True Personal Value Increases True Market Value

March 11th, 2010

What’s the one thing that you excel in, but you never had to go to school for, attend a seminar for, or sweat your way through testing for?  Do you have a talent that you can’t remember learning, and that was never a struggle for you?  Something you would do for free, just because you enjoy being good at it?  That’s your true value.

Often, it’s easy to believe that if something is easy for you to do, then surely, no one else can benefit from it, or would want it.  We’ve been conditioned to believe that we can only use the things that we’ve worked for, or paid for, for profit.

What’s important to remember here is that what comes easily for you might be highly valuable to, and worthy of payment from, other people.

My friend Veronica is a good example.  Before I had assistants to help me with administrative tasks, my desk was a paperwork wasteland.  When Veronica called on me, early in my career, she found my desk buried beneath a clutter of papers.

Veronica tackled my messy office, and in what seemed like the blink of an eye, it was transformed from a disaster zone to a well-organized, functioning space.  My wonderful friend had offered her true value, her talent, to me in a way that not only helped me, but left me awestruck with her ability.

Organization is not impossible for me, but it’s not easy, either.  Tears of gratitude filled my eyes when Veronica had finished with my office space.  The value that she presented me with was immeasurable.

As I explained earlier, sometimes it’s difficult for the giver of true value to understand the impact they can have.  Veronica seemed taken aback with my pouring out of emotion.  She looked at me, as if to say, “What’s the big deal?”  She had difficulty accepting my thanks.

You can help yourself to market your true value when you:

• Identify your inborn gifts and talents; the things that come easily to you.

• Combine those true values into a package that you can offer to the world – something unique that offers significant benefit.

• Identify a genuine need that can be fulfilled with your true value.

Now, this might seem like a speech you got back in grammar school or high school, but it’s still important to remember:  don’t choose paths because they’re “cool,” or because they’ve been successful for others.  You’ve got to stay true to you.

Don’t think that your abilities are insignificant just because they come easily to you.  In fact, your thinking should be moving in the opposite direction.  You were given your talents by God for a reason.  When you use them purely and fully, you automatically offer something that cannot be duplicated by another.

Because you are unlike any other person on Earth, your unique abilities can be combined to equal a unique contribution.  Everyone’s looking for the next big thing.  Seems to me that if you want to find something unique and valuable, you need only to look inside yourself.

Bernadette Doyle is a marketing specialist who helps entrepreneurs become client magnets and attract a steady stream of their ideal clients. She publishes a free, weekly newsletter with invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease – register at http://www.clientmagnets.com

True Personal Value Increases True Market Value

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Posted in Business Plans, Business Success, Marketing, Motivation, Personal Productivity, Small Business Marketing, Success Secrets, Systems | No Comments »

Three Tips for Increasing Productivity

March 5th, 2010

If you’re serious about getting more things done, it’s time for a major mindshift. It’s time to stop being a “doer” and start being a “producer.”  Here are 3 tips to get you started on changing your mindset to accomplish more in your life.

1.  Change Your Mindset and View Yourself Differently
Before you can make a change in how you run your business, you must first see yourself differently. Rather than clinging to the idea that you have to do everything yourself, consider how Oprah Winfrey runs her show. Can you imagine Oprah sitting down and calling prospective guests to book them for future shows?

Of course not! She has producers to line up each show’s content. Those producers, in turn, break down what needs to be completed and assign it to other people. They understand that Oprah brings unique skills to the show and it would be a waste to have her booking talent. Surrounding herself with great teams of producers to get things done is one reason Oprah has become so successful.

2.  Visualize and Plan Your Team
Even before you hire some help, you need to visualize and plan your team.   Think about those big projects you don’t have time to start. Outline how you’d like them to be. Break down those projects into smaller bites and imagine what kind of person could take them over. Imagine how much more smoothly your business would run if you weren’t taking care of every detail.

That’s an important point to reach, you need to visualize and plan what you can delegate.   Let go of the idea you’re the only one who can do every little task. That change shifts you from being the doer to being the producer.

3. Start Delegating
Once you’ve visualized and planned your team, start making it your reality. Get serious about breaking down the work you’re doing now into individual tasks. Let go of the idea that you have to do it all. Choose a task that’s wasting your time, that you don’t enjoy doing and that someone else could do easily. Find a way you can afford to have someone else to do it.

Take another look at projects you’ve been putting off. Determine what’s keeping you from getting started. Decide which pieces someone else should be doing. Visualize the project from start to finish, the way a producer would do. And then find the help you need to get it done. That’s the only way your business, and your income, can expand to the next level.

Being in business for yourself can be overwhelming, especially when you’re stuck in “lone ranger” mode. Allow yourself to visualize what life would be like with a competent team helping to achieve your goals. Learn to look at your business the way a producer would, and you’ll finally experience the satisfaction of getting it all done.

Bernadette Doyle is a small business marketing expert. Get more tips and advice at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Three Tips for Increasing Productivity

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Do You Need To Change Direction?

March 4th, 2010

You’ve worked hard to define yourself and your business. You have distinguished your area of expertise and identified your niche – and business is good.

But, somewhere along the line, as you work within your niche, serving those specific clients who are benefiting from your services and products, your business may start shifting in a slightly different direction. Keep a look out for this shift in direction.  It can be a very positive step – presenting more opportunities available than you’d realized.

If this starts to happen in your business, it maybe time to reposition yourself. If you’re noticing that your skills and expertise lend themselves beyond the niche you created, don’t be afraid to refocus your vision.

For example, a client of mine initially established herself as an expert in helping working moms and moms who wanted to start a business.

She noticed the same things coming up over and again in her target market – guilt, confidence, work-life balance. She did a lot of research and gathered a lot of information because she was coaching, mentoring, and advising her clients.

Although she was very successful and very satisfied with her business, she uncovered an opportunity for corporate work. Though she is still working within her area of expertise by offering workshops and services for working mothers, the corporate niche is totally different.

What she is selling to companies isn’t mom coaching. She’s selling them the end result of retaining working mothers. This is a really important distinction. She isn’t abandoning what she’s been doing with her coaching of moms, but the corporate client is really a new direction. In essence, she has two clients – the corporation who hires her and the end user, the moms that she’s already been working with in the other part of her business.

In this case, the opportunity to expand and work outside her niche led her to reposition herself to accommodate these additional opportunities.

In some cases, you might find that certain aspects of your niche aren’t working for you. This is another instance of the need to reposition your business in order to find a more suitable direction.

Another of my clients spent more than 18 months putting large tenders together to submit to government organizations, where a particularly strict type of bidding process is required by law. It’s very difficult to establish personal relationships that lead to a sale in that type of environment. Though he’s had some success in his business, he began weighing whether it was worth the enormous amount of effort he was putting in. All of the bidders are essentially on the same level, with no personal rapport with the potential client to help win the bid.  He was essentially operating in a buyer’s market. And that is not where you want to be. To attract clients, you need to turn that traditional sales dynamic on its head so that you’re operating in a seller’s market. You want to be the one with all of the advantage, and position yourself so that there is no competition. In his case, looking to private companies with whom he can establish relationships would put him in a better position.

Look for markets where it will be easier for you to build those personal relationships, and where you can position yourself as an expert.

Whether you have noticed the opportunity for additional business, or recognized the need to shift from your current niche, repositioning is an excellent way to expand your options.

You can still work within your area of expertise, but by repositioning yourself, those same skills could be very valuable on a larger scale.

Bernadette Doyle is a small business marketing expert. Get more tips and advice at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Do You Need To Change Direction?

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Posted in Business Networking, Business Plans, Business Success, Marketing, Niche Marketing, Small Business Ideas, Success Secrets | 1 Comment »

Determine Your TRUE VALUE

February 26th, 2010

What comes easily to you?  The thing that you believe is just common sense, is in fact, the most important thing for you to share with the world. We all have things which come easily to us, in fact so easily, that we fail to recognize that other people can have difficulty doing the very same thing. To unleash the power of your online business, you must determine what this thing is. This is your unique value proposition.   Your unique value proposition is your ‘Gold’. It is what you can leverage to create and grow an online business; a proven method of boosting your business’s bottom line, without boosting your required long term time investment.

Try This Brainstorming Exercise: Draw a large square on a blank piece of paper. The square should fill the entire page. Within the square, draw two lines dividing the space into four quarters. In the top left hand quadrant, write the words, ‘hard to learn’. In the top right hand quadrant, write the words, ‘easy to learn but hard to do.’ In the bottom left hand quadrant, right the words, ‘hard to learn, easy to do.’ And, in the bottom right hand corner, right the words, ‘so easy to learn and easy to do.’

Now, write thoughts that come into your mind about your skill sets, placing them into the appropriate quadrants:

• Hard to Learn - What seems extremely challenging for you to learn? If it’s hard to learn and you have to study for years to do it. And, it takes a fair about of effort and focus to do it.

• Easy to Learn, Hard to Do – Filling paperwork. This task is easy to accomplish, yet hard to make yourself do it, at least it is for most people.

• Hard to Learn, Easy to Do – This would be something which is hard to learn initially, but easy to do once you learn it as you love it.

• So Easy to Learn, Easy to Do – This is something you wouldn’t dream of charging people for as you get so much pleasure doing it.

Now that you have completed the exercise, consider where the most money to be made in the world would fall in terms of categories. Where most of the world thinks that there is money to be made is in the hard to learn, hard to do quadrant. The assumption is often made that anything which is hard to learn will have less competition, causing the compensation to be greater.

But, your true value, the area in which you can make the most difference for yourself and for the rest of the world, is the place that comes most easily to you. That’s where your natural talent lies. And, that is the quadrant which you should be operating out of.

Now that you know what your true values are, you can align your online business with them. By doing the brainstorming you’ll discover your unique value proposition, and you will be taking the first step toward boosting your business’s annual revenues.

Bernadette Doyle is a marketing specialist who helps entrepreneurs become client magnets and attract a steady stream of their ideal clients. She publishes a free, weekly newsletter for trainers, speakers, coaches, consultants, complementary therapists and solo professionals. If you’d like to receive invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease, register at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Determine Your TRUE VALUE

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Recognize Your Niche

February 23rd, 2010

Are you waiting for that “aha!” moment to finally figure out your special role on the world’s stage? Do you expect that one day your specialty will just hit you like a bolt of lightning?

If you’re waiting for the light bulb to turn on, you may end up sitting in the dark for a very long time. More often than not, identifying your niche and your specialty is more like a silhouette emerging through the fog.

In my own experience, picking a niche always comes about gradually. You’re working on one thing, and then another thing similar to that, and before long, you are being associated with a specific specialty or setting.

You probably don’t even realize it as it happens because the process of creating your niche is steady and progressive – the feeling isn’t at all like your expectations. No fireworks, no clashing symbols.

The whole evolution of my own niche probably took 12 to 18 months. I didn’t just ask myself one day, “I wonder what my niche is?” and the next day decide to be a cold calling expert. And, once I became a cold calling expert, I didn’t stop there.

You need to just keep going and continue defining yourself in your business. Ask yourself, “What is it that people are struggling with that I can help them with?”

I honed in on the area of appointment setting and appointment making. At that time, no one else was really offering courses on that specific topic. That helped me to stand out in the marketplace. Part of the reason that I stuck with that niche was that the market kept me on track.

I’m not where I am today because I decided at a very early age that I wanted to be an appointment setting expert. If there is a demand for what you are doing, the market will tell you whether you should continue in that direction. It just may not be a direction you ever saw yourself heading in.

Keep it simple.  Look around you and ask yourself, “What am I seeing that’s coming up as a problem for people time and time again?”

You can look at the needs of existing clients, read trade magazines for your industry or visit online forums to find similar topics that come up again and again.

There will be some that you’re drawn to and others where you don’t have that same attraction. Follow up on the ones that you feel a pull toward and see what happens.

Don’t confuse identifying a niche with “what’s my purpose in life?” That is a much bigger question. You are a magnificent being with so much to do on this earth. It’s unlikely you’ll be able to boil it all down into one sentence.

But, that’s actually exactly what you need to do when you pick a niche. Boil it down. Pick one phrase. “I help ____ to achieve or to solve ____.” Maybe you help moms who want to start their own business, or need another example here.

If you’re approaching your niche as a life purpose question, it’s going to be nearly impossible to answer. Take yourself off the hook and take that pressure off yourself.

Your niche will evolve with your business. Again, learn from my situation. I didn’t stop at being a cold calling or appointment setting expert. Today I’m teaching people how to find new business. The way in which I’m helping people and the types of people I’m helping is completely different from what I started out with.

So, don’t be concerned that what you decide today is irreversible. The market may take you in another direction over the course of time.

Approach finding your niche more pragmatically. Identify the area where you think there could be demand and where you feel you’ve got some expertise and can add some value. You don’t have to have it all perfectly figured out from the outset.

Bernadette Doyle is a small business marketing expert. Get more tips and advice at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Recognize Your Niche

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Posted in Business Networking, Business Plans, Marketing, Niche Marketing, Success Secrets, target audience | 4 Comments »

Make More Sales By Gaining Trust and Confidence

February 22nd, 2010

You know that you’re the best, but your customers need to believe that too. There are several ways for you to gain their confidence and trust so you can earn their business.

Sway potential clients in your favor by taking away the risk of doing business with you and making your offer irresistible.

•  Offer a  guarantee. Personally, I have a guarantee when I’m offering my products or workshops. There is some grey area here, however. Some of my higher-value coaching services are more time intensive for me and don’t include a guarantee. The reason I don’t offer one is that I don’t want to give people an opt-out clause. When these high-caliber people step up in a big way and want to get the results that a high level coaching from me can deliver, I want to know that they’re fully in the game.

It’s a big challenge to make a massive transformation or a big leap in business. You don’t want clients like these to be running for the door or the emergency exit the moment the going gets tough. So, in some cases, guarantees are counter-productive and could actually end up helping clients resist what you’re offering.

So, you have to decide whether or not a guarantee is right for your market.

•  Alleviate their fears. Sometimes people won’t sign on or purchase something because they’re skeptical that what worked for other people won’t work for them. You need to show them how, even if they may have failed in the past, this time they will succeed. Include additional follow-ups or features that your competition doesn’t provide to show that you can help them accomplish their goal or fulfill their need. Be creative and really give some thought as to how you can remove the risk for your potential clients.

•  Make your offer irresistible. Pile on so much value that there is just no way they can lose. Include all the things your targeted clients could possibly want so that they just can’t pass your offer by.

There are few different ways to do this. Quantify the benefits of your services. For example, if you’ve got a program where for a $1,000 investment, your client will be able to make or save $10,000 in the next three months, you need to tell them that. Don’t assume that they will figure that out. Quantify the benefits specifically.

If there isn’t an easy financial comparison in your business, you do need to dig a little because this can really help you and help your clients. They will be able to wrap their heads around what you’re offering and make an informed decision because you’re giving them all the information they need.

The more you quantify, make your offer irresistible, and remove risk, the more successful you’re going to be.

Bernadette Doyle is a marketing specialist who helps entrepreneurs become client magnets and attract a steady stream of their ideal clients. If you’d like to receive invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease, register at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Make More Sales By Gaining Trust and Confidence

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Posted in Business Success, Cash Flow, Closing The Sale, Customer Loyalty, Customer Retention, Marketing, Money Making Ideas, Strategies To Keep Good Customers, Success Secrets | 2 Comments »

The Key To Setting and Getting The Right Price

February 20th, 2010

If you want to have a successful business that serves clients, sooner or later money has to change hands. And that means sooner or later you’re going to have to say, “This is what I’m offering you and this is the price.”

If you have a problem with that, you’re not alone. I see a lot of people missing this step when they map out their business plan. You shouldn’t misstep here though, because it is an obvious and necessary detail. Without it, you are not going to be putting any money in your bank account.

The only thing that will put money into your bank account is you showing up and saying to that customer, “Here it is. Here is what it costs. Here is how to pay.”

This can be a difficult thing for people to do sometimes. But, really, there is no reason that you should be afraid to ask for the money. Maybe you’re frightened of the possible rejection. Maybe you’re frightened of negotiation and the possibility that you’ll have to say no. Maybe you’re afraid to actually set the price in stone.

If you set up your price before you even begin taking on clients, there isn’t anything to be concerned about.

Approach this detail from its end point. Design your total client-getting system so that it takes you all the way through to collecting the money. In fact, what I really want you to do is start with collecting the money and then work backward – detailing all of the steps that need to happen in order to get to that point.

You simply cannot deliver outstanding results for your clients if you’re worried about money.

So, it’s important that you begin with the end in mind. Be focused on your end point.  What type of clients do you ultimately want to attract? From there you can begin to develop lead generation systems that will attract the right type of people. People who will be raising their hands, wanting in on your offerings. They won’t be haggling with you about price because you’ve done your research. You know that your services are valuable to them.

This pricing determination has to start before you generate a single lead. By the time you begin your lead generating, you should know how you are going to convert clients and how much you are going to charge them.

So, in essence, you are making decisions from your destination, not from your starting point. This is something that I’ve learned in my own business. When I’m evaluating anything now, I make my decision based on where I want to be 12 months from now.

Something might look like a huge investment to me today. But I know that I’m growing and stepping into something bigger and that I’m going to be in a completely different place 12 months from now.

I know this because I’ve doubled or tripled my income every year for the past three years. When I view something from that destination, something that might look like a huge investment now is actually quite miniscule.

So, make decisions from your destination. Know how much you will charge for your services. Know how you will bill your clients. Get good at asking for money. It is in your best interest and theirs. You can’t treat your clients as well if you’re constantly worried about money.

Start with the details of collecting the money and you will no longer wonder, “How can I ask for this much money from a client?”

The Key To Setting and Getting The Right Price

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Posted in Business & Money, Business Plans, Business Success, Cash Flow, Marketing, Money Making Ideas, Success Secrets | 2 Comments »

Building A Sustainable Business

February 17th, 2010

Have you ever watched the television series, The Apprentice? In one episode, each team was asked to create a business from scratch.

The interesting thing is that neither of the businesses created were really sustainable. Why? Because each team set themselves up in a business that revolved around them selling time.

One team did face painting; the other set up a gardening business. After each team had done the task for a couple of days, they counted how much money they had made. The actual figures aren’t important, because the money didn’t really count for anything. Both teams had to use the bulk of their income to pay employees for the time they spent performing tasks. So, neither of those businesses turned out to be profitable.

When Sir Alan Sugar, the host of the show, didn’t haul them over the coals more for it, I realized how strong this whole concept of selling time is in society.

As a business owner, you don’t want to follow this type of thinking. Doing this will not help you to build a profitable, sustainable business.

The solution is to build an information empire. The whole point of an information empire is that you don’t want to be selling your time. You do want to repackage your know-how and your expertise into products and programs that don’t require all of your attention all of the time. You may have to spend some time delivering programs, but not the bulk of your time.

This is the way to build a sustainable business. Because the paradox of selling your time is that the more successful you are, the less time you have. And, while you can always find more clients, you cannot create more time, no matter how hard you try.

But, with an information empire, time is no longer an issue. It will become possible for you to create more money, regardless of how much time you have. You simply need to stop linking the money you make to the time and effort you put in to your business. Once you truly understand this, creating more money will become easier to do.

It can be difficult to accept this concept. You might be thinking, “I don’t know that you can always get money. Making money has not been that easy for me.”

But the truth is, there is always money flowing. Even in this current economy, with the credit crunch and the recession, money is still flowing. It’s just flowing in different places from where it was flowing previously. It is up to you to find the source of that stream and collect it.

The key is to carefully examine your business to find ways of serving many clients at one time, rather than serving each client individually. Once you develop the products and services that allow you to do this, your business will be fully sustainable, without you having to wish for more hours in the day.

Bernadette Doyle is a small business marketing expert. Get more tips and advice at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Building A Sustainable Business

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Posted in Business & Money, Business Plans, Business Success, Cash Flow, Direct Marketing, Email Marketing, Marketing, Motivation, Small Business Ideas, Success Secrets, Systems | 1 Comment »

Real Life Success Stories Call

February 16th, 2010

People ask me all the time ‘Bernadette, I can see that your marketing strategies clearly work for YOU, but what about other people? Do your techniques work for them?’

The answer is ABSOLUTELY these strategies work for all types of businesses, and I’m ready to PROVE it to you with a special ‘Success Stories’ call I’m hosting this Wednesday 17th February

Get ready to meet:

• The mother of 3 who launched a new program and generated €30,000 in just 67 days (without even having a website!)

• The successful business owner who was frustrated with the margins in his traditional business model and approached me to help him repackage his expertise into a product that he could sell on ‘auto-pilot’. Sales so far stand at £75,000….

• The former financial adviser who started a business from home that now generates £100,000 a year – even though she works just 25 hours a week and balances running her business with looking after her young son….

Results like these are QUANTUM LEAPS, not incremental gains, and we’ll show you EXACTLY how they did it on this special call: http://clientmagnets.com/successstories

Register NOW to join us. You’ll be inspired by the amazing results they have achieved – in record time.

See you on the call!

http://clientmagnets.com/successstories

Real Life Success Stories Call

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Posted in Advertising, Business Plans, Business Success, Home Business, How To Make Money, Law Of Attraction, Marketing, Niche Marketing, Online Marketing, Sales Motivation, Success Secrets, Teleseminars | No Comments »

Leverage Yourself to Keep Clients Satisfied

February 14th, 2010

Take a look at your calendar of appointments right now. If you’ve been applying the Client Magnets approach, you shouldn’t have much available space in that diary. Hopefully, you have a pipeline of prospective business that keeps your book filled.

So, getting clients isn’t a problem for you. That’s a nice situation to be in, isn’t it?

From the outside, it looks fine to be that busy. You may even be getting a decent daily rate for your time. The problem is, though, that while your client list continues to grow, the amount of time that you have to serve those clients does not.

Once you’ve gotten new clients to sign on, you’ve got to deliver results for them. And as your calendar fills up, it’s not uncommon to feel as if there isn’t enough of you to go around. You may find yourself thinking that there aren’t enough hours in the day to meet all of your clients’ needs. You may think the only solution is to do more work, to spend more time at it.

When you get to this point, you’re so busy trying to keep the wheels turning that the idea of having one more thing to do is unbearable. To prevent your business from reaching this unmanageable stage, act now to start building your information empire.

As more people approach you about your services and want to know more about what you can offer, the more important it becomes to figure out how to duplicate and leverage yourself in order to meet their needs.

I’ve heard too many people say, “I just want to focus on getting the clients in. When I’ve got enough clients, then I’ll start focusing on the products, or on automating the sales, or on setting up the ecommerce site.” But you don’t want to let your business get to that point. You want to act now.

You need to design a workable, customized roadmap, one that will get you from that situation to an information empire that will have you earning money in your sleep. A business in which you produce revenue without having to physically get up and see clients every day.

Think very carefully about your business offerings. Look closely at your products or services, and determine which ones can be repackaged to reach more clients simultaneously. Perhaps you’re planning a live event that can be recorded and sold as a CD on your website. Hire a virtual assistant to handle admin tasks so you can concentrate on the creative aspects of your work. Find the thing that you do best, and focus on that.

You have complete control over this. Your awareness, your decisions, and your creativity are the resources that will help you to deliver results that are not dependent on your time and how much you work.

Your willingness and ability to look at the situation differently will allow you to meet the needs and expectations of all of the clients who are anxiously awaiting your help.

Bernadette Doyle is a small business marketing expert. Get more tips and advice at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Leverage Yourself to Keep Clients Satisfied

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