marketing – Page 5 – Michele Christensen

How solopreneurs can use Foursquare

I admit, I’m late in jumping on the Foursquare bandwagon. As with any new undertaking, I have to have a definitive reason for getting involved with something and I have to know what I expect to get from it and have a way to measure that result. I’ve checked out Foursquare several times, but never felt like it was a good fit for my business until now. In this article, I’ll share why I decided to start using it, what I’m using it for and how I keep myself safe.

In case you don’t know, Foursquare is a social media site and smartphone app that uses your phone’s gps system to let you “check in” to physical locations. As a work-at-home solopreneur, I don’t actually have a physical location so it never seemed like something that would work for me. I was also concerned about announcing to the world where I am and that my house is empty.

The reason I finally decided to jump is to spice up my Twitter feed with some more interesting personal information. Several people I follow on Twitter have their check ins included in their Twitter feed and I found I really enjoyed it, especially when they included a picture. It’s important to share some information about yourself, your personality and life in your marketing so people have a sense of just who they are considering doing business with. As with any sharing of personal information, don’t overdo it.

So, the main reason I’m using Foursquare is to add some variety to my Twitter feed. I’m definitely accomplishing that, but there are a few added benefits I hadn’t considered. It’s actually a fun service to use. There’s elements of gaming in it such as the ability to earn badges, which often come as a surprise. I also find it tends to get me out of the house more because I don’t like to see a whole day with no check ins.

The big question is safety. When the practice of revealing your physical location became popular, there was a lot of stories about people being burglarized while they were out and of people being stalked at the places they go regularly. I protect myself from burglary by never checking in unless someone is home at my house. I also have two large, very loud dogs that show up all the time in my social media postings for any would-be burglar to see. If this isn’t an option for you, consider only checking in when you will be home shortly.

As far as discouraging stalkers, I only check in when I’m leaving a place. If someone tries to find me, I won’t be there anymore. I also never check in at any of my regular stops, i.e. places where there is a pattern to my visiting or places I go often. There’s no way to figure out where I go regularly by looking at Foursquare.

Do you see any way to use Foursquare in your solopreneur business? Tell me about it in the comments.

Strategy and growing your business

I talk a lot about strategy, and that’s because it’s truly one of the most important foundations to your success. What is strategy and why is it so important? How can it help you?

Strategy is having an idea of how something will help your business before you start doing it. This applies both to big, sweeping changes like adding a new marketing technique and it also applies to one-time things like attending an expo. Having a strategy makes it so much more likely you will succeed, and even if you don’t you’ll know it sooner and not get sidetracked for as long as you would without strategy.

New business owners often have a fire to get started, and as a result they start off running hard and just doing as many things as they can to build their business. The idea of actually asking if something is a good idea to be doing in the first place seems pointless. It’s easy to get into such a frenzy of doing that it’s hard to even find a few minutes to ask if you should be doing something.

Strategy helps you decide what to do and set some goals around what you expect to accomplish. Most business activities have increasing sales as their ultimate goal but there are many intermediate steps. One strategy might be to increase traffic to your website using social media. This would ultimately increase sales (all other things being equal), but it’s an intermediate step. If your strategy is to increase sales by increasing traffic using social media then you know what your social media activity is supposed to accomplish before you even start doing it. Using some traffic measurements, you can tell how well it is working by measuring how much traffic you sent to your site before and after you started using social media.

One of the best things strategy can do is to steer you when you are off course. What if you social media strategy, as you’ve defined it, isn’t paying off? That’s not as good as it working great, but it’s much better that you know and can change course. If your efforts aren’t working, you need to change what you are doing or find something new to do.

Strategy doesn’t have to be a big deal. It doesn’t have to be formal or complex. Just make sure you know why you are doing any business activity and what you hope to get from it. Have a way to measure if your efforts are working, and know when to change course or pull the plug.

How do you use simple strategy in your business? Tell me about it in the comments.

Solopreneur boundaries, part 2

(This is the second of a 2-part series. For part 1 click here)

Part 1 of this 2-part series was on the first type of boundaries solopreneurs need – boundaries on what you let out. Click here to read about some of the ways solopreneurs can hurt their business by allowing too much out.

The second type of boundaries every solopreneur needs is boundaries on what you let in. This refers to opinions, information and news, and expert or non-expert help you allow into your business, into your life and into your head.

Opinions are ubiquitous – everybody has one and many times people are happy, or even too happy, to share what they think. The problem is that the opinion of a particular person is not necessarily appropriate, valid, helpful, relevant or fact-based for your situation. Unless you have a relationship with the person, you don’t know what their motivation is or whether they are even qualified to render an opinion that is helpful to you. For example, I know nothing about wine. I don’t really like it, I’ve never taken a class or had any tasting experience so I would not be a good person to give an opinion on a specific wine. This is where boundaries are important. When an opinion is offered, take it as just that – something offered which you can accept or decline.

Many of the same things can be said about information and news. It’s everywhere and there are massive amounts of it. Some of it is helpful to you, some of it is not. As with opinions, some of it should be let in and some shouldn’t. It’s important to check out the source and see if it lines up with your goals, your values and what you already know. For example, if you’ve been having great success with a certain technique of generating leads and a news story comes out saying that your technique doesn’t work anymore you can feel free to ignore it. It doesn’t line up with what you already know.

The final area is help, both expert and non-expert. As with information and news, there’s loads of help from experts and non-experts available. Non-expert help is particularly tempting because it often can be had for free (ever have a friend offer to set up a website, blog, or social media site?) The problem is that you don’t know if they know this subject because you have no way of checking them out since they don’t have a business. I’ve seen so many times when someone get terribly off course because of free help. With expert help, you have the chance to check the expert out to a much greater degree before signing on. Even with experts, it pays to do your homework before hiring. Check the person out, and make sure they have mastery in whatever they are going to help you with.

Be very selective about what you let into your business. Not every input is a good one even when it can be had for free.

What are somethings you’ve kept out of your business?

Email marketing as part of your CRM (Customer Relationship Management)

I was in a training recently, and the trainer used the phrase “CRM software” and “email list service” interchangeably. Aside from being imprecise, I thought that mixing these two terms could easily lead someone to that dreadful practice of adding people to their newsletter list without consent, although the trainer clearly was against this idea.

The phrase CRM (Customer Relationship Management) refers to what your company does to manage and strengthen relationships with customers and potential customers. There may be multiple parts to your system and practices such as coupons, rewards, customer-only events, software designed to help you stay on top of things and yes, an email newsletter may be part of that system.

Sales and Networking Expert Don Talbert defines CRM as “A comprehensive system which enables the small business owner to truly manage his or her client database. Used properly, a CRM system can help generate more revenue. One can utilize the CRM system to contact clients on important dates, stay in touch on a regular basis, etc. ACT and Salesforce are two very popular CRM software programs.”

CRM software does a variety of things including keeping track of past conversations with prospects, cuing you to follow up again, tracking their buying habits, testing various practices and generating data about your customers. Since this is for internal company use, it’s usually a good idea to make sure all customers and potential customers are entered into the system.

Your email list service (e.g. Aweber (affiliate link), Mail Chimp, Constant Contact, etc) is much more narrow in scope. It facilitates communicating with people via mass email. The service should take new sign-ups, handle people leaving, let you send emails and provide you with data. One of the more important functions is to help you to stay compliant with spam laws. One big difference between CRM software and an email list service is that only people who have expressively given permission should ever be entered into your email list service. To add people without their consent is a violation of spam laws, annoys people and makes you look bad.

Sales and Networking Expert Don Talbert had this comment about the difference between CRM software and Email List services:

“Email distribution is only one facet of CRM, and is not interchangeable with it. It is simply a medium for communicating with others. Email is integral to CRM however should never be mistaken for being the same thing.”

As you can see, these 3 things – your company’s CRM practices, CRM software and email list service – are all different things that serve different but related purposes. The purpose of this article is not to be a stickler for word usage, but to point out that if you don’t understand the difference between these things you could end up hurting your business.

What people buy

If you’re a sales expert, this will probably be review for you. I’m going through a training right now, and the whole idea of what people actually buy has been covered a lot. I’ve heard a lot of this before, but as with a lot of educational material it sinks in differently the second time around so I have some new ideas.

Features vs. Benefits

This was a really eye-opening concept to me the first time I heard it, and I continue to deepen my understanding of this idea. Features are facts and data about the product or service, e.g. “This laptop weighs 1 pound.” The benefit would be something like “Light enough to carry around all day without fatigue.” See the difference? I don’t care exactly what it weighs, but I do care that I can carry it around. Here’s another example: “This car has a turning radius that is 20% smaller than other cars in it’s class.” The benefit could be something like “Able to squeeze into tight parking spaces passed over by other cars.” Car stats bore me, but I live in LA so being able to have more parking spaces available is a huge benefit for me.

Delivery

Now that you understand the difference between features and benefits, it’s important to talk about how you deliver those benefits. If your benefit is a reduction in body fat, how do you deliver that result? Is it a one-on-one fitness training program? Is it a food delivery service? A boot camp? A supervised diet? There’s lots of ways to deliver this benefit.

The trap is that it’s easy to talk about delivery and so we tend to focus on that instead of what people will get out of what you are delivering. It’s easy and concrete to talk about 6 sessions, an e-book or a box of printed material. We are also familiar with how we do what we do so it feels comfortable talking about it. It’s also a way to duck out on having to share what results people get from working with you.

A lot of sales experts say that people don’t care at all about how the result is delivered and that they care about the results you can get for them. I agree to some extent with this idea, but I differ in the degree. People do care about how you deliver, just not as much as they care about the results. I think it’s too black-and-white to say they don’t care. Some people hate the telephone, some people don’t want to travel and some people like to read their information. Other people may want premium level one-on-one service.

What people buy

So what do people actually buy?

Primarily it’s the benefit or result, but in order for them to actually buy it has to be delivered in a way they find appealing or at least acceptable. Don’t fall in the trap of talking too much about how you deliver, but don’t ignore delivery either.

What’s the benefit of one of your products or services? How do you deliver that benefit? Tell me about it in the comments.

Do you have a business or just a product or service?

Do you have a business or just a product or service? What’s the difference?

I have this conversation often with people in one form or another. One of the biggest misconceptions about starting a business is that all you have to do is be great at making your product or delivering your service and you will have a profitable business. If you’ve had your business for more than a few months, you already know this isn’t true. Granted, having a great product or service is probably the single most important part of having a successful business but it is far from the only part. Since I began my business, I’ve changed how I describe what I do because I began to realize that most non-business owners don’t know that there is a lot to do to build a business that has nothing to do with the product or service you offer.

A business is an organization or structure dedicated to selling one or more products or services. A product or service is what a business sells.

Example: A person could be a dog walker, and offer only that service to whomever happens to find them. In contrast, a person could have an entire business built around the basic service of walking dogs. They could have business cards, a brochure and website. They have various packages and payment options. They could promote by speaking, exhibiting at events and by posting on social media.

A business has lots of parts that work together. There are people, areas of knowledge, equipment, physical places, and intangibles like brands or expertise. Early economists called these factors of production, which consisted of land, labor, capital and entrepreneurship.

A business has processes and ways of doing things.

Example: How are new customers signed up? How are customers billed? How are the finances monitored?

A business has various roles people play, even if the roles are all played by one person in a solopreneur business.

Example: In the dog walking business, there is the person or people who actually walk the dogs, the person who does the scheduling, the person who books the appointments, the person who handles paperwork and bookkeeping and the person who promotes the service.

A business engages in promotion and marketing in order to sell the product(s) or service(s) it provides. Part of this promtion is educating customers so they can decide if they want to buy.

A business has proprietary knowledge about how it does things that distinguish it from other businesses that sell the same things. If this is relevant to customers, the business must make sure customers know about it.

Example: I saw an ad recently for a guy who takes small groups of dogs on hikes into nearby nature areas. Technically, he is a “dog walker,” since his basic service is picking the dogs up and getting them out of the house for an outing, but his way of doing it is very different than the typical dog walker and his marketing materials show this difference clearly.

Which do you have: a business or just a product or service? If you see yourself as having just a product or service but want to move up to a full-fledged business, contact me for more information.

Get creative in meeting your customer’s needs

In my last two posts (here and here), I shared some of what I learned at the Overnight Authority event with Adam Urbanski earlier this month. Today’s post is an expansion on one big thing I learned during a sales exercise we did in the workshop.

One of the points that was made during the introduction of the exercise was that our goal was to make a sale. This was a real sales situation, and even though it was an exercise we were obligated to deliver what we sold and pay for what we purchased during the exercise. We could sell anything we could offer that the other person wanted to buy. That opened up all sorts of possibilities such as selling something that you had never sold before, selling something you created on the spot, or selling something completely unrelated to your business. That was really the first lesson of that exercise – if you can help someone or provide something they need and they want to buy it, find a way to deliver it! Don’t let formalities get in your way.

There was no way to get prepared for this exercise, so I didn’t have any of my usual materials in front of me. I was forced to get creative in offering something for sale since I didn’t have any of my packages or products listed in front of me. I listened to my prospect describe her problems and then created something on the spot that I could deliver that I thought would solve her problem. In a way, it was better that I didn’t have my own materials to work from because I was forced to listen and create something that fit rather than try to fit the customer into my pre-defined pacakges.

People really took this and ran with it. One person offered a package that was turned down by her prospect, and she then offered one tip for $25 which was accepted by the happy customer. Another person created a package for her prospect that was something she could do but had never thought to offer in her business because it wasn’t part of her main work. I offered something that I had been thinking about for a while but couldn’t quite put together until I was under fire to do it.

The really big takeaway for me was that yes, it’s great to offer a range of products and services in pre-set packages but it’s also great to wing it when you have the chance to make a sale outside of those packages. Don’t let the fact that they don’t fit a pre-set offering cause a customer you could help slip away. It’s a disservice to you and to the customer.

Aside from just generally thinking differently about creating things to offer for sale, one way I’m going to implement this idea is to be more proactive at offering to create a custom package for someone who I want to work with. If they want to work with me and the issue is simply that I don’t offer a service package that appeals to them, I’m going to ask them “What kind of package would work for you?” and see if we can make it happen.

How can you be more creative at finding ways to offer what your customer wants? Have you ever created an offer on the spot? How did it work? Tell me about it in the comments.

How to Ditch the Overwhelm!

I’ve got something new to share with you!

You know how entrepreneurs spend a lot of their time feeling overwhelmed? By nature, entrepreneurs love ideas. We can come up with them in our sleep – and often do! Most of us have more ideas than we could get to in a lifetime. So what’s the problem?

Well, entrepreneurs also commonly suffer from “bright, shiny object syndrome,” or the tendency to get bored with something before it’s done and jump to the next thing that we’re sure will make us a smashing success.

What happens when an abundance of ideas and bright, shiny object syndrome collide? Lots of things – low income, scattered focus, dissatisfaction with the business, and perhaps the biggest problem:

Overwhelm!

Overwhelm happens when we have too many things going at once and there’s not only more than we can do but more than we can even keep on top of. It’s like a business treadmill – you are running harder and harder but not getting anywhere. It’s impossible to figure out what to work on and you aren’t making the money you want.

The good news is that there is a quick fix! I can help you Ditch the Overwhelm, get focused and get moving toward making profit quickly with a step by step plan.

We’ll work together to figure out what’s the best thing for you to do right now and create a step by step action plan so you know how to move forward. At the end of our short time together, you’ll be clear about what to do first, how to do it and how it will lead to profit.

Sound great? Click here for details, and I hope to help you Ditch the Overwhelm soon!

PS – This program is only available until the end of May, so if you’re interested check it out today.

Sales lessons from a hard exercise

In my last post, I mentioned that I had been to a live training earlier this month with Adam Urbanski called Overnight Authority. I learned so much there that I have several posts lined up and this is the next in the series.

One night of the workshop we had a bonus session that included a sales exercise. A big part of what I learned at the workshop is that sales is what makes a business. All the other things you do serve only to make sales possible and/or more likely. Sales is a real challenge to many solopreneurs because we love what we do and really want to help people. We’d do it for free if we could! But the truth is, without a sale you can’t help anyone. All of the greatness you have to offer is wasted if nobody buys it.

In the first part of the evening, we learned some of Adam’s techniques on consultative selling which is a way of conducting the sales process as a consultation not as a hard sell. Then, we did the next logical thing which is to pair up and try to sell each other something! Gulp. The thing was, this was not a role playing exercise this was for real! If you sold something, you had to deliver and the other person had to pay. There were also no requirement that what you sold had to be something you already offer or even something in your business.

What was hard for me is that when I have a one-on-one sales conversation I go in prepared. I’ve asked a few questions already and have looked at the person’s website. I also have all of my own material – prices, terms, etc in front of me for easy reference. In this conversation, I was totally unprepared! I have to say, I really didn’t want to do this exercise but I had already entrusted Adam with my time and investment so I trusted him here as well.

Here are 3 big lessons I learned from that exercise. Just for the record, I’ve already shared everything with the other people mentioned because it was a learning exercise.

If your prospect says you don’t understand don’t argue! When I was the prospect, my seller argued with me in this manner and all it did was make me dig in even further and argue back even harder. It completely shut off any possibility of us getting to an understanding. It felt condescending and frustrating, especially when the answer I got was way off base from what I wanted to communicate. At this point, my thinking is that if your prospect says you don’t understand, the only logical answer is something like “Can you help me to understand better?”
When you are selling, don’t be too attached to making a sale. I’ve heard several sales professionals say something like “Be committed to helping them make a decision, but not what that decision is.” This feels really good to me and I try to do it. When I was the seller, I felt close to making a sale at one point and got a little too over-eager and started spewing words out. When I was the prospect, I sensed this from my seller and it made me not want to buy anything that might be offered.
Finally, don’t be afraid to wing it! If someone is sitting in front of you with a problem that you can solve and they want to hire you, find a way to make it work. Lots of people in the room made sales that night of things that didn’t even exist when the exercise began. Create a package on the spot or do something unconventional. Don’t let a chance to serve someone else get away because you don’t have a package that fits.

What is your favorite piece of sales wisdom? How did you learn it? Tell me about it in the comments.