Cathy Stucker - The Idea Lady

Attract Customers and Make Yourself Famous

5 Tips for Getting Clients and Building Business

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This is a guest post from small business coach Jennifer Davey on the five best strategies to get new clients.

Out of all the strategies you can use to get new clients for your business, here are the 5 that I’ve found to be among the most effective.

1. Schedule plenty of time to develop your business. Open up your outlook and schedule time, and then actually TAKE the time. If you don’t set aside time to market your business, you’ll never get around to it. During your scheduled “working on your business” time, shut down your email, switch off your phone, and focus on building your business.

2. Know your niche. If you want to get clients, you have to know your niche. This gives you the important information you need when it comes to reaching your target market. It also clarifies how you should spend your time and energy. Don’t try to market to everyone. Find your niche, and live happily there. Trust me, it works.

3. Be the expert. Your potential clients are looking for the most qualified person in your field to work with. Be that person. You’ll earn more money this way, and you’ll be given opportunities to show what you can do, which will lead to even more income in the future.

4. Stay in touch with your network. Never go too long without communicating with your contacts and associates. Let them know what you’re doing, and don’t be afraid to request referrals.

5. Follow up. In many cases, you have to reach out to a potential client at least seven times before he or she decides to work with you. If you stop making an effort to connect with clients and potential clients, this gives your competitors the perfect opportunity to swoop in and steal your future business right out from under your nose after YOU spent time priming them for the sale..

Small Business Coach and Marketing Strategist, Jennifer Davey, is the author of the “Getting Clients Home Study Program”, the step-by-step guide to getting clients, building your business and making more income. For a FREE copy of her 14-Step Formula for Getting Clients and Report “What you Need to Know to Be Successful at Getting Clients” visit http://jjscoaching.com/free-marketing-tips/

Use Videos for Marketing and to Run Your Business More Effectively

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This is a guest post from Phyllis Zimbler Miller, an author who writes on Internet marketing and social media.

Free video sites on the Internet are not just for teens who want to share their latest exploits or book authors showcasing book trailers.

These video sites actually offer a free or low-cost opportunity for small businesses to both market their businesses and help run their businesses more effectively.

Here’s how:

Marketing on the Internet:

Let’s say you have a home organizer business and you want to reach more clients in your metropolitan area. 

You know the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words”?  How about a two-minute video showing a very messy master bedroom closet and then the “after organization” closet.

According to book authors Patrick Renvoise and Christophe Morin of Neuromarketing: Understanding the “Buy Buttons’ in Your Customer’s Brain, the primitive brain (my term – there’s actually a technical term for this brain) makes decisions for us – and the decisions are based on contrasts.  So before and after pictures make a huge impact on the primitive brain.

How much more so a two-minute video – perhaps of a satisfied customer rather than of you – giving us a tour of before and after you organized her/his closet?

You can film this video yourself and upload it to a free video-sharing site such as YouTube.  Then you can send the video link to potential customers and you can also put the video on your own website if you have one (which you should have even if you have only a brick-and-mortar business).

Running a more effective business:

Another one of the most valuable business books I’ve ever read is The E Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber.  To paraphrase, his premise is that, as business owners, we should set up systems for repetitive tasks so that employees can do these tasks efficiently the way we want them done.

Terry Dean (terrydean.org) creates videos for his interns so that he doesn’t have to teach the same thing over and over.  I thought of him last week as I watched the snack bar owner at the gym teaching a new employee how to blend one of the drinks.  Later I saw the snack bar owner watching a TV show on his laptop at the snack bar.

How much easier if the snack bar owner made a video of how to blend the drink?  Then he could have new employees watch this video on the laptop while he did something else.

And the snack bar owner wouldn’t even need his own website to do this.  He just uploads his training videos to one of the video-sharing sites.  Some of these sites have password-protection options, so he can protect his blender drink recipe from prying eyes.

These are examples of how you can use free videos to both market your small business and run your small business more effectively.  I’m sure you can come up with many more ways to use free videos for your business.

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Phyllis Zimbler Miller’s company has launched the monthly program http://www.WeTeachWebMarketing.com to help people promote their brand, book or business online.

I Love Movies, How Can I Become a Film Blogger?

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movie-blogger

This is a guest post from Dave Taylor, of DaveOnFilm.com. Dave has been a successful blogger for many years, and here he shares tips on turning your love of movies into a popular film blog.

I know you. You’re like me, you’ve been watching movies for as long as you can remember, and when your friends are curious about whether a new movie is worth seeing, you’re the one they call or IM. Harry Potter?  Saw all of ‘em opening night. Indiana Jones?  You not only didn’t like the fourth installment, some goofy nonsense about a Crystal Skull, but you know why it wasn’t a good addition to the franchise.

Heck, you think of movie series as franchises and even if you think Star Trek was lame, you also understand that it was a remarkable accomplishment, having that many films in a series that did at least reasonably well. If you’re as far into the business as I am, you also track directors, producers, cinematographers (known in the biz as “directors of photography” or “DPs”) and even production studios.

That’s all well and good, but how do you turn your passion into an interesting blog about movies that people will want to read and track? That’s what I’ve done, with my Dave On Film site, and it has proven great fun, but a lot of work too.

Why? Because talking to your friends about why a film is cool is very different to writing a coherent and thoughtful review of a film on your Web site, a review that’s going to have to stand on its own even when you fly in the face of other critics or even disagree with 800-pound gorillas like The Rog (you know, Roger Ebert).

One way to get started is to not just read film reviews, but ask yourself what makes them interesting or stupid and boring. Does the reviewer share their own life experiences (as in “I’ve always loved Jaws since I was stranded on a buoy just outside of San Pedro for 4 long hours”) or compare movies with their favorites (“I couldn’t help but think about the monster in Rocky Horror when watching Gollum in Lord of the Rings”)?

To me, a good film blog is primarily a place to find good, smart, thoughtful film reviews. Don’t say “Saw IV sucked eggs, Saw III was far better” without explaining why you think that. Was it the acting (uh, sorry, that’s not so relevant in a gore flick grin , the set design, the story, the editing, the fake blood or ?

If there’s a facet of film that you’re really into, talk about that. For me, I pay attention to cinematography, costume and set color palettes, and what I call the “rhythm” of the storyline. It’s rare for me to write a review that doesn’t touch on one of those factors, or perhaps two or three.

As I said earlier, don’t be afraid to buck the trends too. I am not a fan of WALL-E, for example, and complained vocally when people started saying it deserved a Best Picture nomination. Not in my book. I still argue with people about that, actually, and that’s okay. We’re all entitled to our own opinions.

Finally, don’t forget the secret to success in the blogosphere: contribute valuable commentary to other film blogs too. Whether you’re adding your two cents to a big player like Joe Morgenstern of the Journal, A.O.Scott at the Times, a film site like Rotten Tomatoes or Slashfilm, or even other film blogs, participate. Become part of the discussion!

Good luck, and I’ll see you at the movies and, perhaps, online too.

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Dave Taylor has been involved with movies longer than he can remember and in addition to his popular blog also writes reviews for the Boulder Weekly and Colorado Business Magazine. You can find him on Twitter too, as @FilmBuzz or just stop by DaveTaylorOnline.com

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

Habits Of Action

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Do you feel overwhelmed? In this guest post, time management experts Karen Leland and Keith Bailey show how to get things done by making taking action a habit.

getting-things-doneYou know what you need to do. You know why you need to do it. You even know what steps you must take to get it done. But there’s one small problem: you can’t seem to get moving. It’s a common problem. Maybe it’s chronic procrastination or maybe you’re just so overwhelmed that you feel paralyzed. Either way, the task you must complete is just sitting there, gathering metaphorical (or perhaps literal) dust, and growing more ominous by the day.

A recent study by the Families and Work Institute found that a full third of Americans are overworked; more than 50 percent of those surveyed said they are either handling too many tasks at the same time or are frequently interrupted during the workday – or both. In short, we are overloaded. Is it any wonder, then, that we have trouble getting jobs started, keeping them going, or finishing them up?

As a consultant and coach over the past twenty five years I’ve observed that smart and savvy business women use three habits to get themselves to take action, even in tough times. These habits act as an inoculation against procrastination and feeling overwhelmed so that these busy women are ultimately able to press through and get things done.

Habit #1: Chunking Down: Focus on the Trees Not the Forest

In the computer world, chunking means to break things into bits. To chunk down is to move from a whole to its parts; to chunk up is to move from parts to a whole, or from the specific to the general. Chunking your projects and goals down into smaller pieces will help you take action more quickly and easily, while at the same time helping to combat the feeling of too much to do.

Habit #2: Take Energetic Credit for Completion

When we have a big goal or task to work on, many of us wait – unnecessarily and sometimes to our detriment – until the entire project is finished before we experience any sense of completion, satisfaction, or accomplishment.

Often, even though we’re achieving pieces of our projects and goals all the time, we don’t fully acknowledge them. The most productive people we know are in the habit of enthusiastically taking energetic credit for any action they complete, no matter how seemingly small or insignificant. These people know not to wait until the big item is 100 percent done before experiencing closure. Rather, they generate energy all along the way by recognizing each item they complete.

Habit #3: Time-Planning: Put a Stop to Putting It Off

Smart people are in the habit of using a time-plan to get beyond procrastination. A time-plan is a method of assigning blocks of time to those items you want to get done (but not a minute-by-minute description of your day!) To harvest the power of planning and create your own time-plan, follow these two easy steps:

Step #1: Identify your power times for different types of activities.
Everyone has high and low periods of energy, attention, and focus. By knowing and understanding your own energy patterns you can create a time-plan that takes advantage of your personal rhythms. Reflect on your own energy patterns. When are your power times? Use your power times to take on your most difficult items. Use your down time for more routine items and errands.

Step #2: Set aside blocks of time for getting certain things done.
Keeping in mind your power times, go through your calendar and schedule a specific day and period of time when you will work on an item. Time periods ranging from 15 minutes to 2 hours are most effective. Every hour or so, schedule a ten minute break from your task; this will both keep your brain from getting tired and give it a chance to process any information, so that you can return to your project refreshed.

Lastly, don’t just plan your time in your head – write it down! Whether you use a PDA, a calendar contact program, or a plain old date book, keeping a written record of your time-plan is key.

Karen Leland and Keith Bailey are the bestselling authors of six books including Time Management In An Instant: 60 Ways to Make the Most of Your Day. They are the co-founders of Sterling Consulting Group, which helps organizations and individuals learn how to fight distraction and find their focus in a wired world. For more information please contact: kleland@scgtraining.com