In preparation for my recent interview with Bob Burg (if you missed it, download the recording here), I invited subscribers to share with me their top business challenges. I wasn’t surprised by the answers:
“sales,” “communicating with potential customers,” “sales,” “the telephone,” “sales,” “how do I increase my lead pipeline?” “how to market my business,” “where will I find my next client?” “growing my business,” “sales,”
90% of the questions I got were about sales and marketing, and the reason is that folks believe that sales and marketing are where you actually make the money. Well…you’re wrong.
If your top small business concerns are sales and marketing, you’re focusing on the wrong stuff.
“But…but how can that be true, when there’s an entire industry just build around sales and marketing???”
Ah, there’s the rub. Well, I’m not saying sales and marketing aren’t important. I’m saying that sales and marketing shouldn’t actually be your biggest “challenges.” And yes, I’m prepared to back that up. Here goes:
1) You should know your target market inside-out.
I’ll bet if you’re struggling with sales and marketing in your small business, you don’t know your target market well enough. If you did, you’d know everything from what their likely objections are to where to find them to what kind of marketing they’ll respond to. And when you know that, you really don’t have to wonder if your branding appeals to them or if you’re meeting their needs. You’ll know.
How do you get to know them? Well, first, you have to choose them. Narrow down the people you serve into a clear, definable subset of the population. It’s okay to do this, I promise. It doesn’t mean that you can’t work with people outside your target market. My target market is primarily female entrepreneurs in their 30s and 40s, but I work with women and men, and I have clients in their 60s. Your target market is who you work best with, who you understand the most, and who you like working with, combined with who wants what you have to offer.
Second, once you’ve narrowed down who your target market is, if you want to get to know them, ask them. Survey your list and if you don’t have a big list yet, look for places to find your peeps and invite them to take your survey. It’s not rocket science, but I do have a few recommendations: 1) Offer a high-quality freebie as a gift for taking the survey, 2) Limit your survey to 20-25 questions and only about 25% of those questions should be open-ended, 3) Ask them what you need to know as well as what you want to know. Get basic demographics, but also ask what keeps them up at night.
When your survey is over and you tabulate you responses, you should know a lot more about your target market, where to find them, and what they need and want. Everything else flows from there.
2) Once you know your target market inside out, you can focus on meeting their needs and providing value.
The people you serve are people. I’ve been saying that for a long time. They’re real people with real worries and real fears that keep them up at night. How can you serve them? How can you help address those worries and fears so that they can rest easy and get some sleep? If you’re addressing those needs and bringing enough value, not just in your products and services, but in how you’re showing up in the world, sales won’t really be a challenge anymore.
And remember, bringing value comes in many forms, too. This isn’t necessarily about giving your services away for free (although there may be times when that makes sense). As Bob and John talk about in Go-Givers Sell More, you can bring value in several ways. Bob and John mention five key ways to bring value that I really love: excellence, consistency, attention, empathy, and appreciation. And sometimes, just listening brings value. Who knew?
3) If you focus on bringing real value to people’s lives, sales will follow as a natural consequence.
One of the great things I picked up in my interview with Bob is that the top 10% of successful people in the world understand that giving and receiving are two sides of the same coin. They’re a part of the same thing – as Bob put it, they’re like inhaling and exhaling.
So many of us think that “it’s better to give than to receive,” but actually, being a “go-giver” means you’re focused on giving value, but you’re open to receiving. And as such, if you’re focused on the other person and bringing real value, the natural consequence is that you’ll be rewarded. One of my favorite lines from Go-Givers Sell More is, “The task here is not to create value in order to create a sale or in order to anything. It’s to create value, period…Right now, your total job is to focus on one thing and one thing only: providing value to other people. If you do that well, sales—and money—will find you.”
The bottom line is that sales isn’t about sales. It isn’t even about the thing you sell. And marketing isn’t about the thing you sell, either. They’re both all about value. What value do you bring to the lives of other people? That should be your biggest challenge. Once you master that, sales and marketing shouldn’t be an issue.
Integrate: I’ll also be hosting a Q&A call the following evening. I’ll briefly review the interview with Bob, then I’ll open up the lines so you can ask me your business questions and get live business mentoring and coaching. Don’t miss this call!
Here are the details for this month’s calls:
DATES AND TIMES: Interview with Bob Burg: February 24, 2010, 8 PM Eastern/7 PM Central/6 PM Mountain/5PM Pacific
Integrate Q&A with Susan: February 25, 2010, 8 PM Eastern/7 PM Central/6 PM Mountain/5PM Pacific
I’ve spent a lot of time feeling uncomfortable and uneasy with the sales process. When I have a call with someone who’s expressed interest in working with me, I often worry that I won’t know how to “close” the sale or when to ask for the sale…and I have to admit that my sales have suffered as a result. If you’ve experienced anything like this, I’d like to invite you to join me this Wednesday evening for a frank and in-depth interview with my friend, Bob Burg, author of Endless Referrals and co-author of The Go-Giver and his brand-new best-seller, Go-Givers Sell More.
Bob and I will be talking about authenticity and how to bring more value to your clients and frankly, everyone around you. We’ll discuss how to make the sales process feel less smarmy and more genuine, and then I’ll open up the lines so you can ask Bob your own questions about sales and networking.
My interview with Bob is this Wednesday evening (2/24) at 8 PM Eastern. And on Thursday evening (2/25), at 8 PM Eastern, I’ll be hosting a follow-up Q&A call. I’ll do a brief review of the interview with Bob, and then I’ll open up the lines and answer your small business questions live. We’ll be recording, so if you can’t make it, sign up anyway, and I’ll make sure you get the recording. Both calls are free, and you’ll receive MP3 recordings for both calls.
This is actually the first call in The Experts Series, my yearlong “interview-and-integrate” teleseminar series, where each month, I’m interviewing a different small business expert and helping you integrate their ideas into your own small business.
For the first time ever, I’m running a contest, and there are just a few days left to enter! I’m running a one-week-only contest and giving away free Power-Up sessions to three lucky small business owners. Entry is easy and the pay-off is huge!
What You Win: An hour-long, one-on-one Power-Up Session with me, Susan Baroncini-Moe, CEO of Business in Blue Jeans, also known as “The Micro-Entrepreneur’s Mentor.” In this session, I’ll determine the three biggest mistakes you’re making in your business and provide personalized strategies for powering up your business to grow profitability and achieve success.
How To Win: Write one paragraph. Topic: “If I Could Wave A Magic Wand and Change Something About My Small Business, It Would Be…..” Post it on your blog or Facebook page with link back to http://www.businessinbluejeans.com/contest.html (or to this blog entry…makes no difference to me).
Then, e-mail contest@businessinbluejeans.com with a link to your entry (or just e-mail your entry to contest@businessinbluejeans.com) before February 22, 2010. It’s that simple!
Contest Rules: Three winners will be chosen at random on February 22, 2010. You’ll be contacted by me right away.
So…go write your paragraphs! It shouldn’t take too long and you just might win a freebie Power-Up Session with me!
There’s one question I’m asked over and over again from people who seek out my help: “Why isn’t this small business thing working?” It almost always comes as a desperate plea, a cry for help from someone who’s been trying to make things work for a long time, from someone who’s tried everything they can think of to grow their small business and just hasn’t seen results.
So what’s the answer? Why isn’t your small business working the way you want it to? Obviously, the answers are different for everyone. Each business has its own things that need troubleshooting. But here are the things I see that are the most common reasons why small businesses haven’t yet achieved success:
1. Lack of clarity of purpose and lack of clear branding. This isn’t just about having a clever name. Branding encompasses creating a clear mission for your company and getting clear about what you offer. If you offer too much or you’re too general or broad, your prospects won’t have a good sense of what you bring to the table or know if you can help them. You have to speak to them in their language, and you do that by a) making sure you make it clear what you do and who you do it for, b) reaching them with a corporate identity that resonates with them, and c) making sure you give them what they want with impeccable service.
2. Lack of a professional presence. It’s okay to start out with a homemade web site or free Vistaprint business cards, but if you’ve been in business for awhile, it’s time to upgrade. Your web site should serve three purposes: 1) showing your potential customers and clients how you can serve their needs, 2) giving them an opportunity to interact with you (either via contacting you or directly buying from you), and 3) acting as a credibility check for your business. Say you’re at a networking function and you give someone your business card. If that person’s interested in doing business with you, they’ll inevitably check your web site when they get back to the office. If you’ve presented yourself in person as a professional, but your web site presents as amateur, you’ve got a credibility problem.
3. Lack of authenticity. This is something I’ve been talking a lot about lately, because I see more and more people out there offering to teach you things they haven’t yet achieved for themselves: social media experts who don’t have followers on major social media sites, business experts who promise great riches, but haven’t achieved them for themselves…you have to have the goods to back up what you’re offering! And if you don’t, your prospects will see through you. From miles and miles away.
4. Lack of a clear marketing strategy. Imagine if you were going to take a roadtrip. You know where you want to go, but not how to get there, and you don’t have a map. Would you just get in the car and drive around aimlessly, hoping you hit the right street and end up where you meant to go? No. Likewise, you can’t just start driving around hoping to pick up clients here and there without a clear marketing strategy that’s designed with your target market in mind.
You might be great at what you do, but if you don’t have at least these four pieces in place, you’re going to be missing loads of business and wondering why your business isn’t working. And if you don’t know how to get these four pieces figured out, you need help. It’s good to have a system, it’s great to have a plan mapped out. And even better if you can get an outside perspective, giving you ideas and solutions you might not have thought of on your own.
If you’ve been reading my blog, my e-zine, following me on Facebook, or watching my Tweets, it would be impossible for you not to have noticed my new program, The Experts Series. This series is a yearlong, interview-and-integrate series. Each month, I’ll interview a top name in small business. The current lineup includes several bestselling authors, power players in marketing and PR, and heavy hitters from the real world, and all year long, we’ll be talking about ways for you to grow your small business.
So why should you join the series? Here are my top five reasons:
You’ll learn from the best. I’ve invited some of the world’s most well-known experts in small business, marketing, public relations, and branding to participate in this series. The lineup includes:
Bob Burg, author of Endless Referrals and co-author of The Go-Giver and Go-Givers Sell More
Jay Conrad Levinson,author of Guerilla Marketing, the best-known small business marketing book series of all time.
Jack Trout, author of Differentiate or Die and Positioning, among other bestsellers, and the guy I learned a ton about branding from.
Larry Winget, author of It’s Called Work For A Reason and You’re Broke Because You Want to Be and the guy I turn to for “get real, and get off your butt” advice.
David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR, Eyeball Wars, and Cashing In with Content, among others, and one of the guys I’ve learned the most about marketing and PR from.
(I’ve actually got several more incredible people signed on to participate, but I agreed not to reveal their names or promote that they’re appearing in the series until we get a couple of months closer to their dates. I have to admit that it’s kind of killing me not to tell you who they are, because these are huge names, and I honestly can’t even believe they agreed to let me interview them. But you’ll see the announcements coming up as soon as I’m allowed to share them, I promise!)
You’ll figure out what’s missing in your business that’s keeping you from taking that next step forward.
I don’t plan to just ask these folks what’s in their books or what they always talk about. Sure, we’ll cover that stuff, but I want to go deeper and find out what you can’t learn from their books. What are their best-kept secrets for growing your brand, getting the word out, drawing in clients, getting booked for speaking gigs, and heck, just making money? Was there one thing that they did that took their business to the next level? Was there something that “clicked” in their business? What’s the one thing they think you can do to grow your business and achieve success? I’ll be asking them more in-depth questions than you’ve heard in other interviews, to get to the heart of what these true small business masters can teach us.
You’ll have a chance to get up-close and personal with the top names in small business and ask them your questions. When I’m done grilling these experts, I’ll give you a chance to ask your own questions. You’ll be able to talk to the biggest names in small business and ask them whatever’s been burning in your mind about their books or your business. How often do you have a chance to ask someone of this caliber for a little turbo-coaching?
You’ll be working directly with me to integrate everything we learn during the interviews into your own business. The evening after every interview, I’m hosting a second call. I’ll do a brief recap of the expert call, and then I’ll take your questions. We’ll cover integrating the material we learned the day before, or you can ask me other questions about your business. Point is, I’ll be coaching you live and giving you my best business advice on the spot. This is absolutely the most affordable way to get some real, authentic business mentoring from a seasoned pro. Plus, just like any other Mastermind (I call this my “mastermind lite”), you’ll learn from the other folks on the calls. Remember, we’re all in this together. Whatever you’re going through in your business, I’ve probably been there…and you’ll discover other people who are in the same boat as you, so you can learn together.
Each month you’ll get closer to achieving true business mastery, and building more freedom, flexibility and purpose into your life. Listen…let me be candid. Just listening to the interviews and Q&A calls probably won’t change your business too much. But if you act on what you learn in the series, your business could completely transform. Just imagine if you knew what to do and how to structure your time so you really did achieve small business mastery? Can you imagine if you actually had all of the freedom and flexibility that small business ownership promises? Can you imagine what would happen if you were able to create a vision for your business and then achieve it? The best way to achieve all of that is to learn from authentic leaders who have mastered it themselves, and know how to teach what they learned. And that’s what The Expert Series is all about.
Bonus Reason: These are real experts. They’re authentic people. And they’re interested in helping you. When I invited these folks, here’s how I describe the series: “a new teleseminar series for my subscribers and clients to help them learn and grow in areas they may miss on their own.” And you know, what really amazed me about the responses I received is how generous these people were. I mean, maybe it’s my own jaded perspective, but I never, in a million years, expected anyone as famous as some of these folks are to thank me for reaching out to them and to be enthusiastic about participating in the series. But they’ve all been so generous with their time and they’re excited to join in this series, because this is all about casting off the formality and the suits and rolling up our sleeves and getting real about small business growth today.
For the first time ever, I’m running a contest! I’m running a one-week-only contest and giving away free Power-Up sessions to three lucky small business owners. Entry is easy and the pay-off is huge!
What You Win: An hour-long, one-on-one Power-Up Session with me, Susan Baroncini-Moe, CEO of Business in Blue Jeans, also known as “The Micro-Entrepreneur’s Mentor.” In this session, I’ll determine the three biggest mistakes you’re making in your business and provide personalized strategies for powering up your business to grow profitability and achieve success.
How To Win: Write one paragraph. Topic: “If I Could Wave A Magic Wand and Change Something About My Small Business, It Would Be…..” Post it on your blog or Facebook page with link back to http://www.businessinbluejeans.com/contest.html (or to this blog entry…makes no difference to me).
Then, e-mail contest@businessinbluejeans.com with a link to your entry (or just e-mail your entry to contest@businessinbluejeans.com). It’s that simple!
Contest Rules: Three winners will be chosen at random on February 22, 2010. You’ll be contacted by me right away.
So…go write your paragraphs! It shouldn’t take too long and you just might win a freebie Power-Up Session with me!
The other day, I received a wonderful little package from EzineArticles.com. Inside was a leather coaster marked “Expert Author,” a large coffee mug, and a little bag of coffee, along with a note thanking me for submitting high-quality content to their site. Now, I’m not sharing this to brag, because frankly, this company has literally hundreds of Expert Authors. The reason I’m sharing this is because there’s an interesting business lesson in here.
Frankly, in small business, little things count. I never expected this company to send me a gift. And when I received it, even though I know they’ve sent that package to hundreds of people, it brightened my day and made me feel special. I liked it. It was nice to be acknowledged.
Whenever someone signs on as a client of mine, at some point during the first couple of months of our relationship, I send them a little gift. It lets them know I value them as a client and I’ve taken the time to welcome them.
Spend some time looking at your business and asking yourself, “What can I do to brighten my customer’s day?” The little gift you send to express your appreciation just may forge a stronger bond between you and your customer, encouraging repeat business and long-term loyalty.
My web team just e-mailed me, and apparently I haven’t been working them hard enough, because they’ve just told me they want to do some more sites. So we put our heads together and here’s what we’re offering, but these are special prices, only available until 2/19/10. AND, they’re only extending this pricing to FIVE small business owners.
OFFER #1: $1349
Initial consult with our web manager
2-3 initial customized web layouts to choose from within 1 week and up to 5 rounds of revisions.
Full WordPress integration (optional)
Integration of your e-mail newsletter or e-zine subscription form.
OFFER #2: $1649
Initial consult with our web manager
60 minute consult with me, Susan Baroncini-Moe, to develop your web strategy
Brand-new logo for your company
2-3 initial customized web layouts to choose from and up to 5 rounds of revisions.
Full WordPress integration (optional)
Integration of your e-mail newsletter or e-zine subscription form.
OFFER #3: $2199
Initial consult with our web manager
60 minute consult with me, Susan Baroncini-Moe, to develop your web strategy
Brand-new logo for your company
2-3 initial high-end, customized web layouts to choose from and unlimited revisions.
Integration of your e-mail newsletter or e-zine subscription form.
Integration of up to two videos.
Full WordPress integration with extra programming to add dynamic content to your home page.
If you’d like to be one of the FIVE business owners who get this pricing, and if you want a high-quality (but affordable) web site for your small business, one that you can easily manage yourself, e-mail leo@denimdreamteam.com and set up a time to talk about your project.
Remember, this offer is only good until 2/19/10, and they’re only offering it to FIVE small business owners, so make sure you e-mail asap!
. Bob and I will be talking about how to make sales feel less awkward and uncomfortable and how you can bring more value to your clients. I’ll open up the call for a Q&A so you can ask Bob your own questions, too!