Cathy Stucker - The Idea Lady

Attract Customers and Make Yourself Famous

Six Things You Need to Know About Sales

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This is a guest post with sales advice from G.L. Hoffman. It is excerpted from his book, Dig Your Job.

sales-woman

Sometime during your adult years you will wonder about starting your own business or company. Everyone thinks about it so you will too. There are a lot of factors than go into this decision and things you should know. Some people can achieve success on sheer effort combined with a great business idea…even if they have little experience or knowledge about business. However, no business can survive without sales. Here are some things you need to do to make your business successful.

1. Sales is number one, two and three on the priority list. You should plan on spending most of your time worrying and working on your sales efforts. Nothing else matters much. A sale happens when someone pays you for your service or product. Don’t get too excited if the marketing focus group says everyone will buy one. Get excited when someone pays for it.

2. To sell many, sell one. To build your company, you have to sell multiples. You can’t just sell one. Anyone can sell ONE. The trick is to sell a lot, right? Sure. But before you can sell many, you have to sell that one single customer so that he is excited and pleased to have your product or service. This is why when you talk to venture capital investors, they are obnoxiously insistent on waiting until someone buys something from your company. Everything else is classroom.

3. Do you know what scalable means? This is a relatively new business topic for an old business process. What this means is that you should try to develop processes in the business that can be easily duplicated and replicated. It is one thing to sell your product to one person, quite another to figure out how this sale was made so that you can make the next sale more efficiently. Success often hinges on your ability to continue to do the correct things faster and better that result in some tangible success.

4. Your sales people don’t work for you. The sooner you realize that all good sales people work, truly, for the customers and not for you, you will understand more about sales people than 90% of all non-sales people.

5. Sales trumps all. Sales will mask a lot of internal problems. Or, said another way….sales mean you can live to fight another day, and buys you time to fix and solve internal problems…which are sure to come.

6. Just stay in business. Too many new companies flame out, just like the afterburner on some supersonic jet. The pilot kicks in the after-burner for an added jolt of power, but once it happens, that’s it, no more power. If you can just continue your new business, first year to the second year, then to the third year…chances are great that you will make it. Do whatever it takes to make it to that third year. Don’t flame out.

G.L. Hoffman is a serial entrepreneur and venture investor/operator/incubator/mentor. Two of his companies have traveled the entire success path from the garage to IPO. He has been featured in Forbes, Wall Street Journal and other local business publications and newspapers.

Currently, he is Chairman of JobDig, an employment-focused media company that delivers multi-channel recruitment advertising solutions to employers of all sizes in all industries. JobDig publishes a free weekly jobs newspaper in markets throughout the U.S., operates the popular website jobDig.com, and partners with network and cable TV stations and radio stations in each of its markets to allow companies to leverage broadcast media in their recruitment advertising. The company also owns and operates LinkUp.com, a site that aggregates and publishes only jobs listed on corporate web sites from over 10,000 companies around the U.S. His daily blog can be found at www.whatwoulddadsay.com, JobDig.com, and now as a weekly guest writer at US News and World Report. He can be followed on twitter at www.twitter.com/glhoffman

Concentric Marketing

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concentric

Most small businesses do not have the resources to launch a large national marketing and advertising campaign. However, you can grow your business in stages to ultimately reach a large national or international market. I think of it as “concentric marketing.”

When you picture concentric circles, you envision a small circle surrounded by a series of increasingly-larger circles. Imagine your marketing starting in the smallest circle, then expanding to larger and larger audiences, growing your business in manageable steps.

One way to expand is in geographic markets. Your first marketing might be focused on your part of town. Join the local chamber of commerce, participate in networking groups, advertise or get publicity in the community’s weekly newspaper, place fliers on doors in local neighborhoods, sponsor a local sport team, and engage in other activities that will make you prominent in your small, local area. As you experience success, you can target broader areas, going from your neighborhood to the entire city, the county, then your state, a region, and national or even international audiences.

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Bad Economic Times Can Be Good for Your Business

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The media are full of stories about how bad the economy is, and that if we are headed for a recession, if not a depression. All of the talk about a faltering economy has a lot of people nervous. And that nervousness can actually lead to a downturn.

There is one important thing to remember about the economy: Whatever the economic news, it will be good for some people and not so good for others. When interest rates go up it is bad for people who want or need to borrow money, but good for retirees and others who depend on the income from their savings. When the prices of houses go down, it is bad for sellers but good for buyers. When interest rates go down, or house prices go up, just the opposite is true. The news is good for some people and not for others.

Let’s look at what you can do to make the current economy a good one for your business.

If your business is down, it is a great time to refocus. Are you doing what you should be doing? You may be spending a lot of time on tasks with a low return on investment (ROI). Now is the time to determine what your most profitable business segments are and devote your marketing efforts to those activities.

Along the same line, spend wisely. Examine your expenses to see where you can cut unnecessary expenditures. This is a good idea no matter what the economy is like, but we tend to pay more attention when we are worried.

If other businesses are afraid to invest in equipment and materials, you may be able to get deals. Another truism about the economy is that what goes down, must come up. Look at where you can invest to be prepared for the upturn.

Show your customers how you help them get the best value for their money. They are concerned about their businesses or their jobs, so show them how you can help them.

Look for ways to repackage your products and services. If your customers have smaller budgets, you do not have to cut your prices. Instead, repackage in ways they can afford. Bundle and unbundle services so they can get exactly what they need.

Do not stop marketing and advertising. Many businesses cut those expenses first, and that is a huge mistake. Keep getting the word out about your products and services.

Whatever your perspective on the economy, it will be different later. Some segments will be better, others worse. Be prepared to adapt, whatever happens.

Making a “Big” Impression

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Many small businesses think they must look bigger than they are in order to be competitive. Those who are home-based try to hide that fact, and some solo-preneurs even create phantom employees.

Much of the stigma that used to be attached to being small no longer exists. More important than looking big is to project a professional image in all aspects of your business. That includes your printed materials, web site, telephone service and more.

First of all, you must have a web site. One of the first things many potential customers will do is search for you online. If they do not find an online presence, they will wonder how serious you are about your business. Your site does not have to be complicated, just a few pages with information about your company and what you do for customers along with contact information, such as your telephone number.

When customers call, what do they hear? Your phone should be answered 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Depending on the nature of your business, you may use an answering service or a voice mail system for times when you are unavailable. If customers may need an urgent reply, an answering service is better. If you have a retail location, your voice mail should give the hours your store is open.

When using a voice mail system, you can have your message professionally voiced. This not only makes your company sound good, it gives the impression of being a larger company. And getting a simple message recorded can be a low-cost, one-time expense.

Printed materials need to be high-quality. Laser printers are more affordable than ever, especially when you consider the cost of consumables (i.e., toner vs. ink cartridges). Color laser printers are available for prices starting under $500. Letters and proposals will look better than ever.

Do you have a logo? A professionally designed logo makes your business look better. Carry through the logo and color scheme on all of your printed materials, and your Web site, too.

And what about those phantom employees? Fashioning employees out of thin air creates logistical problems as well as ethical issues. However, it is possible to have staff without hiring full-time employees. Help may be right down the hall from your home office. Do you have a spouse or teenagers who can help out in your business? Employing your children can even provide tax benefits, and it gives them business experience that will be valuable in their careers.

Virtual assistants, interns and temporary help are all available. Not only do they free you to spend your time most profitably, they can give you that “big company” look.  Or outsource specific tasks, such as hiring someone to act as your publicist to handle distributing press releases and serve as the media contact.

Pay attention to how you appear to clients, and soon your small business may be much bigger.

Solo-preneuring: Get Paid to Do What You Love to Do

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Solo-preneuring is getting paid for doing what you love. It is taking control of your work and your life. Solo-preneuring is a form of self-employment, but it is much more. It enables you to integrate your work and your life so that you feel good about what you do for a living.

Do you look forward to going to work every day? Do you enjoy your work so much that you can’t imagine doing anything else? If so, don’t read any further. But if you’ve noticed that Monday through Friday the clocks seem to run slower than they do on the weekends, read on to learn how you can get paid to do work you love.

It is generally believed that you have only two choices when it comes to earning your living: you can be an employee of someone else, or you can start a business and have others working for you.

As an employee, you have to perform up to the expectations of others—your bosses. That means working the hours they set, and doing the work they give you, in the way they tell you to do it. In exchange, you get the security of a regular paycheck. Of course, we’ve all seen in the last few years that there is nothing secure about anyone’s paycheck.

Entrepreneurs work on their terms, but that doesn’t mean they have it easy. Launching a business requires a commitment of time and money, and may take all of both that the entrepreneur can scrape together. Often, the entrepreneur has not gone from slave to master, but has merely traded one master (the boss) for another (the business).

There is an alternative–Solo-preneuring. The Solo-preneur chooses the work he wants to do. She decides what hours she will work. He is not faced with the pressures of making a payroll, nor does he have to go, day after day, to the same old job. Most importantly, the Solo-preneur controls her own destiny. No other person decides her fate.

Solo-preneuring is getting paid for doing what you love. It is taking control of your work and your life. Solo-preneuring is a form of self-employment, but it is much more. It enables you to integrate your work and your life so that you feel good about what you do for a living.

The Solo-preneur has the best of both worlds–freedom from corporate bondage, without taking on the shackles of responsibility required to run a traditional business. Imagine waking up in the morning excited and happy. And doing work that is so in tune with your talents and interests, that it hardly seems like work to you. That’s what Solo-preneurs do.

The Solo-preneur finds ways to make money doing the things he enjoys, while minimizing or eliminating the tasks he doesn’t want to do. As a Solo-preneur, you may choose to do only one type of work. Or, you may combine two or more related functions (e.g., a desktop publishing business and a mailing service). You may even combine two or more completely unrelated pursuits.

My own experience is a great example. I enjoy teaching and speaking, so I conduct seminars and deliver speeches through my own company, and as a contractor for other companies. Writing is another favorite activity, so I write books and magazine articles.

Most of my traditional business experience is in insurance, and I am a licensed agent. Instead of selling insurance, though, I do contract enrolling. It allows me to use my insurance background as well as my public speaking skills, and I can accept work when I want it.

It’s important to remember that there aren’t a lot of rules about Solo-preneuring. The key is flexibility. Your enterprise can be as big or as small as you wish. You may start out small and grow to a large enterprise employing many others, or you may keep it small enough that you remain the only “employee”. You can pursue it full-time or part-time, or even in your spare time for extra income while you work at a traditional job.

The secret to success is starting small (without a lot of up front expense) and adding new profit centers to build your income.

In every other area of your life it seems that people will advise you not to “put all of your eggs in one basket”. No financial advisor would recommend putting all of your savings in only one investment. But when it comes to the key to providing financial security for you and your family, everyone from friends to a guidance counselor to your mom will tell you to go find a good job and stay with it. If that’s not putting all your eggs in one basket, then what is? We’ve all learned that the days of getting a job right out of school, staying there for 40 years, then collecting a gold watch at retirement are over. The work force is changing rapidly. And many people have found themselves pushed out of a company just when they need the job most.

The answer does not lie in the advice given to entrepreneurs, either. The entrepreneur is told to take all his time and money and put it into one concern. Think of nothing else, work on nothing else, and focus completely on making that one venture a success. The reality is that, even with that dedication, a large percentage of entrepreneurial companies do not succeed. So the entrepreneur is left with nothing after working night and day.

And whether you are an employee, an entrepreneur or a Solo-preneur, you will find that business cycles impact you. Various types of businesses are impacted differently by these business cycles. If you operate more than one venture, each will react differently to change. One may slow down while another picks up. In this way you are not going to lose all of your income because of changes in the economy.

Don’t tie your success to one job, one customer, or even one line of work. Be flexible and follow your wishes and dreams. Start one venture, get it rolling, then start another. The time and energy to manage multiple ventures will be there for you, because the work itself will energize you.

Do you remember The Ed Sullivan Show? Ed often had performers who balanced spinning plates atop high sticks. These performers could keep ten or more plates spinning at a time by following a couple of simple principles: Start them one and a time, and tend each one as necessary. Think of Solo-preneuring that way. Start small, then build on your successes. Keep the whole thing in motion by tending whatever requires your attention today.

If your goal is to make $30,000, you may think that there is nothing you can do that would generate $30,000. That’s probably not true, but instead of looking for one thing you can do to earn $30,000, why not look for three ways to make $10,000? These enterprises may be related or not, you may do all of them part-time throughout the year, or you may do each one for only a short time each year. Whether you want to make $30,000 a year or $300,000 a year, the principles are the same.

Virtually anyone can be a Solo-preneur. The key to your success is having an interest in something and a way to make money with it. Most of us can easily identify our interests, so the next step is to determine how to make money with them. Once you start, the problem will not be coming up with ideas to generate income, it will be finding the time to put them all into action!

What Can You Do?

You have skills and abilities that others do not. We often undervalue the things we know and what we can do, thinking, “If I can do it, anyone can.” Well, “anyone” can’t. Maybe you are an excellent cook, or a Civil War buff, or you know all about computers. Whatever your knowledge or skills, they are of value to others. All you have to do is figure out how to package and market them.

Ask yourself:

What do I know that others don’t?

What can I do that others can’t?

What will I do that others won’t?

What can I do for others less expensively than they can do it for themselves?

Be open-minded and creative. You may not immediately see how to turn your interest into a profit center, but try looking at it from a different perspective. If you know how to make the world’s best cheesecakes, one option would be to bake and sell your cheesecakes. But how else could you use that skill to generate income? You could write and self-publish a cookbook of cheesecake recipes. Or you could teach a class on making the perfect cheesecake. There are probably many other ways that you could think of once you open your mind to the possibilities.

Get Started Now!

The best time to start is always now. Stop saying that “someday” you will take charge of your life and do what you have always wanted to do. Get out your calendar and look at every page. Do you see anything labeled “someday”? I didn’t think so. “Someday” is a code word for “never.” Don’t wait for the kids to go to school, or finish school, or move out. Don’t wait for the day when you have more money, or more time, or more whatever. And don’t think that you are too young or too old, not smart enough, or creative enough, or somehow not good enough to do this. There will always be more to learn and do, so don’t think that everything has to be perfect when you start.

How can you get started? An ancient Chinese proverb says, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Take that single step today. It might be as simple as making a phone call to get more information about something that interests you, or you might sign up for a class, register a business name, create a flyer to promote your services, etc. Just pick a step, do it, then go on to the next step.

Want to know more about Solo-preneuring? This article is based on content from the manual, Solo-preneuring: The Art of Earning a Living Without a Job, the self-help guide for those who want to escape corporate bondage and find success doing work they love. For more information, go to https://www.idealady.com/products/solobook