attract more clients Archives - Excellerate Associates

How to Systematize Your Business to Attract More Clients and Make More Revenue – Step 5

February 20, 2014 by Lisa Mininni Leave a Comment

This week, I cover Step Number 5 in How to Systematize Your Business to Attract More Clients and Make More Revenue.

It’s often been said that you can’t manage what you can’t measure, and without a metric, it’s difficult to align your goals, monitor progress, and fix problems.

Speaking of fixing problems, when one of my new clients landed a gig as a columnist for a major website, I asked him how his new assignment impacted traffic on his website, especially since he was able to place a link back to his website.

He was silent for a second while viewing his website report.

Then, he gasped. He was shocked. Visitors galore!

A major missed opportunity:

He had no system to engage with them on his website. No way to welcome them. No way to cultivate the relationship by giving something of value to his visitors. So, they would visit his website, look around…and leave. Needless to say, he corrected what was missing right away.

Click on the video to learn Step 5 to Systematize Your Business:

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

Click to Learn More and Register

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: https://excellerateassociates.com/wired-to-win.

How to Become Known In Your Field of Expertise

April 18, 2013 by Lisa Mininni 4 Comments

howtobecomeknowninyourfieldofexpertise

We know people do business with people they know, like and trust. So how do you build credibility and get found online?

Using technology in the right way is by far, one of the best marketing tools for fast growth. When you expand your reach and build your credibility, more people will know about you and you’ll become known as the go-to person.

One marketing strategy to become known as the go-to person is through Article Marketing. Article marketing is where a business owner writes articles about their field of expertise. For example, if you have an accounting practice, you may write an article on a timely topic, such as ways to save on your taxes during tax season. If you’re a chiropractor, then you can write an article on how to minimize allergies at the beginning of Spring.

Once you write the article, submit it to article directories or to authority sites where your prospects hang out. Article directories that receive a lot of traffic and good web page ranks are considered authority sites by search engines leading to high traffic. As people search on your topic, they will land on your article on one of these authority sites. At the very end of your article is your biographical summary complete with your contact information sending you valuable, targeted traffic.

For years, this marketing strategy has helped me to educate small business owners on topics in my Entrepreneurial Edge System^TM, including attracting clients, marketing strategies, and lead generation. As a result, quite a few authority online sites such as Huffington Post, CareerBuilder, RainToday.com and CNN.com have published my articles. When my article, You Have a Lead Generation System, but No One Is Buying. What’s the Problem?, was published on RainToday, it also received a Reader’s Choice Award extending the publicity and traffic.

Imagine being able to use those logos on your website, business cards and social media. It’s an impressive way to show off your expertise. By writing high-content articles, you also start to cultivate that trust factor.

With article marketing, you not only educate your prospects, you will drive traffic to your website by leveraging technology. When you systematize so that your article marketing happens consistently, you will expand your reach and close the gap so people find you and you become known in your field of expertise.

How Not Testing Your Assumptions Is Costing You Serious Business

February 21, 2013 by Lisa Mininni Leave a Comment

Every day, entrepreneurs act on their assumptions. Making assumptions is a part of doing business. Assumptions are often based on our experiences and are not often questioned. It’s part of our system of beliefs. If our beliefs are not sound, our assumptions are not sound.

These assumptions can serve you or they can deter you from getting your products and services out into the world in a big way. If limiting, they get in the way of creating and selling products or closing on more sales.

When you test your own norms, the possibilities can be endless. As an example, let’s take the bottled water industry. In the 1960s, who would have thought that people could make a profit off of something that that was readily available and was as close as the nearest water fountain? Years later, someone tested their belief. Today, you can’t enter a supermarket or gas station without a wall filled with brands of water to choose from and mixes to put in them.

You might think that testing assumptions is risky. Take the risk any way. By not testing assumptions, there is risk. In this fast-changing world, what worked yesterday, may not work today. Yet, many people approach their sales and marketing with assumptions about certain techniques that worked in the past will work the same way today, despite the changes in technology and human behavior.

Assumptions can work for you or limit you. Testing your beliefs and notions creates possibilities. Without challenging our beliefs, you may be resisting possibilities. Because of how one of my clients was innate hardwired, she assumed everyone wanted to receive a lot of information before they made their decisions. She found herself giving away a lot of useful content during her initial consultations with prospects, but frustrated because she was not converting them into clients.

In working through the Entrepreneurial Edge System^TM, she discovered two very important assumptions:

She gave information the way she wanted to receive it. She was delivering her information methodically with long descriptions. However, many of her prospective clients wanted to receive it very differently. They wanted to receive their information in quick, short, concise bullet points.
She was offering only one way for them to work with her. Her prospects liked choices. After a few adjustments in her delivery and service offerings, she went from sales failure to sales superstar now closing on up to an average of 98% of her prospects.

In your daily interactions, ask yourself:

What assumptions am I making?
What are the possibilities (ones that will get me closer to my vision)?

The moment you start limiting yourself with an excuse or telling yourself something can’t happen – stop yourself. Ask yourself these two questions. Then, watch how many possibilities are created just by checking just one assumption. [Tweet This]

Timing Is Everything

December 1, 2011 by Lisa Mininni Leave a Comment

Timing is one of the most critical elements of running a successful business. Imagine making every business decision at the most favorable time or creating the right relationship at just the right time.

Hallmark is not only the leader in timing, but has mastered how to tap into the emotional aspects of a particular time of year. During the holiday season, they create timely marketing messages in the form of a short movie that puts their customers in the holiday spirit and tugs at their heartstrings. Through their commercials, they demonstrate how touched someone is when they are remembered with a Hallmark card.

Take some inspiration from the particular time of year to add value to your customer or client community. For example, last year I wrote a blog article entitled, “Year End Checklist for Small Business.” In it, I suggested what to add to your year-end checklist and what to consider as the new year begins. I heard from many small business owners in my community who used the suggestions to round out the current year and begin thinking ahead about the upcoming year. In several cases, they secured additional contracts and clients from implementing the suggestions I made.

Regardless of your profession, a holiday is an opportunity to touch base with your clients. Here are some examples on how you can get your marketing messages out in a relevant way:

Chiropractors – create a top 10 checklist on how to maintain your health during the holidays. Tuck the checklist in with your clients’ holiday cards. When they open your card, they will get an unexpected surprise.
Event Planners – write five short tips on setting a holiday table. Share a tip with your social media followers each day for the five days prior to the holiday.
Speakers – use YouTube to post a short video. If you’re a speaker on customer service, record 10 ways to show your customers you appreciate them.

If you write an article, remember to place it in one of the many article directories. One of my favorites is www.ezinearticles.com. For added free PR, repurpose your material and pitch your article of tips to one of the television stations. They love receiving timely tips for use in their segments.

Remember to plan ahead. At the beginning of the year, review the holidays or awareness months to plan out your messaging to your community of clients. Profitable florists have done this for years, reminding their customers about the upcoming holidays, like Valentine’s Day. October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and the cancer foundations have used it to educate women about getting their yearly mammograms.

Use the times of the year to position your marketing messages, add value to your community of followers, and get your message out in a relevant way. When you implement these ideas, your marketing messages become much more relatable and you develop a reputation as the go-to expert

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