Funny you should say that?

Do you work from home? Here are some tips that will make your days more productive.

1)      Start Each Day with a Plan
I know early in the morning what I will be working on that day. A lot of people start by checking their email and then do whatever comes to their minds next. You should spend at least 10 minutes every day to answer yourself this question, “What is the ONE thing I need to get done today that will put me closer to my goal?” That’s your top priority; work on it first.

2)      Have a Functional Workspace
* You need your own room. You can’t work in the kitchen with the kids running around.
* Have all the elements you need at hand. You shouldn’t have to stand up to pick up a notepad or go to the other room to print a document.
* You should work in a pleasant environment. Make sure it is noise-free, the temperature is adequate, your items are organized and you have a glass of water next to you.

3)      Create a Schedule and Adhere to It
This is extremely hard to do; especially if you own the business. But, mastering this skill will make you and your family happier. Decide what your work hours will be and stick to your schedule. You can carry a notebook and if you get an idea outside business hours, you can write it down and do it the next day.

4)      Learn to Say No
If your spouse wants you to pick up the kids from soccer because “you are home”, remind him or her that you are working, not “relaxing at home”. Learn to say no.

5)      Set Small Goals and Don’t Take Breaks Until You Accomplish Them
I like working in chunks of one hour each. If I need to email 100 people and each email takes me five minutes, then I know that I can email 12 people per hour, so I make that my goal and I don’t do anything else until I’m done. I don’t check my email, answer the phone or cook myself lunch. When I’m done, I take a break and do whatever else I need to do. If an idea comes to my mind while I’m working on the 12 emails, I write it down for later and continue working on the emails.

6)      Take Care of Yourself
Even though you work from home doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t shave, shower, exercise, or eat well. Looking good makes you feel good and when you feel good you are more successful.

7)      Analyze Each Day
This exercise will only take you five minutes and it’ll make you much more effective. Whenever you feel you haven’t had a very productive day, write down everything you’ve done that day. Figure out what the biggest time drainers were and how you can stop them from happening again. Don’t be too hard on yourself; working from home isn’t easy. Just learn from your mistakes and move on.

 Is your business struggling in the current economy?

 In the current economy and political climate many business owners have lowered their expectations, their goals, and their dreams. Unemployment is still rampant, foreclosures are at an all-time high, stores are closing, and businesses are struggling. Optimism for the future is at an all-time low.

 The real tragedy is that people get dragged down by the tide of frustration, negativity, and hopelessness. Here is something very important for you to consider.

 There is absolutely nothing you can do to change the current downward economic slide. You can’t do it yourself. Powerful business leaders and politicians can’t do it. Special interests can’t do it. Nobody knows what to do to turn things around.

 That is the bad news.

 The good news is that you personally can change your individual circumstances and still be successful in your business, no matter what the economy is doing. This is true now, has been true in the past, and will be true in the future.

 Despite the economic ups and downs, the Wall Street crash, Sept 11, the financial collapse of 2008 and the ongoing employment crisis, some businesses have consistently done well. This past year has been one of their best years.

 This is due to having good, consistent marketing of their business. They keep creating products and services that serve a need and make a difference, and market them in a consistent manner.

Good marketing is only one of the factors that lead to business success. There are a few others that are also essential.

 Factor 1

 It is based on the quality and professionalism of your service. Therefore, the better your service is the higher the demand will be. The better the quality, the more success you will see. This doesn’t guarantee success but it is hard to have success without it.

 Factor 2

 The business owners’ mindset or attitude directly affects it. This isn’t about positive thinking, but thinking that is aware and awake. Those who can stand calmly amidst chaos and confusion, make good decisions and take effective actions, despite fears and doubts, will always triumph.

 Factor 3

 Do you have the ability to communicate the value of your services? Marketing is all about getting your message across in such a way that it generates enough attention and interest to move people into action. They want you to tell them more. Almost anyone can be a better marketer, but the worse the economy, the more important it is.

 These are the qualities you see in the most admired and visionary business leaders.

 They embody these Factors. 

 If you passively accept your situation, are resigned to the current economic realities, and sit around waiting for things to change someday, your chances of success are next to zero.

 The only people I can really help are those who already understand the importance of these factors and are willing to do the work necessary to grow in each of these three areas.

 It is simple, but not necessarily easy. What can you do and where can you start? Here are a few ideas that can be applied in your business.

 1. Commit to continuous improvement. Know that you can always increase your knowledge, understanding, and skills. Learn something new every day that will strengthen your factors.

 2. Look at your business though the eyes of your clients. What would they want? What would help them? How can I make my services better, easier, simpler, more valuable, and more fun? If I was a client, what would I want? And then work on one thing at a time to make it happen.

 3. Know thyself. Make it a lifelong endeavor to learn your strengths and weaknesses and discover ways to work with more focus, energy, and inspiration. There is no simple formula for this. It can start with the question like this: “What can I do to improve my productivity, value, and personal awareness?”

 4. Surrender to marketing. You can resist it forever, like eating your veggies or flossing your teeth, or you can just work on marketing a little every single day. Consistent learning, practice, and skill-building ultimately leads to mastering marketing.

 5. Get support. If you think you can do this alone, you are deceived. You can’t. You need to be guided by those who have travelled the territory before you and who can save you time, energy, and money to help you get there faster and in one piece.

 6. Learn about others’ success. Much of your success can be built upon the stories of others who have succeeded. I’m always looking for specific, how-to strategies, and tactics that work consistently to produce results.

 The Bottom Line: You can succeed beyond your wildest dreams, even in this economy. But it will not just happen. It takes a certain degree of commitment, work, and persistence to take each of the factors to the next level.

 Steven J. Beaman is the founder & principal owner of BCSG, LLC, a general business consultancy and coaching organization whose primary focus is independent professionals and small businesses. Steven helps businesses to determine the constraints that are causing them to become stagnant or unproductive. He also assists start-up businesses to determine the roadblocks or obstacles that they may not have perceived. He also guides organizations through the start-up process, rapid business growth, or a turnaround situation. He does this using his wealth of management experience gathered during his over 35 year career of managing a variety of business functions in both small and medium businesses. He has expertise in numerous types of businesses (for profit and non-profit).

 Link to BCSG, LLC is http://www.bcs-mn.com

Went to see the movie Courageous

This movie will make you think about your life as a father and husband. See the trailer and then go see the movie at a theatre near you.

Do you have the right tools?

Marketing action plans can be a magic wand that produces wondrous results if you know how to use them. Once you have created the foundation for your plan, your next step is to develop the actual action steps.

Exact steps get predictable results. A plan is always changing depending on tracking what is working or not, tweaks or improvements on the action formulas. Follow the plan to the letter and get better results than your competition.

The lesson here is that even if you are given a plan, you have to test and tweak it yourself. It’s all about the details.

Let’s say we were to work on a marketing plan for Speaking Engagements. Here are some action steps:

Step One – Target Market: Identify and contact ideal organizations that could host your talk. Make a list. A LONG list and be persistent in contacting them all.

Step Two – The Outreach: Ideally, call these organizations by phone and tell them that you have a talk on “Systemizing Your Business to increase your Productivity and Profits.” Make it results oriented. If they are interested, they will ask for more information.

Step Three – Written Materials: Send a speaker’s kit by mail or email that outlines the results that can be expected. Make sure they look professional. Lots of benefits and no typographical errors!

Step Four – Follow-Up: Call or email a few days later to see if they got the materials and if they have any questions. If your topic is current, interesting, and valuable you are likely to book some talks from this approach. Again, contact many organizations.

Step Five – Prepare the Talk: There have been books written on this but the main thing here is write out the whole talk, create an outline for participants, and practice it out loud several times.

Step Six – Promote the Talk: This is the job of the organization, but you can help them by writing the copy for their announcement. Make sure it includes all the benefits that people will receive from the talk.

Step Seven – Give the Talk: Make it exciting, dynamic and fun. Engage the audience. Do an exercise or two. Make three or four “thought provoking points” instead of giving a long laundry list of ideas. Make time for questions at the end.

Step Eight – Call-to-Action: This may be the most important part of the talk. Find a way to collect cards for follow-up after the talk.

A good way is to say: “Here’s an article I’ve written that covers the key points from today’s talk. Who would like a copy? Great, please give me your business card and I’ll send it to you.”

Step Nine – Follow-Up: After the talk, send a copy (pdf) of the article to everyone who gave you their card. From there you can make offers for your service, invite them to speak to you, etc. Don’t leave out this vital step or you’ll get very few new clients for all your efforts.

There you have it a detailed step-by-step marketing plan with a call to action.

You can produce similar plans for networking, social media, joint ventures, direct mail, etc.

The difference between a marketing plan with a call to action and most marketing activities is that it is systematic. One thing leads to another. From initial contact to final follow up, you have a direction and a purpose. You are proactive, not passive.

But remember, no formula will do it all for you. You design the steps the best you can and then test and tweak until you can produce a consistent result every single time.

The Bottom Line: Just like a magic formula, marketing plans need to follow a definite sequence. That is the key. If these steps are followed randomly with no clear intention to produce a result, you can be certain that they won’t.

 One of the Marketing Mindsets and one of the most frequent mindsets is, I don’t have the time to market my products or services. But the truth is, you’ll always find the time to do something if you see the value and make a commitment.

Then time is never a problem.

Why do so many things seems to stop people from putting their marketing into action. There are many mindsets that stop many people from acting on their marketing plans.

Here’s one: I can’t start marketing until I know exactly what to do. This mindset is interesting because there’s actually some truth in it, but there’s also a big lie.

There’s no question that it’s useful to know what to do before you start anything. It’s like a recipe. And when you have that step-by-step recipe, it’s usually a lot easier to get started.

However, just like cooking recipes, there are a whole lot of marketing recipes available. All you need to do is take a little time to study them and get started. You can find these recipes in books, internet sites, and audio programs.

The step-by-step details are there for anyone to follow.

It’s not a big deal to launch a speaking strategy, an email newsletter, or a networking plan. Nevertheless, you may have access to these recipes and still not get started. Why?

For instance, do you have a blog, how many of you are still thinking about it?

Perhaps there’s another mindset in the way. Does this one sound familiar? I might do it wrong, and if I do, I’ll make a fool of myself and be ridiculed or rejected. This one is very common.

Despite having a step-by-step recipe, you may hesitate or procrastinate in getting started, or you may try to get everything perfect before you finally launch your plan. But, I have to do this perfectly, is just another limiting mindset.

Let’s do some reality thinking here. How dangerous is marketing, really?

What’s the worst thing that could happen if you put a marketing action plan into place? What would people do if you launched your blog, or gave a talk to a group on your area of expertise, or put your profile up on Linked-in and Facebook?

The worst thing that could happen, is that people wouldn’t be interested. They just wouldn’t care. They wouldn’t respond or want to know more.

But tell me honestly, would that kill you?

Truthfully, wouldn’t you survive? If you really think you wouldn’t, you just may be in the wrong business! You should pick a safer profession, a job where nobody could ever reject you. Maybe you should be a forest ranger or night watchman.

Instead, take a look at the potential upside.

If you put yourself out there, if you were willing to face some disinterest, even some rejection (in fact, if you could embrace the disinterest and rejection), you just might discover that some people actually *were interested* and wanted to know more about your business. They might even hire you!

Here’s a challenge to you: Pick a marketing strategy that is scary to you, (but that you intuitively feel could help your business) and then learn the step-by-step recipe to get started and put it into action.

And then just do it.

The Bottom Line: Taking any kind of marketing action is potentially dangerous. You could fail, be ridiculed or rejected. But your thinking about what could happen is almost always worse than the reality. It’s not hard to find the tools to help you. And the potential benefits almost always outweigh the risks.

Does your direct mail end up here?

If you want to improve the response rate to your direct mail, the answer may be as simple as making a better offer.

For example, a recent mailing by one business offered free samples and pulled a good response. Here are the details:

A manufacturer of skin-care products, offered free samples to a targeted list of skincare professionals. These two factors, the offer and the list, were far and away the most important reasons for the client’s success. The third and least important factor was the copy. Sure, it played a role and had an impact. But without an excellent offer—free samples—it’s unlikely that this mailing would have produced much more than a handful of responses.

Crafting an Effective Offer: First, Do Your Homework
I understand that everyone’s business is not suited to offering free samples. But that doesn’t mean you can’t create a stronger, more compelling offer that increases your response.

To create an effective offer, you should first consider the economics of your business. What is the best offer that you can afford to make? For example, you run a printing business. You know that the top 20% of your customer base spends an average of $2,000 a year with you. And because of the high quality of your work and your outstanding customer service, these top-tier clients stay on the books with you for an average of seven years. When you look at your business in this light, you may determine that you can afford to make a much more generous offer when targeting companies that meet the same profile.

Maybe you’ll decide to offer prospects a substantial discount on their first order: four-color printing for the same price as black and white, free shipping on all orders during the first 12 months, or some other compelling incentive.

Get Creative With Your Offer
Allow me to continue with the above example and show you how a little creativity can help you craft an even more compelling and unique offer.

Let’s say you feel that the offer of a first-order discount would cheapen the high-end, high-quality image you’ve worked hard to establish for your printing company. So you and your staff do some brainstorming and come up with another idea. After careful consideration of the future income stream that each name on your targeted list is capable of producing… you decide to do a test mailing of a very special offer. An offer that, figuratively and literally, drives home your corporate image as a classy, one-of-a-kind organization.

Here it is:

Because you have a world-class printing facility with state-of-the-art presses and digital imaging equipment your most effective sales approach is to have the prospect tour your shop. So your offer is a guided tour of your facilities.

But here’s the kicker: You arrange for a limousine service to provide each prospect with transportation from their office to your shop and back. (I can see the envelope copy now. “May I send the limo for you?” Who wouldn’t want to read what’s inside?)

Plus, for an added touch of class and more selling time with the prospect, you schedule the tour so that it ends right around the lunch hour. Then, you and your prospect dine together in your executive offices with lunch ordered in from a fine restaurant. When lunch is over, you walk your soon-to-be customer to their limo and warmly send them on their way. Class, all the way.

In addition, any marketing professional worth his or her fee would easily be able to take a winning campaign of this nature and generate local and national publicity with it. By the way, if you use this idea, let me know.

Now maybe your business doesn’t lend itself to the type of offer I just described. That doesn’t matter. These are the two key points I want you to take away from this example:

1. Be a progressive, forward-thinking, “big-picture” marketer. When calculating the ROI of any marketing effort, don’t focus solely on the short-term profitability of making a sale. Look also at the much more substantial and profitable outcome of making a customer.
2. When creating an offer, don’t be afraid to think outside the box. Make every effort to make your offer fun, unique, compelling. Ask yourself, “If I were receiving this offer instead of sending it out, what would motivate me to take action?”

Successful Offers for Your Next Mailing—Two Proven Business-to-Business offers
Sometimes, particularly when you’re mailing to a larger list of prospects, circumstances may restrict how creative or generous you can be with your offer.

That’s why I want to share with you two low-cost business-to-business lead-generation offers you can use to achieve profitable results. But first, a brief discourse on one of the most significant challenges faced by business-to-business marketers.

Way too many business-to-business offers amount to nothing more than “Call us for further information.” The problem with that offer is that it lacks any motivating force, and the prospect feels no need to take action. Consequently, the only people likely to respond are those who are already interested in buying the product or using the service. The end result is that “Call us for further information” will produce high-quality leads but not nearly enough of them to make your salespeople happy and your marketing program successful.

On the other hand, offering a free premium such as a Mag-lite Flashlight will generate a high number of leads, but at an increase in fulfillment costs and a substantial drop-off in the quality of the leads.

Using one of the following two offers can help you solve this quantity/quality dilemma:

1. Today’s Business Owners and Executives Are Overloaded with Reading material.

The paradox is that they are always on the lookout for advice, tips, pointers, and information that can help them do a better job of doing their job or running their business. (Your taking the time to read this article is a perfect example. And, by the way, thank you for doing so.)

The topic of your booklet should obviously be a subject of genuine interest to your targeted prospects. It should offer relevant, helpful, meaningful information in a seemingly unbiased and neutral way. At the same time, the information in your booklet should help sell the reader on your product or service. A good editorial approach to take with your booklet is to explain how to successfully accomplish a certain end result or how to select a product that will help your prospects achieve that result. Naturally, you want to slant your material in such a way that the reader will favor your approach or your product.

Once you’ve selected the topic and content approach for your booklet, your next step is to give it a title that will attract attention and generate response. A good title is very important and will largely determine how successful your free booklet offer is. Here are some examples of effective business-to-business booklet titles:

50 Cost-Saving Printing Trade Secrets

How to Market With Postcards

15 Ways to Improve Your Collection Efforts

The 6 Most Common Mistakes Made When Leasing Commercial Property…. And How to Avoid Them

Family-Owned Businesses: The 3 Most Common Pitfalls… and How to Avoid Them

Important final note: Be sure that you call your informational offering a booklet and not a brochure. Why? Booklet sounds less commercial, more meaningful, and more informative than “brochure.”

2. Case Study

A case study can make a great offer and can be a powerfully effective marketing tool. Essentially, a case study is a success story that details how your company was able to help a specific client achieve exceptional results. You can also look at it as a lengthy and detailed testimonial written in the form of a magazine article.

A good format for a case study is as follows:

• Problem: This is how things were before our customer started using our product or service.
• Solution: This is how we solved the problem.
• Payoff: This is the documented payoff our products/services have enabled the customer to achieve.

You want your case study to show the “hows and whys” of a customer’s situation and decision. For example, how many products did they evaluate and which other companies were among the “finalists”? Why did the customer choose your product over the others? Your case study should emphasize the successful results your customer achieved with your product or service. Plus, you’ll want to be sure and include numerous direct quotes from the principal parties involved in the buying decision. Also, as with the informational booklet, you’ll need to give your case study a good title.

Well-written case studies will build strong credibility for your product or service. By providing references and helping prospects gain a better understanding of how your product or service can help them achieve their goals and objectives, a good case study can overcome the prospect’s natural skepticism.

Plus, a case study has public relations value. Many trade publications make extensive use of them, either as full-length feature articles or as fillers.

Do You have a Winning Combination?

If you ask your accountant, they will tell you that marketing is an
expense. Most businesses think of marketing as an expense because
they keep writing checks for their marketing, but don’t see anything coming back in return.

The true business owner or entrepreneur knows that marketing is not an expense, it is an investment. For it to be an investment, every marketing dollar that goes out needs to account for more money coming into the business.

So why is this true for some businesses and not for others? Here  are 10 tips of how to change your marketing mindset from that of an expense to that of an investment. By following these basic steps you will change the way you think about marketing forever.

See BCSG,LLC for additional topics of interest.

1. Spend more time producing income instead of reducing costs. Many businesses spend their time trying to reduce costs just to make ends meet. This is an important aspect of business that can not be ignored. However, if you cut your costs to the bare minimum to keep your business running you can probably only add 10-20% to your bottom line, but if you focus on increasing income your impact to your bottom line is almost unlimited.
2. Put 50% of your time, effort, and investment into distributing and more importantly the other 50% into sales and marketing. Most businesses spend about 90% of their time on getting their product or service to market to serve their customers. This leaves only 10% of their time to focus on sales and marketing. This happens because they are working in their comfort zone, this is what they are good at and what they know. To increase the revenue in any business, you need to focus 50% of your time on distributing and 50% of your time on sales and marketing.
3. Marketing is an investment when you measure and test your results. When asked, business owners don’t know where their leads are coming from and they usually say, “Yes, we ask every customer where you heard about us”. I then respond by saying, “That’s great, can I see the results?” They then inform me that the information is not written down or tracked electronically. It is impossible to accurately measure this information. To get a clear picture of what media, headline, and offer is working you must not only ask, “How did you find out about us?”, You must also record the results.
4. Acquiring customers is an investment so set your marketing budget by your acquisition costs. When you begin to understand that marketing is all about “acquiring customers” you begin to change the way you look at your advertising and marketing. If you understand the acquisition cost of a customer, then you can begin to create a marketing budget and acquire as many customers as you want. The concept is simple, you spend $1000 on advertising, and you get 50 phone calls, then you are paying $20 per lead. Now if you close 20% or 1 out of 5 of those leads, you’re paying $100 (5x$20) per sale. Now, if your product sells for $200, you have just made $1000 (50 calls x 20% closing x $200 minus $1000 advertising). The only thing left to determine is, am I making more per customer than the acquisition cost? This is referred to as your conversion rate. Also consider increasing your average purchase price.
5. Never focus on chasing market share, but on the pocket share instead. In the business world, if you are a small or medium size business and you are focused on just market share you are in effect just chasing your tail. When you are chasing market share, it is based on the assumption that you are buying a product or service and then turning around and selling them to your customers. However, if your mindset is now on acquiring customers you are now focused on how much, how many, and for how long can you sell to each customer. We are moving from being product focused to being customer focused. The key here is customer loyalty. Always remember, it is more profitable to sell to existing customers then to market to new ones. What other product or service can you offer that compliments your current sales efforts.
6. Establish the long term view of the value of your customers and their lifetime value. As mentioned above it is more profitable to sell to existing customers than to market to new ones. How much will your average customer spend over their lifetime? By establishing a long term view of a value of your customer, you can begin to appreciate the importance and impact of good customer service and how costly poor customer service can be to your business.
7. Always aim to reduce your acquisition cost and raise your customer’s lifetime value. If we go back to our example above, our acquisition cost was $100. Now, if our product sold for $100 instead of $200, we would only be breaking even. The success of this campaign would have to be based on the long term value of the customer. If our average customer will purchase from us on average 2x per month, we would now be making $200 per month from this client. Our goal now is to continually measure and test to decrease our acquisition cost by either getting our campaign to generate more leads or by increasing our conversion rate of lead to sale. Secondly, we need to implement strategies to get our customer to purchase from us more often and to shorten the time between each purchase.
8. We are in the Profit Business. You must determine the correct selling price for your product and service. If not, you will sell yourself into bankruptcy. Also, stop all advertising that is not working. Focus on reducing the acquisition costs of the advertising that is working.
9. Measure and Test everything. This is a simple but most overlooked strategy in business. Simply put, if you can not measure it you can not improve it.
10. Marketing is Math! By utilizing the simple formulas we discussed above you will take the guess work out of your marketing and turn it from an expense into an investment.

Do you have a Dream for your Business?

Change is the ultimate secret to business growth

I talk to business owners that want to take their businesses to the next level, but are puzzled as to why it’s so hard. They push and work and expand and contract only to find themselves right back where they found themselves last year.

Have you ever had that feeling? – “I’m doing okay, but I can’t seem to grow past a certain plateau.”

Growth is a tricky thing, business growth is a tricky thing, because growth always involves change. And for most, change seems hard.

But, change is the ultimate secret to business growth

Actually change isn’t that hard, but we seem wired to find ways to make it so. Change involves little more than letting go of past assumptions and trying new things, admitting that you don’t have, and don’t need to have, all of the answers, showing yourself and others different ways to approach the same challenges.

Letting go is particularly hard for small business owners, it’s often a bit like sending your child off to school. The unknown is too scary, so you just clutch to what you know and, well, there you have it.

It’s sort of a paradox in business too. To get to some level of growth, you’ve got to be consistent long enough to develop some positive brand awareness, to move past that level, you’ve got to change what got you there.

The first change that may be necessary for growth is to start looking at change as a positive element of your success. Start seeing change as a good thing, start looking for signs of change, practicing change on purpose, looking for change opportunities that roll right up to your feet in the simplest of things. (Change your coffee drink)

You know, however, I’m not simply talking about making change for change sake here, I’m actually talking about looking at change strategically and then implementing it tactically.

So maybe you need a prescription for change. Below I’ve proposed 5 ways you can intentionally get change in your business life and focus on new and empowering growth behaviors.

Get Uncomfortable on Purpose! – Your wealth, your success, will correspond directly with the size of your mindset. Get in front of an audience and speak, write for an industry publication, start blogging, network with prospects, write personal thank you notes. Let someone else be in charge or take the credit for success. You can’t grow unless you are uncomfortable – embrace it!. Write a book. Start a radio show. Create a podcast. You are so much bigger than you are allowing yourself to be. Reach.

Get and Give New Skills – Read everything you put your hands on. (Perhaps starting with Duct Tape Marketing!) Read your direct mail, watch infomercials, read magazines that cover topics seemingly unrelated to your job and “this is a big one” look for ways to teach others how to grow their businesses. Become known in your industry for some specific expertise and show others how to do it. Teaching something is the fastest way to get better at it yourself.

Get Bigger Ideas – Tear your products and services apart. Look for ways to approach an industry problem like no one else can or will. Your ideas don’t have to really be that big as long as they are world altering. Come up with one idea this year that makes someone say you are nuts – and then go do it.

Get Value – No matter what you offer, it can be better. Heap more and more on your products and services, give stuff that no one expected you to give. Add services over and above what was agreed upon. Force people to talk about how incredible you are.

Get What You’re Worth – If you do any of the steps above, you will be more able to do this. Raise your prices. Choose to work with fewer clients at much higher rates. Sell based on value, not on time. And, refuse to work with clients that don’t fully appreciate the value you have to offer. You can make more space in your head to serve your clients when you don’t have clients that bring you down.

So, how do you systematically embrace change?

Are You Puzzled or Can't fit the Pieces together?

To communicate your marketing message effectively, you must first clearly and honestly identify your business personality. To do this, you have to define three deceptively simple-seeming concepts:

1. Who are you?

2. What do you do?

3. Why do you do it better than your competitor?

You hear what you see

We experience our lives through our senses. We see, hear, touch and smell. People experience the Internet through a computer screen, and as a result the Web has become a profoundly visual venue.

People believe what they see is the most important element in delivering a message, but I would argue that what you hear outweighs what you see. Companies spend millions of dollars on attractive logos and corporate names, and I have no argument with developing a proper logo or a great name. But successful company names and logos have an element inherent in their design that goes beyond how they look. It is how they sound.

When you see a visual brand representation, a signal goes off in your head and a little voice whispers that company name. Try to think of a popular corporate logo without the name of that company sounding silently in your head. Sound, and more specifically the human voice, is the most underutilized marketing tool we have at our disposal.

The Web is made for sound

The Web is a multimedia platform. Your Web site should use every possible tool available to establish your image and deliver your marketing message. No one was able to stop the flood of images from overtaking the Web, and soon audio will follow.

If you implement audio on your Web site properly, your message will get through the visual noise and you will connect with your audience in a truly human way. But how do you effectively implement voice on the Web?

1. List all the human attributes inherent in your business personality. An accounting firm may want to project stability, reliability and a conventional outlook—think of the voice of Walter Cronkite. An advertising agency might want to deliver a hip, cutting edge, creative personality—think the edgy delivery of Chris Rock or Dennis Leary. Great voice actors are available at very reasonable prices and can project the desired style and delivery.
2. What are the audio qualities of the signature voice? Do you want a man or a woman, or both? Do you want a deep, base voice full of conviction, a snooty British accent dripping in condescension, or comic rapid-fire patter aimed to amuse and entertain? Accent is as important as delivery.
3. What kind of language, phrasing, and cadence is required to give the voice its personality? If you’re looking for a voice for a DVD to be used at the winter baseball meetings, maybe you could use a combination of Dizzy Dean and Mel Allen. The key is a good-ole-boy southern charm conveyed through a combination of baseball jargon, phrasing and dialect. You are not necessarily looking for someone to imitate Dizzy Dean, just someone who can deliver the essence of Dizzy’s love for the game.
4. Do you prefer wet or dry? Have you ever watched one of those “The Making of…” documentaries on a how a movie was made? Sometimes they will show you a scene with dialog but no music or sound effects. It’s really very flat, even with the actors doing their dramatic best. Voice without music or sound effects is called a “dry” delivery. When the effects and the music are added in postproduction, the scene delivers real emotional impact. The music and effects provide emotional clues and memory hooks.
5. Write the script. Having the voice in my head is a great help in writing the script. The cadence, phrasing and language are what make the script come alive and create the personality that will represent your company. Unrelated to the actual voice (but definitely of importance to the script) is the point of view. The script should not be about you; it should be about how your audience can benefit from knowing you. Don’t fall into the trap of focusing on you and listing a bunch of product or service features. Talk about what you can do for your audience, and in that way you will make a real connection.
6. Audition the talent. Once you have a script, it’s time to audition voices to find the one that fits the personality you are looking for—and, of course, the price you are willing to pay.
7. Implement on the Web. Once the voice audio is complete, music and sound effects can be added as needed. The audio tracks are then cut into digestible clips, compressed and converted into appropriate implementable files.

In a world of mental clutter, information anxiety and narrow attention spans, your Web voice could become the next big weapon in Web media presentation and marketing.

How do you connect with partners?

Whenever I go to a Chamber meeting or a networking function, I’m always astonished at the way individuals meet.  When I’ve gathered the business cards that were handed to me, they all looked alike and none of them jumped out at me.

You can reach us at BCSG, LLC

The reason I’m writing about this, is that I just came back from a Chamber Networking meeting that was designed to put everyone in front of each other over an hour period of time.  You should have seen the “off to the races” scenario.  A bell rang every 30 seconds, so you only had 30 seconds to give your card and say something.

Everyone who gave me their business card told me their name and the company they worked for or owned.  None of them prepared an “Elevator Speech” to fit into 30 seconds. And, most importantly, none of them had their USP or Elevator Speech on the back of their business cards.

Look at your card and the cards you’ve gathering over the years.  Are any of them unique?  Do any of them motivate you to call them or to do business with them?

Within the hundreds I have accumulated over the years, they are all the same size.  Nothing is different about them.

Why not be creative. 

Let’s assume that you want your business perceived as being on the cutting edge.  What could you do? 

How about a business card that looks like a razor blade with your information on it and also your USP and/or Elevator Speech on the reverse side.

What could you do if you owned a restaurant?  How about an irregular card that looks like someone took a bite out of the corner?

For insurance agents, or really for anyone, create a free report.  You can get the facts on how to do this by reading a copy of ”How to Print Money Legally”.  You received a free copy if you recently bought my book, “How To Get Customers To Call, Buy & Beg For More”.  

Have the front of your card say the following:

FREE Report Reveals How You Can Protect
Your Family’s Dreams and Future.
(See back of card for details)
         Your Name
“Your Dream Protector”
ABC Insurance Agency
Address
Phone #

The back of the card could read something like this:

Dear Friend,
For many families, an unfortunate event, such as a fire,
earthquake, flood, hurricane accident, can wipe out
everything they now own…overnight!
Imagine losing your home, your car, your savings, your
business and having to start all over from scratch.
To help you protect yourself, your family’s dreams and
future against any unexpected disastrous event, ask for your FREE special report called “How to Protect Your Family’s Dreams and Future from Unfortunate Events.”

Call the 24 Hour Recorded Consumer
Awareness Hotline at 222-2222 Today.

Now, let me give you some more examples.

Here’s a message I created for an Accountant to put on the back of this business card. 

“How Much Money Would You Take Out of Your Business
If you Didn’t have to pay Tax on it?”

Or this one I created for my Loan Officers in the Banks I helped start.

“In the business of Friendly and Superior Banking Services
And Giving you Ideas on how you can Grow your Business
And Get more Customers.”

What do you think of that one?

With the next printing of my business card, here is what will be on the reverse side:

…helping businesses increase customer acquisition by up to 32.7% in as little as 3 to 6 months, and increase customer retention by up to 90%.

I’m sure that if you brainstorm long enough, you can come up with a unique design, for your business card, and make sure that your USP and/or elevator speech is included on the reverse side. 

And one more thing, make sure that when you hand the card to someone, it’s reversed where the back side is what they see immediately.