Client Magnets Official Blog

Archive for the ‘Personal Productivity’ Category

When you’re running a one-day course, it’s important to understand group dynamics. In a one-day course, you must build rapport among attendees quickly so you can proceed with the underlying message of your course. Building rapport quickly is easiest when you have a little help.

Attendees’ Mindsets Upon Entering an Event
When attendees come to a course or event, they typically enter the event feeling a bit vulnerable or defensive. Your attendees may be worried that they’re going to be put on the spot, embarrassed, or humiliated. They worry that they may lack knowledge on a particular subject, and that lack of knowledge is going to be revealed. In business courses, attendees may be sent by managers and have even less confidence in their knowledge or attending an event. In other words, most attendees are a bundle of nerves at the beginning of an event. In a one-day course, you must overcome this initial discomfort quickly so that you can give attendees something valuable they can take away from the event.

Pre-Event Mingling
One way in which you can begin building the rapport and breaking through people’s insecurities is provide them with an opportunity to mingle prior to the starting of the event. Have coffee or snacks set up outside of the room prior to the session, and provide a comfortable area for people to sit and mingle. A breakout room where people can chat and interact with one another is a great criteria to include when you’re selecting a venue. This gives people an opportunity to overcome a little reticence before entering the event, and they’ll be more comfortable upon entering the room.

Bring an Assistant
At the beginning of an event, you’re focused on a thousand details. You’ve got to register all of your attendees. Your attendees may have questions, or needs that must be addressed. You may find that your attendees are too hot or too cold, and the temperature needs to be adjusted. What happens if the coffee isn’t ready, or if you run into a problem with registration or setting up the room? At the beginning of an event, you want to be focusing on the event; not the minutiae.

If possible, bring an assistant to help you manage these details. The assistant can help with registration, make sure everybody has their badges, check with the hotel about coffee, deal with temperature, and generally answer questions. A good assistant can also introduce attendees to one another and get them chatting; raising their comfort level and dispelling their initial fears. This frees you up to chat with attendees prior to the beginning of the event, or simply focus on the event itself.

The Secret to a Successful One-Day Event
The secret to a successful one-day event is to overcome attendees’ initial discomfort fast and build a rapport. This is easiest if you bring a good assistant who can help you field questions and concerns, and facilitate conversation among attendees. The right assistant can make your life a lot easier!

Bernadette Doyle created Client Magnets Ltd to help self-employed people solve one of their biggest business problems: attract a steady stream of clients. If you’d like to receive invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease, register at http://www.clientmagnets.com

There are no stupid questions. The only stupid question is the one that isn’t asked. Whether you’re just starting out or trying to grow your business to even greater heights, I’m sure you have many questions about your next steps.  Usually, the questions that come into your mind are more concrete in nature: Who is my audience? Where should I open my business? How should I advertise?

Good questions, but there are others that you may not think to ask – of yourself and about yourself. These questions revolve around the person you need to be in order to achieve the success you want.  These questions are so important in your journey of success.  This week I invite you to get personal.  Look within yourself by considering these 7 questions.

Think about them before answering them, and be sure to answer them honestly.  These are the same personal questions I continue to ask myself.  These are the questions that help me to propel my business higher and higher every year.  I promise you, spending a little focused time here, will reap you great rewards …

Q1. Are you setting your goals according to what you truly want or what you think you should get? If your perspective is based on what you think you can do or have to do, you’re limiting your business potential. Set your goals based on what you truly want to achieve.

Q2. Do you have a burning desire? When you set out to do something you’ve never done, you are bound to encounter obstacles and hurdles. A burning desire will motivate you to overcome them rather than quitting because the going gets tough.

Q3. Where do you want to be? Design your business on your terms. The lifestyle you want to live, how much vacation you want to take, how many hours you want to work are totally up to you. Map these things out in advance so you can determine how to get there.

Q4. Are you setting the right goals? Setting goals that excite and challenge you will keep you from becoming lazy or complacent. Be careful not to set goals that are so overwhelming that they paralyze you with fear.  Keep a balance.

Q5. What do you need to let go of? When you move from one level to another, in life and in business, you have to leave some things behind. It could be a habit, a former acquaintance or a work pattern, but the more old things you carry with you, the harder it is to climb. Let go of the things that hold you back.

Q6. Who do you need to be in order to do this? How you act and react is just as, perhaps even more important, than what you do. Take notice of your habits and your surroundings. Ask yourself if the person you need to be to achieve your goals would live and act this way.

Q7. What is the one critical skill you need? Learning to sell is the most critical skill in any business. The most important investment you can make in yourself is learning to sell one-to-one. Make the conscious commitment to making yourself the best salesperson your business could have.

Asking yourself these personal questions and revealing your personal, honest answers will give you insight on what you need to learn and do to achieve your goals.

Never stop asking yourself questions. Every answer will take you further and further on the road to your success.

How many things do you have to do today?  Or this week?  How many of those things are springboards for the bigger and better things that are waiting on the other end of your procrastination?  The things that are going to lead you and your business to satisfying success!

Often, many of us feel overwhelmed with all of the things we need to do by allowing the end results of a virtual to-do list mill around in our heads.  Maybe your current brain-contained list sounds a little like this:

• build a website
• schedule a teleseminar
• research trade magazines
• start outsourcing – find a VA

How many times have these items (or similar items) drifted around the outside of your brain, bouncing off the inside of your skull, clouding your view of current events, and dampening your motivation?

If these words in any way resonate with you, let me share with you my prescription for de-cluttering your head and getting things done.

In order for any grand task to be accomplished, it must first be dissected into small, manageable task chunks.  For instance, building a website might involve defining your website budget, asking business associates for webmaster recommendations, interviewing copywriters, and choosing styles for the individual pages.  And the best way to break that large task into smaller tasks, without further cluttering your brain?  On paper.

To-do lists are the ultimate back-patters.  Think about it.  How good do you feel when you accomplish something that you’ve been putting off?  When you can check an item off of a list, no matter how small, you’ll experience that feeling, and will, in turn, feel motivated to do it again and again…ultimately accomplishing the large task.

Here are some tips for making a list that will work for you:

• Keep the end in mind, and only include tasks that will contribute to that end.  For instance, don’t commit to writing a free report just because it sounds intriguing to write a free report, or because you’re proficient at writing reports.  Everything on your list should contribute to your desired result.

• Remember to delegate, wherever you can.  And mark that delegation on your paper!

• Start with the items that you feel most confident in completing. If you’re most proficient in research, hit the internet and get to know some webmasters.  The quicker you can get that first checkmark, the quicker you’ll fuel your own motivation to tackle the tasks that aren’t as simple.

• View your list-making as a brain dump. Give your tasks to the paper, and envision space clearing in your head.

• Understand that the writing of the list is a checkable item. Simply making the list brings you one step further to accomplishing your grand tasks.

• Don’t stress over every little detail. As you conquer the notable tasks on your list, small details will fall into place.  For instance, if you’re planning a workshop, you’ll need to establish a date, a time, a method of advertisement, and you’ll have to know its main benefit (the problem it will solve).  You’re not going to have to figure out how coffee will be served or whether lunch will be chicken salad or turkey.  Once your motivation is in full swing, the details will fall into place as you move along.

• Commit to your list. Feel the momentum that’s generated when you accomplish even the smallest of tasks and use that to propel you forward…but remember, you can’t experience that momentum unless you keep the check marks coming.

Some of us are natural list-makers.  Others manage our busy lives in our heads…or at least we like to think we do.  No matter our natural or learned tendencies, there is a wealth of potential just waiting to be realized…on a blank page.

Building your list of potential clients is necessary for landing deals, filling seminars, and realizing the revenue that you desire.  But in order to build your list of interested parties, you must first organize your thoughts into manageable pieces of doable tasks.  There’s no better method for accomplishing this than a list.

You want a list of for-sure, ready-to-buy prospects and clients, right?  Then get your pen, grab your paper and prepare to clean your brain’s RAM with your new list!

When you meet someone for the first time, you have a chance to make a real connection, or you can just pass on your name and be forgotten. Successful relationship-building requires more than just handing out business cards. To build long-lasting, solid and mutually-beneficial relationships, a little homework and a little thoughtfulness goes a long way. Here are my tips for making an impression that brings lasting results …

Research the People You’re Meeting

If you’re meeting someone in particular, research the person or people you’re meeting. Lots of resources exist that can give you both professional and personal reference material. The Web is a source of myriad information, with things like company websites, personal bios, work histories, resumes, portfolios; depending on who you’re meeting, you may be able to find a wide range of information about your contact.

If the Web doesn’t yield any useful information, you could check with the company where your contact works, to see if they have any marketing information containing professional info about your contact. You could also check periodicals, such as magazine stories, newspaper articles or professional interviews. Depending on how public the person is that you’re meeting, you may be able to find everything from the name of a spouse to the first place he or she worked out of college.

Use the information you find when you meet your contact. Talk about common interests, such as being dog owners, adoptive parents, yachters; whatever common bond you can form with your contact can help you form a good relationship. Ask about things near and dear to the person’s heart – not just business talk – and you’re well on your way to forming a real connection.

Ask Questions and Show Genuine Interest

Get to know people to form real connections. Ask questions about everything; not just their professional life, but their personal interests and family life, too. The more you can show that you understand, know and really “get” the person, the better your relationship will be, and the more business opportunities you’re likely to gain. Be a real person to your connections, too – if your new business partner volunteers information about his wife, talk about your wife. The more personal you can make your relationships with people, the better your long-term success with those relationships will be.

Have Fun Making Connections With All People

Everyone can have fun building good relationships – all you have to do is be genuinely interested in people. Enjoy getting to know your business colleagues, or even that woman you met on the street the other day. Forming connections with people can help in all aspects of your life, and even random connections can help your business in unexpected ways. You never know when someone will refer a key contact; an affiliate who may have great products for your prospects, or a business or distributor that could make your product a high-demand success!

Don’t just see people as stepping stones to a better business. Form real, legitimate connections by getting to know people, and I promise good business will naturally follow.

Many entrepreneurs, small business owners and other professionals find themselves focused on earning an income, finding new clients and the day-to-day struggle to survive.  Having enough income and cashflow to grow your business rapidly is not an uncommon problem.  I often hear people talking about their expected income for the next day, weeks or months ahead.  They focus on knowing where the next paycheck is coming from because they don’t have enough confidence in their existing client base or cashflow.   They fear their income will dry up.

Have you ever felt like that?  If that sounds like you, then it’s time to STOP focusing on your income.  It’s time to start focusing on a long-term plan for success and diversification.  But how?  How do you free yourself from the day-to-day financial worry and really start to thrive?

The answer simply lies in starting your own high-end coaching program.   A high-end coaching programme (when designed and delivered the right way) will provide enough guaranteed revenue to enable you to stop worrying about money and be free to focus on your long-term success!

This is how the strategy works …

Sell Once a Year to Generate Guaranteed Revenue

• With your high-end coaching programme, if you market and sell the right way, you will only need to focus on the selling once and then you’re done for the year.

• Create a program with a limited number of spots, and you’ll only have to sell long enough to fill those spots and then you can focus on serving your clients and creating alternate revenue streams.

• Create a program with a fixed time limit, such as my annual programme, and you only have to sell those spots once per year. Then you’ve got the commitment for the income, and you’re free to focus on other areas of your business. No more worrying month-to-month whether you’ll have enough cash for next month; with a high-end coaching program, you can earn enough money to free yourself up for other pursuits.

Free Yourself Up to Look at the Big Picture

One of the biggest benefits for you and your business of creating a high-end coaching program is freeing yourself up to look at the big picture. If you’re like most people, you spend countless hours per week working on finding enough business, and the rest of your time goes to satisfying your existing clients. You never have time to think about the long-term plans for your business, or how to diversify your revenue streams.

Once you have the committed income of a high-end coaching program, you can stop spending so much of your time selling yourself and your services because you have a guaranteed revenue stream. Instead, you can focus on creating the other steps to achieve success in your business, and put together a long-term plan for your business!

In order to truly become successful in your own business, you’ve got to stop focusing on immediate income so you can begin to build a road map for long-term success.   Worrying about your day-to-day income is short-term thinking and can seriously hamper your long-term business success. When you start a high-end coaching program, you get financial commitments for a large portion of your revenue and begin looking at other ways to improve your business success.

So if you want to see an end to your day-to-day financial struggles and the beginning of long-term success, it’s time to start your high-end coaching programme!

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Social networking platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, give you a powerful new tool for connecting with potential prospects, clients, sales leads and new business partners. Because of the nature of social networking, successful social networking is about more than just creating a marketing campaign and sending it out into the ether. Social networking is a social process, and it works best when your personality shines through to your social networking contacts. With the right techniques, you can build your personality on social networking platforms and improve your social networking success.

Offer Advice: One way you can get real personal, real fast with your contacts is to offer advice or even just sympathetic comments. Listen to what people say, and respond to them even when it’s not related to your business. This is a fast and easy way to form personal connections with people, which can lead to unexpected business opportunities. Additionally, by offering advice or sharing information about related things in your life, you’re letting people find out more about you as a person and letting your personality shine through your social networking.

Share Personal Information: Share personal information via Twitter and Facebook. For years, people have had distinctive mindsets of “this is business” and “personal is for friends.” Let your business contacts be your friends, too. When you share information about your diet, or struggling with the conflicts of being a parent and business person, you’re sharing personal information that lets other people see that you’re not just a faceless business – you’re an individual.

The things that you share might resonate with your followers, and give them a reason to keep following you beyond your business information. People are also more likely to refer friends to other friends for business opportunities than to faceless strangers, so if you and your business can become a friend, you’ll get more business opportunities.

Find Ways to Blend Business and Personal: Find ways to blend business and personal updates. If all of your updates are personal, your followers who aren’t particularly interested in your business might just go away. If you share personal information, too, your followers may be interested in you as a person and continue to follow, even if they don’t find your business particularly interesting.

By blending business with personal updates, you can share information about your business without being blatant. For example, you could say something like “Going to Ireland to speak for business, and taking my husband along as an anniversary gift.” This lets people know that you’re a successful business person who travels and speaks, but also shares information about your personal life – that you and your husband have an anniversary.

Be Genuine: The most important thing about sharing your personality through social networking is to be genuine. Don’t give fake updates tailored just to get a reaction from your followers; be forthright and honest, and people will respect your integrity. If you let your personality shine through to your social networking followers, you’ll find yourself with a bigger pool of followers, which potentially gives you more business opportunities.

Bernadette Doyle created Client Magnets Ltd to help self-employed people solve one of their biggest business problems: attract a steady stream of clients. If you’d like to receive invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease, register at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Are you thinking about starting a high-end coaching, consulting or mentoring program? If you’ve got years of accumulated knowledge, a top-level program can be a great way to share that information and help your clients achieve success. It may be time for you to stop running one-day programs and selling books and launch a top-level coaching program, instead. You can provide great results for your clients, and truly share your information in a significant way through these programs.

One-day workshops may be good for clients who have limited time or budget but want to make a difference in their business. In a one-day workshop, you can begin to create the foundation for a successful business owner to make a transition in the way he or she does business. However, a one-day workshop isn’t a magic medium for you to create an army of happy, successful businesspeople. You can only share so much information through a one-day workshop, and you’re essentially always starting clients out on the same basic level; they never progress past the techniques you can cover in a single day.

If you’ve accumulated a lot of knowledge about success in your medium, business or industry, you might consider selling e-books. E-books are typically a compilation of knowledge and techniques that people can use to work on their own and boost their business. E-books can provide a revenue stream, but they’re typically limited in scope.

An e-book cannot begin to convey all the accumulated knowledge and business acumen of years in an industry or field.  Like one-day workshops, an e-book can help build a basic foundation for client success, but many clients never progress past that basic level of knowledge and technique contained in the e-book. This makes e-books great for introductory materials, but ultimately too limited to help clients achieve overall success.

Top-Level Coaching Programs are Great for Client Success
Top-level coaching programs let you really share your accumulated wisdom and business expertise with your clients on a basis that can help them achieve success. Unlike e-books and one-day workshops, a top-level coaching program typically enables you to work with your clients one-on-one to help them develop the skills and techniques specific to their field. You can help your clients set goals and achieve them with your expertise; you’re not just leaving clients alone to blunder around and try to build on a basic foundation.

Top-level coaching programs provide clients with an ideal medium to move beyond the basics and truly grasp success. This is good both for you and your clients. If you’d like to help your clients achieve real results, it’s time to move beyond e-books and one-day workshops and consider launching a top-level coaching program.

Bernadette Doyle created Client Magnets Ltd to help self-employed people solve one of their biggest business problems: attract a steady stream of clients. If you’d like to receive invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease, register at http://www.clientmagnets.com

By declaring your goal, whatever it may be, you are taking the first step toward achieving it. Taking that first step is a good start. But, the very instant you make the decision and take the step, something is going to come up – a challenge that you will likely need to face. It could be a fear, an obstacle, or an external challenge or circumstance you didn’t foresee.

When fears, obstacles and circumstances arise, it’s easy to go into panic mode and contract and retreat. If you do this, you will end up feeling like you’ve tried and failed.  And when you feel like that, you’re actually worse off than when you started. In addition to not achieving the goal that you wanted, you’re also left feeling bad about yourself.

Here’s something truly valuable you need to learn about change. It’s so important to grow bigger than your obstacles or unwanted circumstances.

This is what people who are consistently successful do. They take the step. They still experience the obstacle, fear or external circumstance that comes up. But, instead of shrinking, successful people make a decision. They choose to grow bigger than their problems. They expand – and the solution becomes visible.

Richard Branson, a hugely successful businessman who is admired by many, went through this scenario early in his career. He found a loophole where he didn’t have to pay taxes on the store he owned – or so he thought.

He ended being fined an enormous sum of money, with his only options being to pay his fine or go to prison. Branson made what appeared to be a crazy decision. His solution was to open another store to make more revenue to pay his fines.

In that instant, he chose to grow bigger than his problem.

That is partly what makes him such a successful businessman, and such a tremendous contributor to society on a global scale.

To make an impact like that, you have to learn to be comfortable with managing your fears and challenges. When you encounter an obstacle, grow bigger than the problem.  When you learn to do this, nothing is out of your reach.

When obstacles and challenges and fear come into play, you need to find new ways to handle them. Ask yourself, “What do I need to learn?  What do I need to do differently in order to fully step into my new life?”

The instant you do, the solutions will become visible. They may well have been there all along, but you couldn’t see them before. As you grow bigger than your problems, new opportunities will appear because you are doing things differently.

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Most people think of their business assets in terms of things they own, such as buildings, office equipment or machinery. That’s how an accountant would measure your assets.

To me though, your assets are the things that you currently have in your environment that you could leverage in order to achieve your goals.

It’s important to list out what your assets are. This will help you to realize that the path to your vision, from where you currently are, starts right here.

Start by thinking of your assets more as resources than possessions.

Two of the best assets you can have in your business are people and products.

People
The people that are assets for your business can be grouped into a few different categories.

Your Team
If you have a team of people that work with you, they are a big asset. They are your resource for getting your business going, your products developed, your articles written, your website up and running. Joint venture partnerships are also an asset by helping to increase your exposure.

Your Clients
Any clients that you already have are definitely a tremendous asset. If your vision is to double or triple your income next year, your existing clients are the people that will help you achieve that vision.

Don’t doubt this. If you think you don’t have enough clients or that they wouldn’t be interested or willing to pay as much as you want, those are excuses and obstacles. I guarantee that a percentage of people from your existing client list will be the same people who can help you achieve your revenue goals next year. Maybe not directly; maybe not even as clients. But they are excellent sources for referring business to you, and are also your best case studies and testimonials.

Your existing clients are, without doubt, one of your best assets.

Prospects
Your prospect list is an asset. I am a big proponent of building a list, and have done this for years because it is such an asset in my own business, and will be in yours.

If you’re experiencing a lean period, you can always mail out to your list. Do a special offer to generate some income. Some of those prospects are bound to become existing clients, making them an even greater asset.

Products
Products are an essential asset that can help you achieve your goals. If you don’t have any products yet, you may need to consider creating some. Like your team, they go a long way in generating business and revenue. Create a hard copy or downloadable recording that can serve as an independent, self-supporting source of revenue.

The path to your business vision starts with what is currently around you. There are most certainly opportunities and possibilities in your immediate environment that are tremendous assets to you, and could well be the starting point of this being a dream year for you.

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

As a business marketing tool, you’ll only get out of social networking what you put into it. If you only put a few minutes per day into your social networking efforts and aren’t particularly invested in the platform, you won’t get a lot of return. However, if you put a genuine effort into your social networking, and work to help your associates and contacts, you can get a real return on your investment. One of the best ways to succeed via social networking is to become a great relationship builder.

Building Connections Helps the Relationship Bank Account
Building connections among your social networking community puts a lot into your relationship bank account. You might connect two people who would be great for one another because of a business venture or shared interest, and that might have no direct impact at all on your business. But both of those people will appreciate you connecting them, and that puts a lot into your relationship bank account. The next time one of those people sees something they can do for you, they will, and that can make a great difference to your business.

The Secret to Relationship Building
Relationship building is about paying attention to what people say and do, what they have to offer and what they’re looking for. If you know that John owns a plumbing business and Sally had a pipe burst, you can connect John and Sally and they both benefit. Sally gets her pipe fixed, and John gets some business. They’re both grateful for you because they both benefited, and if they can do something to help you or your business, they’ve got a personal reason to do it.

You don’t just have to connect people who have overlapping niches or a business interest in one another. You can also connect people who have something in common faith-wise, or family-wise; people who have shared interests but don’t know one another. This helps them because it gives them someone else who shares their interest, and it also makes them like you more because you paid attention and noticed this about them. Again, this puts a lot of money in the relationship bank account, even if it doesn’t impact you directly.

To practice good relationship-building skills, try introducing at least four people per day to one another via Twitter or some other social networking platform. If the connection is helpful to them, it puts a lot into the relationship bank account in terms of gratitude to you for connecting them. Even if the connection isn’t helpful, people will appreciate the effort and it will put some money into the relationship bank account because you went out of your way to make an effort on their behalf.

Relationship-building doesn’t have to be a monumental effort. You can do it via Twitter or another social networking platform. All you have to do is pay attention to what people say, and match people who have similar interests or might benefit from knowing one another. It’s a simple process that can yield big benefits for you and your business.

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com