How to Work on Your Business

Here is one business strategy in particular that is really important to me. It is about helping you to work “on your business” versus working “in your business”. Now what do I mean by that?

Most entrepreneurs work in their business doing whatever it is they do. So, if you’re a realtor, you’re out showing homes. If you’re an attorney, you’re out meeting with clients. If you’re an accountant, you’re doing accounting work. If you’re a speaker, coach, trainer, therapist — whatever that is, you’re doing your craft. Even if you own a retail store, you’re working in a store. That’s when you work in your business. You’re doing the things that you do that make you skilled as an entrepreneur. Here’s the problem. Most entrepreneurs, in my experience, work so much in their business that they’re not spending enough time working on their business. So what do I mean by “on your business”?

“On your business” means that you are working on the marketing and on the systems that make your business grow, thrive and prosper. You are doing what it takes to make your business successful so you can keep doing what it is you do year after year and that you’re not doing it just for the sake of doing it. You’re doing it because you’re making a great income. You’re supporting yourself and your family. Taking great care of your kids and you have freedom. You have time to spend living your life. Doing the things that you love and not just working.

So what I advise you to do is one full day a week. At least five hours. And don’t cheat me. At least five hours. I want you to work on your business. That means you close the door. You lock the door. You don’t take any phone calls. You don’t have voice mail. You’re not paying attention to the fax machine. You turn off e-mail and you literally create five hours of uninterruptable time.

What do you do with that time? You schedule it every single week on your calendar. And during that time, you’re either working on marketing the business, growing the business, or strategies and techniques that go in your operations manual. Yes, you should have an operations manual. What’s an operations manual? It tells exactly how to do the day-to-day things that happen in your business. You want to create that as a policy and a procedure. This is for if you’re not in the business, or if you want to take a day off and be with your family, or you want to lay on the beach in Tahiti, or you could be seriously ill. You need to be prepared. You need to have your business able to run without you. And it runs because one day a week, five hours a week, you spend on your business creating the systems so anyone could come in and run your business if they needed to. Also, this positions you to sell your business later so you will have a good exit strategy.

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Winning New Clients

Today getting new clients in any business is getting more and more difficult. Many business owners are frustrated by the lack of leads and ineffective sales conversion systems. In fact many businesses are spending a ton of money trying to acquire new clients but are failing.

I teach my clients that education based relationship marketing based on the idea of adding value to your prospects is how to attract a ton of leads and easily convert the right leads into paying clients. Without relationships built on trust people are not going to move into action to buy your products or services. It’s that simple.

I am a huge fan of client testimonials because people live vicariously through the success of others and this enhances my credibility vs. me telling potential clients how great I am… they see and hear it from other business owners just like them.

The other goal is to get in front of prospects regularly so that they get to know who you are because people buy from people.

Let’s break this into steps:

The first step is getting in front of prospects:

You must be seen as an authority in your niche area you gradually start to build trust with your prospect. Begin by producing “solution based” educational material either by video, CD, DVD or in writing that you get to your audience. PR and articles and radio interviews also work for credibility.

Step Two: Convert the warm lead

Now you have the warm leads but you still have to convert them to a converted sale. You do this by continuing to create value for your leads and pointing out their problem areas and then matching their problems with your solutions.

Problem!
Many businesses don’t really understand their prospects. They are spending money trying to attract clients without being crystal clear who their clients are. If you don’t know exactly who you want to attract then you don’t understand how your prospect thinks and you don’t fully know their problems or how you can help them.

Get your message out:

The best way to get your message to your prospects is by giving them materials of value: teleclasses, seminars, webinars, written training materials, cds, dvds, etc. Direct mail with a valuable newsletter or emails with content are great as well.

What actions you need to take right now in your business!

I am an expert at showing clients how to do attract and convert on a shoe string budget. Here are the actions you need to take right now:

1. Offer prospects valuable information in exchange for their email or snail mail so you can keep in contact with them – NOT to sell them, to give them value, value, value.

2. Do NOT sell to prospects. Give them gifts and show them you are an expert, you care and build a relationship with them.

OK, there you have it… start taking action and let me know how I can help you.