May 17, 2012

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Managing Your Business When One Client Takes Alot of Your Time

Managing Your Business When One Client Takes Alot of Your Time

How often has your schedule been thrown out of whack because of a client’s needs?

I try to live by the 80/20 rule: working from my home office 80% of the time and working onsite with clients 20% of the time. But, the past week has been the exact opposite.

I had a demanding onsite project. I had to drive halfway across town and give up my weekend to help my client meet their deadline. Yeah, I know. It’s time to get me some cheese to go with my whine.

You could think of this as “drowning in success”. It’s an interesting image. You’re surrounded by good fortune – your clients need you, you’re doing rewarding work, and, of course, you’re getting paid. But, at the same time, you feel like you’re drowning. You’re so focused on how you’re going to get through this stretch that it’s easy to lose sight of your larger business goals.

When this happens, I have to put my situation in perspective. The following are 4 steps that help me to see the bigger picture.

1. Discuss your upcoming schedule with your business partner(s) and/or family members. You may have to reallocate some business or household responsibilities. Your business partner can continue to focus on marketing, searching for clients, and getting the word out. Your family can chip in by covering some of your chores. Brett and I are great about continuing to keep the business and household afloat when one of us gets too busy.

2. Be thankful for your current “problem”. Acknowledge how busy you are right now. Then, think about what it’s like when you’re struggling to find clients. I know which “problem” I prefer.

3. Give yourself permission to relax. Sometimes when you’re spending that much time on one client, you feel guilty about the other things you haven’t had time to do. But, instead, set aside time to do something mindless. My guilty pleasure is my free money online poker game.

4. Leverage your current project.

* Write a press release about the client you’re working with. For added punch, include a quote from your client. It’s a win-win.

* Write a case study based on the work you did. You could include this with your marketing materials. Or, you could turn it into an article and submit to an industry magazine.

See you in the pool!

About The Author

Leila Johnson co-owns Data-Scribe(tm) along with her husband Brett Johnson. The New Mexico-based firm empowers Micro-Businesses through technology, the written word & training. To get more tips like this, visit their Micro-Business E-Library or sign up for their Micro-Business Gazette at www.datascribe.biz.

Filed Under: Business Management Tagged With: , , ,

Discovery Procedures for Building Effective Management Systems

Discovery Procedures for Building Effective Management Systems
by: Chris Anderson

Part One in a Five Part Series

Imagine what a professional football team would be like without a regimen of practice drills? Now take away their playbook and player statistics. What you have in this extreme scenario are highly talented (and perhaps overpaid) individuals participating in organized chaos. They might actually win a game or two, but in the long run, this team is doomed.

Management Policy

I offer this illustration to drive home the point of why any organization needs to examine the existence and effectiveness of its management systems. If there are weaknesses or holes in your documented procedures (playbook), or benchmark measurements (stats), then you will want to take corrective action.

Process Phases

It is my experience that when a company attempts to establish its management systems for the first time, it takes longer than expected, involves more people than planned, and grows in complexity.

To control this trend, I advocate dividing the process into five (5) distinct phases, each with clear objectives:

1. Discovery
2. Planning
3. Development
4. Implementation
5. Rediscovery

In this series, we will take a look at each phase. So this week, let’s take a look at the Discovery phase.

Discovery Procedures

Think of this phase as all the things the coaching staff does up to and including the first pre-season team meeting. It is where the overall missions and goals are set, with clear effectiveness criteria established. Certainly the team may set it sights on the championship, but what about the kicking team or linemen? Each part of your organization must have meaningful and measurable performance criteria mapped out in this phase.

Management Objectives

Establishing objectives and criteria requires close scrutiny by management of what really contributes to the overall company mission. Departmental goals must be aligned with company goals. To illustrate with our football analogy: running backs may propose a goal of 5,000 total yards rushing in a season. This may or may not be beneficial to the team goal, whereas an aligned goal might be to achieve an average of +5 yards per run. The latter may be more appropriate for a highly pass-oriented offense.

System Action Plan

In your discovery phase, once your objectives and effectiveness criteria are agreed upon, you can create your action plan. This step is simply the broad roadmap covering the remaining 4 phases of building your management system.

The Discovery Phase generally takes from 2-4 weeks, and represents approximately 12% of the total process.

Planning Procedures Phase

In part two of this series, we will take a look at one of the most critical and also most overlooked phase in building your quality management system – the Planning Phase.

About The Author

Chris Anderson is currently the managing director of Bizmanualz, Inc. and co-author of policies and procedures manuals, producing the layout, process design and implementation to increase performance.

To learn how to increase your business performance, visit: www.bizmanualz.com

sean@bizmanualz.com

Filed Under: Business Management Tagged With: , , , ,

Success From Failure Is As Simple As Focus, Plan, Execute 1

Success From Failure Is As Simple As Focus, Plan, Execute

You excitedly signed up for that pre-made money generating website you saw in a popbehind window. You signed up for the affiliate IDs. You set up your autoresponder and signed up for several “traffic generators”. You read the writings of all the internet gurus. Then you sat back and waited to pull in those MASSIVE PROFITS!

Its now a year later and what do you have to show – 150 subscriptions to your ezine and a couple of downline affiliates. You are disgruntled, dejected and more broke than you were when you started this venture. You feel that it is time to give up.

Don’t.

A major breakthrough leading to increasing success in your home business may be just around the corner. Here are a few steps to take before throwing in the towel.

Why did you start?

When you first signed up there were circumstances in your life that led you to look for a home business opportunity. These may have been due to a job loss, desire for more time with your family or need to supplement retirement income. Whatever the reason, most likely they still exist. Write them down. Put it in big letters on a single page and post it where you will be likely to see it several times a day – on the bathroom mirror, on the refrigerator, on a kitchen cabinet, the bedroom door – somewhere that you will see it and remind yourself of the ultimate goal.

Focus

When you started you become excited about a product or service. But along the way you have been bombarded with the “next best thing”. It’s easy to get started but then but when it comes down to DOING what you start, it gets hard and doesn’t happen as fast as you would like it to.

Jack Humphrey, in his article “Focus and Fear of Success – The Biggest Monkey on Your Back?” http://tinyurl.com/5zr6e says “The problem lies with your focus and your fear of success. You must CHOOSE the opportunity you are passionate about, or create a product you stand behind and love, and then hunker down for the long-haul! Make yourself do everything you are taught to do to build your business and build it – all the way or not at all.”

Create/retool your marketing plan

You may or may not have created a plan for marketing your opportunity. The two must haves to be successful are a large and growing opt in list and massive traffic to your website. In all those forums you probably learned several methods to boost your online presence, including:

1. Listing your ezine in ezine directories
2. Signing up for pay-per-click advertising
3. Exchanging links
4. Buying leads from a lead generator
5. Signing up with traffic generators, such as searchestate
6. Buying ezine advertising

You may have tried these and several more. But did you have a plan?

Stone Evans, the Home Biz Guy, in his free ebook, 30 days to success http://tinyurl.com/63rfj, says ”Some of the key marketing activities that you should perform on a regular basis are starting to show up once every week: write and article, submit your article, create links back to your site, network in forums… I strongly recommend that you keep these vital practices up for the life of your business.”

“ You see, it is very unlikely that one BIG event is suddenly going to make you an Internet marketing success story and cause you to become rich overnight. In truth, it’s all the small things you do that add up over time and ultimately allow you to become successful in this or any business undertaking.”

Execute the plan

Now that you have refocused on your goals, narrowed in on your product and built a marketing plan all that’s left is to execute that plan. Set aside time every day that you will spend on your plan. Write an article on Monday, submit it on Tuesday, exchange links on Wednesday and so on.

Ultimate Success

You had your reasons for deciding to start your own home based business. You must always keep your reasons in the forefront of your mind. You must always be able to rely upon your own self and your dedication to the success of your business. Success is within your reach, if only you can stay focused on your goals. You must decide to reach for your goals, and then, you must have the discipline necessary to reach them.

About The Author
Timothy Spaulding is the owner of the Work At Home Business Resource Center www.workathome-awesomeopportunities.com. He has been employed in the restaurant, retail and aerospace industries.

Filed Under: Business Management Tagged With: , , , ,

Get Tough

Get Tough

Running a business requires many skills. One major skill is to be tough. Not everyone is your friend and people will try to take advantage of you. Be prepared to be tough. A friend of mine who recently sold his business had a very interesting experience with a business partner and friend. This other guy was horrible to deal with. He squeezed the last penny out of a deal and put pressure on my friend wherever he could. Imagine someone threatening to take his business to the competition in one minute and then turning around and be your best friend while inviting you for lunch and a hockey game.

Here are some ways to show toughness in the business world:

• Don’t talk too much. Keep it short and simple. Don’t open yourself. The less you talk, the less you reveal about your own position. The less you talk, the more you can listen for weaknesses or opportunities and to take advantage of your opponent.
• Be slow and conservative with your concessions. It can really grind your opponents down. If you must give, give just a little, and ask for something back in return immediately – even if it’s their concession to take an issue off the negotian table.

• Be firm. No means no. Don’t have a problem to give your opponent the feeling he just hit a wall. Explain your position – be firm.

• Keep things moving. Don’t let opponents to go back to issues already worked out and settled. Once an issue is settled, it’s settled. Your opponents must feel that your time is precious and that you do not tolerate wasting your time.

• Stay focused. The last person standing at the bargaining table is the one with the greatest power of concentration. Don’t loose sight of what is in there for you.

Filed Under: Business Management Tagged With: , , , ,

Customer Loyalty

Customer Loyalty

Loyal customers are the foundation of almost every business. Going the extra mile to provide outstanding customer service is the first step to customer loyalty. But there is more. Of course – your products and services in general need to be good. If you offer lousy uptime there is not really a reason to be loyal when being a customer. You just don’t deliver, period.

Here are a few more suggestions to gain customer loyalty.

1) Be smart. Be smarter than your customers are. Make sure you and your staff always (no exceptions) have more answers than your customers have questions. Most people are very loyal to expertise and proven skills.

2) Pay Attention. Pay attention to what your customers really want from you and what they really are hoping to find. If you see a pattern – follow it and adjust accordingly.

3) Attitude and outfit. Show positive attitude. Always be on time; never ever run late when a customer is involved. Be professional, act professional. If you meet with a customer – don’t look like coming from a .COM company (even if you are) where shorts and T-Shirts are business attire. Don’t over-dress either.

4) Dump any strict policies. Don’t make customers think, that doing business with you is a risk. Be generous and flexible. Every situation is unique – so can be your decisions. If a customer is not satisfied, give him the money back and try spinning this into an even bigger sale.

5) Don’t hire unlikable people. Nobody likes to give money to someone they don’t like. Even if your staff might never really talk to customers and only communicates via email or forums – a personality will always shine through. A customer will feel after a while, who he is dealing with.

6) Don’t be pushy. Don’t try to push a customer to something they don’t want, they don’t need or they are not sure about. Show options, be patient. Customers like that more than a stupid sales pitch.

7) Offer superior products. Add a little more to each product or service than necessary.

None of these things alone with get you loyal customers, but a combination of things will make it very difficult for a customer to leave. If you get a customer to this point, you are able to ask for a higher price for your products and most of them will be happy to pay a little more so that they can continue to enjoy the service and the products that you provide.

Filed Under: Business Management Tagged With: , , , ,
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