I’ve got a business plan….and I know it’s somewhere in this drawer!

I’ve got a business plan….and I know it’s somewhere in this drawer!

No doubt, when you started your business, you, along with countless others, were told the importance of having a Business Plan and, yet, less than 5% of businesses have a plan; why is that?

There tends to be three types of business plan:

1. The one you put together when you want your Bank to give you a loan. You know, the ones that never see the light of day when they have served their purpose. So they are not very useful when it comes to growing your business
2. To attract investment into your organisation. These can be very useful, but once again have a tendency to get stored away and never see the light of day once the investment has been secured.
3. A business improvement and growth plan that is tied to your life goals. After all, what is the point of putting yourself through the trials and tribulations of running a business if it is not going to help you achieve what it is you want for your life.

So, of the three, one and two have their uses, but three is vital if you are going to achieve the future you dream of.

How do you put together a compelling business improvement and growth plan? You need to start with the end in mind. One day, you will look to exit your business. A key question is what will it look like when that day arrives?

• How many outlets/offices?
• What is the turnover/profits?
• How many people do you employ?
• How many hours are you working?
• What is the legacy you are leaving?

Of course, on a more personal note, as a result of having your ideal business, what is the lifestyle you are able to have for yourself and your family?

Once you are clear on what the business needs to be achieving and you have a concrete future date for this to be achieved, start to track back from that date to the present moment. Along the way you need to be setting down markers/targets for where your business needs to be at certain points along the journey. So let’s say you have a ten year plan for your business, where does it need to be in 5 years? Three years? 1 year?  90 days? Next week?

What I find works is to break your big plan down into bite sized chunks of 3 months. Then, every 3 months, evaluate; what were the big wins during this quarter? What did I learn as a result of what I did/didn’t do this quarter? What needs to happen in the next 3 months to move my business towards my overall vision?

So what should be included in your quarterly plan?

Because this is an action plan geared towards business improvement, the plan should focus on What is going to happen to achieve the desired result. For instance, if your goal for the quarter were to grow sales by 20%, you could achieve that by:

• Putting together a tested, measured and scripted sales system.
• Improve your sales skills by reading one Sales book per month making sure you have a strategy in place to implement what you learn.
• Have in place scripts to up-sell and cross-sell your products

Keep the plan ‘skinny.’  It is better to achieve 2-3 goals than to have a 101 uncompleted goals. Truth be known, it only takes a couple of solid strategies (for instance any two of the ones above) to double the sales in most businesses.

I recommend that every business person should be spending at least 4 hours per week working on their business. So the next step would be to timeline at least 4 hours every week which will be dedicated to implementing the strategies from your plan.

You may be thinking where am I going to find 4 hours? Finding that 4 hours could well be a worthy goal for the next quarter because you need to be asking what is happening/not happening in your business that means that you cannot dedicate 4 hours to working on your business.

For you to achieve your compelling vision, at some stage you have to break the cycle of working every hour in your business because you will just keep going round and round in circles.

I have asked many business owners, how many years have you been in business? To which the reply may be 10 years. On further investigation, it turns out they have been in business 1 year, but just lived it 10 times because every year has been the same; they’ve neither grown nor expanded, made the same (or perhaps less) profit each year, basically experiencing the business equivalent of groundhog day!  After ten years, you would hope to have more to show for your efforts than simply to have maintained the status quo of year 1 for 10 consecutive years!

Now, on a weekly basis working from your plan, break down your goals into the tasks that you will complete the following week during the 4 hours that you have put aside to work on your business. An important point here is treat these 4 hours as though you are meeting with your number 1 customer/client. You wouldn’t miss that appointment would you?  At the end of the day, who is most important; you or your number 1 client? Achieving your vision, growing your business living the life you want, will only ever be a pipe dream if you keep cancelling appointments with yourself.

So there you have it, how to put together a compelling business improvement and growth plan.

Simple, yet not necessarily easy.

If you would like to learn more on this subject and indeed put together a one page plan for your business growth come along to our 'Big Leap' Planning Workshop (click here). This is your opportunity to work on your business with a group of like-minded business owners. 

Is your marketing hitting the mark?

It has been estimated that every single day we are bombarded with between 3000 and 30,000 brand names and ads. They are delivered to us on variety of platforms; billboards, radio, TV, social media and texts, to name just a few. What that means to every business owner is that your marketing message has to work extremely hard to grab our attention.

It is not just advertising messages that have to work hard it is every employment ad you write, every email you send, every presentation you deliver, every newsletter you write…they are all competing for your audience’s attention.

Over the years the world of advertising has become more and more sophisticated and yet despite this the basic principles of producing compelling copy that an audience will not only be attracted too but also feel inclined to take action on, remain the same. Your message needs to grab their Attention, Interest them in how your product or service can help solve a problem they are having so build their Desire to contact you by taking some sort of Action to contact you.
As you can already see AIDA is an acronym for

• Attention/Attract
• Interest
• Desire
• Action

These are the four stages you need to take your audience/target market through if you want them to contact you, buy your product, apply for a vacant position, or get them to read you email.

How you can put AIDA to work in your business.

Whenever you write anything that you want to result in others taking some form of action use AIDA to transform your responses. Here is a brief explanation of each of the elements of AIDA:

• Attention/attract

With so many messages reaching your target audience you need to do something to grab their attention really quickly. The use of powerful words in the form of a headline is normally the best way to raise people’s attention. Consider when you are flicking through a magazine or newspaper what is it that normally pulls you in? In most cases, it is the story headline or a picture.

It has been estimated than 5 times more people read the headline than read the body copy.

With that in mind you need to invest some time writing compelling headlines that will perk your reader’s interest. For instance:  an email subject line of Attend this Seminar will probably get a lot less opens than: By Attending this seminar you will transform your business results. Guaranteed!

• Interest

Once your headline has had the desired effect you now want to engage them so that they feel compelled to read on. Focus on your readers needs by making it easy for them to pick out any relevant messages quickly. A way of achieving this is the use of subheadings and bullet points to break the text up so that your points stand out.

• Desire

The aim here is to help them understand how what you are offering will meet their wants and needs. This is where you engage them on an emotional level sell the sizzle and not the steak. Henry Ford once said “If I ask people what they want they will tell me they want a faster horse” his next question will then be “What does a faster horse give them” in other words what are the benefits to them. Your readers are tuned into WIIFM (what’s in it for me) so the focus here should be on the benefits to your reader and not the features of your product or service.

• Action

In the planning stage a question you should be asking is what do I want people to do as a result of reading this piece? It could be visit your web site, buy a product, watch a video, sign up for a newsletter or phone now for your FREE financial healthcheck (The word FREE is one of the most powerful words in advertising). The key thing is to give them something to do because with so much information coming at them on a daily basis, they will quickly forget about your message.

Using AIDA could be one of the most important strategies your business can use to help it grow. It will ensure your message gets read more often keeps your readers and prospects hooked and drives them to take some kind of action.

If you would like to find out more just gives the team a call on 0151 348 1202.

Have you ever been lucky enough to observe a 12 month old up close? Have you seen them take their first few steps. I know that at some stage we have all gone through the same process, but have you ever really considered the tenacity, mistakes, slip ups and potential embarrassments that you went through to do something that you can now do without ever thinking about it? Lets consider the process. They usually spend some time, crawling along whilst watching and observing the older people in their life run around everywhere. Through that observation, they now consider that they are capable of modelling those actions themselves. They spend a month or so preparing, starting to pull themselves upright on anything that comes to hand, table/chair leg, your leg, sofa and even the dog. Eventually, they get to the point where they can stand up, but those first, tentative steps normally ended up with them falling. Undeterred, and surrounded by a chorus of encouragement from their cheer leaders (family), they get up and have another go, each and every time learning from their previous experience. By making micro adjustments to their movements and balance they get to take those first few steps and now they are a walker; truly a miracle to behold. What might have happened had they started out on there quest with adult thinking? The thinking we learn from, our peers, the media, the education system etc. The learning that teaches us that to fail is bad. Upon falling they might have thought to themselves “Maybe I’m not cut out for this walking lark” they may have also been embarrassed to attempt to walk in front of others in case they made a mistake and others were able to witness there ‘failure’. They may have thought, “the time might not be right for me to walk” and made a decision to put it off and wait for the perfect conditions. They might have thought, “maybe I haven’t got the right abilities to take on this challenge so why bother?” Fortunately, they don't have adult thinking or, as some call it, stinking thinking, so encouraged by those around them, they pick themselves up dust themselves off and go again until they reached their final objective. What has this got to do with business? Unfortunately, for most of us, we have had the experience of being conditioned to think that to fail is bad and to ask for help is a sign of weakness. So, when we start off in business, we muddle along working really hard for little or no reward and suffer a great deal of stress in our attempts to get our new business off the ground. After a period of time, our new lifestyle becomes all too familiar and we are in a rut. I have heard a rut described as a grave with the ends kicked out! A sad statistic that is banded about these days is that as few as 4 out of every 100 businesses that open their doors will not see their 10th birthday. What would happen if instead we applied the innocent thinking of a baby to some of life’s and business’ obstacles? What might we be able to achieve? What if we were to accept the fact that if others’ can do it, then so can we? What if we were to learn from those who have gone before us? What if we were to learn from the mistakes those people made, so that we didn’t have to go through them ourselves? How might our outcomes be different? The challenge is that our ego sometimes gets in the way and, instead of searching out sound advice, we think that letting others see our vulnerability is a sign of weakness when, in fact, it is a sign of strength. We stay in our ‘rut,’ when life could be so different. If you ever find yourself thinking “there must be another way” or “how can I do this differently?” you might be interested in our FREE seminar 'Take Control of Your Business' where we will looking at simple, yet effective strategies to build a better, far more profitable business, whilst generating a better lifestyle. Come along and hear for yourself it will be great to meet you. Click here to book Your FREE place/s

Have you ever been lucky enough to observe a 12 month old up close? Have you seen them take their first few steps. I know that at some stage we have all gone through the same process, but have you ever really considered the tenacity, mistakes, slip ups and potential embarrassments that you went through to do something that you can now do without ever thinking about it?

Lets consider the process. They usually spend some time, crawling along whilst watching and observing the older people in their life run around everywhere. Through that observation, they now consider that they are capable of modelling those actions themselves. They spend a month or so preparing, starting to pull themselves upright on anything that comes to hand, table/chair leg, your leg, sofa and even the dog.

Eventually, they get to the point where they can stand up, but those first, tentative steps normally ended up with them falling. Undeterred, and surrounded by a chorus of encouragement from their cheer leaders (family), they get up and have another go, each and every time learning from their previous experience. By making micro adjustments to their movements and balance they get to take those first few steps and now they are a walker; truly a miracle to behold.

What might have happened had  they started out on there quest with adult thinking? The thinking we learn from, our peers, the media, the education system etc. The learning that teaches us that to fail is bad. Upon falling they might have thought to themselves “Maybe I’m not cut out for this walking lark” they may have also been embarrassed to attempt to walk in front of others in case they made a mistake and others were able to witness there ‘failure’.  They may have thought, “the time might not be right for me to walk” and made a decision to put it off and wait for the perfect conditions. They might have thought, “maybe I haven’t got the right abilities to take on this challenge so why bother?” Fortunately, they don't have adult thinking or, as some call it, stinking thinking, so encouraged by those around them, they pick themselves up dust themselves off and go again until they reached their final objective.

What has this got to do with business?

Unfortunately, for most of us, we have had the experience of being conditioned to think that to fail is bad and to ask for help is a sign of weakness. So, when we start off in business, we muddle along working really hard for little or no reward and suffer a great deal of stress in our attempts to get our new business off the ground. After a period of time, our new lifestyle becomes all too familiar and we are in a rut. I have heard a rut described as a grave with the ends kicked out! A sad statistic that is banded about these days is that as few as 4 out of every 100 businesses that open their doors will not see their 10^th birthday.

What would happen if instead we applied the innocent thinking of a baby to some of life’s and business’ obstacles? What might we be able to achieve? What if we were to accept the fact that if others’ can do it, then so can we? What if we were to learn from those who have gone before us? What if we were to learn from the mistakes those people made, so that we didn’t have to go through them ourselves? How might our outcomes be different?

The challenge is that our ego sometimes gets in the way and, instead of searching out sound advice, we think that letting others see our vulnerability is a sign of weakness when, in fact, it is a sign of strength. We stay in our ‘rut,’ when life could be so different.

If you ever find yourself thinking “there must be another way” or “how can I do this differently?” you might be interested in our FREE seminar 'Take Control of Your Business' where we will looking at simple, yet effective strategies to build a better, far more profitable business, whilst generating a better lifestyle. Come along and hear for yourself it will be great to meet you. 

Click here to book Your FREE place/s

The problem with living on Someday Isle

One of my clients was recently talking to their Dad, who, sadly, at the moment is fighting a life threatening illness. During the course of the conversation, he asked his Dad, “If you could live your life again, what would you do differently?” Some of the things his Dad said didn’t surprise him, but what did surprise him was how easily these things rolled of the tongue. It became obvious to him in that moment that his Dad had spent a great deal of time thinking “if only”. He would eventually go to his grave with lots of regrets.

Apologises if you feel that the opening paragraph is a little depressing, but the fact is that most of us will go through life (and, indeed, in our business) thinking “one day I will get round to doing….” Add your own situation here it could be; sorting out my cash flow, growing my business, taking control of my time, saying, NO more, letting go of that employee that, although they may have all the skills my business needs, are toxic in the workplace, spending time with my kids, getting fit and healthy…

Why do we do it?

There could be numerous reasons/excuses for it, but what I would like to do is focus in on some that have definitely shown up in my own life, but also show up in the lives of my clients, family and friends.

We become tolerant with our present circumstances.

It is very rare in business that a problem just happens. The customer that goes bust owing you money has almost certainly been on your radar for some time, but because there isn’t a gaping hole in your cash flow, instead of chasing them, you rationalise, “They have always been good for the money in the past and I have cash at the moment, so I won’t bother them just yet”. A key word here is, ‘rationalise.’ What we are saying to ourselves is perfectly rational, but, in actual fact, we are lying to ourselves because the alternative to letting it go has a feeling of discomfort associated to it. Picking the phone up and asking for the money might mean the client gets angry for being pestered, he might take his business elsewhere, I might have to face the truth that they are in fact in financial trouble and I could lose the money….we play out in our heads all sorts of scenarios of what could go wrong.

But what if it is just an oversight from their accounting department?  What if your invoice was lost in the post? Again, there could be lots of positive reasons why the invoice hasn’t been paid, but it is still easier to give in to that uncomfortable feeling you get when you rationalise. I am going to suggest a reframe on that word to ‘rational-lies;’ we lie to ourselves because it feels more comfortable. By giving into these rational- lies, we are in fact shrinking our comfort zone or as I prefer to call it our familiarity zone -after all, a comfort zone isn’t necessarily comfortable. The problem with this way of thinking is that all the good stuff in life and business could well be on the other side of that zone.

We think we have unlimited time.

How many times have your said to yourself, “I will do it tomorrow, I promise?”   Tomorrow comes and we push it back again because there is something more urgent to deal with. We push back the important to deal with the urgent because we rational-lies we will have time to get round to the important stuff one day. What happens to that important stuff that we keep putting off well one day you can guarantee it will become urgent. That is how we could end up like the Dad of my client; with a whole load of regrets.

Fact of the matter is that, in the UK we have a life expectancy of around about 80 years and, for most of us, that seems a long way off in the future and gives us a warped perspective about time. We put things off because we think we have lots of time and we move to a new address ‘Someday Isle’. Someday Isle (I’ll) fix that cash flow problem, someday Isle (I’ll) tell that toxic member of staff to go and be successful in some other company, someday Isle (I’ll) take that holiday, someday Isle (I’ll) get round to spending more time with my kids. Problem can be that someday never arrives because there is all this urgent stuff that demands our attention and, if we choose to allow it, it will always get in the way of the important things in life.

I recently read the book, ‘Life in Half a Second,’ by Matthew Michalewicz and he had an interesting exercise it the book to bring home how we can get a more real perspective on how much time we do in actual fact have and that could if we were to choose lead us to stop putting the important things off.

The exercise is to simply take your age at your next birthday away from the 80 years you will get, if you live to the average age. Turn that answer into days by multiplying by 365 and add to that figure the days between now and your next birthday. What you have now is the number of days you could potentially have left. Does it change your perspective? Do you feel like wasting any of those days on trivial stuff? Does it make the important stuff more important?

Are you driven by pain or pleasure?

In other words, when you think of a goal that you may have, what thoughts come up for you? Do you think about all the great things that will happen as a result of achieving the goal or are you driven by the consequences of what will happen if you don’t move towards the goal? It is really important when goal setting to understand yourself. What is it that drives you? Think back to a goal that you have achieved in the past, what drove you to achieve it? What were you saying to yourself at the time? What were you looking to achieve/avoid? When you discover your preference you are now armed with the knowledge of how to speak to yourself in any moments of doubt or weakness. If you are a ‘towards driven’ person, you can tell yourself about all the great things that will happen when you get over this moment of weakness. If you are an ‘away from’ driven person, then you will almost certainly get over the moment by telling yourself about the consequences of giving into the weakness.

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Vision, planning and achieving your business dreams

It’s the final week of June, we are approaching the half way mark of the calendar year and it’s that time when some of us will be looking back and reflect on what sort of year it’s been thus far.

People tend to make exclamations like, “what a BRILLIANT half-year it’s been!” or (sadly), more frequently, “what a crappy half-year it’s been!”  We also start to think about what sort of half-year we would like what would make 2018 brilliant.  We develop a vision for the next 6 months; ideas of what would make life happier, hopes and dreams for the future, a plan to make the next 6 months better.

What do these visions usually consist of?  Often we promise to make life better by spending more quality time with friends and family, we want to earn more money to provide for them and to be able to splash out on life’s little luxuries, we dream of the holidays, hobbies and events we want to experience, the changes we’d like to make to our homes, the new car, gadgets, whatever it is that you dream of.

The problem many business owners have is that they stop seeing these visions as achievable goals and see them as pipe dreams.  These things are not wishes that can only be granted by sitting on a hill humming they are very much attainable targets that a healthy, successful business can grant you.

Your business only will achieve a different result if you do something different. To create a successful business you need a vision for your business and a plan to achieve that vision.

What will you do in the next 6 months to achieve the results you deserve in 2018?

Only if you’re serious about your business

Business owners are, on the whole, very serious about their businesses, so why do so many good businesses fail? 

Often, when we talk to business owners looking for support in their business, they describe the product they sell or service they provide with enthusiasm and excitement; they’re passionate about what they do and they are genuinely good at it.  However, many business owners who went into business because they were good at something or because they enjoyed it end up struggling. 

One example of this would be a talented hair dressing salon owner I met recently; she loved cutting and styling hair and, after of years of working for others, decided to open her own salon.  She was very good at what she did and even taught colouring techniques for a high end brand that recruited her having seen some of her models, yet her business was not making a substantial profit.  Upon discussing this with her, she surmised the problem in the following statement, “I love what I do, I just don’t know how to run a business.”

It occurred to me that this is true for many business owners; you can have all the skill, talent and qualifications for a business idea that you like, but without at least a little business running expertise, you will never be able to make a success of your business.

Business owners often set up businesses having little or no clue about cash flow, profit and loss or break even points, team training, marketing or leadership skills, let alone how to work on improving these areas in their business.  Part of what we do is to help business owners get to grips with business basics (although they really are anything but basic in their value).  This helps business owners to unleash the potential in their businesses.

This week I will be working with business owners on precisely this area; transforming the fantastic ideas and skills they have into serious business ventures through key strategies that have the potential to help you grow the business you desire.

If you’d like more information on unleashing the potential in your business, feel free to contact us.

Never enough hours in the day?

All too often I come across business owners who are working ridiculous hours, struggling to cope with the demands of their business and are continually feeling stressed and overwhelmed by the sheer volume of work they have.  They permanently seem on the verge of disaster and, in fact, often use panicked expressions like, “I’m drowning under all this work” or “there are never enough hours in the day!”  Does this sound like something you might say?  I would put money on it not being how you envisaged owning your business would work! No one sets up a business hoping to feel this way or in order to have to battle through each and every work day (and most of their “days off” too, as free time often becomes non-existent in these circumstances!).
Let's  look at ways of overcoming these issue; taking control of your business, mastering and managing your time, achieving success and, therefore, gaining back your free time and achieving a balance between work and the rest of your life!

Here are some simple principles to implement into your business that can make a difference now:

1.   Be realistic!

Never get to the bottom of your to-do list? Always find that a job that you expected to take a couple of hours actually winds up taking an entire day to complete? Do you struggle to meet deadlines, even if you were the one who set them?

The simple matter of fact is that there is never enough time to do all the things we would like to get done in one day! Learn to be realistic and have realistic expectations about what you can get done.  It is better to focus fully on one or two tasks and complete them well than to split your focus across all areas and end up with a dozen incomplete tasks that get you nowhere.

Being surrounded by incomplete tasks and failing to meet your own (albeit unrealistic) expectations is a sure fire route to disaster; it leaves you feeling stressed, frustrated and demotivated.  Feeling that you’ve accomplished something at the end of the day will create a sense of achievement and bring positivity to your business and positivity will help build your success.  Set targets that you can be realistically met and give yourself the opportunity to succeed!

2.   Plan!

The adage goes, ‘fail to plan and you plan to fail’ and this is certainly true in business. In the larger sense, you need to have clear aims and goals that will lead directly to success in your business, but also, you need to have a plan for each day. 

In our modern world, we are surrounded by a plethora of gadgets, so there is no short supply of electronic devices that can be used to create a plan to manage information, tasks, appointments and contacts, but whether you like to manage your activities in a paperback diary or on an APP for your i-Phone, everyone should have a planning tool that they use routinely. 

That said, you do need just the one planning tool, and if you are not the only person adding tasks to your diary, that one planning tool needs to be kept up to date and be accessible to you and others at all times.  A business owner who has been double booked by his PA does not give an air of professionalism to his/her prospective clients.

Blocks of time for which you are unavailable must be clearly demarked and always ensure you leave adequate time between activities and appointments; the appointment itself might only be scheduled to last an hour, but how long will the journey take and have you allowed yourself time for a comfort break before the next client meeting?  Better to schedule a realistic time frame than to arrive late!

Not only does your day-to-day plan need to be in place, but so too does an adequate plan for the week ahead.  If your working week runs from Monday to Friday, then make the last thing you do before you finish work on a Friday be to ensure you have the following week’s plan completed.  Some people like to do this on a Sunday evening as a precursor to the week ahead, but if you are aiming to manage your time and create better balance, why would you want to waste your free time?

This doesn’t have to be a long, drawn out process; look at what you have in your planning tool (diary, calendar, app etc.) and make a note of the things you need to do in between the major tasks this week.  Note them down and make this your default diary-the list of things you will attend to whenever you are not scheduled to be anywhere or doing anything else.  If it helps, organise them into short activities and longer activities (and I refer again to my former advice of ‘be realistic’ here); those things that you can dip in and out of that will take 15 minutes here and there, and those things that will require more sustained periods of time.  This will help to eliminate periods of procrastination! Instead of thinking, “right, I’ve got half an hour before my next appointment, what shall I do?” and ending up frittering away your time on unimportant and unurgent tasks (like playing Candy Crush or reading emails from Wowcher or browsing your next holiday on the internet; all tasks you might enjoy, but save them for outside of your work day!), you will refer to your default plan for the week and realise you’ve got time to send that report, call back that supplier, complete that file etc. How much more effective would you be, how much more time would you have if you remained productive throughout your entire working day?  Take your scheduled breaks, of course, just WORK while you’re meant to be WORKing!

3.   Eat a Frog for breakfast

It was Mark Twain who originally said, “eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day” and many coaches have now coined this phrase to apply it to the world of business.  Often, procrastination comes about as a result of putting off an unpleasant or unappealing task.  If you know you’ve got something to do that day that you’re not looking forward to, you can become exceptionally good at finding a thousand and one other little jobs to get on with instead in order to avoid it.  Did those thousand other jobs really need doing or have you just wasted your day?  When planning your day, put the ‘frog’ as your first task of the day.  Get it out of the way and then spend the rest of the day being productive not procrastinating.

4.   Keep working on Time Management

Time management is one of many areas where learning is never complete.  Continue to look for better ways to manage your time; you never know where a handy tip or trick that will help you to manage your time will arrive from.  Time is precious; we cannot get it back once it’s gone and there is only so much of it in each day.  Being more effective with your time and getting more out of the hours in your day is an essential skill for all business owners.  Neglect to focus on this area as continual process of development and you will easily slip into bad habits and find yourself heading back towards disaster.

Failing to manage your time brings your business chaos and disorder.  Manage your time effectively and you improve your productivity, personally you will feel more accomplished and positive and you will greatly increase your chances of both personal and professional success.

Practice makes perfect…or does it?

Practice is a bit of a misleading term here because it has multiple meanings.  According to the OED online, it can mean a habitual or customary performance; something you do every day without even thinking about it, e.g. its common practice for me to have a cup of coffee before I start work in the morning.  However, the OED also says that practice can mean, “A repeated performance or systematic exercise for the purpose of acquiring skill or proficiency.”  This is quite different.  I don’t set out each morning to make a cup of coffee in order to become better at making it, a star barista; in fact, some days, I make a pretty crappy cup of coffee.   So then, there must be a difference between what is achieved when we habitually or routinely repeat the same task over and over again and when we actually set out to improve how we do something by “practicing” the skill.

Thinking about the world of sport, Chris Froome triumphed in the Tour de France by riding better and faster than any of the other competitors.  He practiced those skills and it paid off.  However, every day I see hundreds of cyclists commuting to work, kids riding their bikes to work, work out junkies peddling in the gym, yet, in all likelihood, very few (if any) of them will go on to win competitive cycling championship titles.  Why is this?  What makes Froome get better and better, but the same results are not seen in the masses getting on their bikes every day?  It is that key difference between habitual repetition and systematic performance.

When we practice a skill with the express intention of improving the quality with which that skill is performed, we do things rather differently than just repeating the same thing over and over again.  We look at strengths and weaknesses of our performances, consider ways in which we might improve, we measure output and we set targets.  Froome didn’t just go out on his bike for a few hours each day, he likely had a training plan or programme, a coach, a training partner, sought feedback,  was highly self-aware of his performances and proactive in attaining his improvements. He practiced with the intention of perfecting skills and getting better!

Thinking about your business, what skills do you as the business owner and leader have to develop and perfect in order to be a great leader?  How often do you set out to intentionally practice these skills? And what about your team?  Perhaps your sales person has been making phone calls for years, but have they ever really practiced this skill or have they just been left to habitually repeat the same phone calls over and over again?  Isn’t that supposed to be the definition of madness?  Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?

What do you think would be the effect of actually investing time for you and your team in intentional practice?  How much of an improvement could you see in your skills and in the skills of your team?  Think again of sport; could Andy Murray have just won Wimbledon without practicing and refining his skills?  Could Chris Hoy have become the most successful British Olympian ever without practice?  Do you really think you and your team will ever be as successful as you have the potential to be without practice?

Practice can indeed make perfect, but only if it’s the right sort of practice.  Which sort of practice will you instill in your business and what effect is it likely to have on your success…well that’s up to you now, isn’t it?

For help, ideas and team training exercises, feel free to get in touch.

The Better You Are At Sales…The More Successful You Will Be In Business

The Better You Are At Sales…The More Successful You Will Be In Business   Over two sessions this workshop is engaging, interactive and informative, unlike other workshops there will be both theory and negotiation activities If you are facing any of these challenges this is for you: Your sales are flat lining and you can’t increase them.  Your sales team are demotivated and under performing. You have insufficient sales structure and process.    You’re tolerating mediocrity at best and substandard at worst because you don’t know what changes to make. You know your conversion rate could be much better but are not sure how to increase it Who is this workshop designed for? Any leader wanting to stimulate growth The leader wanting to have a high performing sustainable sales team The leader that wants to increase the efficiency of their team Those new to or are struggling with sales and are eager to learn just how to make a difference Fact is you are always selling… Selling to customers, your team, prospects, friends and family. Do it well and you’re more likely to do well. If you don’t you won’t. Unfortunately a great deal of people find selling tough, or a frightening experience, sometimes both. Yet it needn’t be that way and in this 2 part Sales and Negotiation Skills Workshop we will share with you the simple techniques that anybody can use to sell more.  To secure your place simply click here...  “I’ve always considered myself to be ‘good’ at sales, implementing the learning from this workshop has taken me from good to a whole new level, if you’re serious about improving your sales skills this is for you ”… Peter Tamblyn

3 ways to get your customers to come back more and I guarantee that almost 70% of your competition are not doing #3

Customers for life;

When it comes to marketing for a great many businesses the strategy is to generate new customers at a faster rate than their present customers drop off. A strategy guaranteed to put a strain on cash flow, profits and it will also certainly produce a fair amount of stress and sleepless nights.

A much better way is to consider the idea of customers for life. You have done all the hard work to get them to know like and trust you so why let them slip through your fingers?

Here are just three low cost ideas that if implemented correctly will keep your customers coming back time and time again:

1   Give outstanding service – You may be thinking “Well we already do that” most people do, yet if you were to ask your customers what level of service do they perceive they are getting it would probably not be a the level you think you are providing. This is a concept commonly known as perceived indifference. I sometimes ask business owners to rate the level of service they are getting out in the marketplace and they will give a score which is much lower than the level they perceive they are giving to their own customers. One of the main challenges here is the fact that some businesses do offer outstanding customer service and then because they may consider themselves to be the best they get complacent. Competitors will always be snapping away at your heels in effort to catch up and overtake your levels of service. You can never stand still in business you’re either growing or dying and this is particularly true when it comes to service. I like the analogy of walking against an escalator if you keep moving you stay in place, stop moving and you are going backwards. So a permanent focus on improving the customer experience and giving outstanding service will mean customers will be compelled to return time and time again.

2    Have a loyalty programme – Most of us will have a loyalty card in our purse/wallet for instance; frequent flyer, supermarket, restaurants etc. The reason they work so well is because they are a constant reminder to shop somewhere and the fact that you do shop there means you are going to get rewarded. What's at work here is a concept known as Operand Conditioning. This is a form of conditioning that is based on the fact that as humans when we gain a reward it produces endorphins in the brain that make us ‘feel good’ and when we feel good we want more of that, so the tendency is to shop at the same place. Consider what kind of loyalty programme you could put in place, these may include; a free purchase for every xx purchased or number of visits, reward points towards future purchases, using some kind of BOGOFF concept. It is entirely up to you what programme you put in place, just make sure you have one and all your customers are aware of it.

3   Communicate continually – I can almost guarantee that 100% of your customers will not be aware of 100% of the products/services you supply. By having regular communication with your customers you can educate them on your whole range. How many times have you heard “I didn’t know you did that?” it is a dangerous way to do business because if your customers are using one of your competitors to purchase a product they didn’t know you offered you are giving your competitors the opportunity to impress and entice your customers away from you. Email, newsletters, blog posts, social media, videos, direct mail and the telephone are just some of the platforms you can choose to deliver the message. You just need to choose your platforms and have a plan in place to keep regular contact with your customers to let them know what is available.

So there you have it, just 3 strategies to ensure your customers keep coming back to you time and time again.