Coaching For Success
Business Tips
‘Importance Of Work-life Balance For An Entrepreneur’
Jul 12th
Work - Life Balance
Running your own business is a tough job. If you are in a conventional earning job then you can plan in order to maintain a balance between work and your personal life. But things become different when you own a business because running a business demands the extra efforts and can leave you spending many more hours working than if in a conventional job.
When working for yourself you need to be there whenever you see an opportunity and you must always be ready to face new challenges, this fact alone makes it hard to plan anything with certainity so it becomes tough to get time for yourself, let alone your family.
As a person you must appreciate the fact that you should not work for hours on end like a machine. You do need some time to relax and rejuvenate yourself. If you work continuously in a stressed environment you may get burnt out.
It is a known fact that productivity levels fall when you do not refresh your energy levels from time to time. ‘Workaholics’ advocate that the output they can generate, given a set of inputs, is directly proportional to the number of hours they put in. This may be true to some extent but maybe they should also think about the fact that the productivity unleashed during those hours are what matters in the final outcome, and not just number of hours spent.
As a businessman/ woman, you should try to focus on the output generated per hour rather than the hours put in. This way you will be able to evaluate your operational efficiency and work towards improving them. It is important to keep a time for yourself during busy schedules to rejuvenate yourself, by doing so you help yourself towards better work-life balance. There are some steps you can take to maintain work-leisure balance while on the job.
Firstly, check out the time when your customers require you the most and plan your work schedule in such a way that you are available at that time without any sort of breaks unless it goes over lunch etc (bathroom breaks not included of course 
). For the rest of the time you can plan out appropriate breaks during the remainder of your working hours.
You can take time out to walk out of your office or attend a networking event and interact with different people (it is work but of the lighter version , try not to go in with a sell mentality), that way you have time out and at the same time expand your network, you may even get a prospect or customers through your network.
There are a lot of social networks which are available like Lion’s club, rotary club, Chambers of commerce etc. where you can meet like-minded business persons which may be useful to your business. Alternatively listen to some music for ten minutes, go for a walk, join a gym and work out during the slow hour periods, if you decideto do this you will free yourself from hectic hours and also build up healthy physique.
To get more family time plan to do things in quiet times, if you think you cannot find quiet time ask yourself this ‘can i get up a little earlier or do something else like read and respond to email a little later in order to make time during sensible hours to play with your children or take them/ pick them up from school? With a little thought you will find that you can – the key is knowing when your busy periods are so you can utilise your quiet times.
Adopting a better life-style is as important as generating better profits for your business. No matter how much you have to work, you must make space for leisure time. As we have seen above, even eisure activities can be aligned to your business motives like expanding networks, if planned in a proper way, running a business can be fun.
Always remember that you should not ruin your health to earn money and then spend the same to regain your health. You must always strive towards a healthy work-life balance.
Remember when Internet Marketing, ‘Men are from Mars’ and ‘Women are From Venus’21
Jun 21st
All good business owners know that understanding your market and the types of people who may buy from you as well as your understanding of present customers is important. This is especially so when using an internet business and using internet marketing. It is essential for interent business owners to understand what their potential customers or market are looking for and how they are doing this online so you can get their attention and get your internet marketing message in front of the right audience.
'Men are From Mars' and 'Women are from Venus' when it comes to Internet Marketing
Studies hve shown that men and women use the internet differently, using this knowledge for insight can truely help a business target their audience well. Women who once were behind in use of technology no longer are, they fore run men in the use of internet services.
However men are tend to stay online longer and spend more time on online entertainment i.e. gaming and researching technical gadgets. So basically men are more likely to use the internet to check sports scores and get sports news, read any news political or otherwise, download music and video, buy or sell on ebay and buy tickets for travel shows etc. Whereas women tended to use the internet to participate in support groups or social websites, read religious or spiritual information and get health information. In 2009 a Burst Media study showed that 62.3% of women use the internet as their primary source for information on the products they were considering purchasing and that 51.7% of the women studied used the internet as the primary way to keep in touch with their families.
so what does it all mean, well think about your business what product or service do you offer inside of these areas? take a look at your website, is it tailored towards both men and women or at only one group. If your site is informational and entertaining in content it is more likely to be for men, if it is informational and nurturing it is more likely to be a site for women. Gender plays an important part in the way people use time online and offline. you can use this information to target and hone your offering, it also tells you where to position your ad campaigns and possibly the right time of day. All of this information can help drive traffic and ultimately get sales for your product or service if used correctly.
Networking Tips for Small Businesses
Jun 18th
Networking
One of the hardest things for small businesses to conquer is how to network well, this problem is mainly one of confidence and a practised idea of what to say and do to promote your offline or internet business in a short sharp and effectively captivating way to enable you to build a relationship with other individuals who may well promote you to others even if they do not need your product themselves. In essence you become your own personal billboard.
Networking is a a means to build trust with other people or businesses that can see how your product or service can genuinely benefit other people and can seroiusly promote your business if done correctly. Below are a few tips to help you network more effectively.
1. Figure out what your specific goal is for the network session you will attend, this will help you focus on networking with the right people i.e. if you sell cakes then you need to look for groups or associations etc interesting in buying cakes. By doing this you will get the most out of your networking session.
2. Try to be a good source of information ‘ the go to guy or gal’, people always want to know people who know things or people who can do things, can answer queries easily, come up with good ideas and suggestions. By simply being that go to guy or gal can keep you in the forefront of people’s minds.
3. have a pre-prepared answer to the most commonly asked questions ‘so what do you do’ and ‘so how can that help my business’ of all the questions I have come across these are the most common two (I am sure you know others). The idea here is to stun the person with an genuine answer that rolls off your tongue as though it was second nature – Why would you want to do this? – well it gives the impression that you know your stuff, and that builds trust. Be careful not to sound like a prerecording when you answer remember personality counts for everything in the delivery of this prerehersed answer.
4. Ask open-ended questions that will allow the person to give you information on their business or self during your networking sessions and shows them that you do not want to just sell to them but are interested in them. An open ended question starts with any of the following; who, what, where, when, and how.
5. Do not start a networking conversation with your business card, many people will instantly put up their defences to you believing you will give them a sales pitch, which reflects badly on your business. Get to know each other first you may find that actually you do not want to do business with them.
6. stay abreast of world affairs or have a backup topic as this could help you both into a conversation sometimes before you discuss business.
7. make contact quickly with new contacts and try to steer clear of self promotion in first contact instead talk about the meeting or other topics,make a mention of some of the business things you discussed (your business, but make it brief) and compliment or state your good impression etc of their business,letting them know that you enjoyed meeting them. This is how you formulate a good networking experience for them so they build trust in you and your products.
Hopefully these tips will help you to network better remember follow up with new contacts and any referals given you quickly as if not this will reflect badly on your business.
Marketing Strategies Part Two
Jun 17th
Marketing Planning
In part one we discussed the different between what business owners percieve customers want and what potential clients want and need this was a case or product/service V people/brand allure. I discussed why people/ brand allure was a natural winning combination for any business and hopeful gave you some food for thought in changing the strategy you maybe using by looking at whether your business was inline with customers wants and needs. Today I want to look briefly at the process you need to follow to plan an effective marketing strategy for your business.
The objective of your marketing plan is to grab the customer and retain them for as long as possible, this is easier said than done, however following a step-by-step approach can guide you in the right direction. Below I have broadly set out a marketing plan.
1. Define business objective – You would be amazed at how many business owners we at The Internet Business Coach speak to who just can not define the objective of their business (Note: STOP! if this is you before continuing to read do this). How can you approach a potential customer if you cannot answer this. Your objective/s need to be short and succinct – if you can not do it in 100 words or less something is wrong and you need to rethink!
2. Establish market environment variables like competitors, customers’ behaviour. If you never study the competition, your business stands to lose, ask yourself if they are more successful than you what is it that they are doing that you may not be doing or getting right, what brand allure are they using to attract customers, how and most importantly where are they marketing? Is their marketing targetted at specific groups? All of the answers to these questions can help you overcome any current issues you have with gaining new business. Customer behaviuor is very important and as mentioned yesterday customers do not buy products/service but people and brand.
3. Define your market and customer profile. – to define your market you must first define your customer profile, i.e. where are they,? what is their key problem? then you can look at the market, where can you find them?, how do you reach them and so on.
4. Define your positioning, branding, pricing and promoting strategies – We discussed your positioning and marketing brand in part one and will discuss in more detail pricing and means of promotion in part three.
5. Establish an implementation plan. – At this stage you have already done most of the true hard work and now you need to think about how you use all of the data you collated to implement and execute your marketing plan of action. This in itself is no easy feat and if planned incorrectly can cost you time and lost money. Take time to write this down look at the time period over which this specific plan will be implemented and how this will get done i.e. your marketing mix.
6. Allocate financial and human resources. – The key here is to ask yourself how much of this can I do myself, what do I really know and could someone else do it better. If you know in your heart that you cannoot give this task X hours per week/month of undivided attention because your business demands are great or you simple do not know enough or the learning curve for you will be to steep then you really need to allocate enough money to your marketing campaign to cover outside help and the acual marketing itself ‘ it is better to plan to cover this cost in your product/service sale price then to try to do everything and end up doing nothing or half doing it where you ultimately end up with no new business and financial loses.
7. Identify the metrics for plan evaluation. – Basically this is a fancy way of saying what method/s you will use to monitor your plan and by what will you measure it i.e. collection of data, resources, schedule, quality, scope and problems. Keep reading the posts on this blog for how to do this.
8. Implement the plan. the D-Day of your hardwork is finally here in the words of Nike’ Just Do IT’.
9. Evaluate its effectiveness based on the set metrics – Now you are at the stage of checking to see if what you thought was going to happen and if not why not and how to change it, if it did go according to plan, how to contniue to do it or get potentially better results.
10. Define opportunities for long-term market development on the basis of the results. – This one speaks for itself, if it did not work well tweak, if it did rinse and repeat. In part three we will look at online and offline marketing, see you then. If you like this article and wish to republish it please leave it intact crediting it with a do follow link back to http://www.theinternetbusinesscoach.co.uk/blog
Making Seminar Promotion Pay
Jun 14th
Not All Seminars are Classroom Led
Some of the conventional marketing tools never lose their relevance with changing times. Seminars are one such medium of promotion which has been in use for a very long time. They have advanced with changing times and a lot of innovative techniques have evolved to make them as useful as possible. This article discusses various techniques that are used to build a successful seminar for promoting your business.
‘What is a seminar?’
Basically a seminar is a presentation made in front of an intended audience with the aim of promoting your products or services and add customers to your business by adding value to them in the form of knowledge. A seminar revolves around a message which you wish to convey to the audience. The more effective the message and the way it is communicated, the more likely the semiar will be a success. So, there are some basics which must be followed while developing its content.
‘The content’
A presentation is always identified by its title. In order to get the attention of the maximum number of people, the title should be very catchy tagline. There must also be a sub-heading explaining the benefit your product/service offers and explaining what you intend to convey from your catchy title. If your seminar is informational i.e added value at one level in order to get people to buy higher priced products you must ensure the content is very good and useful to them, the expression is ‘an eyeopener’ or an ‘a ha’ moment.
The body of the content must carry forward the effect of the catchy title. The content must be as concise as possible and must be presented in an effective format. Wherever it is possible, you should use bullet points instead of wordy lines. The words used in the content as well as used by the presenter during the presentation must be persuasive in nature, yet light and not sales pitch like. The words should spontaneously create an attraction, for example-’Please’, ‘Free’, ‘Save’ etc. Through persuasive words you can hold on to the attention of the audience. The content must end with a thanks note along with a call to action like highlighting benefits of early purchase.
‘Add-ons’
In order attract the audience to become customers you can offer them additional benefits. ‘Early bird offers’ can be made where you can offer special discounts or gifts on early purchases. You can also mention ‘Money back guarantees’ to give them reassurance. Online ordering facilities always work well especially alongside easy finance options given to facilitate the purchase. These simple offers can get many customers attracted to your product. You can publish the testimonials of successful customers which authenticates your product.
‘Different forms of seminars’
A seminar may not be always a presentation in front of a sitting audience. It can be in various forms like- a flyer intended for pitching with a cover letter; an e-mail campaign where the content is mass mailed; an advertorial, which is content in form of an advertisement; an online advertisement; a referral campaign where you can ask your old customers to refer your product to new customers and offering them incentives in return; a simple radio or TV infomercial where the content of seminar is moulded as an infomercial. The seminar presentations can also take place in PR events. Whatever the form of seminar is, the intention is to convey an effective message to a target audience.
A successful seminar ends up generating a lot of customers for your business and moreover it builds up a long term relationship with them. Once you develop a relationship with your customers, you start expanding your network. The most important thing is to hold on to your network by constantly following up with them. Remember, a successful business runs on a successful network.
