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04 August 2010 05:14
Do you want to reduce your working week?Or do you want to simply want free up more time ''to work on the business.''If you are time pressured at the moment, I want to give you one way of lifting some of the pressure that you might be under.The only condition is, you have to be prepared to change something yourself to free up some time. The trick is leverage how do I leverage myself how can I automate, how can I get other people to do my work? People that might work for you that you employ or independent contractors that work for you.As you can see there is a sign up box below. This is not a trick to get your email, this is a full beta test self development tool to assist you improve your delegation skills. The only thing I want in return is some feedback on what you think to it? There are a number of other self development tools being created at the moment this is the first, which is way I am giving it to you, to see if you think its useful or if you think it might need some amendment.Anyway complete the box below
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02 August 2010 05:15
Just check this video out.I hope you found that interesting.Take CareRegards Mark A Results Driven Approach To Your Business Success Mark Wheatley associates is a business development company that specialise in low risk sales and marketing helping small and medium sized businesses grow through coaching training and consulting services. Based in Nottingham in the East Midlands UK. www.wheatleyassociates.org Copyright Mark Wheatley 2010 All Rights ReservedA Blog Posting From Mark Wheatley
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29 July 2010 02:28
This is a guest post by Randy Schrum more about Randy at the end of this post.So you''re exploring the best practices of LinkedIn for your company or business? Learn how to effectively position yourself on LinkedIn with these seven strategies.1. Their corporate profile is optimized properly.The first sentence in the description is written well for others to derive what you do in that first sentence.Your Corporate Profile is keyword optimized to your industry.2. They participate in the Q&A portion of LinkedIn. With over 170 plus industries participating on LinkedIn and people seeking quality answers. Many turn to LinkedIn Q & A as they know they will get quality answers and advice. By participating in this you can become recognized experts voted on by the community of people who ask the questions.Dedicated personnel to answer questions in specific topic groups that pertain to your target markets.Each answer is tagged or finished off with a standard signature that lets readers who your company is.3. They take advantage of the Events Application.This is a great way to draw attention to your companies events, tradeshows, expo''s, or other public and industry events. By simply using this tool on Linkedin your event will be
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24 July 2010 06:16
I''ve been scratching my head on this one for a few weeks.At the time of writing this post, I''ve had very few comments on my blog. I am not complaining, but sometimes its worth airing your problems, to explain what not to do, as well as what you might do. So on the basis that someone is going to comment on this, here is one stupid observation and some ideas.My stupid mistake was not having a visible comment box (idiot). Now I''ve fixed that I might stand half a chance!! Here are some other ideas.1. When someone makes a comment answer when you can2. Ask for readers opinions and ideas3. Offer something in return reciprocity4. Every comment is a good comment, don''t put people down5. Thank people for their comments6. Ask people for their examples of similar experiences7. A bit of self-deprecation - like me pointing out, I made a basic error with the lack of a comment box8. Have a rating system for your content (I am working on that one)9. Regular interesting posts (Yes you can comment on that)10.Moderate comments quickly11. Ask for helpTell you what................... why don''t you add some of your own ideas to this list?
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23 July 2010 09:06
Apart from networking organisations that you may belong to like BNI? Do you have any other referral systems? Or do all your referrals come from word of mouth?If you had four solid referral systems working in your business, what might happen to your sales? 10% -15% increases are easily possible.Systems that allowed you to ask for referrals without feeling awkward that encouraged the giver of referrals to easily come up with them.Sounds great doesn''t it. There is however a problem why many companies and practices don''t get any referral systems operating. Its not that they are not bought into the subject, there are a few reasons why referral systems don''t get developed or they simply fail.Many of the reasons are found in my implementation posts that I wrote some time ago.The word is ''system'' many companies simply don''t create them properly, they don''t test it, they don''t train their people and they give up too soon.Let me give you something from some training I provide on networking strategically.Almost every small to medium sized businesses that I come into contact with, attend lots of different networking events in search of referrals. Have you ever sat back and asked yourself questions like these?What
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22 July 2010 08:48
If you are up against it on price, try to think of ways of making your product or service different.Differentiation is relatively easy with services, but with products its more expensive. You can of course improve the services that surround a product to differentiate it. Examples could be a longer warranty, faster service back up, a replacement product and so on.This week one of my clients added two processes to their service offering that were not anymore expensive to deliver and they closed an order, 30% higher than their competitors, who were not offering the same level of service, provided by my client. People will pay more if they can see the value. When your offering is difficult to compare to your competition, your product/service will be less of a commodity, making price pressure easier to deal with.Let me give you a practical example years ago I owned a concrete company, now that''s a commodity business! We were one of the the first companies to offer 2 metre capacity trucks. We did not charge surcharges for small loads like the bigger operators and our trucks could access areas where the big trucks could not go.It was a nice little business that we
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21 July 2010 10:05
I was at a meeting today discussing a new business opportunity and discussed different aspects of the business model that was being proposed for a start up.A key point was that two elements must exist for me to get involved. In fact these two points are important to any would be business owner or existing one for that matter. Regular repeat sales and the ability to scale the business up easily.A final point was that the business would need to be attractive to purchasers in the future. The objective being build it and sell it.Do these points exist in your business model? If not what can you do about it?A short post today check out tomorrows.All comments welcome, what do you think are the important aspects of a business model?Take Care Regards Mark A Results Driven Approach To Your Business Success Mark Wheatley associates is a business development company that specialise in low risk sales and marketing helping small and medium sized businesses grow through coaching training and consulting services. Based in Nottingham in the East Midlands UK. www.wheatleyassociates.org Copyright Mark Wheatley 2010 All Rights ReservedA Blog Posting From Mark Wheatley
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20 July 2010 09:14
This post is relevant to anyone that uses the phone to follow up leads.Unless you manage your activity, you won’t know how many calls you need to make a sale. The cornerstone of face to face selling is making enough calls.There was a brilliant book written in the 1930’s by Frank Bettger “How I Raised Myself From Failure To Success In Selling” In it he wrote this “You can’t collect the commission until you make the sale, You can’t make the sale until you write the order,You can’t write the order, until you have an interviewYou can’t have an interview until you make a call.”Frank was making cold calls, there''s nothing wrong with cold calling apart from many people don''t like doing it. There are plenty of ways of generating leads without cold calling. All of the lead generation that I advocate is direct response marketing. Where you are making an offer and asking for people to ''put their hand up'' to show you they are interested. What that means is they fill in the coupon, or go to the website, call the special number etc.If people have given you their number and expressed an interest, you''ve got a legitimate reason to
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19 July 2010 03:01
There has been quite a lot of interest in my original post, ''People The Biggest Barrier To Growth.''The idea for that post came from a friend, who told me that he was employing people in his company, for the first time. Moving from ''one man band'' to a man with people management responsibilities.Which was when I remembered the research that I did, on what stopped SME''s growing. People being the problem, that was singled out as the biggest barrier to growth.Anyway my friend asked me, what was the best strategy in overcoming that problem?This was my reply.There is no one answer to that of course. In my experience it’s attracting and selecting the right candidates. For example, the selection process that I use on salespeople for clients, has a number of elements designed to sort out the ''wheat from the chaff.'' That’s the starting point of getting it right.Beyond that, it’s the right conditions, pay, commission, training, their role and responsibilities. being clear, along with performance expectations being set.The quality of the product and service the company provides has to be right.Good leadership and fair management, are essential. Creating an environment where there is a lack of office politics, which
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18 July 2010 07:41
Let me explain the link.One of the aspects of consultative selling is uncovering the problems of the prospect, finding out what the real problems are. Seeking to put a value on what the current position is for them clarifying what your solutions would mean to them if they invested in them, its a particularly useful approach when selling business to business.The link is is from the poem ''I KEEP six honest serving men.''I KEEP six honest serving-men(They taught me all I knew)Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who.What and Why and When and How and Where and Who are the consultants questions.You will never be stuck in a sales situation when you use them. Take CareRegards Mark A Results Driven Approach To Your Business Success Mark Wheatley associates is a business development company that specialise in low risk sales and marketing helping small and medium sized businesses grow through coaching training and consulting services. Based in Nottingham in the East Midlands UK. www.wheatleyassociates.org Copyright Mark Wheatley 2010 All Rights ReservedA Blog Posting From Mark Wheatley
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17 July 2010 11:59
There are a number of techniques that you can use to deal with sales objections.Provided that a sales lead, is a qualified lead, its possible to sell to anyone. That assumes that you are selling something worth buying of course!A qualified lead is a decision maker, who can afford what you are offering and can buy within a reasonable timescale.It helps, if you think of objections as being unanswered questions.There are several techniques you can use to handle them.When I work with companies in the area of sales training, I ask them prior to the course to write down all their common objections. We work together at creating responses for them during the training.There is however a different approach to having stock answers to objections. That being pre-empting the objections.The idea is to bring up the objections yourself in the sales conversation.For example, if you were selling cars and the particular make, had a bad resale value because of a quality problem with a particular car, that had tainted the brand.You might say ''''one of the problems you can have in the future with any car is a poor resale value, even when the sales price and the deal on your
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16 July 2010 05:27
Some people take laptop''s to make presentations to the their prospects, personally I used printed pages from a PowerPoint presentation.There are a few reasons for doing this, the first being communication. A leading university concluded that up to 93 percent of communication effectiveness is determined by nonverbal cues. Another study indicated that the impact of a performance was determined 7 percent by the words used, 38 percent by voice quality, and 55 percent by the nonverbal communication. By having photographs, samples, graphs etc. It helps support what you are saying verbally and improves communication. Which if I recall is defined as sending and receiving information.In terms of believability it also helps when your visuals have independent information from reliable and reputable sources. The reason I use printed pages rather than a presentation on a laptop is I can close the book and move on, if my prospect understands the point that I''ve made and they want to ask me some more questions. If you don''t use visuals, why not develop some and try them out, to see how they can help you support your sales presentation.I would be interested in hearing about what you take to presentations, what works and what doesn''t. Take Care.RegardsMark P.S. If
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15 July 2010 04:17
Anyone for tapas? I took this photo at Glastonbury last month.Its a very large flamenco dancer promoting the sale of tapas.It certainly got my attention.The question is could you buy or make something a little wacky like this, that you could use? Something along similar lines to get your business to stand out?It does not substitute for signage and clearly space is an issue, but for a retail or restaurant business with a little room outside, well its a possibility!If you have seen anything similar send me your photo''s and I''ll put them on the blog giving you a mention of course. All comments welcome.Take Care Regards MarkA Results Driven Approach To Your Business Success Mark Wheatley associates is a business development company that specialise in low risk sales and marketing helping small and medium sized businesses grow through coaching training and consulting services. Based in Nottingham in the East Midlands UK. www.wheatleyassociates.org Copyright Mark Wheatley 2010 All Rights ReservedA Blog Posting From Mark Wheatley
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09 July 2010 08:42
You could turn this statement around and say good people are a key catalyst of growth.The statement comes from the research that I undertook when I did my MBA.The dissertation was examining barriers to growth in small to medium sized companies and does the Internet Internationalise businesses faster. This was back in 1998 when the Internet was still ''young'' so we all know the answer to the second part of the question now.What I wasn''t expecting though was the response to the wider question of what''s stops small businesses growing. It wasn''t cash flow or marketing it was people.Every managing director more or less said the same thing getting and keeping the right people was the biggest thing that was stopping them growing their businesses.People that have the right attitude, skills and motivations these were their observations.What are yours? What''s stopping you I would be interested to hear your comments.If you don''t want to admit it publicly as a comment below send me an email and I will publish the results without revealing your identity in a future post.So what''s holding you back what''s stopping you from growing at the rate of growth that you would like?Take CareRegardsMarkP.S. I am
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04 June 2010 01:09
A few weeks ago I asked for some guest blog writers, this is the first contribution. It’s a great post about the The Human''s Guide to Blogging which gives you some great tips on writing effective articles, whatever your niche written by Gavin Whittaker.More about Gavin is at the bottom of this first guest article.Let’s get on with the Human’s Guide to Blogging.Big eyes, green skin, from mars? - If you’re an alien then sorry this short article sharing some great secrets of blogging is not for you...What? - you’re human?...great, you’ll get this then. Us humans consider it a challenge to put pen to paper, or write online articles. Why? - because we simply try too hard.Now Sssh...don’t tell anyone this as it’s a ‘trade secret’ but the trick is to just be yourself. And here’s some great tips on composing your blog articles from scratch too:A great headline – clear, succinct and if appropriate a play on words250-350 words...don’t turn off your readers with essays. Chunk it down and live to blog another dayA mug shot – a picture says a thousand words. No Hawaiian shirts or grumpy faces however pleaseBullet points – The human brain responds well to
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06 May 2010 04:30
Positive mental attitude and self belief mantra is a massive industry with solutions provided by Guru’s and would be Guru’s trying to sell their latest recordings, books, seminars and so forth.Now clearly a positive mental attitude isn’t the solution to everything, but when you are leading a business, particularly a business that’s in difficulties, its far better to have one, to transmit your positive beliefs and mindset to your colleagues, rather than being a defeatist and being negative.Having turned around businesses in the past myself, I believe that being positive and keeping your emotions under control are part of the ‘tool kit’ required to deal with difficult situations.Positive affirmations, such as ‘I always can find a solution to a problem,’ or when you are going into a meeting with the Bank for example ‘I am prepared for this meeting they can ask me anything and I’ll be able to answer it.’ ‘I’m a bloody negotiator I’m a great salesperson etc.’ These kinds of statements do help. I often recalled a story which my Father told me that he would recount when facing difficult situations.He used to say to me, ‘You cannot let it beat you Mark, if you believe you
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16 March 2010 05:52
A repurchase system is a hidden marketing asset. (See my earlier posts which explain more about hidden marketing assets). Your customers or clients should benefit when they purchase your product or service when it’s needed. You might think that''s an obvious statement, but do your customers or clients purchase at the optimum time? Do you have repurchase systems in place? For example, it might be better for you to get your hair cut every four weeks not every six weeks. So the optimal time is four weeks not six, to avoid those bad hair days! What does that mean if you own a hairdressers business or hair salon owner, if your from the USA? Lets say the price is £10 for a cut for man. If someone purchases every six weeks that''s it works out at 8.66 haircuts a year, well we don''t have a .66 of a haircut, so lets say its 8 haircuts a year. For at least two weeks out of this six week cycle, your hair might look slightly untidy. Its £80 sales revenue per customer, per year without any extras. Now if the hairdresser pre-booked the appointment and managed to get their customers
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10 March 2010 07:29
I went to see a new prospect today, a really nice chap with an interesting business.Without giving away who he is its an online business which helps other business owners manage their people.He has advantages in his services that are superior to the major competitors. When I asked him what are his concerns about his marketing he complained that ''people don''t understand our service.''Well prior to the meeting I reviewed his website and considered the notes from my first phone call with him. During the meeting he told me about other features and benefits, about how his system worked and guess what?What do you think it said on his website and in his sales copy about the advantages of dealing with him?Not a lot , he really wasn''t telling anyone about his unique selling points or the extra value he was providing or about why people should do business with him as apposed to his competitors. So no wonder people didn''t understand his service.A Hidden USPIf your business isn''t communicating about ''what''s in it for me,'' from your prospective customers point of view, why should they care why should they buy from you?Anyway here is the ad. If you need a new USP
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23 February 2010 11:13
Have you got a detailed marketing plan in place? Do you have more than five different methods of attracting leads, that produce a predictable number of prospects?Are the methods that you use to generate leads creating sufficient leads to meet your monthly sales targets, taking account of the percentage of prospects that turn into sales?If the answer is no to these three questions then you''ve got a marketing problem.On my website in the news section I''m offering a limited number of free consultations. These are not some elaborate trick to put you into some program or take money off you.I am building some examples of my work for marketing purposes, (recordings and transcripts) so that''s what''s in it for me.Anyway if you are not generating sufficient prospects here''s a great way of solving the problem.Just visit my site at www.wheatleyassociates.org and fill in a contact form or send me an email off the contact page to arrange your free consultation. I am only doing ten free consultations on the subject of lead generation, so don''t delay.RegardsMark A Results Driven Approach To Your Business SuccessMark Wheatley associates is a business development company that helps companies and professional firms grow providing low cost
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12 February 2010 11:26
I was doing the weekly shop the other week and the cashier said to me ''would you like a Sun to read, its free,'' I was about to say no and then she said ''you can have £5 off your shopping bill,''Well money for nothing and the Sun for free that''s almost a song. Anyway it was a deal based on an irresistible offer. Why wouldn''t I want £5 off for no effort on my part, even if I don''t like reading the Sun, who''s headline was all about the none football activities of our England football captain that was.When I said okay to the cashier, she opened the Sun and she tore out the coupon that was in a full page ad that Asda was running.It was interesting to see how Tesco reacted to the competitive threat and a reminder that coupons are a direct response tool to bring new customers or clients into your business.You don''t however have to spend money on full page ads in national newspapers to take advantage of this lead generation mechanism. There are online and offline methods which are both low cost and very effective. If you want to know which work best or
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04 February 2010 07:24
Greetings all blog readers!I did not make a post last month because I was very busy helping my brother sell one of our businesses. In terms of what''s going on at the moment I am currently working on a new business development course which will be supported by coaching.This will be launched in April of this year. Its taking the Michael Gerber principle a bit further, ''working on the business not in the business.'' The objective is to grow a business incrementally by between 2-5% per month, addressing seven results divers. The course only requires an hour a week of the business owners time and I am throwing in some time management principles that will help you create additional time, if you are time pressured.You can in fact sign up to the time management report on the blog and that will explain some of the concepts. Since I''ve not been attentive to my readers if you sign up to time management report I''ll send you something else that you will find useful.That''s all for now.RegardsMark A Results Driven Approach To Your Business SuccessCopyright Mark Wheatley 2009 All Rights ReservedA Blog Posting From Mark Wheatley
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23 December 2009 03:36
The other week I mentioned that I would tell you about the other e-mail marketing solution that I recommend.Infusionsoft is much more than an e-mail marketing system. Its used by many of the leading internet marketeers and various business building guru''s such as Michael Gerber who wrote the EMyth.Its not the cheapest system on the market but its very good, check it out and see what you think.RegardsMarkA Results Driven Approach To Your Business SuccessCopyright Mark Wheatley 2009 All Rights ReservedA Blog Posting From Mark Wheatley
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16 December 2009 08:34
Here are a few questions to simulate your strategic thinking for the New Year. If you are getting too many no’s or don’t knows, just leave a comment and I’ll do my best to reply.1. What sets your business apart from the competition, why should they choose you instead of your competitors? 2. Have you got five or more lead generation strategies to generate sufficient leads to achieve your budget for 2010? (Excluding referrals).3. Do you close above 50% of your prospects? (A prospect is defined as someone that has shown an interest in your products and services).4. Have you got three or four referral systems that are being consistently worked by the appropriate people in your organisation? (Word of mouth does not count).5. Are you spending sufficient time in managing and developing your sales and marketing activities?6. Are you attempting to increase the size of every sale with every new and existing customer/client?7. Do you have a cheaper alternative when people cannot afford to buy from you?8. Are repeat sales built into your sales model?9. Do you know how long an average customer/client stays with you in years?10. When you have lost a customer/client do you know why?11. Do you continually
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14 December 2009 05:42
Just a quick post to suggest that its worth completing the form ''How To Remain Focused The Secret To Time Management.'' It only four pages so it won''t take a lot of time reading it! RegardsMark A Results Driven Approach To Your Business SuccessCopyright Mark Wheatley 2009 All Rights ReservedA Blog Posting From Mark Wheatley
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11 December 2009 05:59
Building your e-mail list is fundamental to growing your business.With a credible system you can quickly build yourself a list of opt in subscribers.A list should be segmented so that you can easily communicate with different types of customers or clients.You can segment your list by type of product or service purchased, by interest, by higher value customers and so on. In fact the more you segment your list the easier it is to get the message right, to promote the relevant subject that your readers or subscribers are interested in.As a rule of thumb don''t just keep ramming sales messages down peoples throats.Educate them, inform them, to keep them interested.The way to capture names is to offer something on a sign up form, such as a free report, a free video even a free gift. Something that people will value.The next step would be to build a programme of useful communications that would be sent throughout the year. You can tie in with holidays, and birthdays (if you gather that type of information).Then its all about maintaining that relationship.There are two systems that I recommend, Aweber is the first one I''ll cover.They have some great videos on their site,
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