What plans do you have to grow your personal abilities and to address the constraints that may hold both you and the business back?

You may have a business plan to increase the success of your business, but what of your own personal growth? This is the difference between focusing on your outer game and more importantly your inner game. It is said that in broad terms the top 6% of achievers are the ones that have clarity in terms of their long term plans.  In fact in a piece of research in America, it was found that the 3% of Harvard students who wrote down their long term goals for themselves faired better in later life than the 97% who had not.

Here is a 7 stage strategy for personal growth, that I believe will comprehensively support you in realising your true potential:

1.  Decide on where you are trying to get to and why. This is in essence your personal vision and purpose. Both are key, as not only do you need an inspiring vision but you must be sure of why you are trying to get there. Many have set a vision without exploring the true purpose behind it and this very often ends in unfulfillment.

2. Address your constraints. We are almost all restricted by our self talk and self belief. You need to become aware of this and work on ways to intercept negative self beliefs and start to form different perspectives. In NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) it is said that “the map is not the territory”. In effect this means that our beliefs are based on perceptions of reality. Perceptions can be changed and beliefs can become more helpful to us. It is a matter of choice. Also, in terms of addressing your constraints, you need to take an honest look at what personality characteristics hold you back. Do you seek too much control? Are you too critical? Do you lack self confidence? Once you have a clear view of the 2 or 3 most dominant constraints, work on an action plan to change your behaviour.

3. Set goals, change habits and get into action.  As indicated in the earlier research, it is proven that achievers set goals and plan. It is as simple as that. We know this both in business and our personal lives. Things do not go to plan, so plans need to be tracked and modified, but the act of planning raising success levels. Also take a look at the habits that have become ingrained in your behavior.  What are those that serve you? Which ones do not? Which new habits would impact on your success? It takes 21 days to bed in a new habit, but once bedded in it becomes more unconscious and automatic without having to think about it. So work on your habits to improve your results.

4. Improve your skills. Look at the areas of your life or business where improving your skills would have a positive impact. Are your sales skills as good as they could be? Do you need to improve you understanding of finance? Whatever it is, look to improve your skills. Read a book, attend a webinar or seminar, book on a training course, get a coach. If an area is holding you back then work on your skills in this area.

5. Leverage your environment. Use the resources at your disposal to make the most effective use of your time and to support you in your endeavours. This might be a piece of technology, a useful business forum. Most importantly it is the people you know. People are our greatest asset. So use the skills and knowledge of others to help you leverage the best results for what you are trying to achieve. Remember too that this is reciprocal, so look to help others too.

6. Serve others. Leading on from the point above. The more positive you are about serving others, the more positive results will come back to you. Whether that be in going that extra mile to serve a client or to help out someone else in your business or in helping a contact outside your business. We are more connected as each day goes by and having a mentality of service is a key to personal growth.

7. Enjoy yourself. Richard Branson believes something is only worth doing if it is fun. When we are happy we grow. If you are doing something you do not enjoy, look to make changes. Get other people to work on tasks you find a chore. Also find ways to get more pleasure out of the tasks that you have to do. Use rewards to make them more fun. Also apply this mentality to those in business with you. Even a smile goes a long way and is infectious. Oh and look for the opportunity to have a good laugh – it releases endorphins and make you feel better. So use humour and see humour in the events of life as it is good for you.

• Do you need to work on generating more leads into your business?
• Do you desperately need to convert more leads into sales?
• Are you looking to make more of your relationships with existing customers?
• Do you need to look at your operational efficiency and improve your margin?
• Do you need to lower your fixed costs and ensure you break even?

Then join us for a FREE event to kick start your business success in 2012 at:
Country Cottage, Easthorpe Street, Ruddington, Nottingham NG11 6LA

• April 13th 9.30 to 11.30 am

This event will be of special interest to sole traders and solo business owners, as there will also be information on the number 1 way to grow a solo business.

To book your place:

Call me on    – 07912143040

Email me at  – tony@bb-ds.co.uk

This event is brought to you by Tony Brooks from Building Bridges and our partner for this event (and the Solopreneur Club) Tony Miles from Milestone Solutions. Milestone solutions bring 35 years of experience in accountancy and taxation, business advice and software support.

• The event will start with informal networking over coffee.
• There will be a presentation by Tony Brooks to uncover “The 5 critical strategies to grow your business in 2012”.  This is based on the coaching system used by Building Bridges, that was developed in America in 2005 and delivers 68% improvements in profit on average.
• There will then be a presentation by Tony Miles with some killer hints and tips on business finance and taxation.
• Finally, for solo business owners and sole traders there will be an introduction to the Solopreneur Club. This is the Number 1 way to grow your solo business in 2012!

This is an unbeatable way to boost your business success and Tony Miles and I look forward to helping you increase your business results.

Call me on    – 07912143040

Email me at  – tony@bb-ds.co.uk

Do you know what makes you unique and special?

Defining yourself uniquely, will enable you to stand out in the crowd. You may have heard of the concept of a USP or a Unique Selling Proposition. This is critical to the long term success of your business.

The danger is that we can speak about our businesses in language that is too general – “quality service”, “fast delivery”, “expertise”, “reliable” ……

These are known as platitudes or to put it another way, they would be statements that potential clients would expect as a given for your service from anyone. What you need to be saying is something different, that will flip your prospects minds from alpha state (auto pilot) to beta state (alert).This will need something different that will prick their attention.

Without that uniqueness, the temptation can be to try and differentiate on price by discounting, but this would be turning you into a commodity business.  This is a path to be avoided.

Ask yourself the questions -

- What problems, frustrations, or challenges do your prospects expect to face when dealing with your industry in general ?

- How can you make sure you provide them comfort this wont be the case with you?

- How can you delight and exceed expectations?

- What statistics can you use to differentiate what you offer and provide some comfort for your prospects?

- What is different about the way you do things, particularly as this will be experienced by a client?

This is the path to uniquely defining your business.

You may find that you can offer some form of guarantee that others in your sector do not offer. This is a strong way to differentiate you and remove an element of risk from the purchase.

Be sure you can honour this though in a high percentage of cases, so that if you do have to compensate people on a rare occasion, this has only a minor impact in comparison with the increased sales in a broader sense from having the guarantee.

You may also want to explore a potential niche market for you services or products. Is there a sector you can specialise in, that will again differentiate you. If you provide a service that positions you as a specialist for accountants, for example, an accountancy practice would be more likely to pick you than a generalist.

One final piece of advice. To help you define what makes you unique and special, why not ask your clients? Who better to give you a view on why your services and products are chosen!

Do you want more help with going through this process? Then drop me an email at tony@bb-ds.co.uk or call me on 07912143040 and we can book in a free 30 minutes for me to start to explore this for your business.

We also touched on the importance of making those vital calls to contacts and prospects.

So this week we will look at some hints and tips to make those all important calls as effectively as possible.

It all begins with the preparation and here is a useful mnemonic to help with this.

P – Place must be business like.

R – Ready for business – have all the things you need to hand.

E – Expect a positive outcome and develop some positive affirmations.

P – Professionalism – don’t be over familiar on the call and it can also help to stand up to make the calls.

A – Anticipate opportunities and look out for them.

R – Research – ideally find out information about the company before the call

A – Attractive systems – diary systems, databases, CRM system.

T – Talk to everyone and get ideas on how best to make calls.

I –  Interest – keep sounding interested and use a warm tone of voice.

O – Overcome negatives and prepare yourself for some objection handling. What are the typical objections and what are your responses? See the rest of the blog for this.

N – Note down everything and use a template for the calls to help you structure them.

The above offers some ideas, but make your own plan for each time you start to make some calls.

Let us now look at handling objections in a little more detail.

Handling objections

Objections typically fall into the following categories:

• I don’t have the money
• I don’t have the time
• I don’t believe you  
• It wont work for me

Try and pre-frame these out before you and they get to them in the consultative sale. But if you encounter them be prepared.

You can use what are called spin patterns, which are a form of advanced “reframing” technique. Or in essence trying to get people to see things in a different and more helpful way.

Here are 12 reframes you can consider. I have used an example “Your training course is too expensive” to help illustrate this.

Here are the 12 responses for each type of reframe:

• Shift to a larger frame – “How affordable is this in terms of what it could bring”
• Perspectives of others – “Here is some feedback we have had off others …”
• Higher values – “Are you and your business worth the investment?”
• Negative consequences – “What do you feel will be cost of not doing this?”
• Higher level of abstraction – “Not doing this may well keep the business from developing”
• Analogy or metaphor – Tell a story of someone else’s experience
• Transcend generalisations – “Too expensive compared to what?”
• Turn to another issue of greater importance – “The expense it not issue but how much you and the business are worth investment”
• Evaluations – “Where there is a will there is a way”
• Reversal – “If you attend you will grow and afford even more investment in your business”
• Newly define in a different way - “Not expensive but Value For Money”
• Explore intention from behaviour – “Are you interested in wise investment”

Help people see an empowering viewpoint (but don’t manipulate them!).

And finally, here are some hints and tips to consider to raise your game further.

Hints and tips

• Think about what your USP (Unique Selling Point) is and promote what is unique about your business.
• Have a short 1 minute speech ready about what your service is and what makes you special! You can use this to summarise at the start of the call.
• Use open questioning techniques to find out more about their business, issues and needs.
• Listen to the problems or requirements they have. What is special about you or your services that will solve the issues or meet the requirements they have?
• You can plant seeds in the conversation.  For example “it sounds like you need someone to ….…”
• Try not to sell overtly but educate enthusiastically in a positive uplifting manner and lead them to a buying decision.
• Focus on your services as they deliver benefits and results for them.
• Shift from thinking about selling to adding value.
• Become a master at closing the sale.
• Make some notes next time someone calls you to sell something and see what worked and didn’t work for you!
• Follow up the call with value add information specific to them!

If you would like to discuss how to raise your game in making those all important calls, please call me on 07912143040 or email me at tony@bb-ds.co.uk.

So what is your attitude to sales? Is it a dirty word for you? Does the thought of picking up the phone to make a call to a cold or even a warm prospect fill you with dread?

In sales it is all about the 3 key areas – your attitude, your activities and your acumen.

Attitude

Firstly, for almost all of us what we have to offer as a service or product we actually believe is of value to certain people or businesses. What we are trying to do is to match our services and products with the pains and needs of other people and businesses out there.

Building some confidence in that is a good starting point.

What this also means is that our services and products will NOT be of benefit to all the people all the time, so we need to get used to rejection!

Knowing your conversion rate for sales is important, as this means that you are clear that each rejection is a journey on a path to a sale. It actually means that each call or contact is actually worth something.

If you need to make 150 calls, to have 30 longer conversations, to get to 3 meetings to secure one client worth £1,000.00 this actually means that one call is worth £6.67. Try the calculation for your business, based on your conversion rates. If you don’t have a clear view of your conversion rates start to track them as what you focus on and measure is what you can improve.

Work on seeing sales as a positive part of what you do for both yourself and the potential clients out there – and NOT as a necessary evil. Remember you are developing relationships and not hard selling.

Also try building some form of routine in each time you start selling – whether that be positive affirmations, reading testimonials or doing something that will put you in a good frame of mind. You can then do this before networking events, sales meetings or making calls.

Activities

We started to touch on this in the attitude section, but you need to plan your sales activities week by week. This means planning in time and key actions for you and others involved in sales in your business. It also then means tracking the performance of your system and the team involved via conversion rates and other key measures. 

Make sure your contacts and business cards are in a system, whether it be a spreadsheet right through to a sophisticated CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system. This will then allow you to record contacts and provide prompts for future contacts. So many businesses are based on a box or folder of business cards as their system and this will not allow you to manage your activities effectively.

So a) get yourself a system, b) plan in time every week for sales activities (possibly via your default calendar to have regular times each week) and then c) track and measure your performance.

And finally ….

Acumen

Focus on building your skills, knowledge and experience. Get some training, coaching, a self study course or read books. Do what you need to do to improve your performance and build your confidence. This will be a continuous process, but observe how your performance improves via your measures as your skills improve.

Work on developing some scripts or at least a template structure for how you will approach initial meetings at networking events or calls to new or known contacts. What are the objections that may come up and how will you handle them?

Sales is a skill and it can be learned and improved. Take comfort from that. More on making calls in next week’s blog.

Here are 10 key tips to ensure you deilver on your goals in 2012:

1. Keep your goals in mind – Although you may feel proud that you have established some really great goals in different areas of your life and business, this will all be meaningless if you do not act to achieve them. Set time aside to constantly review your goals, to feel inspired by them and to fine tune them if necessary. Sometimes we can lose sight of the direction we are going in when the day to day challenges take over, so this is vital.  Some people like to use visioning boards to constantly keep their goals and vision in mind.  This can be a selection of images that represent your goal or vision.

2. Continually plan and re-plan – The first thing to do after setting a goal is to have a plan as to how you are going to achieve this. Have some actions you can take immediately to get things moving, but ensure you also have milestones on the way to achieving your goals, so you can monitor if you are on track and reward yourself for successes along the way.  Again you need to set time aside to work through the plans and make any revisions as necessary.

3. Take responsibility to move things along– A goal ultimately needs to be your responsibility. Look on a day to day basis at where you are blaming others or trying to justify why much needed actions are not happening.  Rather than blaming or justifying look at how you can do something to take charge and put yourself on the cause side of the cause-effect equation. Issues and problems naturally come along, but it is how you deal with them that counts.

4. Use available resources – On the path to achieving your goal; don’t reinvent the wheel if you don’t need to.  There are physical things you will already have or knowledge you can tap into that will help.  The most important resource we have though is other people. Think broadly about who has the skills or knowledge in certain areas and use them to help you.

5. Develop effective habits – Look at the habits you need on an hourly, daily, weekly or monthly basis that will deliver a new level of success and support the achievement of your goals. Use these 4 questions to help with this:

- What must I start doing that we are not doing at the moment?
- What must I stop doing as it is clearly adding limited value?
- What must I start doing more of which could prove effective use of time, energy and resources?
- What must I start doing less of as it is not a valuable use of time, energy and resources?

6. Make the time to work on your strategy – All this work on goals and planning requires time.  Review how you are spending your time currently and make some changes so that you release time to work on your strategy.

7. Keep your mind and body active – To keep inspired and energised, keep developing yourself by reading, listening to audios or attending events that will enhance your knowledge and skills. It is also important to fit in some exercise into your routine. This is not only good physically, but it is good thinking time. I have some of my best ideas during my morning swim!!

8. Handle psychological blockers – Very often our worst enemy in achieving our goals and ultimate success is ourselves. We all have a range of negative beliefs about ourselves and situations that can have a huge impact. Recognise these and try and reframe them.  Look at the positive beliefs that you can continually reaffirm to support you and build a bank of evidence to support these.

9. Recognise your achievements – I often say to my clients that achievements are not just the big wins.  You need to reflect on a daily basis and recognise all the achievements on the journey.  This is especially important if you manage or lead people, as people need to be appreciated.

10. Have somebody to keep you on track – Whether it be a friend, mentor or coach it is important to have someone who can make you accountable for changes. It can be lonely work getting to your desired outcomes and having someone to act as a sounding board and offer objective advice can bring some focus, structure and rationality to a situation.

If you would like to find out how you can work with Building Bridges to achieve your important business goals, call now for a free consultation on 07912143040.

What do you plan to do in 2012 and beyond to raise your game and reach a higher level of success?

The New Year is always a great time to reflect on where you are currently, the challenges that lie ahead and where you would like to be in the future.

As you look forward to 2012 and beyond, rather than starting with 12 month goals, try looking further into the future to where you would like to be in 3, 4 or 5 years. This is all around establishing a clear vision for the future.

It is commonly said that one of the factors that determine the success or failure of a business, is whether there is a clear picture of where the business is going in the longer term. So it is important to work on this first for you and your business.

Your goals and targets should fit with this picture and should form part of the milestones and stepping stones on the journey to where you truly want to be in life and in business.

Vision:
In establishing your longer term vision, you must challenge yourself and ask yourself some big questions. Here are some examples to prompt you and get you thinking about the direction you and your business should be going long term.

• What are the 5 things you value most in life and work?
• What would you do if you won £1M?
• What would you aspire to if you or your business had no limitations?
• What have you always wanted to do but have been afraid of doing?
• Throughout your life, what has given you the greatest self esteem and sense of pride?
• What does long term success really look like for you and your business?
• What would you want as the legacy for you and your business?

Once you have a clearer view of the longe term picture, it is time to set goals for the next 12 months.

Goals:
When setting your goals for 2012, make sure that they fit in with the longer term vision of where you truly want to be.

Work through the different aspects of your life and/or business and decide which areas are in need of the most focus and create specific goals for these areas.

Write your goals as though you are actually experiencing the realisation of your goal in the future and imagine what you would be feeling and what you would be doing when you are living within your goal at the end of 2012.

When setting your goals in the various areas of your life and business, make sure each goal is :

• Specific – it is clear what is to be achieved
• Measurable – it can be broken down into chunks in a plan
• Evidential – there will be clear objective evidence when you reach the end
• Realistic - it is not reliant on external factors but on yourself and your employees to make it happen
• Time Based – you need to set a time boundary of typically 12 months
• Inspirational- it truly inspires you and others around you
• Emotional – it is emotionally in tune with where you and others want to be

I also recommend that you create shorter term 90 day goals to ensure real focus in those key areas. This will also create increased motivation as you experience the results on the journey, by achieving those shorter term goals.

If you want to kick start your year, contact me to book a “complimentary business development meeting” or join me at a free event to  “discover the 5 critical strategies to grow your business in 2012″ (Jan 13 and Jan 20 at 9.30 am in Ruddington)

• Do you need to work on generating more leads into your business?
• Do you desperately need to convert more leads into sales?
• Are you looking to make more of your relationships with existing customers?
• Do you need to look at your operational efficiency and improve your margin?
• Do you need to lower your fixed costs and ensure you break even?

Then join us for a FREE event to kick start your business success in 2012 at:
Castle Cottage, Easthorpe Street, Ruddington, Nottingham NG11 6LA

• January 13th 9.30 to 11.30 am or
• January 20th 9.30 to 11.30 am

This event will be of special interest to sole traders and solo business owners, as there will also be information on the number 1 way to grow a solo business in 2012.

To book your place:

Call me on    – 07912143040

Email me at  – tony@bb-ds.co.uk

This event is brought to you by Tony Brooks from Building Bridges and our partner for this event (and the Solopreneur Club) Tony Miles from Milestone Solutions. Milestone solutions bring 35 years of experience in accountancy and taxation, business advice and software support.

• The event will start with informal networking over coffee.
• There will be a presentation by Tony Brooks to uncover “The 5 critical strategies to grow your business in 2012”.  This is based on the coaching system used by Building Bridges, that was developed in America in 2005 and delivers 68% improvements in profit on average.
• There will then be a presentation by Tony Miles with some killer hints and tips on business finance and taxation.
• Finally, for solo business owners and sole traders there will be an introduction to the Solopreneur Club. This is the Number 1 way to grow your solo business in 2012!

This is an unbeatable way to start your year and Tony Miles and I look forward to helping you kick start a year of success and achievement.

Call me on    – 07912143040

Email me at  – tony@bb-ds.co.uk

Whether you be an individual within a business, a business leader or if we look at an organisation as a whole, tracking and improving key measures is vital to success.

You may have heard these termed as KPIs or Key Performance Indicators. These will report on a regular basis the key activities within the business, so everyone knows the impact of their efforts on the success of the business.

Measures should form part of the job descriptions for roles in organisations. On a higher level there should be 5 to 10 measures across a whole business that give everyone a clear sense of how the business is performing.

But how do you determine these key measures?

They typically fall in 4 areas:

1. Marketing

2. Sales

3. Operations

4. Finance

You then need to ask yourself some key questions across these 4 areas:

• Where are your marketing leads going to come from?
• What are the costs per lead?
• What is you conversion rate?
• What is your gross margin on your service or product?
• How efficiently do you do what you do?
• What are your fixed costs?
• What is your break even point?
• How much profit do you aim to make on a monthly basis?

But the end result is that you want 5 to 10 key measures that can be tracked by everyone.

Use these as a core part of your weekly team meetings. Everyone should know where the company is trying to get to, where they are and what they can do to influence that.

What you measure and focus on is what you can improve!

So for the last few weeks of 2011, set yourself up with your key measures for 2012.

If you need any help with this, we can cover this as part of a complimentary business development meeting for you and your business. Call me on 07912143040 to arrange this.

Or you could come to one of 2 free events in January to kick start your year – “The 5 critical ways to grow your business in 2012″.

These are being held on January 13th and 20th in Ruddington (Country Cottage Hotel) at 9.30 am. Contact me to book a place and use this as a key part of setting your business strategy for 2012!

If that sounds familiar, then please read on.  Because if there’s one problem I see entrepreneurs battle with over and over again, it’s trying to manage their time effectively.

Fortunately, there is a solution you can work on – The Time Management Plan.
Here’s what you need to do…

1. Learn the Four Dimensions of Effective Time Management.  This framework comes from Dr. Steven Covey’s classic book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.  In it, he proposed that there are four quadrants into which all tasks fall:

A) Important and Urgent
B) Important and Non Urgent
C) Not Important and Urgent
D) Not Important and Not Urgent

The first quadrant, important and urgent, consists of things you simply must do NOW:  fire fighting, and so on.

The second quadrant, important and not urgent, is the “quality time” quadrant. It consists of critical tasks that can be scheduled in advance.  Working on your business plan, personal recreation, and time with family belong here.

The third quadrant consists of not important and urgent tasks.  These are distractions and interruptions, unimportant emails, tasks, and phone calls that compete for your attention in the moment.

The fourth quadrant, not important and not urgent, is the “time-wasting” quadrant: online games, trivia, unproductive meetings and so on.

2. Track the way you spend your time.   Your next step is to begin tracking everything you do for at least one business week.  Write everything down, either as you do it, or every 3-4 hours.  At the end of the day, go back and assign a quadrant to each of your tasks.  If you are like most, this will be a very illuminating experience. Be honest with yourself and then be ruthless with tasks that should be eliminated as the first step.

3. Delegate where you can.  I know, delegation is hard for independent, high-charging entrepreneurs who want to make sure everything is done right and don’t feel comfortable leaving their fate in someone else’s hands.  But if you ever want to turn your business into a revenue-producing asset, you must work on this.
After you’re done tracking your time for the week (and you have eliminated initial tasks), go through your logs and identify every task you could have given to someone else.  Then, begin the process of assigning those tasks to others.  It might require that you do some restructuring of your employees’ job descriptions (though in many cases, you can hand the tasks over without too much trouble). It might mean looking for external support if you work on your own.

4. Fill the resource gaps.  You might find that you don’t have sufficient resources to cover the workload once you identify the tasks you really should be delegating.  That’s when it’s time to recruit new people or to look to outsource and use other resources available.

5. Use a “Default Calendar”.   Your default calendar shows you what to do each hour of each day to be optimally effective.  You block the most important things in your schedule as an appointment with yourself so that you can hold yourself accountable and achieve lasting success. These mostly fall into the “important and not urgent” quadrant and should be treated  like a client meeting. This is one of the most powerful approaches to time management you will ever use.

This whole process can be challenging to implement on your own, so for help, reach out for a Complimentary Business Development with me.
You can contact me at 07912143040 or email me at tony@bb-ds.co.uk to book a meeting.