Professional development Archives | Jim's Marketing Blog

15 Essential questions for EVERY business owner

January 22, 2019 by Jim Connolly

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Who are you allowing to influence your business decisions and have they earned that position?
What’s the single biggest hurdle to your success right now (and what do you plan to do about it)?
How can you make it feel less risky, for people to hire you or buy from you? This will help.
Do you have a strategy in place, to find out why time-wasters respond to your marketing?
What’s the biggest threat facing your prospective clients in 2019 and how are you helping them prepare for it?
Do your clients recommend you regularly enough and if not, how do you plan to improve things? This will help.
Can you name the most influential person in your industry and if so, have you introduced yourself to them?
Is your marketing motivating and useful or does it read like a sales pitch? Tip: People hate being sold to! This will help.
If 2019 is already starting to look like a repeat of 2018, how long will you wait before you make the improvements required?
Have you considered offering a premium version of your services, for high value prospective clients who are eager to pay more, for the ‘extra’? This will help.
If you ceased trading tomorrow, how tricky would your clients find it to replace your service?
Does your branding create a powerful and professional image of your business, which your marketplace trusts?
Does your marketing inspire enough urgency or are you leaving money on the table every day?
How different are you from your competition? This will help.
Is your business providing you with the lifestyle you want? If not, are you lowering your expectations or working on a plan to massively improve your financial situation?

It’s competition time

January 17, 2019 by Jim Connolly

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Competition is good for business. More importantly my friend, competition is good for YOUR business.

Here’s why:

Competition motivates you to raise the bar and set higher standards.
Competition inspires you to innovate.
Competition compels you to leave your comfort zone.
Competition encourages you to differentiate yourself, so you stand out.
Competition leads to better products and better services for the marketplace.

As business owners, the decision we face is simple: Do we wait for an agile competitor to force us to do better, or do we take the initiative?

In other words, do we wait and react or take the lead and act?

Our response to that question is hugely important.

Why?

Because it will determine whether we give ourselves a winning advantage and achieve our full potential or find ourselves constantly playing catch-up.

The feast or famine problem is bogus

January 15, 2019 by Jim Connolly

feast famine, famine feast, cycle, marketing

Photo: Shutterstock.

The first thing to know about the so-called feast or famine problem, is that it isn’t a feast or famine problem.

In fact, it isn’t even a problem.

It’s a symptom.

A symptom of a marketing problem.

The feast or famine cycle is what happens when a business owner lacks control of their turnover / profits, because of ineffective or non-existent marketing.

It’s impossible to build a successful business, until you break that cycle.

That’s because a lack of control over the lifeblood of your business, means you’re unable to plan ahead. You’re unable to forecast, because all you know for sure, is there will be more uncertainty. So, you anxiously wait for the next feast. It’s like playing a super-stressful game of roulette with your livelihood.

When the future of a business is out of the owners hands, they need to retake control.

Taking control

The first step in solving a problem, is to identify what the problem is. And this one is easy. In this case, the business owner simply has a marketing problem, which can be resolved with effective marketing. Effective marketing allows you to attract the customers or clients you need, based on your business goals. This then lets you plan ahead with confidence and look to the future with excitement, rather than apprehension.

It’s how all successful business owners operate.

Now for the REAL challenge.

Knowing what your problem is and how to resolve it is one thing. Actually deciding to resolve it is something else. This is why one of the biggest factors in your future success isn’t what you know… but what you decide to do with that knowledge.

How to do more of your best work

January 13, 2019 by Jim Connolly

Image: Shutterstock.

I recently looked at my most popular blog posts of the past 12 months. I do it every year. Once again, literally none of the top 10 posts are what I’d consider my best. Not a single thing I sweated artistic bullets over got the response I expected.

It reminded me of a wonderful process I discovered, which I’m going to share with you. It’s a very simple way to produce your best work on a regular basis.

First, I’m going to quickly unpack why the top 10 posts were unexpected hits.

Unpacking…

We can’t always predict that a piece of work will be a smash hit. This is true even if we spend lots of time refining it, to make it perfect.
If we focus on perfectionism, we’ll very seldom produce our best work. In this example, none of those top posts would have been published.
This means we’ll fail to be productive AND fail to ship our most valuable projects.

How the top producers operate

Here’s how I’ve found the most productive people operate. It’s a process I’ve followed for over 20 years. And it’s spectacularly simple:

They decide what they want the outcome to be. They then write it down. They include a deadline. Finally, when the work meets their criteria, they ship it.

That’s it. (Just make sure that ‘perfect‘ isn’t part of your criteria!!)

When the project is complex, they write the outcome down in detail. You don’t need that level of attention for something as basic as a newsletter, blog post, etc.

For example, my desired outcome for everything I share with you, is that it needs to be useful. That outcome is what gave me the freedom to publish those top performing posts. They were useful. Not perfect. Just useful. So, they were published.

I hope you found this imperfect post useful, my friend.

It’s a lie: The customer is not always right!

January 11, 2019 by Jim Connolly

Photo: Shutterstock.

That old saying, that the customer is always right, is bogus. Worse still, if you believe the customer (or client) is always right, it will damage your business.

That’s because the customer is often wrong.

Allow me to explain!

That saying still persists, because fearful service providers are scared that if they say the customer is wrong, they might take their custom elsewhere. So, generations of business owners have worked under the erroneous belief that they should simply agree with their clients all the time.

That’s a really, really bad idea. It fails the client and it fails you.

Here are a couple of examples:

Designers end up producing ugly work, because the client made terrible design demands. The client is left with low quality design, which won’t work for them. The designer will never get to work with that client again.
Copywriters end up writing junk, because the client demanded uninformed changes. So, instead of a professional piece, the client gets something amateurish, which they could have written themselves. The copy fails to work. The client ends up unhappy. The copywriter is never hired again.
Coaches and mentors end up delivering a poor quality service, because the allow strong-willed clients to dictate what happens. The client then ends up hearing what they want to hear, rather than what they need to hear in order to succeed. It fails the client. It fails the provider. Lose-lose.

It’s hard to grow a business with unhappy former clients and no referrals!

No, I’m not suggesting you argue with your clients. That’s a really bad idea and extremely unprofessional.

However, you do need to guide your clients. As a professional, it’s your job to help them make the right decisions, so they get the very best results. That means providing the client with your informed, expert guidance. It means steering them away from avoidable mistakes.

Because you’re an informed expert in your field, and they are not, there will be disagreements. When this happens, the key is to respond with education, not anger. This leads to helpful exchanges of ideas, rather than unhelpful arguments.

Your clients deserve your very best work. Agreeing with a client, when you know they are making damaging mistakes, doesn’t help them and it doesn’t help you.

Give your clients your very best. That’s what they pay you for. That’s what they deserve. And you cannot, on any level, afford to give them anything less.

Recommended reading on this subject: The secret behind the best paid, most valued people in your industry.

The weird guy who owned his competitors

January 10, 2019 by Jim Connolly

I spoke about the importance of creative marketing yesterday. I also promised to give you some examples.

This one is an absolute gem!

It’s all about Edwin and how he owned his marketplace. Plus, the secret of his success. A secret which can be applied to your business.

Edwin was the busiest and best-known photographer in the town where I grew up. He had a very unique sense of fashion, often wearing an elaborate hat and super-bright jacket, with contrasting waistcoat and the weirdest shoes you can imagine. He drove to meet his prospective clients in a classic 1950’s Ford, or riding his equally old motorcycle (complete with goggles). He stood out a mile. He looked like an artist. And everyone hired him, despite his high fees.

Did you notice something missing from Edwin’s description?

At no point did I mention how good his photos were. Having seen his work, it certainly looked professional… just like the vast majority of experienced, professional photographers.

What set Edwin apart from the competition, was that he used creativity to stand out. He built a brand around his services. And in doing so, he developed a whole experience around hiring him. His customers would get bragging rights, just because THEY hired Edwin for their wedding, family photos or corporate work. He gave them a story worth sharing, and they told everyone.

If people wanted to hire another local photographer, capable of equally good work, there was a ton to choose from, and for far lower fees. However, when they wanted to hire Edwin, Edwin got hired and he was paid Edwin rates.

The takeaway from Edwin’s story

The most commercially successful; accountant, lawyer, architect, coach, consultant, designer, photographer, hair stylist, doctor, etc., is very seldom the best or the most qualified or the most experienced.

That’s because there’s a HUGE difference between being the best-selling, and being the best.

So, step away from the pack. Stop marketing your services like your competitors and apply real creativity.

Because every piece of marketing you do, which falls in line with your prospective customer’s expectations, is simply camouflaging you and hurting your business.