Archive for September, 2009

Now What?

Now that you’ve thought about your marketing (read the last post for more info), and maybe even talked to some of your clients and asked them how they want you to talk to them, what’s the next step?

Finding a Way to Talk to Your Clients that also Makes Sense for You

The best marketing sports two simple features: it communicates to your customers and prospects in a way they understand and is convenient for them, and it actually gets done.

For it to get done, my theory is, you need to enjoy doing it. For this to happen, you need to know some things about yourself: Do you get energy from being with people, or get energy from being alone?

If You Get Energy From Being with People

If this is you, your marketing needs to include interacting with people directly: networking, joing groups, visiting your people face to face or talking to them on the phone; perhaps speaking to groups.

If You Get Energy From Being Alone

Your marketing must include some alone time. Blogging, Twitter, or updating your Facebook business Page, all in the quiet and solitude of your home or office, will give you the opportunity to recharge your batteries while you are communicating with your clients.

A Secret

If you get energy from being with people, you are an extravert. If you re-energize by being alone, you are an introvert. To find out which one you are (plus a lot of other useful information), take this test. Once you know your personality type, here are some marketing suggestions based on what type you are.

I Invite Comments

1. What is your personality type?

2. What marketing has worked best for you?

3. Are you going to try some different marketing, now that you know more about your personality?

Tags: Extravert, Introvert, Marketing

The theme for this week’s blog post (I know, it’s already Friday- I had to think a lot about this first), is marketing.

Revolutionary Idea

What if you picked a marketing activity you enjoyed doing?

What might that activity be?

Luckily for us, the Internet has expotentiallyexpanded our marketing choices. You can blog, tweet, have a Facebook fan page for your business, arrange in-person groups via MeetUp, write articles showcasing your knowledge, link with other business contacts on LinkedIn … but where’s an overworked business owner supposed to jam all this activity into our already over-scheduled days?

A Different Way to Think About This Problem

Instead of fretting about which kind of marketing to do, take one step back and come at the question from the opposite direction.

Since marketing in its purest form is nothing more complicated than communication between your business and your clients and prospects, ask yourself: how do your clients want you to talk to them?

Better yet, ask your clients.

Comments I’d love to read:

1. You talked to your clients and here’s what they said.

2. You talked to your clients and here’s what you’re doing as a result.

Tags: Customers, Marketing, Relationships, Social Networking, Success

One Small Step for the Number-Phobic…

Here’s a small thing you can do if you have your own business and don’t like to look at your numbers.

1. Pick your best client

2. Get out your calculator and add up how much he/she spent with you in 2009 so far.

What this Number might tell you

1.  Does this best client represent a big chunk of your whole business? Like more than one-tenth (10%)? You don’t have to know the exact percentage of your sales that this client represents. You don’t even need to calculate it. You can judge this from how much time you spend with them. If this one client makes up a lot of your total sales, this can be risky.  This is a good thing to know. Proceed to number two for the fix.

2. Whether this client makes up too big a portion of your total sales or not, it might be nice to find more of them. How did they find you, or how did you find them? Can you do the same thing again and find more clients?

3. Have you said thank-you lately to this client who loves you and your work?

What a single Number can tell you

See how knowing this one number can give you a lot of information about your business?

You can say one thing for sure about the language of Number; it can say a lot with one little numeral.

Comments

Your business just spoke to you. And you heard and comprehended what it said.

I welcome comments about what you found out about your best customer, and what you did after you understood the information.

Tags: Business Numbers, Numbers

Listening to your business. No, it doesn’t speak English

Your business talks to you. It’s true. It doesn’t speak English (or Spanish, or any other language with words); it speaks Number.

Number is a different language.  That’s why it can be challenging to learn, just as learning any new language would be. And it’s harder for some people than others.

But we don’t usually stigmatize people for taking longer to learn a foreign language the way we seem to stigmatize those who don’t catch on to Number as fast. Even though Number has a different “alphabet,” like Russian and Chinese. If you were studying either of these languages, you’d give yourself a break if you weren’t fluent after week #1.

If you happen to be right-brained, or you just got off on the wrong foot in elementary school math class, you may have contracted full-blown Number phobia.

If you work for someone else, you can charm someone into balancing your checkbook and handling any other Number transactions for you. But if you own your own business, Number phobia can cause great pain, leading sometimes to the actual death of your business.

What to do if you have Number Phobia

If this is you, here’s your assignment for this week:

1. Remember that learning how to understand Number is the same as learning a new language.

2. Take the rest of the week off from condemning yourself.

3. Return here later in the week for a simple, small step you can take to begin understanding what your business is telling you in Number.

If you have a difficult time looking at, or understanding your business numbers, I invite you to comment. What have you done so far to overcome this issue?

Tags: Business Numbers, Number, Numbers

Tags: Business Plans, Publishing a Book, writing