Top 5 DO and Top 5 DON'T Lists for 2010

The holiday season is a great time for both reflection and renewal, and a perfect time to work on your "lists" of things to accomplish in the new calendar year, while enjoying quality time with family and friends. So, let's get started on your lists.

Here are my suggested Top 5 DO and Top 5 DON'T lists that I hope will serve as a guide to help you put together your New Year's resolutions and 2010 goals.

Top 5 DO List ...

1. Devote more time to the 4F's - faith, family, finances and fun. Enjoy the blessings and embrace the challenges each new day brings in these most important areas of your life.
2. Get out of your way and really start to enjoy life again. Be passionate about where you are right now and celebrate your daily accomplishments, both large and small.
3. Make a difference by putting your time, talents and resources to work to improve yourself and the world around you. Pursue new projects, opportunities and challenges with enthusiasm.
4. Be a better spouse, parent, colleague, neighbor and friend. Network and meet more people, build new relationships and partnerships, and lend a helping hand to others in need of your expertise and support.
5. Learn to live with the real you, to embrace your flaws and to laugh at yourself. Life's not perfect and neither are you, so get on with it!

Top 5 DON'T List ...

1. Sell yourself short anymore. Emphasize your strengths and put your energy and time into the things you are truly passionate about. Each morning finish this phrase "I'm the very best at ..."
2. Beat yourself up over past failures and disappointments. Life is too short; it's time to turn the page and move to the brighter future that lies ahead for you.
3. Wait until tomorrow to catch lightning in a bottle. Make "now" your favorite word; do those things that must be done every day to help you reach your goals and achieve success.
4. Miss a single opportunity to say the words "I love you" and "thank you" to all of the special people in your life who make such a difference every day.
5. Sweat the small stuff (you knew this was going to be on the list, right?). In the grand scheme of things it really is all small stuff, so just enjoy the ride!

While you celebrate this holiday season, make sure to set aside time to work on you and your goals for 2010. By doing so, you'll start the new year out refreshed and with a renewed sense of purpose.

Hope you and your family have a wonderful holiday season, and a Happy New Year!


COPYRIGHT © 2010 John Carroll

Serious Business Owner or Playing Office?

Most of us think of ourselves as serious business people, committed to the success of our businesses, but are we really and do our actions truly reflect that?  

Are you a serious business owner or playing office?

A recent Kauffman Foundation study of 549 successful businesses showed that 93% of the business owners surveyed cited "not putting in the time and effort required" as the #2 most common barrier to entrepreneurial success next to failure to take risk. Are you devoting the time and effort required to grow your business and reach your personal and financial goals?

Here is a simple test that should help provide you with some clarity and answers regarding your focus and level of commitment to building a successful business. Provide either a "Yes" or "No" response to each of the 10 questions below to find out where you are today.

1.  Do you have a detailed written business plan that includes your strategy, an overall market analysis, product/service plans, sales and marketing plans, 3-5 year financial projections, and an exit strategy?
2. Have you implemented a comprehensive sales and marketing system to enable your business to scale and to achieve its short- and long-term objectives in terms of customer adds, revenues, profits, etc.?
3. Do you have a written Vision Statement, Mission Statement and Customer Value Proposition (CVP) for your business, and do you review and update each at least quarterly?
4. Have you completed a thorough competitive assessment and SWOT analysis for at least your Top 3 competitors to see how your business stacks up against the competition?
5. Do you have detailed cold calling plans that include customer profiles, target prospect lists, cold calling scripts and defined metrics, and do you allocate time weekly to cold calling for new business?
6. Are you spending more time prospecting for new business on all fronts than chatting on the various social media sites - i.e. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.?
7. Do you routinely (twice per year) survey your customers to determine what they like and dislike about doing business with you, and to identify their additional requirements?
8. Are you receiving at least 3-5 new referrals per week from your collective networking activities?
9. Are you spending more money today on advertising, marketing and promoting your business than on personal development, self-help and "feel good" seminars and programs?
10. Do you really think you are going to make $1 million or more next year on the latest online "get rich scheme" you bought into this year?

If you answered "Yes" to question #10 go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200! And if you answered "No" to five or more of the questions above, you may be guilty of playing office. However, don't despair; all of our businesses are works in progress. All of us business owners have a litany of things to be done, done better or done differently to improve business performance and ensure our future success.

This simple test is just a guideline or tool to help you identify some of the key areas where you may need to focus additional time, energy or resources in the coming months to grow your business. So, if you are a serious business owner take time to go through your responses to these questions, and then take action to address the areas of concern as a part of your 2010 business planning.

Tres Coaching Services works with clients in the areas highlighted in questions 1-9 above to help them improve business performance, and get the results they need to move beyond their vision. If we can assist you in addressing any of these critical focus areas, please feel free to contact me.


COPYRIGHT © 2010 John Carroll

6 Tips to Help Keep Your Sales on Track

Every business owner or salesperson needs to continually add new customers and increase sales in order to grow their business. So, it is important to have a well defined sales process to enable you to build consensus with prospective buyers at each critical juncture during the selling process to improve sales results.

Having a well defined sales process will help you improve close rates, shorten sales cycles and enhance the profitability of each sale. Here are some tips to help keep your sales on track:

Call on decision makers. 60% of a salesperson's time is spent in front of people who can't buy or will never buy their products or services. So, identify the key decision makers and influencers very early in the sales cycle, and work directly with them to improve your success rate.

Know where you are in the sales process. Think of your sales pipeline as a production line where raw materials (leads) go in at the top, and the finished product (sales) comes out at the end of the assembly line. Define the sales process at each phase, and the next steps in the sales pipeline, to help keep new projects on track and moving forward to closure.

Have a fallback plan. You are the most vulnerable right after the prospect has given the verbal approval, so keep your guard up. Have a fallback plan to cover all contingencies in case a pending sale starts to unravel prior to contract, and move stalled projects up or out of the pipeline in 30 days or less.

Work on balance, grasshopper. Balancing opportunities and risks in each category of your sales pipeline is critical to improved sales performance. This will help you minimize gaps between sales closings, and enable you to more effectively allocate resources to new projects where needed.

Stay the course. On average, 48% of sales people never follow-up, and only about 10% make more than three contacts with a prospective buyer. However, 80% of sales are made on the 5-12 contact. So, stay engaged with the prospect through closure to improve your win rates on new proposals.

Ask for the order. "We miss 100% of the sales we don't ask for" - Zig Ziglar quote. Be prepared to close the sale at any point during the sales process when the prospect shows clear signs they are ready to buy.

Selling is a continuum process, so it is important to have a clearly defined sales process in place to help keep your sales on track. This will help you effectively manage sales cycles for each opportunity, while improving close rates, and enhancing the profitability of each new sale.

Good luck and good selling!

COPYRIGHT © 2010 John Carroll

It's Time for Conversations Not Just Connections

Can we talk?

Ten years ago that would have been a ridiculous question, but today in a world that is dominated by "drive by" communications, it has become much more challenging to have a simple conversation.

When was the last time you sat around the dinner table as a family or with friends and just talked; talked about nothing in particular but just had a conversation? Are you finding it more difficult to get your telephone calls returned, or to get responses to your emails these days? Or, to get someone to take 5 minutes out of their busy day to speak with you?

In this modern era of voice mail, email, text, chat, IM, tweets, etc. we have relegated conversations to sound bytes, 140 characters, or the 30-second elevator pitch. Rather than conversations that enable us to help build long-term enduring relationships, our communications have become more sterile, computer-generated and impersonal. The focus in our society has shifted to pushing information to others versus true interpersonal communications and getting to know the other person on some level.

We constantly hear the term six degrees of separation, and assume we are now closer and that technology has somehow brought us all together. However, most people I talk with feel more disconnected and farther apart than ever when it comes to communication with friends, family and the outside world. In reality, we are bombarded every day by thousands of messages from various sources, and as a result take little time to just talk with each other.

For example, when voice mail and email were first introduced, they were intended to enable us to never miss a call and to enhance our ability to communicate with a broader audience. Overtime, however, both services have evolved to selective communications vehicles. We now determine who we choose to communicate with, and which telephone calls and emails get returned. This is a great solution for avoiding spam, but do other important conversations get lost or neglected as a consequence?

Personally, I am not a fan of the 30-second elevator pitch, or drive by communications. I look forward to the personal touch and to people interaction in my communications with others. If you, too, prefer conversations and building relationships not just connections, then here are some suggestions:

1. Spend less time on the 30-second elevator pitch, and more time one-on-one getting to know the other person. This should be your first priority at all networking events.
2. Routinely schedule breakfast meetings, lunches and after-hours events with family members, friends, business associates, etc. No agenda required, just to talk.
3. Make time for family dinners and those great conversations about nothing in particular.
4. Get to know at least one new person every week, and take time to really listen to their story.
5. Find a way to communicate more face-to-face or via the telephone versus by email, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
6. Be sure to turn off the cell phone, laptop, PDA, pager, etc. and just enjoy the conversation!

If you miss those leisurely conversations around the dinner table, then bring them back, and make time for the people who are important in your life. The holidays are a great time to start.

If you have an opinion or any additional thoughts on this subject, please let me hear from you.

COPYRIGHT © 2010 John Carroll

Do Your Goals Align With Your Vision?

When I think of the challenges most companies face in aligning their organizational goals with the vision for the company, I'm reminded of this quote by Isaac Asimov:

"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome."

Our mastermind group has been focused on The Visioning Process for the past month or so, and the members have completed weekly exercises to help them re-define the Vision Statement and Mission Statement for their respective companies. As the group has come to experience, it's hard work to go through the process when taking into account the past, present and future in order to find a better pathway to success.

Getting to where you want to go, from where you are today, is the ultimate challenge for most businesses, and it is this transition that's the most troublesome. For most, it requires moving away from old habits and traditional thinking to ensure that you have the proper goals alignment with your vision. Here are some suggestions to help you work through the process:

1. Start where you hope to finish. Schedule a brainstorming session with your team; capture all of the "wild ideas" that surface from the session, and discard those things that don't work anymore. This will help you move through the process from Visualization to Actualization to Realization, and on to a list of concrete recommendations you can build upon.
2. Create S.M.A.R.T. goals and objectives. From your short list of actionable recommendations, create goals and objectives that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time bound.
3. Take the time to do it right. Develop horizon plans and goals that encompass the upcoming plan year, 1 to 3 year, 3 to 5 year, and 5 to 10 year outlooks to enable you to reach your vision.
4. Involve everybody in the goal setting process. It is critical to obtain "buy-in" from all internal stakeholders, so get them involved upfront in the goal setting process.
5. Keep your vision and goals in front of you and the team. Your vision and goals should be an integral part of your company's DNA. So post them everywhere and review them monthly so they stay fresh.

Finally, make sure to link the company's objectives and individual performance plans to the goals. This helps to ensure that the proper alignment of your goals with your vision becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy through your daily work related activities and the activities of your team members.

COPYRIGHT © 2010 John Carroll

Sales & Marketing Plan Check-up Time

Much the same as your car or home, you should also schedule periodic check-ups of your sales and marketing plans to ensure that you are receiving optimal performance and results.

These check-ups should be done on a monthly, quarterly and annual basis as an integral part of the ongoing planning process. Regularly scheduled plan reviews will enable you to capitalize on emerging market trends, and make necessary course corrections to minimize potential shortfalls.

At a minimum, the areas that are listed below should be audited as a part of your sales and marketing plan check-ups to determine your company's sales and marketing effectiveness.

1. Sales Metrics. Review the number of first calls, customer visits, proposals, closed sales, customer adds, and revenue.
   
2. Sales Productivity. Determine the total revenue amount per individual sales headcount in each period vs. plan. 
3. Sales Pipeline. Evaluate the total number of projects in the pipeline, dollar value of the pipeline, % of total per funnel phase, average days to closed sale, and average sale value.
   
4. Lead Conversions. Identify the "hit rate" by calculating the ratio of new sales to leads from all sources.
   
5. Marketing ROI. Calculate the revenue to expense ratios for all marketing activities to determine where you are receiving the greatest return from your marketing expenditures.
   
6. Budget. Are you meeting your sales and marketing targets in all areas - i.e. sales, revenue, customer adds, expenses, etc.?
7. Execution. Are you delivering new products, promotions, projects, collaterals, etc. on-time? On-time delivery is a must for you to reach your sales and revenue goals.

The data you compile from the sales and marketing plan check-ups will provide you with the insight needed to develop future business plans that are consistent with prevailing market trends and the historical performance of your business.

So, if you do not have a similar sales and marketing review process in place today, make it a priority. These check-ups will enable you and your team to stay on-track with the projected business plan outlook, while receiving optimal performance and results from your sales and marketing investments.


COPYRIGHT © 2010 John Carroll

The 4C's of Social Media Marketing

For serious entrepreneurs and business owners alike, social media marketing should be all about the 4C's ...

1. Content
2. Connections
3. Conversions
4. Cash

It starts with knowing your targeted customer profile and how to reach prospective buyers through your social media marketing activities. Rich content will help you get the word out and draw the intended audience to your social media sites, drive additional traffic to your web site, and help you establish key connections that can be converted into cash.

For entrepreneurs and business owners in the growth mode, the focus should be on tapping into the viral marketing capabilities of social media to build a stronger brand presence, cultivate key strategic partnerships, open new markets, launch new products and services, and acquire more customers.

In this broader context, social media marketing should be more about following the money and building profitable relationships on all fronts, and less about how many followers and friends you have on Twitter and Facebook.

To fully capitalize on all aspects of social media to grow your business, you should engage a social media expert. A social media expert can help you design a plan that is right for your business, and then work with you to develop targeted content, programs and offers to reach those new prospective buyers through social media.

Keep in mind, whether its social media or any other media, the 4C's should be the focal point in reaching the end goals for any business - more customers and more revenue.


COPYRIGHT © 2010 John Carroll