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How to Give Great Referrals
How do you take a cold lead and turn it into a warm-like-hot-cakes referral that closes with ease? If you were in the room at one of my most recent presentations to a local networking group, you'd already know the answer :)
I'll break it down for you.
We see posts, or hear conversations from friends and family all the time where people are looking for recommendations or trusted sources to solve a problem. As easy as it is to just "google" it (or bing it? haha) to find a business who can help, why take the long road by asking and waiting for responses?
Top 3 Dangers of Discounting
Every good horror movie has its signature music that tells you something bad is about to happen. The music starts with a slow ominous rhythm, and then builds to a climax that announces the arrival of the monster or killer. JAWS. Halloween. Psycho. You can probably hear those unforgettable notes as you read this. Businesses do the same thing with their marketing strategies. Things like “loss leaders” are intended to create a sense of urgency and boost sales. But like any horror movie, there are always dangers lurking in the shadows when a business discounts its products or services.
Gas Prices Got You Down? Don’t Make This Mistake
How much is your time worth? With how much gas prices have risen, along with most everything else, it is incredible what some people feel compelled to do to save money. True story: Just a few miles from where I live, an enterprising gas station owner decided to slash the price at the pump by $2.50 a gallon for two hours in the middle of the day, starting at 11am. Naturally, the line of cars stretched around the block, through the neighborhood, and then some. The scene at 10:30 was absolutely bonkers, which is when this picture was taken.
What Can Any Business Learn From One Gynecologist?
Yeah, I know. Now that I have your attention. If everything about running your business is rainbows and unicorns and will always be so forever and ever no matter what happens… …and you’ll never need to do anything to change or adapt to things like technology, customer preferences, social dynamics, or even something as unexpected as a pandemic, then feel free to skip this and go on scrolling about your day. Or, check this out… In my line work, and because of where my career has taken me over the past 22+ years, I find that I spend more time.
Oh no! Facebook is down… now what do I do?
Maybe you noticed, maybe you didn’t. Chances are, at some point you’ll have either been directly affected by today’s Facebook outage – or at least heard about it. As I’m writing this, it has been down for at least an hour and is still down for who knows how much longer. Never fear. I’ve got you. This is a bit long, but stick with me for ONE key solution that can’t be overstated when stuff hits the fan… While Zuck’s platform isn’t my favorite thing on the planet, I do value it for a variety of reasons (both personally
2 Basics You Can’t Ignore If You Want To Scale
I know my target audience…it’s anyone who will pay on time, pay full price, and who will request work when my calendar allows. Is that so hard? There are countless strategies to be studied, and an ever growing number of platforms, tools, and magic potions available for sale to run and grow a business. This only makes it easier than ever before to get distracted by all of the shiny objects for ways to shortcut the rocky road of success. For today’s Fundamental Friday, let’s talk through two basics that I was reminded of during a recent podcast I
What Can A Trapeze Teach Us About Business Growth?
What can a trapeze teach us about how to grow a business and strengthen a team? It has everything to do with Risk and Trust. Think about the last 10 people you’ve hired. No matter how well you wrote the job description, perfected the interview questions, and screened the candidates, maximizing the impact that employee will have on your team has more to do with what they do outside of why you hired them than the reasons they were offered a job in the first place. Consider this: What if every person who ever joined a new company simply completed the
Rooting for the small market team, then it all comes crashing to a halt
Has this ever happened to you? I’m listening to my favorite sports radio talk show and the host is doing a live broadcast on location for a local small business. Because of what I do, I paid close attention for the few minutes I had in the car and found myself rooting for the business to do a good job. Alas, my heart hurts because of what happened in the end…I’ll come back to that in a moment. But first, we all know how these work. The host announces throughout the broadcast that s/he is live at said business and
Kick Start Your Marketing
Today I’d like to teach you about the three most important start up marketing tools you need to get and keep new customers. In person: It’s essential you meet with customers/clients in person whenever possible. This shows you respect them and take the time to work with your clients to give personal attention to each of them. Follow up letter: Always take a moment to send a follow up letter about what you talked about, new agreements or partnerships made and to thank them for taking the time to meet with you. Likewise, you should always send thank you letters
3 Simple Ways to Build Stronger Employee Loyalty and Performance
Employees must love a company before your customers ever will – Simon Sinek While many companies are born from an idea of how to serve a market or solve a problem in a new or unique way, in time, the idea turns into a company with employees, partners, and customers. Real, breathing, people. I’ve been involved in far too many situations over the years where a significant portion of the employee base not only didn’t LOVE the product or service (weird, I know), but frustrations with the company or organization as whole were palpable. It’s one thing when this affects
Stop Wasting Your Resources!
Today you’re going to learn how to find a target market of potential customers so you aren’t wasting precious resources on blitz marketing. So, the two questions you have to ask yourself are: What do people really want to buy from me? What related products are they already buying? Once you figure this out you will know who is more predisposed to purchase your products/services. Then, you find other businesses with the same customer base who you can customer share with. Come up with an incentive and great arrangement to encourage both of your customer bases to shop
Educate Your Customers
Educate them about what, you may be thinking. Well, consider this, many businesses focus solely on attracting new customers, but you NEED to spend a good chunk of your time retaining current and former customers. These are people you already know to be a good sales potential…they’ve already bought from you! Take the time to market and sell new products to your old customers and less time trying to sell old products to new customers and you will see a drastic change in your sales, customer quality and branding position. Here are a couple of key elements to use
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