Standards. We may not think about them much. But we all have them. Individuals. Families. Companies.
From time to time, we are forced to measure our conduct against our standards. We may find when we do that, we are not living up to what we profess to believe. I am talking about what happens when a business cuts corners, makes compromises, takes “the path of least resistance,” contrary to an established policy.
Having worked with many owners, leaders, managers and employees and a theme that keeps coming up is how to deal with change. The standard way of dealing with change in most workplaces is to get really upset and run around in great distress. Many people dwell on how things used to be and clutch desperately onto the old ways of doing things. In one business where I had to change the culture, everyone told me “but, that’s the way we have always done it.” My response was the same as well. Doing that way is why the business is failing and we need to change how it is done so everyone has a job in 6 months. This dynamic usually happens because leaders and organizations do not have the systems in place to welcome change or view it as an opportunity for growth.
Many people fear change. Change can be scary and daunting but what I’ve noticed affects workplaces negatively is how they deal with the situation. People don’t consciously try to complicate things, it’s just that they don’t know what to do and very often their leaders aren’t helping them through the challenging times. The next time you’re experiencing change in your organization make sure that you do the following things to make it more difficult.
2. Stubbornly keep doing what you’ve always done. No matter what is said and done, just keep doing the it way you’ve always done and hopefully no one will notice.
3. Whatever you do, don’t change your perspective. Stay on your course. Do not look at anything from another perspective.
4. Complain to as many people as you can. My favorite. Be the poison in the water. Why not, the squeaky wheel gets the attention.
5. Don’t buy-in to new ways of doing things. Blockbuster loves this one. The world is changing and don’t buy into the hype that it is changing.
6. Actively resist doing anything differently. No matter what do NOT try anything different.
7. Stay nervous at all times. Be that long tailed cat in a room full of rockers. By being nervous you can spread some panic to those that do want to change.
8. Run around aimlessly. Like the old FedEx commercial. Busy being busy. This way people may think you are changing, when you are really just spinning your tires in mud.
9. Feed into the hysteria as often as possible. Find others with the same fears as you and really build the hysteria- just like the media does.
10. Don’t offer any solutions. Remember you need to be the problem and not the solution. Giving a solution means you are open to the change and that is not good.
I know I have seen all these 10 things being done withing businesses that are trying to change for the better. But, if you do these ten things, you’ll find that you will reverse the rotation of the earth and everything will go back to how it was. Realistically, you will have little to no impact on the changes going on which really leaves it up to you to decide how you’re going to deal with what’s actually happening. You have the ability to take even the worst situation and focus it any way you want. You choose whether the change is a tragedy or an opportunity. It’s just like when you want to support your point of view, you can always find someone to support it on the Internet, but maybe not support it in real life. By resisting the change, you will actually cause change, in that you will have to look for another J.O.B. If you are the owner and resist change, then you will probably have to close the doors to your business.
The world changes. Your customers preferences changes. Buying habits change. Technology changes. Economics change. Regulations change. And so much more. Smart leaders expect change and need to plan for it in order to grow their businesses.
What will you do to welcome change and use it to grow and succeed?
Steve Feld, MBA, Certified Business Coach, Author, provides training and business performance coaching to business owners, professionals and executives. Steve also speaks to organizations, conducts workshops and training. Focusing on the lead generation and revenue creation to get growth results for the business.
Contact Biz Coach Steve today to see how he can assist you get the results you want in your business, [email protected], or www.bizcoachsteve.com. He is in the business of growing businesses. Need a speaker, contact Steve today. #bizcoachstevef #entrepreneur #smallbusiness #business #smallbiz #coaching #businessowner #businesscoach #leadership #marketing #speaking #keynotespeaker #meetingprofs #eventprofs #meetingstoday
What will make you more persuasive? Thinking less about what you want and more about what you deliver for others. Think about delivering benefit instead of trying to win over your clients/prospects.
A benefit exchange is the heart of persuasion. It answers the question from the radio station-WIIFM, “What’s in it for me?” for the person you are seeking to persuade. In other words, it’s a benefit you promise in exchange for someone taking your desired action.
The old school way of marketing is nothing like WIIFM. It was clearly a neglected concept in communicating a business’s products and services to the market. But benefit exchanges are useful for all kinds of situations, such as getting someone at work to agree to your proposal, inspiring people to change their habits or compelling someone to buy your product.
We so often get the benefit exchange wrong. The number one error is we talk about attributes vs. benefits. We get lost in the qualities of an idea or a product rather than translating those attributes into the benefits they deliver for a prospect or customer. Telling me that a proposal addresses a problem in workflow is citing an attribute; demonstrating how it saves money or increases efficiency is showing a benefit. Rack and pinion steering is an attribute of a car; responsiveness that makes you feel safer on the road is a benefit.
Good benefit exchanges focus on what your audience wants – not what you want. That’s the second common error most small businesses make. Don’t fall into the trap of communicating based on the benefits you desire. Think from the perspective of those you want to influence and speak to that world view.
Those are ways we go wrong. So how do we do it right? If you want to be more persuasive, here are five ways to build a strong benefit exchange and win hearts and minds in the process.
Make the Benefit Immediate: Few of us take action based on a benefit that we expect to receive in the far future. It is human nature to seek instant satisfaction over distant gratification. How can you make your case that if someone does what you want, they will reap immediate rewards? Answer the question: what will be better tomorrow?
Make It Personal: A compelling benefit needs to make people feel their lives will be better as individuals or within their tight circles of friends, family, community or work. At the end of the day, the personal connection, not the grand concept, grabs our attention. Make sure you’re focused on why your agenda is specifically relevant to the person you wish to persuade.
Speak to Your Audience’s Values: We can’t easily change what other people believe, but by plugging into their existing mind-set, we unleash great power behind our message. Make sure the benefit you are communicating is something others seek – not just what you want. Those two things are rarely the same, but we often imagine they are.
Know What You’re Up Against: Think competitively about your benefit. Is it better than what people get for doing nothing – or something else instead? Don’t forget there’s a reason people aren’t taking the action you seek. They may be deriving benefits from those alternate behaviors. How can you shape a benefit better than sticking to the status quo?
Be Real: Last, you need to make sure your benefit exchange is credible and honest. People need to believe in what you communicate. Ask someone who is respected to back you up. Or show other people gaining the promised benefit. Or tell a good story that is a true example of the benefit in action. You want to persuade by keeping your promises.
If people aren’t doing what you want, you may to speak to someone and get an outside perspective. Maybe you are thinking the WIIFM is you, when the WIFFM is your customers. What outcomes are you providing to your prospects and clients? How will you and your company’s products or services solve their problems, needs and wants?
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Steve Feld, MBA, Certified Business Coach, Author, provides training and business performance coaching to business owners, professionals and executives. Steve also speaks to organizations, conducts workshops and training. Focusing on the lead generation and revenue creation to get growth results for the business.
Contact Biz Coach Steve today to see how he can assist you get the results you want in your business, [email protected], or www.bizcoachsteve.com. He is in the business of growing businesses. Need a speaker, contact Steve today. #bizcoachstevef #entrepreneur #smallbusiness #business #smallbiz #coaching #businessowner #businesscoach #leadership #marketing #speaking #keynotespeaker #meetingprofs #eventprofs #meetingstoday
Do you have what it takes to become a successful entrepreneur? Many people jump the cubicle (leave corporate JOBS in pursuit of being their own boss) and may have the motivation and desire. But, do they have all the other skills, education, focus and money to make the jump? Here are six simple things to consider.
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1) Do you believe you have what it takes?
We don’t mean personal characteristics — or not just personal characteristics, anyway. Do you believe you have all the skills, energy, money, people, and knowledge to start a business? Founders who carefully identify and evaluate their resources in pursuit of a well-defined goal display “entrepreneurial self-efficacy,” a trait many academics believe to be the best predictor of success. “It’s situationally specific confidence — ‘I strongly believe that I have all the resources I need, and here is what they are,’ ” says J. Robert Baum, an associate professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland. “Overconfidence, by contrast, is partially caused by the absence of self-efficacy. ‘Let’s get going. I just know I can do this.’ “
2) Are you able to let other people down?
A founder may set out in a rowboat, but pretty soon, he is piloting a cabin cruiser with investors and employees on board and their families huddled belowdecks. Risking your own fortunes is easy compared with risking the fortunes of those who believe in you. “These people may not completely understand the business,” says Baum. “They may not understand the level of risk. But they think they’ll be OK because you are so smart. Breaking their dreams is very painful.”
A business owner walked out in the middle of the road and stood there, half hoping a car would end his misery. He was thinking of all the people who had risked their livelihoods for him. He thought, I have sold this dream to them, and now I am going to let them down.
3) How do you handle setbacks?
When you are smiling, the whole company smiles with you. In the book Resonant Leadership: Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee explain that emotions are contagious: Morale rises and falls with the mood of the leader. Consequently, people who succumb to black moods or depression can fatally infect their own companies.
Because some people have an inflated idea of their resilience, perform a reference check on yourself — ask people who know you well how you handle adversity. See if you are the type of person who needs to retreat for a period to recharge, which is not possible in most business. Are you the type of person that if you have a very high sense of responsibility and you take setbacks hard, you have to know that and be honest with yourself about being in business for yourself.
4) Are you really an inventor, rather than an entrepreneur?
Raising a child is generally more challenging than creating a child, and the same is true of new products. Some people mistake the act of invention for the tough part. Too many times, these inventor types spend an inordinate amount of time on the patent and making the prototype just so, then they think once they’ve done that, the world will beat a path to their doorstep.
It’s also hard for some people to entrust their brainchildren to designers, engineers, and marketers. Entrepreneurs like Sir James Dyson, the inventor of the bagless vacuum cleaner who surrounded himself with Britain’s best engineers, and “Caractacus Potts types” – a reference to the eccentric soloist who creates the namesake flying car in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Product development is a team sport. Inventors don’t get that. Entrepreneurs do.
5) Can you accept that your company may outgrow you?
Some entrepreneurs love to brag that they don’t need an exit strategy, because they are not going anywhere. But at some point, your business may need you less than you need it. That’s particularly true at fast-growth companies, at which entrepreneurs may not have enough time to develop the necessary leadership and business skills.
Sometimes founders bring in presidents or senior executives from the outside, only to sabotage them. They do it by not giving them the necessary information. They do this by not stepping back and by involving themselves with managers in a way that is inappropriate in the chain of command. They can be disruptive during meetings.
6) When you look in the mirror, does an entrepreneur look back?
If so, and if that’s the reason you are starting a company, beware. Many traits-persistence, creativity, and risk tolerance among them, are commonly ascribed to entrepreneurs. But having those traits doesn’t much improve the odds that you will succeed.
Research into entrepreneurs’ personal traits with things like persistence and need for achievement explain only about 5 percent to 10 percent of the difference between people who start companies and those who don’t. Entrepreneurs are less important than external predictors like the spirit of the times, the economy, and changes within an industry.
Trying to predict success in entrepreneurship based on personal traits is a fool’s game.
Steve Feld, MBA, Certified Business Coach, Author, provides training and business performance coaching to business owners, professionals and executives. Steve also speaks to organizations, conducts workshops and training. Focusing on the lead generation and revenue creation to get growth results for the business.
Contact Biz Coach Steve today to see how he can assist you get the results you want in your business, [email protected], or www.bizcoachsteve.com. He is in the business of growing businesses. Need a speaker, contact Steve today. #bizcoachstevef #entrepreneur #smallbusiness #business #smallbiz #coaching #businessowner #businesscoach #leadership #marketing #speaking #keynotespeaker #meetingprofs #eventprofs #meetingstoday
Stephen Covey stated, “Think with the end in mind.”
Many business owners are so excited and overwhelmed that they often overlook a big part of their business, operating plan. Their exit plans.
You may finally figure your target market. Your USP (Unique Selling Proposition). Your business structure and much more, but you have not figured out how it all ends.
Here are the most common ways to end a business:
The sale or transition of a business will likely be the single largest and most important financial transaction of a business owner’s life………and its level of success will impact the rest of their life in retirement.
Mapping out a successful plan to exit the business can help business owners:
The key to exit planning is that it isn’t actually about the exit itself. It’s about the planning for the exit. The staging process that leads to a happy ending for the business owner, bringing them maximum value for the business when it’s sold.
Here are some exit statistics:
How successful are we at transitioning businesses?
A successful business exit strategy includes 5 key ingredients:
Are you prepared to exit?
How are you planning on exiting your business?
Steve Feld, MBA, Certified Business Coach, Author, provides training and business performance coaching to business owners, professionals and executives. Steve also speaks to organizations, conducts workshops and training. Focusing on the lead generation and revenue creation to get growth results for the business.
Contact Biz Coach Steve today to see how he can assist you get the results you want in your business, [email protected], or www.bizcoachsteve.com. He is in the business of growing businesses. Need a speaker, contact Steve today. #bizcoachstevef #entrepreneur #smallbusiness #business #smallbiz #coaching #businessowner #businesscoach #leadership #marketing #speaking #keynotespeaker #meetingprofs #eventprofs #meetingstoday
Sad to say this but the stats don’t lie. The statistics for a new business to succeed is not too positive. Twenty-four percent of new business fail in the first two year. Almost 50% of those remaining fail within the first five years. Which leaves about 8 out of 100 new business that are still around after 10 years.
The top ten reasons small businesses fail are simple and all can be avoided. But most business owner do not seek help and avoid the harsh realities of their own business. The order of the list has been discussed with many fellow business owners, mentors, coaches and consultants and we feel this order and the years in which a business fails are accurate.
Bonus: A closed mind: Everyone goes into business with some preconceptions — don’t be surprised if you find that many of yours are wrong. Look for mentors who can give you advice and run your ideas by them before you make important financial commitments. Read books and magazines about small business, visit business-related Web sites and network with your peers in the business community.
Steve Feld, MBA, provides training and business performance coaching to business owners, professionals and executives. Steve also speaks to organizations, conducts workshops and training. Focusing on the lead generation and revenue creation to get growth results for the business. Contact Steve today to see how he can assist you grow your business, [email protected], or www.bizcoachsteve.com. He is in the business of growing businesses. Need a speaker, contact Steve today. #bizcoachstevef #entrepreneur #smallbusiness #business #smallbiz #coaching #businessowner #businesscoach #leadership #marketing #speaking #keynotespeaker #meetingprofs #eventprofs #meetingstoday
One reason that many businesses fail, is that they have no strategic plan.
They are always chasing a sale, or marketing/advertising just to be marketing or advertising with no real purpose. Yes, we get it. You want more sales, but your marketing and advertising is not strategic towards the goals of your business. It has no real purpose; it does not have any strategy that is in alignment with the goals of your business. That is one of the many reasons you are not getting an ROI on your marketing/advertising investment.
Strategic management is a widely studied field because it is through strategy that organizations attempt to reach their goals and out-think the competition. Thinking strategically requires research, analysis, and forethought in order to create a plan for how you will proceed as an organization. Most small business owners do not take time out of their schedule for strategic planning. They have no strategic “game plan.”
The process of crafting and implementing an organizational “game plan” for:
Look at your business and ask yourself, your team, division, department and then as your organization as a whole:
Next, you need to create a plan for how you will make choices in the future that align with your strategic plan. You must be willing to identify and make changes to the way you currently think and operate so that you are truly guided by the strategic plan you adopted for your business.
Here are six P’s of thinking strategically:
A strategic plan is like a game plan for you and your team to follow. Your team wants to know they have a leader that knows where the team is headed. The plan gives you something that your team can rally around and get excited about. It helps them feel connected to the mission of the organization and to feel that they can make a contribution helping the organization to reach the desired outcome.
What are your businesses strategic plans?
Steve Feld, MBA, provides training and business performance coaching to business owners, professionals and executives. Steve also speaks to organizations, conducts workshops and training. Focusing on the lead generation and revenue creation to get growth results for the business. Contact Steve today to see how he can assist you grow your business, [email protected], or www.bizcoachsteve.com. He is in the business of growing businesses. Need a speaker, contact Steve today. #bizcoachstevef #entrepreneur #smallbusiness #business #smallbiz #coaching #businessowner #businesscoach #leadership #marketing #speaking #keynotespeaker #meetingprofs #eventprofs #meetingstoday
The Holiday Season is upon us and for sales professionals and sales managers this time of year adds special challenges for maintaining focus on sales productivity.
Being an entrepreneur has lots of challenges between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. The familiar music, parties, seeing old friends, and spending time with family. In the midst of a joyous season the sales environment can be brutal.
During the holiday’s salespeople and business owners struggle to maintain activity targets while prospects and customers routinely put off decisions until the New Year. The good news is, despite the challenges, you can take control, maintain your focus, and still close deals. The key is in staying true to the fundamentals of selling and maintaining self-discipline combined with a sprinkle of creativity.
One of the hardest things about selling during the holiday season is getting customers to act on buying decisions. They say they just want to wait until the New Year to make any decisions. To them it makes logical sense to wait. Far too many salespeople willingly accept this excuse as logical too. However, if you’ve been around selling long enough you know, by the time you get to January, most of these deals will be cold.
To have any chance of closing these deals you have to strike while the iron is hot. You cannot allow emotions to wane. So, during this time of year you have to give your prospects and customers a more compelling reason to make a decision now than to wait until later. This means getting creative with your offer, price, value added services, or signing bonuses. You may have to give up more to get the deal done than during other times of the year.
In sales, like it or not, activity is everything. If you are not prospecting, questioning, presenting, and closing you will fail – no matter what time of year it is. Of course with all of the wonderful (and not so wonderful) distractions of the holidays, it can be easy to slack-off, let your self-discipline slip move away from your normal daily routine.
This slip has two consequences. In the short-term it hurts your closing ratio during the month of December. In the long-term it impacts your sales pipeline during January, February, and March which can have a major impact on your future income.
To keep this from happening to you, it is critical that you sit down with your daily planner right now and ensure that you have your calendar blocked properly for daily prospecting and lead generation, as well as information gathering, presentations, demos, and closing meetings. Take into account all of your holiday activities and build them into your planner. You may have to do some workarounds, but the key here is to get everything planned out in advance. To stay on track set daily activity targets and commit to reviewing those targets each morning and afternoon. You will be amazed at how powerful this forward planning process is for keeping you on track and focused during the holidays.
Most importantly, by planning in advance and developing creative ways to close more business, you will find that you feel less stress, cash bigger commission checks, and have plenty of time to enjoy the holidays with the ones you care about the most.
One thing I cannot stress enough is to be open as much as possible during the holiday season and answer your phone. Just that alone will separate you from the rest of the pack. Keep moving forward, do not take the season off and your business will benefit in the first quarter of next year.
Steve Feld, MBA, provides training and business performance coaching to business owners, professionals and executives. Steve also speaks to organizations, conducts workshops and training. Focusing on the lead generation and revenue creation to get growth results for the business. Contact Steve today to see how he can assist you grow your business, [email protected], or www.bizcoachsteve.com. He is in the business of growing businesses. Need a speaker, contact Steve today. #bizcoachstevef #entrepreneur #smallbusiness #business #smallbiz #coaching #businessowner #businesscoach #leadership #marketing #speaking
What is your USP?
You may have heard that question at some point when you were building your business or starting up. USP stands for Unique Selling Proposition.
In very simple terms, why should I buy from you versus anyone else? What makes you different? Unique?
After presenting the Scores ABC’s of Starting a Business workshop for years, it still blows my mind how many people do not have a clear focus on what their business is and who problems they solve and to whom are they solving those problems for. We hear extra filler junk, such as. “I am like the UBER of XXX.” So, what I heard is that you have a billion-dollar valuation, are in the debt over a billion dollars and have not been profitable and probably will never be profitable. Not good.
This was from an INC magazine article. “A Unique Selling Point is a feature or a characteristic of a product that makes it stand out of the masses and allows the product to look more exclusive/valuable to the customer. The unique selling proposition is often the crucial factor why a customer bought a specific product from a specific company (A), rather than a comparable product with similar features of another company (B). Simple put: the USP’s are the unique benefits a product offers its purchasers.”
So how can you create your own very compelling USP?
Simple. Follow this simple formula and create your own USP. Think of it as your elevator pitch.
First, write down your target market. Now you may have more than one, but not more than three. Why? Because if your message is trying to be everything to everyone, no one cares, and no one wants to hear it. They want someone to solve their problems-not the worlds. Be specific on who your market is. If it’s dentists, then what kind of dentist? Orthodontist? Periodontist? General? Oral? Etc. Be specific. “My company works with orthodontists.”
Next, write down at least 25 problems your target customer has, then write down 10 more. This will really help in in your business down the road. Identify the top 3 problems your target market has based on your list. How do you know what the top 3 problems are? Hopefully, you know why your customers are doing business with you. If not, ask them what problems/challenges your product/services solves for them. If you don’t have customers yet, then meet with a mentor to have them help you find those top 3 challenges. You also may know what 3 challenges you want to solve for your customers-but it must be in alignment with THEIR needs. I.E. Orthodontists problems are; patients not showing up for appointments, potential clients not having insurance to get braces (cost) and finding good staff.
Now write down at least one solution to each one of the problems you outlined
in the last step. Be specific. Using our dentist as an example; send out email,
text and voice mail reminders for the appointment, providing another insurance
solution if they don’t have insurance, use a systematic process to hire great
staff.
Let’s put it all together.
“My company works with elite orthodontists who have challenges obtaining new patients and attracting high level staff. We help them develop acquisition and retention strategies to build their practice and their team.”
You may be thinking, how did I get that USP from the exercise. It’s simple. THEIR problem is getting new patients in because they don’t have insurance, keeping patients and getting new staff. The USP says that in a language that is speaking to the orthodontist-not to anyone else. Now, if another type of dentist heard this, would they want to know more from you? Absolutely. You can alter your USP to your market.
I.E. “My company works with elite dentists who have challenges obtaining new patients and attracting high level staff. We help them develop acquisition and retention strategies to build their practice and their team.”
See how that works. You must speak to your audience. It’s NOT about you. It’s about who you serve, what are their problems and how are you solving them.
Stop being the Uber, Apple, Tesla, Google, or whatever other company you want to compare yourself to. They have their USP. Here are a few.
Uber: Ride when you want, where you want
Apple: We provide a lifestyle with our products
FedEx: When your package absolutely, positively has to get there overnight
Coke: The real thing
Google: Access the world from your fingertips
You are NOT them. They have established themselves in the market, you are working on establishing yourself. Speak to your audience, be unique, be you. They do not have to define their market; it has already been defined.
Create your USP today. Be clear.
Steve Feld, MBA, provides training and business performance coaching to business owners, professionals and executives. Steve also speaks to organizations, conducts workshops and training. Focusing on the lead generation and revenue creation to get growth results for the business. Contact Steve today to see how he can assist you grow your business, [email protected], or www.bizcoachsteve.com. He is in the business of growing businesses. Need a speaker, contact Steve today. #bizcoachstevef #entrepreneur #smallbusiness #business #smallbiz #coaching #businessowner #businesscoach #leadership #marketing #speaking