vendor partner of mine expresses their interest in helping me succeed as their client it makes me value them as a partner even more.  If you can do that for your customers you’ll gain their respect and trust and you’ll be able to effectively help them reach their goals.  Tell them how much you care.

3. Be Willing To Face Old Problems

Once you’ve expressed your interest in helping them succeed, facing the old problems that may still be lingering from your last interaction becomes much easier.   Now that they understand your goal is to help them succeed they understand that it is a joint effort when you consider the problems or lingering issues that may stil be left from an original product or service.  Be willing to face these problems and work together to resolve them.  Remember, if you focus on helping them succeed, you’ll never go wrong.

That is today’s step.  Simple and easy to execute if you are willing to just pickup the phone and talk to the customers who you haven’t spoken to for awhile.  Go ahead and do it now.  This action will pay you over and over everytime you do it.

Action is the foundational key to all success. ~ Pablo Picasso

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561 days ago Short URL 1 Comment

Finance/goals/Grow Your Business In 30 Days/Instructional/sales/Small Business Resources

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