entrepreneurial edge system Archives - Excellerate Associates

Something Magical Happens When You Take A Break

April 14, 2022 by Lisa Mininni Leave a Comment

There’s something magical that happens when you take a break, interrupt your usual routine, or step off the treadmill of life and be fully present.

You attract new things into your life. The new thing, the new idea, or the new way was just waiting for you to stop long enough to notice.

Next Thursday and Friday, April 21-22, 2022, a cohort of business owners will take a break from their routine to work on their business at the Wake Up Profitable Boot Camp for Business Owners.

As they experience the Entrepreneurial Edge System they will see solutions, create ideas for revenue streams, and expand their capacity to grow without working harder. They expand their capacity to grow because they will see connections that they haven’t seen until now, not because they haven’t tried, but because their thinking gets changed. They will approach scaling their business with a fresh mindset, approach, and way. They will see how each area of their business is interconnected.

If you are inspired to build a scalable, resilient business, outline your ideal team needed to support your scaled business, map out how your clients experience your products and services to increase the lifetime value of each client, and systematize your sales and marketing plan, I invite you to register by Friday, April 15, 2022 which is the last day to register to secure your seat at the April 21-22, 2022 cohort for the Wake Up Profitable Boot Camp. Join us online or onsite.

Systems That Solve Your Business Snags

July 11, 2013 by Lisa Mininni Leave a Comment

(See hyperlinks below for additional information on types of systems):

Best-Selling Author of E-Myth Revisited, Michael Gerber said, “Let systems run the business and people run the systems…People come and go but the systems remain constant.”

There are many examples of systems at work, including our own circulatory systems, eco systems, and even marketing systems. Some of the most profitable businesses started with systems: McDonald’s and Federal Express are popular franchise systems.

A system can simply include a set of steps completed at regular intervals or a daily set of habits to increase productivity. Some business systems can be developed in a few minutes or more complex systems can take weeks to implement but offer the business owner leverage and significant return on investment, like a lead generation system.

Systems Are Building Blocks to a Profitable Business

Efficient systems will solve your biggest frustrations, like prospect follow up, inadequate cash flow and declining sales. Examples of business systems include sales, marketing, accounting, payroll, fulfillment, operations, lead generation, and hiring to name a few.

Whether you realize it or not, systems are critical building blocks of your company. Because every single area of your business is part of a system that can be managed, building systems within each business function is critical. What’s most important is making sure that each area or part works together for the entire business. Creating those interrelated, effective business systems is essential to growing a profitable business you love.

Systems Create Freedom, Not Inhibit It

A systems approach looks at the whole and reduces shoot-from-the-hip tactics. It includes processes, standards, and other metrics designed to serve as a blueprint. When you have a blueprint, one simple glance at your metrics and you’ll know how your strategies are or are not working.

Now that you know what a system is and how a systems approach can work, it’s time to identify yours.

Take a minute to identify where you feel the most pain or source of frustration in your business. For example, are you finding it difficult to keep up with following up with people inquiring about your services?
Determine if you need additional assistance, automation, a process or procedure.
When determining a solution, consider how it will impact the whole business. One system may appear to be a quick solution, but really isn’t when you consider how it will interface with your other systems. For example, if you integrate a shopping cart software system, but it doesn’t adequately interface with your accounting software, you may have faulty sales reporting or unnecessary staff expenses because you need to maintain two separate systems when you could have an integrated system that works together seamlessly.

Ultimately, it is your business system that will leverage your time, effort, and resources and turn your business snags into business success.

Did You Know That You’re Wired to Win?

May 30, 2013 by Lisa Mininni 1 Comment

Join me for the Wired to Win! Series on June 26-28, 2013

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Did You Know That You’re Wired to Win?

Winning can be defined in several ways. Dictionary.com defines winning as, “to finish first in a race”, to or “to gain the victory”. In each of these definitions, however, it infers someone is going to lose.

If you apply the win-lose mindset to the sales process, you’ll end up trying to push. This push sales creates a situation where your customer develops buyer’s remorse and returns the product or you end up spending a whole lot more time trying to satisfy them.

The key is to create win-win relationships. As the supplier of a product or service, you want happy customers. Why? Happy customers return and tell others about your products and services.

To create win-win relationships, it’s important to understand how you and others communicate. At the heart of your communication is how you are naturally wired.

Your natural wiring has been with you since birth emerges at 1 ½ – 2 years old and stays with you your entire lifetime. Unfortunately, most business professionals do nothing to understand it at a level where it changes their results.

Yet, the beauty of understanding your innate wiring is that it is your nature, while your behavior is nurture – all the things that have impacted your environment, like education, life experiences, and responsibilities.

When you understand your natural wiring (and notice the wiring in others), you will create winning relationships.

Relationship building often depends on “getting off on the right foot”. One way to connect with others is being able to quickly recognize how others process thought. When you know this, it will increase your ability to communicate successfully with others creating a win-win scenario.

Everybody talks and everybody thinks but there is a part of your wiring that will tell you how you crystalize or process thought. This is critical in every aspect of your business whether it is sales, your client relationships, and even employee relationships.

For immediate value, I will focus on the Internal and External Thinker Factors of your wiring.

If you’re an External Thinker – you crystalize your ideas as you verbalize them. Have you noticed when talking to someone that you did all of the talking, the other person hadn’t said a word but you got great ideas? That’s because you crystalize your ideas as you talk about them.

Conversely, there are Internal Thinkers. If you’re an internal thinker, you crystalize your ideas as you internalize them or think about them. So you often leave a meeting and shortly after the meeting is over, ideas pop into your head. You often say, why didn’t I say that in the meeting?

So how do you make your natural wiring work for you?

Here’s a quick tip for the External Thinkers:

If you’re an External Thinker, I’m sure there have been times when you’re talking to an Internal Thinker. How do you know you’re talking to an Internal Thinker? Notice when, after you make a statement and you see a blank processing stare. You’re natural tendency is to say something to fill in the dead air. Instead, stay silent. If you need to say anything, what I recommend is, “Do you need a second to think about it?”

This gives the Internal Thinker time to process internally what you’ve just said aloud. If you don’t give them that processing time, it will create disconnects in your conversation.

If you’re an Internal Thinker, here’s a quick tip when communicating with an External Thinker:

Notice when communicating with someone and they start to repeat themselves. In that case, you’re likely talking to an External Thinker. It’s important to give them a verbal response. You might say, “Mind if I think about that for a second?”

External Thinkers are wired to need a verbal response while the Internal Thinkers don’t give a response until their internal process is complete.

Can you see how just this one feature of your natural wiring can impact your sales, your client relationships, and employee relationships?

In the next article, I’ll cover other aspects of your natural wiring so you come out a winner at everything in life and in business.

If inspired to take a deeper dive, join us for the Wired to Win! Series starting June 26, 27, and 28, 2013. Early Bird Registration is going on now until June 7 at: http://excellerateassociates.com/wired-to-win.

The Silent Process That Explains Why Your Sales Conversions Fail

May 23, 2013 by Lisa Mininni Leave a Comment

When entrepreneurs are building a business they love, they are often so overjoyed to help others, they talk to everyone and anyone about it. If you were to ask them if they are desperate for sales, you likely get a definite, “NO!”

The fact is that as you listen, there is an underlying silent process.

It’s so subtle, yet so powerful.

You may not even be present that it is exists while you’re talking to your prospect.

However, it is almost as if the prospect feels it unconsciously.

What is it?

Attachment to your prospect’s choice or decision.

It’s not that you’re begging for the sale outright. It’s so much more silent – just underneath the surface. What are the negative effects of being attached to someone’s decision?

You feel an internal panic that your prospect is not going to say yes.
You run the risk of negotiating from a position of lack and experience low self-esteem.
You will have people overly dependent on you for their outcomes.
You start de-valuing yourself or your product.
You don’t have anyone else in your funnel so everything depends on that person saying yes.

The key is to slightly detach from their choice. The more you want the sale, the more you will go into push mode. I don’t mean that you should be completely unfeeling. What I mean is that if you don’t slightly detach from the outcome, you will not only sound needy, you are needy.

Detaching from the outcome is a process. Here’s one quick tip to implement at the beginning of your sales process. When you are developing rapport with your prospect, set an expectation. Let your prospect know that the choice is theirs.

An important way that you work with your clients is to have completeness, which includes a yes or no decision from them. The worst place you can leave a prospect is sitting on the fence. By setting this expectation upfront, you’re allowing them to complete their choice: whatever choice they make.

There’s one more important point about slightly detaching. A no does not mean rejection. If it feels like rejection, then you may be more attached to their decision than you think.

As a subject matter expert, you provide a valuable service. When you have a strong belief in your product or service with slight detachment on the choice your prospect makes, you become appealing to them.

The best part?

When you detach, you’ll feel a sense of personal power, confidence, and peace. And that internal confidence is precisely what will attract your preferred prospects to you.

5 Words That Will Kill a Referral or a Sale Every Time

May 2, 2013 by Lisa Mininni 6 Comments

You’ve heard these words uttered by entrepreneurs thousands of times when networking.

You’ve probably heard them within the last week.

In the course of a day, you may say them dozens of times to your networking buddies, referral sources, and prospects.

But these words are the quickest way to kill a referral or sale every time.

What are those five words?

“I work with anybody who.”

When you utter these five words, it:

1. Is too broad. It does not paint a picture in your referral sources mind in who to send your way;

2. It’s not precise enough from your prospect’s perspective. It does not clearly convey to your prospect if they are exactly who you work with;

3. Reeks of desperation. It says that you don’t have enough of the ideal clients that you’ll work with anybody right now.

Instead, be exact to attract. When someone asks you who you work with, identify the titles, income, or other demographic information that describes your ideal prospects. When you describe exactly who you work with, your networking buddies will know who to send your way. You will also confirm in your prospect’s mind, that they are a fit for your services.

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