Business Coach Firm

Every sale has five basic obstacles:
no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust. 
- Zig Ziglar

Do you have a process to pre-qualify your leads?  Are you giving up valuable time talking to people that have no intention of engaging your services?  Every Small Business Owner, including Business Coaches, benefits by narrowing down their leads to potential customers that might actually do business with them. 

Your website is a great place to begin the pre-qualification process.  Start with these simple tips:

1. Make your website very clear about your services and the type of customer with whom you do your best work. Remember, you can’t be everything to everybody; don’t be afraid to narrow down your services offered to the type of prospects you actually want as customers.
2. Why not put your pricing where everyone can see it? This eliminates some of the tire kickers and helps prevent you from discounting your price, which is always regrettable. Remember, you don’t want to spend time trying to make the sale to every single visitor, only those that have the capacity to pay for your services.
3. Don’t be a slave to your keywords; get them to work for you. For instance, if you are restaurant in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the keyword phrase “steak dinner” might bring visitors to your site, but “steak dinner in Scranton” brings visitors that could result in actual paying customers. Also, trying to get placement on the first page of Google for “steak dinner” is going to be near impossible, but “steak dinner in Scranton” could be pretty easy. You need a good internet marketing tool to help with this process and the best we’ve found is Hubspot.

Protect your sanity with good pre-qualification procedures, they will give you more time and energy for the conversations that turn real leads into real customers.

When defeat comes, accept it as a signal that your plans
are not sound, rebuild those plans, and set sail
once more toward your coveted goal. 
- Napoleon Hill

Do you give up too quickly?  Instead of abandoning a plan all together, maybe it’s just time to re-group.

Every plan isn’t a born winner; you have to mold it, test it and adjust it.  Having the strength to admit what works and what doesn’t is an important aspect of every successful entrepreneur. 

Talk to a business coach or mentor – take in all the information you can find.  Come up with several different strategies and test, test, test.  Keep what works and file the rest.  (Never discard an idea; you never know when you might come across a situation where an idea that didn’t fit previously could work perfectly.)

Don’t be afraid to make a mistake, the most costly ones are the ones we don’t make!

How well or how lousy does your small business meet the needs and wants of your customer?  Have you asked?  Most small business owners do not gather or take advantage of this critical information; their most valuable company asset. 

WHAT WE DO:

Ask every customer three short questions:

1. What do you like about doing business with us?
2. What do you hate about doing business with us?
3. What product or service do you wish we offered?

Leave enough space so they can tell you what they feel when answering each of the three questions.

Find several ways of gathering this information:

• Through your website
• At your place of business
• On your invoices and packing slips
• At the bottom of every email
• Over the phone
• Through your sales people

Make this a standard practice in your business. Your customers will appreciate the outlet and know you really care about what they want and need and that beats price every time.

WHAT WE DON’T DO:

Don’t ask your customer to complete a long, complicated and time consuming survey.

Don’t ask them to rate your business on a scale of 1 to 10. What the heck does that mean anyway? Every individual interprets that scale differently. You want meat and bones, not some meaningless number.

Don’t make it hard for the customer to provide this valuable feedback.

Don’t do it just once for a short period of time.

It can be painful to hear what others have to say about your organization, particularly if you take it personally.  Just remember, it’s not about you, it’s about them.  Put on some armor, jump in and take a long hard look at your business through the eyes of your customer.  Making decisions with their viewpoint in mind puts you miles in front of the competition.

If you don’t know where you’re going,
you’ll end up somewhere else.
- Yogi Berra

Goals are essential to the long-term success of every small business and for most people, goals are pretty easy to create.  Accomplishment is the hard part! 

This might help:

1.  Find an accountability partner who has your best interest at heart.

1.  Break the goal down into manageable parts.  Put a deadline to each part.  Share all with your accountalbility partner.

2.  Delegate what you can with due dates.  Make sure you follow up with your delegates on a regular basis to make sure things are progressing.

3.  Stick to the deadlines and make sure you are doing your part.  Remember, anything worth doing is going to be hard work.  If it wasn’t, everyone would be doing it.

4.  Keep everyone up-to-date on goal progress.  Be honest with your accountability partner.  No excuses!

5.  Adjust as you go if you have to – don’t abandon your goal!

6.  Celebrate when you’ve accomplished your goal.  Remember to acknowledge all who had a part in your success.

There is no reward for finding fault.
- Arnold Glasow

Building and maintaining a family owned company is challenging, even trying at times. An off-hand comment can quickly escalate into an emotionally charged argument that can bring a business to a grinding halt.

As Family Business Owners, we are better served by finding a way to help rather than a way to blame.