Vision

Simply put, vision is a picture of a preferred future. People gain inspiration and motivation when they feel like they are improving the world in some way. It doesn’t have to be massive, though some are highly engaged by BIG visions. For most people it is just the awareness that we are helping someone, we are making a difference in one person’s life. Every business does this and it is the role or task of the leader to highlight that and celebrate it when it happens.

Much has been written around the topic of vision. However, I think it is very simple (though powerful.) Every vision begins with a problem, something that is unpleasant, undesired, or uninspiring. In other words, to articulate a “preferred” future we must start with and “un-preferred” present!

So ask yourself, what is the problem or undesirable current reality that our product or service solves?

The Problem – The Vision

As a business coach I see small business owners who are frustrated and struggling because their businesses are not growing. That’s a problem. My vision is to help them develop and implement strategies which will relieve that frustration and enable their businesses to grow.

I also see owners who feel like their life and business is out of control because of disorganization, inadequate systems, or rapid growth. They are worried, stressed, and working way too much, sacrificing their health, their families, and their most important relationships. That’s a problem. My vision is to help them organize and systematize their businesses so they can actually work less but make more money.

Create Your Vision

So again, ask yourself, what problem does my business solve for people? What is the emotional or felt need they experience? What motivates them to consider my product or service? How do we add value?

Once you feel, understand, and clearly communicate the problem, then articulate the vision of something better to your team, your strategic partners, and your customers. Do it over and over and over again. Never stop sharing the vision, refining the vision, and celebrating the vision. No one else in your company or organization can do this. It is your role as a leader to keep everyone focused on the vision.

“Isn’t it really ‘customer helping’ rather than customer service? And wouldn’t you deliver better service if you thought of it that way?”

I think that’s the right question for every business owner and leader to be asking.  A business leader is responsible for establishing the VISION and the FOCUS of the organization.  SATISFYING YOUR CUSTOMERS/CLIENTS is a critical focus area.

Your company’s primary focus should be squarely on exceeding the expectations of your customers/clients.

Begin to establish a culture whereby your team falls in love with your customers and their needs/wants and not your own company’s products or services.  You are in business to attract, delight and retain customers in a profitable manner – period.  The real value of your business is tied directly to the future, predictable cash flow from your highly satisfied and loyal customers.  Without customers, you do not have a business.

Again, your focus should be on your customers and solving their problems, needs, and wants.  It should not be about your company or your services and products.  Teach your employees to value your customers, serve them well, and sniff out any customer problems or complaints.  Keep your customers delighted and coming back for more!  As leader, have the courage to create an environment in which the customer is your enterprise’s primary focus.

As CEO, set the tone by visiting regularly the top 20% of your customers and keeping them satisfied.  Find out what is on their minds.  Aside from creating clarity of direction for your business, there is no better use of your time and talents as the owner. Let us know what you think!

How are you doing keeping yourself and your employees focused on satisfying your customers/clients?  Never lose sight of the fact that your primary responsibility as a Strategic Business Owner is LEADING! Be a leader in customer service!

We have already looked at 5 Reasons Why Satisfied Customers Do Not Give Referrals, but now I want to look at the number one reason why satisfied customers DO give referrals.

People are passionate about giving a referral when they have a friend or collegue who has a need, and when they know that they have a resource that can solve the friend’s problem! It’s that simple.

Most people, given the opportunity to help a friend, will! If they view you as a valuable resource in helping someone you will get the referral. So ask yourself these 2 questions:

1. How can I position myself to be a valuable resource to my customer/referral source?
2. How can I help my customer become more aware of opportunities to help their friends and colleagues in this way?

I would like to encourage you to take a strategic retreat and think about how you can leverage referral marketing more. These are your best prospects and they typically turn into your best clients. By taking a strategic retreat you will be able to think, strategize, and create a plan of action to grow your business.  Make sure you know the 5 objectives of a referral marketing strategy and build those into your plan.

Every Monday I like to offer tips specifically to help you as a business owner with your marketing. I call this our Monday is for Marketing feature. Subscribe to our blog and get business and marketing tips every week to help you grow professionally and grow your business.

As a business coach referral marketing is just one of the marketing strategies I help my clients with. I would really like to know what you think about this. Give me your comments and feedback! Thanks!

Most satisfied customers DO NOT give referrals

Everyone will agree that referrals are the best source of new business.  As a result, we all want business by referral to be a part of our marketing strategy.  We also know that customer satisfaction is essential for generating referrals.  But customer satisfaction does not automatically lead to a referral.  There are at least 5 reasons why this is the case.

First, your customer does not know when they are talking to someone who would be a good referral for you.  It’s easy for us to take this for granted but it is true.  Would they know it if they spotted a good referral for you?  It is critical that we be continually educating our customers on how to know when they encounter a good opportunity to make a referral.

Second, your customer doesn’t know what to say.  Chances are they tried making a referral once and it was awkward.  Maybe they just think it will be awkward because they don’t know what to say.  Nobody wants to feel awkward so they avoid the subject.  It is essential that we help our potential referral sources with language and simple scripts to help them create the conversations.

Third, your customer is uncertain that their friend or colleague will get the same outstanding customer experience that they have received.  We must find ways to let our customers know that we take great pride and attention with EVERY customer.

Fourth, they don’t realize that you want them to give you referrals.  In one study 82% of the customers said that they were never asked for a referral from their service provider.  They don’t know that you want to build your business by referral.  Most small business owners just don’t ask, and if they do, they don’t have a system to help their customers actually generate a referral.

Finally, your customers forget!  Maybe you did ask for a referral once but you didn’t want to keep bugging them, so the subject never came up again.  I have seen many very satisfied customers simply forget to make the referral.

Think about yourself for a minute.  How often do you make referrals?  I’m sure you can easily think of someone you trust and whose service you value.  You have a high level of customer satisfaction and I’m sure you would be comfortable giving them a referral.  But how many times in the last 6 months have you independently picked up the phone to make a referral on their behalf?

Research indicates that very few of us do this!  Our intentions are good, but like everyone else we are busy and don’t always know how to recognize referral opportunities.

John Jantsch in The Referral Engine sites from his own research with small business owners that 63% indicate that over half of their business came by way of referral.  However, almost 80% of these same owners readily admitted that they had no system of any kind to generate referrals.  What could happen in their businesses if they did?

As a business coach serving Sugar Land, Houston, and Southeast Texas, I constantly encourage business owners to create a referral marketing system.  Make business by referral a central part of your marketing strategy by creating a system.  A good system will help you overcome these 5 obstacles and double or even triple your number of referrals!

5 Ways to Make Your Advertising Extraordinarily Effective

Here are 5 elements from Duct Tape Marketing guru John Jantsch that every business owner should consider for making their advertising more effective.  “Advertising is an important part of the lead generation puzzle. Some marketers suggest that you can do without the cost and low returns they attribute to advertising, but done right, advertising is a tremendous tool.”  Read more…

How to Set Yourself Up for a Productive Day

Here Michael Hyatt shares 5 strategies that he uses to make each day a productive day. I like these!  ”How many times has this happened to you? You go to bed after a long, unproductive day with the intention that tomorrow is going to be different. Then you wake up the next day and fall right back into the same old trap. It feels like you’re trapped inside your own private version of Groundhog Day.”  Read more…

The Easy Trap

Do you want to build a great reputation or take the “easy” path? Seth Godin makes a powerful point in this insightful post. A must read!  “The prospects that are the easiest to engage with online–the ones that believe big promises, simple come-ons and garish interfaces–are often the very people who will become your lowest-value customers.”  Read more…

We Drag An Anchor

Unfinished business can include organizational, financial, relational, legal, health, or any personal or business messes that we allow to build up in our lives. When we allow this to happen we can feel overwhelmed and even paralyzed.

The truth is that new “messes” come into our lives almost every day. The temptation is to ignore them or avoid them. After a while they accumulate to the point that we can feel like we’re dragging a boat anchor around with us everywhere we go.

Denial

In order to cope with this mental and emotional burden we often begin to deny that they exist. In other words we simply pretend that it’s not really happening. We chose to NOT face the reality that an important relationship is suffering, or the debt-load is killing us, or the new business is just not coming in like it needs to.

Rather than change bad habits (or create better habits) to correct the problem, we just hope they will disappear by ignoring them. However, it almost never gets better – it gets worse and drains us of more and more mental and emotional energy.

Fear

When we step back and look at what we’re doing it’s totally irrational, but we do it any way. Why? Typically it is fear. We fear it could be worse than we ever imagined. And it could be, especially if we are prone toward denial. This fear breeds doubt, and doubt leads to a loss of confidence and energy. It’s a vicious cycle.

At least once a quarter every one of us needs to take a retreat to step back, reflect, face reality, and make plans to clean up these messes in our lives. By having an accountability group we are more motivated to take action to stop accumulating unfinished business.

What do you need to look at today? What have you been avoiding or putting off? What unfinished business is there in your life or business today?

Let me encourage you to address it quickly. Clean it up. And you will discover a renewed energy and confidence. It will improve your attitude and outlook, and you will see new possibilities. If interested, contact us to learn more about personal coaching and our Strategic Business Owner Quarterly Retreats.

“If you could demonstrate that everyone else was already interested in, and excited about, your product, wouldn’t that communicate a greater sense of value and lower the prospect’s risk? That’s precisely how the Herd Theory works. By showing prospects that ‘everyone else’ is already moving in a certain direction, you can more easily motivate potential buyers to move in the same direction.”

Reduce the Risk

Much like animals, people are strongly influenced by the direction of their surroundings. If we can give our prospects an authentic sense that “everyone else” is already moving in a certain direction, we will reduce their sense of risk and increase the probability of a sell. However, I want to stress “authentic!”

If you do not have happy customers, good stories, testimonials, and particularly, online reviews, you do not have much to work with! These are key to your ability to “pull” potential customers your way. Strategic partners can be a big help here as well.

Why Do Your Customer Buy From You?

Once your prospect sees “others” are moving your direction you can confidently ask, “Would you like to know why?” It is a beautiful thing when we are invited to share why our customers hire us or buy our products!

The goal is to create a sense of momentum. As Tom says, “If the rest of the herd seems to be moving in a certain direction, other prospects and customers will want to know why.”

The Herd Theory is a powerful marketing and selling technique for establishing credibility, generating interest, and reassuring prospects. If your prospects feel like many others have benefited from your products or services, they will be more likely to step out and engage you as well. You will increase your sales effectiveness and build sales momentum by leveraging the Herd Theory.

Your Best Clients

It amazes me that many business owners cannot tell me who their 5-10 best clients or customers are. These people are the linchpins in your revenue stream. It is absolutely essential to know who these people are and to be intentional about nurturing these relationships.

In our strategic retreats with business owners we take some time to identify and focus on these important relationships every ninety days. Then we make concrete plans to reach out to them, touch them, and deepen that relationship.

Sometimes that touch is as simple as a personal thank-you note. Sometimes it’s a phone call. Sometimes it’s a coffee or lunch meeting. It could be a golf outing or a gift card to a nice restaurant. Whatever you do, just be sure you do it consistently with genuine gratitude.

You may want to take a little time and just ask them, “How are we doing? Are we serving you well? How can we serve you better? What other needs do you have that we help with?” These are valuable questions for deepening and strengthening the bond between you and your most valued customers!

Your Best Referral Sources

These people may or may not be your customers. However, these are people who are happy and eager to refer others to you. Again, the objective is to identify your 5-10 best referral sources and touch them at least once every quarter.

I keep a running list of both my best referral sources and potential referral sources. By looking at this list systematically you will be much more intentional about nurturing and leveraging these important relationships to grow your business.

Unfortunately, most satisfied customers do not give referrals for a variety of reasons. However, by regularly touching them, educating them on how you add value, and expressing appreciation when they do give referrals, you will be able to engage them and keep them engaged over the long haul.

Your Best Prospects

Sales professionals know how important it is to keep the pipeline of prospects full in order to grow your business. However, many business owners are quite passive about marketing and prospecting.

I encourage my clients to be targeted and focused on who they want as new customers. List your 5-10 best prospects and start building a relationship with them. Demonstrate the value you add. Educate them on how you meet needs and solve problems for your customers. Take the appropriate initiative to get on their radar, build credibility, and invite them into your community of satisfied customers.

Your Key Support People

We will not achieve high levels of success without key support people. This might include your staff or key employees, your advisors (like a business coach, CPA, banker, financial planner, or attorney), and strategic business partners like your vendors or the local chamber of commerce.

Make sure you do not take these folks for granted. They are critical to your success. Let them know how much you appreciate them and do it consistently. Once again, I encourage my clients to list these people every quarter and be intentional about reaching out to them.

Your Family and Friends

Finally, but most importantly, do not neglect your family and close friends. These are the people who are most important to us but the easiest to take for granted. Why? Because they love us and will continue to love us even when we unintentionally ignore them.

The truth is, they are the ones with whom we want to share the fruits of our success. So be sure to maintain a healthy work/life balance, and be intentional about nurturing these relationships.

The bottom line is that life and business is all about relationships. The key to success and joy is relationships. In the busyness of accomplishing tasks and achieving goals, always keep your priorities around relationships.

First, identify your ideal customer. I encourage my clients to think carefully about this and simply make a bullet point description. If you offer multiple lines of products or services for different types of customers, you should create a different marketing plan for each customer. With that said, I have two primary target groups – business owners and executives (or upper level managers.) Here is my ideal business owner client:

• A business owner who has been in business 3 years or more.
• A business owner who has 3 or more employees.
• A business owner who’s business has gross revenues of at least $300,000 (many of my clients are over $10 million but $300,000 seems to be a minimum threshold to afford our services)
• A business owner who is improvement-oriented

This is my ideal client. Can you describe YOUR ideal customer? Sometime business owners fear that creating a description like this will “limit” their possibilities (which is not really true.) However, remember that you must FOCUS to receive the greatest return from your marketing investment! Don’t be afraid – do it!

After you identify your ideal customer create your positioning statement. This is sometime called a unique selling proposition. To learn more about this see my other U.S.P. posts. But let me say here that you should answer 3 questions:

1. Does my U.S.P. really offer a benefit my target customer really wants?
2. Am I communicating the real value I offer?
3. Does it separate me from my competition – does it differentiate.

The third step is to identify the marketing tactics that are best for you! There are at least 110 different ways to market your business, so pick the ones that are best for you. Experiment occasionally, but don’t waste time and money on tactics that do not generate qualified leads.

The fourth step is to create a calendar. Map out for the year (or maybe just the quarter) exactly what you’re going to do and when you’re going to do it. Create an actual calendar so you can assure that you are consistently engaged in marketing.

The final step is to create your budget. Don’t just throw money at any new idea or the latest marketing salesperson’s products. Be intentional and be disciplined. Track and measure everything you do so you will know the specific return you get on your marketing investment.

But whatever you do, don’t stop marketing!

Let me close by sharing with you 10 reasons to continue marketing (from Jay Conrad Levinson’s classic book Guerrilla Marketing.)

1. The market is continually changing.
2. People forget quickly.
3. Your competition won’t quit.
4. Marketing strengthens your identity.
5. Marketing is essential to survival and growth.
6. Marketing enables you to keep your customers.
7. Marketing maintains morale.
8. Your marketing program gives you an advantage over competitors who have ceased to market.
9. Marketing allows your business to continue marketing.
10. You stand to lose out on the money, time, and effort you’ve already invested if you stop.

Remember, marketing is the key to growing your business. Create a plan and execute on it every week. If you would like some help, we offer a FREE strategy session to get you started. Contact us today.