Win a Free Healthy Business Assessment!

Do you know how healthy your business is? What parts are working great, and what parts could use some oiling? Now you can find out by entering the Possibilities Unlimited contest for a free 2-session Healthy Business Assessment.

What will you win? Through August 31, 2009 we invite you to enter our drawing for a free, 2-session healthy business assessment. The winner will receive two 45-minute phone coaching sessions designed to set you and your business on a path to success. Through a series of specific questions we will help you determine the areas of strength your business contains, and the areas of weakness where you could grow. You will walk away with specific tasks you can implement to help move your business forward onto a more successful path. The winner will choose from the coaches on staff - either Bonnie Landau, Mary Mullenhoff or Lee Ann Farmer.

How to enter
1) Write out 3 ideas you could implement right now to better manage your time. It could be work, business or personal time.
2) Share a brief paragraph on how you believe each of these ideas will impact your business life.
3) Send your ideas via email to Lee Ann Farmer at Possibilities Unlimited.

Announcing the winner
The winner will be randomly chosen from the entries received. The winning entry will be announced and read on Consulting2Win Radio on September 2, 2009.

Who is ready to win?

Managing Lasting Relationships

“Treasure your relationships, not your possessions.” Anthony J. D’Angelo, The College Blue Book

Relationships are critical to maintain with family, friends, significant others, and your staff and colleagues. This is true for everyone including busy entrepreneurs. I dedicate this blog to David Anthony Ferrara “Dino”, who died on Saturday July 18, 2009 at the age of 44. Only 500 people (of the thousands who’s lives he touched) attended his funeral; these were family friends and business contacts with whom he’d been affiliated over the years. He was a truly successful person and entrepreneur. He helped build and sell a $30 Million company all the while:

1. Making plenty of time to spend with his kids: coaching their lacrosse teams, teaching them about charity and to care for others by volunteering at their church. He fed the poor and led bingo for the elderly at retirement homes. There were countless stories of how he’d hop on an airplane at the drop of a hat to help his brothers, cousins, aunts; anyone in his family who was in need.
2. Participating regularly at events that united his friends: he played golf annually with over 30 buddies he met in grammar, elementary and high school in Baltimore, in college at Bucknell, and during the years through other friends and family. He’d do things like drive out to the desert to play golf with a friend he hadn’t seen in a while and make it back in time that evening for his daughter’s lacrosse game.
3. Managing key relationships throughout his life with staff and colleagues: he went to college with Pete Henig who at the time was editor of Red Herring. Pete introduced Dino to Michael Schwab. Dino nurtured that relationship and was able to raise money for his company. His partner in the business was his grammar school friend David Boden and most of the employees were also either long time friends or became close friends.
4. Supporting his wife April. Their relationship was fun to watch. When you saw the two of them you could tell they were meant to be together. April, an entrepreneur herself, was looking to sell a catering business she’d built and had been running for years. She approached me to check it out and see if I would be interested in buying it. She had an event scheduled with a very influential client (Maria Shriver) to see how to run the business. My husband was out of town that day, and at the time my son was not even a year old. I didn’t have anyone to leave him with so Dino brought their two young kids up to my house to baby sit our kids, so April and I could work at the event. He’d do anything for her.

When you think of all the key elements of the whole life matrix, none is more important than your relationships. To be successful and to have it all, you need to make maintaining relationships your primary goal. Dino did. People were willing to introduce him to their cherished contacts because they knew he’d take care of them too. Though Dino died at very young age, he lived an incredibly full very successful life, and through his treasured relationships built a legacy.

Identifying Prospects - Knowing Where to Win

“The harder I practice, the luckier I get.” Gary Player, South African Champion Golfer

One of the first and most important keys to successful selling is identifying and qualifying prospects. It’s well worth your time to search out and pursue prospects who have a high likelihood of buying your product. The more calls you make to people who have a need for what you’re selling, the more often you will convert those calls to paying customers.

Assess your product – Know what you’re selling, what it costs, and how it can help your prospects. Start thinking about who is in a position to buy that product. If it costs $10,000, don’t pursue clients who have a $5,000 budget.

Ask questions. Determine what your client needs and wants. If they want pizzas, don’t try to sell them caviar. If you sell caviar, look for places where there are likely to be people to buy caviar. If you have a broad range of products or services, take time to zero in on what your prospect feels will fill their needs. If you sell pizza and caviar and your prospect wants pizza, sell them pizza. Maybe you can interest them in extra toppings, but don’t waste your time asking them to buy caviar if that isn’t what they want.

Go where the good prospects are. Join networking groups where there will be people who need your product. Professional associations, leads clubs, chambers of commerce, all of these are excellent resources for meeting new people and potential clients. The more specific the association is to your ideal client type, the more likely you will make contacts that are useful.

Check the competition. Who are your competitor’s clients? Are they buying what you’re selling, but not from you? Maybe you can offer a better deal or a more customized product. Study what’s selling at other companies and consider how you can distinguish your product in the marketplace.

Research other available data. The internet is an amazing resource that can provide you with lists of companies that are in your industry, are of the size range you market to, are in your geographic area, or match up to some other indicator of being an ideal prospect. Spend time daily reading blogs or annual reports to learn more about your target market.

Referrals, referrals, referrals. The best way, hands down, to identify a prospect is for someone to refer you. If you have good relationships with your clients, ask them for referrals and ask them often. You will be surprised at how many times your clients know people who can use your product or service. With a referral, your client has laid the groundwork that gives you an automatic edge. Your client has, in essence, prequalified the prospect for you.

By taking a little time to research and focus your efforts on reaching out to the right people, your sales efforts will be more productive and profitable. And you will be winning the game of sales.

Are you ready to win?

Get on the Social Media Diet!

"The most important key to achieving great success is to decide upon your goal and launch, get started, take action, move." ~ John Wooden

I'm sure you've heard about social media. It seems to be the general buzz of life these days. But when you think about jumping on this band wagon, you hear yourself saying, "It's too hard" or "It's going to suck me into a time vacuum". If these are the messages rumbling around in your mind, the Social Media Diet is for you! This is the perfect solution to gaining the benefits of extending your networking without draining the precious time that we all need more of.

This diet consists of ample portions of social media engagement, while making certain you do not overextend your commitment. You get to choose your menu plan, and you get to decide where to allocate your minutes. And the best news of all, you GAIN a social media network! Here’s how it works:

1) Time allocation (it’s okay if it’s 5 days a week, but 7 will bring greater results):

• Choose 3 times a day that you will set aside for social media.
• There should be one 20-minute interval, and two 5-minute intervals.
• Put these times into your calendar so you do not schedule over them.

2) Choose your main course
Choose 1 means of social media you wish to engage in the most. This is where the bulk of your 20-minute time span will be spent. Some ideas for your main course might be:

• Perhaps you are already reading blogs, so choose commenting on blogs.
• Maybe you’re a wannabe Twitter fan, so make a decision to grow your following and promote your brand.
  
• Perhaps you want a Facebook company page, plan to get it going.
• Perhaps you write a blog and want to get the word out, focus on blog distribution.
• Maybe you want to connect with other business owners, so answer questions on LinkedIn forums
• Perhaps you have a special interest you would like to exchange ideas about, start putting posts into online message boards.
• Maybe you have a lot of original content so you pursue the creation of a Hubpage or Squidoo lense.
  

3) Choose your side dishes
Choose 3 other media outlets which you will utilize and tie into your main course. These should not be time-intensive endeavors. They may be:

• Use Twitter to post at least 5 tweets - re-tweet other tweets and promote blogs you read
• Add daily LinkedIn updates and send 1 link invite per day.
• Add a Facebook comments or write a personal message to a Facebook friend
  
• Add Digg or Stumbleupon plugs and comment on the articles you plug.
• Add at least 1 comment to 2 different blogs you like.
  
• Putting at least 1 post onto an online message board
• Connect with more people on any of the above

4) Get your dessert
Go get some cookies or fruit to munch on while you implement step 5.

5) Move into action
Spend 15 of your 20-minute session engaged in your main course. Spend the other 5 minutes implementing one of your main dishes. Spend each of the other 5 minutes per day implementing your other 2 main dishes. When you get comfortable implementing your main dishes quickly, then spend a couple minutes doing each one during the 5-minute sessions. You connect with more people if you distribute your efforts throughout the day, especially with Twitter.

6) Switch it up each month
Nobody likes to do the same thing for too long, and social media is about making a far-reaching impact. For month two, rearrange your diet. Choose a different main course so you can focus on growing in a different area. Turn your month-one main course into a side dish (since you’re so good at it you can do it quickly by now) and choose two other main courses to focus on. Repeat with each subsequent month.

7) Tips for guaranteed success
Always keep in mind that with social media it’s about quality, not quantity. Be purposeful and honest in your program, and you will see the results your desire. Don’t rush through and contribute in a panicked fashion, this will show and people will stop reading. It’s better to have 1 great tweet that gets re-tweeted than 10 nobody reads. Social media is about building a relationships, and this takes time and sincerity. Be patient, and your efforts will pay off!

Are you ready to win?

Relationship Management - Keeping Track of All the Players

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” Darrell Royal, Former Head Football Coach, University of Texas

Every business should have a relationship management system. This system records everything you need to remember about your clients and prospects, vendors, service providers, anyone you need to contact in order to run your business.

In the old days, the Rolodex was the tried and true device that contained contact information. A business card was usually all the information you had. Maybe you would jot down a note on a card such as “Enjoys baseball.” But other than the business card getting glued into its spot, the Rolodex didn’t offer much in the way of tracking, and enhancing your relationship with your contacts.

I would be lost without ACT, which is my preference for client database software. In ACT, you can enter not only the client’s name address and phone, but you can keep notes on every conversation. “Bill thinks he will want our product in November.” “Sara will be on vacation next week, returning on Monday the 4th.” I update my prospect notes each time I have a sales call, because that way I transfer important information to the database while it is fresh in my mind.

You can also group each contact with others who share a common distinction. Create a group such as “Prospects for Special Product” or “Accounting Clients”. Contacts can be members of any number of groups. You can send e-mails to individuals, groups, or the entire database at once. The possibilities are endless.

Your relationship database is indispensible as a sales tool. It is impossible to remember every conversation, every order and every preference of all your clients and prospects. Your clients will be impressed when you can tell the date and time of when you last spoke, and you can keep the sales process moving forward with confidence. When you have all the information you need right at your fingertips, you are ready to win the game of sales.

Are you ready to win?

Stamp Out Cold Calling & Make Sales Fun

“Six degrees of separation is the theory that anyone on the planet can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than five intermediaries.” The theory was first proposed in 1929 by the Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy in a short story called "Chains."

Use this theory to turn any cold call into a hot one. Create a relationship map and odds are that you know someone who knows someone who works at the company you are targeting. Look at your contact list of co-workers, friends, neighbors, your kids friends parents, it’s amazing how once you start a conversation with someone, there always seems to be a connection to another person you both know.

When we eliminate cold calling from the selling process, the process becomes very enjoyable. The difference between a “cold” call and a “hot” call, is that with a “hot” call, you’ve done your homework, you are well prepared, you have a connection and a great attitude about having a conversation that will thrill the person you are calling. They are thrilled because you are offering them a product, service or solution that provides a tremendous amount of help and value. They feel you see the world through their eyes and that you really understand them. Once you make that connection, selling is fun.

Successful selling is a series of conversations you initiate in which you help shape how a situation occurs to the buyer. You carefully select the language that will help steer the conversation in a way that keeps the focus on the other persons needs, desires and intentions. The more you can relate to the person through your research and getting a good referral, the better you can help build a solution that improves their lives.

Once you follow up and follow through on your promises, create a healthy urgency for your product offering and provide a solution that thrills them, they will buy from you. Once they’ve received the solutions you’ve co-developed, they will continue to buy from you and refer their friends as well. The connection, and the ongoing referrals will keep you from ever having to cold call again and make the selling process fun!

Are you ready to win?

Take the Heat out of Cold Calling!

"My thoughts before a big race are usually pretty simple. I tell myself: Get out of the blocks, run your race, stay relaxed. If you run your race, you'll win... channel your energy. Focus"

~ Carl Lewis

In the age of the Internet, there is no reason to do cold calling. While you may have never talked to a specific person before, it’s an easy thing to find out about your prospects before you dial their number. Use the Internet to get to know your prospects so you can approach your sales calls with familiarity. Remember, sales is about relationships, and the first step in developing a relationship is getting to know each other.

Search Social Sites to Discover Network
The following social networking sites are widely used by people in business. If a person is listed, this is an excellent way to find out who they are connected to, and there’s always a chance they are connected to people you know. Remember to search by name and company name.

• LinkedIn
• Plaxo
• Facebook
• Spoke
  

Search Twitter to Discover Personality
Twitter is its own animal when it comes to social networking sites. Searching by people only searches the username field, and many people don’t use their real name there. So when you search on Twitter, search for people but also remember to search in the sidebar search field. This allows you to search the text of the tweets to find somebody. Once you’ve found them, read their tweet stream. This gives you a lot of information about them.

Search Google to Find Out Details
Google is a wealth of information, if you know how to extract it. Successful searching is about the keyword and quote combinations you use to refine the search results. Many people find it frustrating when they get back hundreds of thousands of results for a search, but spending 20 minutes learning basic searching syntax can mean you will find exactly what you’re looking for.

For example, if I wanted to see if somebody had won an award, just typing their name into Google is going to bring back a huge search result. Instead think about the words that would describe winning an award. You might type “person's name” + “award” or “person's name” + “ceremony”. These searches brings back results that give information about this name and any awards or ceremonies associate with them. Definitely more telling than a general search.

Now that you know your prospect better, you are ready to make that call. Use the information you found to make a connection by personalizing your conversation. Remember, there’s no such thing as cold calling when you know the person you’re calling!

Are you ready to win?

Time Outs - Staying in the Game During Summer Vacation Season

“The one man team is a complete and total myth.” – Don Shula, Former Head Coach, Miami Dolphins

It’s that time of year again…everyone is taking their summer vacation and spending time away from the office. Everyone, that is, except business owners and managers who are afraid that things will fall apart if they leave.

At Possibilities Unlimited, we work with people to structure their businesses to run smoothly when they are not there. It doesn’t mean for a minute that the boss or owner is not important or indispensible. It means that any well-run business should be prepared to keep moving forward when the key players are not around. Having these strategies in place is necessary, not just for vacation season, but for emergencies and unpredictable circumstances.

Here are some key ideas for setting your business up for when you are not there:

Time is Everything: Your vacation has to be scheduled into the calendar. Your business projects have to be scheduled into your calendar. Your calendar will make it possible for you to take your vacation because you will have scheduled a time for everything that needs to happen while you’re gone. Production deadlines, accounting deadlines, sales reports, all these things need to be clearly mapped out in your calendar. Assign tasks to other people to be handled while you’re away, or reschedule the task for a time before or after your vacation. It really is that simple, as long as you have everything in your calendar and leave detailed instructions for your staff.

Written Production Procedures: Don’t leave your employees guessing as to what’s expected of them while you’re gone. Meet with employees and discuss written guidelines as to what they need to accomplish in your absence.

Inform Clients: Touch base with your major clients and let them know your schedule. Make sure they know who to contact when you’re not available. Address any concerns in advance as to projects that have delivery dates during your vacation.

Provide Backup: Make sure your employees know who is handling your duties in your absence. Clearly define the interim responsibilities and reporting structure. Your business coach is an excellent resource for questions and concerns while you are away. A good coach can provide support to keep departments functioning at peak performance.

Enjoy!: You are no good to your business or your family if you are too focused on one or the other. Everyone needs time away, time to refuel and time to rest. It’s often in those down times that inspiration happens. Your business coach can steer you away from overwhelm at the thought of taking time for yourself to confidence that your team has got you covered.

We all have different ideas of what “having fun” means. A winning business allows for vacations and having fun within a structure of established procedures and timelines.

Are you ready to win?

Cold Calling 2 Win

“My motto was always to keep swinging. Whether I was in a slump or feeling badly or having trouble off the field, the only thing to do was keep swinging." - Hank Aaron - American Baseball Player

Successful cold calling is dependent on your getting-started attitude. The law of large numbers says, the more "no's" you get out of the way, the closer you are to getting to "yes!" The best way to succeed is to be prepared and to keep swinging.

There are four basic elements to an effective cold calling campaign:

1. Qualify your prospects: Begin with a list and qualify your prospects; make sure this list includes businesses that need your products or services and can afford to buy them. Attain key contacts who can make buying decisions.


2. Be prepared: Do your homework on the company and the industry. Know their key competitors and research some best practices that can add value to their business. Then create a script with which you feel comfortable and include a brief introduction and an interesting third party story about a company similar to theirs who is already using your products or services.


3. Turn cold calls into warm calls: Do a relationship map and find someone in your company or at another client’s organization who may know the prospect. Get a referral and find commonality. When you have common ground, you know the same people, or you can talk about something you know interests them, people are more warmed up to the call. Approach them on neutral turf by attending networking events or trade shows where they may be present. Find out if your prospect plans to attend and make it a point to run into them. Provide some value: give them a free assessment or a promotional item that would be of great interest to the buyer, something that will catch their attention.


4. Follow up: Timing is very important, don’t let too much time pass between that first meeting and your next phone call. Follow up when you said you would, but don't flood their machine with messages. Keep calling until they answer the phone. When you want to schedule an appointment, offer a specific time; don’t leave it open-ended. Ask for only 10 minutes of time to make your pitch. People are very busy, and your call was likely an unplanned interruption. Make it short and sweet and show them you respect their time. During the conversation, find their “hot buttons.” Continue to schedule future brief conversations so they feel they know you, find value in your product and are ready to buy.

Once you’ve got them on the phone and they are intrigued, remember the 80/20 rule. Listen 80% of the time and speak only 20% of the time. People want to buy from people who they feel understand them, their issues and can provide value. They love to speak about themselves, so give them plenty of opportunity. Ask key questions that will reveal how they like to buy and show them how your product fits those specific needs. Keep swinging, and before you know it, you'll have a growing list of paying customers, and that is a recipe for winning.

Are you ready to win?

Production & Delivery - Running With The Ball

"You are never really playing an opponent. Your are playing yourself, your own highest standards, and when you reach your limits that is real joy." - Arthur Ashe, American Tennis Player

Production and Delivery – this is where your company runs with the ball. This is where you make your product, develop your service, and get it out to the public. You’ve got to have an energized, efficient production and delivery system, or you’re never going to win the game of business.

The Four Elements of Production and Delivery are:

· Measurements of Performance
· Resources
· Procedures
· Team

Measurements of Performance are essential to any business operation. They provide the specifications to employees so they can know if they are winning in their job. If you give someone a task, and you do not define what you want, that person has no means of determining what will satisfy you. It’s like going into a restaurant and asking the waitress to go get you something to eat. Who knows what she might bring from the kitchen? You do not want to take that chance. By defining your measurements of performance, you eliminate the guesswork. The specific, measurable results clearly explain what you expect and give the employees benchmarks for success.

Resources are the building blocks you use to produce your product. They include your facilities, equipment, inventory, labor and management. You combine these ingredients in various amounts to create your product. You must manage each carefully. You must control the purchase and distribution of each. How well you manage the cost and use of these resources determines the profit of your business. Setting up systems to control, manage and reduce the cost of resources is a great way to increase profits.

Procedures set up the flow of your business. When you move from a business that has all the information in people’s heads to one that has the procedures on paper, you will have matured into a company with the potential for more growth. It also creates potential for a business that can grow without the owner there on a day-to-day basis. That is the sign of a growing business. Putting your procedures in writing is often the limiting factor. Once companies take this action, the door opens up to a lot of new opportunities. More people can be cross trained to more jobs, creating more efficiency. Employees can deliver a more uniform product that meets the company’s written standards.

Team is what is present when your company is aligned on a purpose. People work together as a high-performance team when they are aligned on a common goal. If you look at your business as a sports team, you will see that all the elements that are present in sports are present in your business. Goals, rules, scoreboards, penalties, coaches, celebrations, winning, losing, and deciding what to do next time. You must create team spirit in your company to get the turbo boost that happens when people work together. When all their efforts combine the whole is greater than the sum of the parts and you win the game of business.

Are you ready to win?