business mentors Archives - Page 3 of 4

Three Business Essentials Every Business Owners Must Get Clear On and Why

April 25, 2019 by Lisa Mininni Leave a Comment

What do these business tools have in common?

Organizational Chart
Core Values
Fiscal Fitness

These tools are often overlooked essentials. Without them you will:

Wrestle with knowing your bench strength
Struggle to shape your company’s culture
Be caught off guard as you scale

Bench Strength

As soon as one of my mentoring clients got clear on the reporting relationships within her rapidly growing business, she was then able to see clearly how to stop being the bottleneck in her company’s growth. With greater ease, she easily assigns responsibilities freeing her schedule to focus on the strategic plan rather than the day-to-day tasks.

Company’s Culture Through Core Values

Your core values are more important that words on a poster. One CEO of an IT firm indicated that his values come into play each day particularly in their consultative process with clients or even prospects. It’s part of his core values to give the customer what they need, not just what he has to sell. As a result, he has a high degree of customer retention and satisfaction. He has positioned himself as a trusted advisor.

Fiscal Fitness

Nobody wants to be caught off guard when they scale. As your company expands, it’s more important than ever to understand and manage the fiscal fitness of your company. If you’re not managing your financials, you could be aligning yourself with some sleepless nights when you discover you don’t have enough to cover payroll. A simple system to review your financials each week or month keeps your eye on early warning signs so you can respond before it becomes problematic.

Today is Day 1 of the Wake Up Profitable Boot Camp for Business Owners where we work on these very essentials to scale your business. If you couldn’t make it this month, make it point to get your ticket for October 3-4, 2019. I invite you to register with 2019earlybird10wup before Friday, May 3 to take advantage of early registration for October. Mentoring starts right away. We’ll schedule your Welcome Strategy Call as soon as you register.

3 Unconventional Tips to Client Satisfaction

March 8, 2018 by Lisa Mininni Leave a Comment

Search on customer satisfaction tips and you’ll see similar advice:

Listen
Be Responsive
Get to Know Your Customers
Measure and Improve

The advice is good. It is also essential.

Let’s go a step further. Consider what client satisfaction processes would make your company’s culture distinct.

There are three steps that have made a real difference in distinguishing my business mentoring and training company. As we expand our continuum of services to include a co-working and conference space, we are also consciously checking in with our clients to make sure the programs and services continue to provide value.

Below are three tips for client satisfaction that have made a real difference:

1. Make Random Client Calls

While we teach business owners the importance of automation and systematization, there is a balance. If you don’t have enough automation, you may not be able to serve your clients at a high level because you’re spending too much time with your routine, manual processes. If you add too much automation, you lose touch with your clients. Integrating personalized calls are a warm welcome.

Each month, I randomly select a client to call. Whether I’m leaving a message or catch them live, I ask them how they are doing. I leave myself open to hear whatever they want to share.

Since the calls are random, it also doesn’t matter whether the person attended one of our live workshops, we’re working with their company’s leadership team, or they are a mentoring or coaching client. All clients are important.

While they are sometimes surprised by the call, they recognize and appreciate the outreach. For clients who purchased a self-study training program or attended a workshop, they are usually shocked to get a call. Sadly, this tells me this process is not a common practice. And, at the end of the call, they almost always share that they feel touched in some way by the call.

While it’s not always possible to get to every client, it makes a big difference for those you do reach.

2. Provide an After Action Report

Unfortunately, what typically happens with training is a trainer goes into an organization, executes their training, and often leaves the client to figure out how they are going to implement next steps.

As part of our high-performance team training process, we set up metrics to measure a return on their training investment. An After Action Report is written and sent to the client.

An After Action Report is a handy summary with next steps. One of the best practices we implement for our clients happens at the end of each training session. We ask each participant to identify what they will implement as a result of the training, identify a due date, and assign a responsible party for that action being implemented.

The After Action Report also serves as a follow up to those plans, showing each client ways to get the highest return on their training investment.

3. Let Go

One of the best ways you can help your client may be to let them go. Usually, you see the behaviors. They resist, don’t implement, complain, blame everyone else for their situation, make excuses, and/or do not take full responsibility for their outcomes and commitments.

This is not to say don’t hold them accountable for their promises or take a stand. However, you can release what is not yours.

It can take quite a bit of emotional labor to release them and be unattached. In some cases, the best thing for them and you is to let go.

When it comes to Client Satisfaction, there are many factors that have influenced these steps. Know that these tips didn’t come first. The steps are the product of aligning and standing for our Contribution in the World.

What’s your Contribution in the World?

To crystallize your Contribution in the World, systematize your business management systems, and scale your business, join Lisa Mininni for the Wake Up Profitable Boot Camp for Business Owners on April 26-27, 2018 in her new headquarters, co-working and conference space in Livonia, Michigan.

Register at:
https://excellerateassociates.com/wake-up-profitable-boot-camp/
Apply code: 2018wupsponsorlam
Apply Early Tuition Code by March 9, 2018

Business Management Processes: Simple is Profound

February 1, 2018 by Lisa Mininni Leave a Comment

Admit it. Sometimes you make business harder than it is. You overthink your strategies and complicate processes.

Yet, the simple solutions are the most profound. Simple business processes can position your business for scalability and positively shift your bottom line.

In my experience mentoring business owners, they often have the solutions but don’t realize it. They have the pieces to a puzzle but haven’t put them together in ways that make a real difference, especially when it comes to their marketing and sales processes.

According to a study done for Harvard Business Review, a whopping 71% of leads are never followed up on. A common reason is that most businesses don’t systematize or automate their follow up processes. Let’s assume that each client is worth $10,000 or more, that’s a lot of lost opportunity.

In working with my Profitability Lab Clients, we reviewed the Integrated Marketing Model. It’s one of our proprietary models that show businesses how to marry their online and offline marketing as well as connect their sales and marketing tactics.

When one of the lab members shared that her business would be attending a trade show, we looked at a simple process to maximize their attendance. We mapped the process from start to finish.

Where most companies fail to follow up is after the trade show. They return to the office and get distracted in the day-to-day happenings.

Using an existing follow up system, we reviewed simple ways to capture leads and to automatically follow up with those leads. We also discussed having a simple scoring system that could be used at the trade show to separate the terrific leads from the tire kickers.

Your business processes don’t have to be sophisticated to be effective. In fact, using simple systems already available in your business can make a profound difference in nurturing your leads.

Look around your business. Where can you implement a simple process or optimize the use of an existing system to successfully scale your business this year?

Leadership: Overcoming Breakdowns

January 25, 2018 by Lisa Mininni Leave a Comment

The new year is often a signal to set new goals and create new outcomes. Goals give your business and life direction and boost your motivation.

Let’s face it, when you create goals that are a stretch, the reality you’re living in doesn’t always match up. There’s a gap.

That gap naturally creates breakdowns. The most recent breakdown happened to be January 17.

What was January 17, you ask? That day is dubbed Ditch Your Resolution Day.

It turns out that 91 percent of Americans fail to keep their resolutions. Just weeks into the new year and the majority of people are already giving up.

Consider that if you didn’t create a goal that took you beyond your current skill level, you wouldn’t experience these break downs. You are presented with a new opportunity to develop, to go beyond what you think you know, to boldly become what it takes to fulfill on that goal.

Break downs are opportunities. You can disempower yourself by trying to fix what is wrong. Focusing on what is wrong or what needs to be fixed may be entertaining, but it is not in the spirit of effective leadership.

Effective leaders create new opportunities, magnificent possibilities, and desired outcomes. They continuously communicate the vision and instill that vision in others. They honor their word. They practice what they teach.

Will you back down from any one of your promises because you’re experiencing a break down? Or, will you restore your promise and be in action consistent with your desired future?

Even in what could be the messiness of all break downs, choose powerfully. Fulfill on your promises. Honor your word. Choose to take action consistent with the desired future instead of the circumstance.

Every step of the way through a breakdown ask yourself, who do I need to be to fulfill on my agreement, the desired future, or the ideal outcome?

Then be it.

Dealing With Sales Rejection: Biologically Overcoming No

November 30, 2017 by Lisa Mininni Leave a Comment

If you’re in business, you have something to offer. You offer an idea, a product, or a service. When that idea, product, or service is rejected, it can stop business leaders in their tracks.
Being stopped may take on the form of:

Overthinking what went wrong
Getting upset or making yourself and/or your team wrong
Stopping communication or action

Let’s face it, nobody likes rejection. However, there is a biological reaction that occurs when you hear the word no.

If your biological wiring measures higher in autonomy, the more the word no motivates you to get more sales. The lower the autonomy the more no discourages you. It is just what is happening in the background. Just notice it and understand it.

Couple that biological dynamic with how no’s take on many forms. An outright verbal or written no is easy to recognize.

More often, no shows up when your calls aren’t returned, they unsubscribe, or they tell you, they’ll do it later. Sometimes these no’s are disguised as no but are no’s for now. Sometimes these no’s require consistency on your part and sometimes something is missing.

It can be mind boggling to figure it out. If you’re getting stopped by no, consider two things:

1. Reframe The No

Consider that a no is a powerful catalyst for moving your business ahead. It’s better to get a no from a prospect rather than endless calls that go nowhere.

During your first conversations with your prospect, set up a mutual agreement on how the final decision will be communicated. Words like, “we’ll get back to you” are vague. Set a clear expectation that the meeting is designed to simply identify their final decision regardless if it is yes or no.

By setting clear, specific expectations at the beginning of a relationship on the communication that you expect on their decision whether it is a yes or a no, you clear the way for completion or next steps.

2. Ask Yourself What’s Missing

If receiving consistent rejections, consider that something is missing. You may be missing a system or an integration of your processes.

When processes are missing or misaligned, you spin your wheels. You may not be pre-qualifying them or talking with them too early in the buying process. Additionally, if you’re unclear on your sales process, your product and services offerings, or your ideal client, this incongruence gets in the way of a yes.

If you’re playing a big game, then there will be no’s. Embrace the no and ask yourself what’s missing. A resilient leader knows that a no can also clear the way for new opportunities.

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Bench Strength

Company’s Culture Through Core Values

Fiscal Fitness

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