Professional development Archives - Page 45 of 91

Switch off the autopilot and take control

By Jim Connolly | January 14, 2021

Not long ago, these brands thought they’d arrived.

They were kings of the hill.

MySpace totally dominated social networking.
Blockbuster video owned home video entertainment.
Nokia was the world’s leading mobile phone brand.
And Internet Explorer had 94% of the web browser market.

Here’s what this means to you and your business, as you navigate the coming year.

Business success is a journey

Small and medium-sized businesses are at even greater risk of this threat.

It happens when a business grows to the point where the owner gets comfortable, stops steering wisely and starts to coast. Decisions are made on autopilot.

The hunger for success, when replaced with contentment, causes a business to plateau. And a business that plateaus soon becomes irrelevant, as their marketplace continues to move forward. The business becomes a dot in the rear view mirror. Growth is sluggish and unpredictable. They work hard, yet spin their wheels.

Here’s how to avoid this happening to you.

The art of steering your business successfully

The art of steering a business successfully, begins with accepting that you’re on a journey. And that your task is to navigate your business through the opportunities and threats ahead.

Remember: Even if you want your revenues and profits to remain the same, you still have to develop your business to account for lost clients / customers or new competitors eating into your market share, etc.

Here are a couple of suggestions.

Learn to identify the danger signs. This might include: Too many months or quarters of weak growth. Too long a gap since you last introduced a new product or service to your portfolio. Too few referrals. Too little awareness of new competitors or new trends.

Learn to spot genuine opportunities. This might include: Identifying gaps in your market. Finding ways to increase the value of your service. The introduction of new products for your existing clients. Seeking out new markets for your existing products. Improving your overall marketing strategy.

My first business mentor used to say that the reason so many businesses fail, is that failure is incredibly subtle. It’s seldom the result of one cataclysmic event or decision, but lots of small, daily errors repeated.

The way to avoid this is to grab the wheel of your business and embrace the art of steering. Fire your autopilot and take control.

How attractive is your marketing, to ‘them’?

By Jim Connolly | January 6, 2021

How attractive and interesting does your marketing look, from the perspective of your marketplace?

For example.

That interesting newsletter you’re going to send. Is it interesting to you or the people you’re sending it to?
That special offer you’re about to launch. Is it special to you or the people you’re offering it to?
That important email you’re planning to send. Is it important to you or the person you’re sending it to?
That exciting announcement you’re about to make. Is it exciting to you or the people you’re announcing it to?
And that amazing opportunity you keep talking about. Is it amazing to you or the people you’re talking to?

Think for a moment about how many special offers, exciting announcements and marketing messages you encounter each week, which you totally ignore. It’s more than 99 percent of them.

You only buy (attend, purchase, subscribe to, etc), the things marketed to you, which do the following.

Grab your attention. Otherwise you wouldn’t notice them or the message they have.
Are clearly of so much value that you attend, make a purchase, join or subscribe.

And that’s also what your prospective clients or customers need from your marketing!

Here’s the thing: The vast majority of small business marketing fails on both fronts. Why? Because it’s written from the perspective of the sender (the marketer), NOT from the perspective of their marketplace.

I’m not saying the offer isn’t directed to the prospective client, or that it doesn’t offer benefits, or that it lacks a call-to-action. It usually does all those things.

I’m saying that the way this is done, is based on a toxic assumption. An assumption that the marketplace is as motivated about whatever the marketer is offering, as the marketer is.

3 ways toxic assumptions can hurt a business

These are probably the 3 most common examples. Though there are many, many more.

1. Too little time is spent pumping MASSIVE, real-world value into our offering.

This happens because we think the benefits of our services are already compelling enough. The truth is, no matter what we think, our offering is never compelling enough! If we’re not adding a measurable lift in the value of our product or service very, very regularly, we quickly get surpassed by competitors or become irrelevant.

Check out the competition. Look for holes in the provision of whatever you do, which a little creativity can be transformed into a huge marketing win.

2. Too little time is spent listening to what prospective clients want.

Even before the pandemic, the pace of change was accelerating. Now, as we plot our way out of the pandemic, the rate of change is hugely accelerated. Thankfully, social media gives us access to what our marketplace wants, in real-time.

The social media platform we choose to ‘listen’ to should be based on where our marketplace is. With a little time spent learning how to find the core information we require, we can better match our offering to the ACTUAL, current wants and needs of our prospective clients.

3. Too little time is spent learning how to create compelling marketing.

When we assume that our marketing is already compelling enough, there’s little incentive to radically improve it. Sure, we might make some adjustments. But we tend not to invest the time, effort and hard work on improving something, if we believe it’s already great.

Outsmarting your competitors is not enough. Here’s the missing ingredient

By Jim Connolly | January 1, 2021

Every business owner knows that it’s essential to outsmart their competitors.

However, the most successful business owners add something extra to the mix. It’s a missing ingredient that makes all the difference. They outcare their competitors, too.

For example.

They care more about the success of their clients than their competitors do.
They care more about building great client relationships than their competitors do.
They care more about delivering on promises than their competitors do.
They care more about improving industry standards than their competitors do.
They care more about assisting their marketplace than their competitors do.
They care more about making great contacts than their competitors do.
They care more about quality than their competitors do.
They care more about service than their competitors do.
They care more about meeting deadlines than their competitors do.
They care more about ethics than their competitors do.
They care more about connecting with people than their competitors do.
They care more about professionalism than their competitors do.
They care more about their marketing than their competitors do.
They care more about leading in their industry than their competitors do.

It’s hard to think of a more mutually beneficial, effective and future proof way to succeed in 2021 and beyond.

Finally, from my home to yours, I’d like to wish you and your family a healthy, happy and prosperous New Year.

The customer is not always right

By Jim Connolly | December 21, 2020

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.

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 bad idea

It fails the client and it fails you. Here are a few 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 that 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 misguided 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. And the provider is never hired again.

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

I am suggesting you need to guide your clients.

As a professional, it’s your job to help clients 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 mistakes. It means responding with advice and ideas, which lead to a successful project and a delighted client.

In short, 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. So 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.

11 Urgent and important things you need to focus on for 2021

By Jim Connolly | December 11, 2020

In no particular order.

Have you considered firing your worst clients? Bad clients are a source of stress, frustration and unhappiness. They zap your energy too. The time wasted on bad clients can then be invested in delighting your best clients even more.
Do your business goals for 2021 fill you with excitement? Are they all about thriving, or simply surviving? If you miss a thrive goal by 25%, you’ll still have a great year. If you miss a survival goal by just 1%, you’re broke. Set goals that inspire you to succeed.
What was your biggest business challenge in 2020 and what can you learn from it? Whilst this year has produced a number of unique challenges, it has also exposed lots of historic weaknesses. Some of the most common include; an unwillingness to adapt, insufficient financial reserves, piss-poor marketing and fear of investing in yourself / your business. Those who don’t learn from past mistakes tend to repeat them.
If you stopped trading tomorrow, how tricky would it be for people to find a suitable replacement? Your task is to be as close to irreplaceable as possible. Learn more about becoming irreplaceable here.
Have you looked at opening your services up to a global audience? If not, now is a good time to consider it. That’s because proximity is no longer geographical for many service providers. For example, my 3 newest clients are based on 3 different continents. One of the big lessons from 2020 is that people are happy to work with you remotely. I’ve worked this model for over 15 years and can’t recommend it highly enough.
What are the biggest hurdles to your success right now, and how do you plan to remove them? A business problem can only persist with your consent… passive or active. EVERY challenge you’re facing right now has already been overcome successfully by hundreds of thousands of business owners. There are experts in every area of business, who have the exact answers you need. Talk to them!
How can you reduce or eliminate the feeling of risk that’s associated with hiring you or buying from you? There are a lot of fearful people out there right now. Figure out how to help them feel more secure. This will remove a major block to hiring you or buying from you.
What’s the biggest opportunity for your prospective clients in 2021 and how will you help them benefit from it? Help your clients see all the amazing rebound opportunities on the horizon. And if you work in business development as I do, use your skills and vision to help them benefit from these opportunities.
Is your marketing useful or does it read like a sales pitch? People hate being sold to. So stop pitching them and make your marketing so useful, that prospective clients would miss it if you stopped.
Have you considered offering a premium version of your services? There’s an extremely profitable segment of every marketplace, who are eager to pay more for ‘that certain extra’. Here are some useful tips.
Is your business providing you with the lifestyle you want? If not you will either need to lower your expectations or work on growing a better business. I recommend the latter. Rekindle that motivation you had when you started your business. And stop settling for less.

How Jess turned Marketing Tip number 9 into a success story

By Jim Connolly | December 9, 2020

marketing ideas, business development

Something spectacular happens, whenever a good idea is combined with the action required to deploy it. Here’s an example along with some tips on how to make it work for you too.

I was prompted to write this, after receiving an email from a reader called Jess. She explained that back in June, she read the marketing tips section of my blog.

One of the tips really spoke to her.

So, Jess decided to deploy it. It’s marketing tip number 9.

Her email was to thank me for the tip as it really helped her business, slashing her marketing spend and increasing her sales numbers at the same time.

An idea by itself

An idea by itself, even a great one, is of zero value. After all, if we’re just 1% away from switching the light on, we’re still in the dark. The best demonstration of this, is the so-called eternal student. They love to learn, but simply collect knowledge without ever putting it into action. These are the people that former US President Calvin Coolidge famously referred to, when he said; “The world is full of educated derelicts”.

Without Jess pondering that idea, then deploying it, she would never have enjoyed the results. That’s why as a marketing mentor, I work with clients to fully equip them to succeed; with the knowledge required, along with the ability to motivate themselves to deploy the plans we make. It makes all the difference and unlocks their potential.

Try this

With that lesson from Jess in mind, it’s worth pondering the great ideas you’ve gathered over the years, but failed to put into action.

Now ask yourself:

Is there one idea that you can see the value of, which you can start taking action on today?

It has often been said that you’re never more than one good idea away from a massive breakthrough. I disagree. That’s only half the story. It’s what we do with what we know that produces amazing results.

So grab that idea and get moving on it.

If you need some help getting the ideas or putting your ideas into action, read this and send me a note.