Basically, there are two things that must be in place before any of your offerings can be successful (read: profitable). One is that it must be designed for a niche. So, there must be a group of people who you are targeting to offer your product/program/service toward.
The other is that is must solve a problem that your niche wants solved. Sounds obvious, yes? But many times, we create what we think our niche NEEDS instead of what it WANTS. It’s critical to know the difference and to use that knowledge to create your offerings.
There are many ways you can find out what it is that your niche wants most so you can create it and offer it to them. One of those ways is to hold a teleseminar that both delivers value to your participants as well as provides you with market research to use to inform your product line.
The best thing is that these types of teleseminars can be easy to fill and fun to host. Here are the 4 steps:
1. Decide on the topic
Your best best is to choose a topic that’s broad in scope, meaning that it discusses a problem that the majority of your niche struggles with and would like help in solving. This will get you more people on the call as well as give you a more diverse group from which to learn from for your own market research purposes.
2. Use a mini-application
When people register for your teleseminar, ask them to fill out a short questionnaire. This really begins your market research because you’ll be asking them what it is that they are struggling with specifically in relation to the bigger topic.
For example, if your topic is “How to Balance My Business and My Family and Still Have Time for a Great Life”, one question you may ask in your questionnaire is, “What’s the ONE thing you struggle with most when it comes to balancing your business and your family? Please be as specific as possible so I can give you some specific strategies to help!”
You could also ask the question in another way: “What two questions do you have that I must answer on this teleseminar for you to feel it was of value to you?” You may also want to ask where your participant is at present with regard to your topic and where they’d like to be.
Tell them you’ll be answering as many questions as you can on the teleseminar itself, to engage people right from the start when they are registering for the call, as well as encourage them to show up in the first place (this is particularly helpful if this is a fre*e call).
Also, don’t be shy about telling your participants that you’ll be using their comments and feedback as part of growing your own business. For example, if you’re writing a book and you need some more content for a certain section, hold a teleseminar on that topic and share with your teleseminar participants that they may be featured in the book if their comments, suggestions or examples are used. People will jump to sign up for your call!
3. Ask questions
At this point, you have an outline for the call itself, and now you’ve filled it in with more content with the answers to the questions that were submitted when people registered.
The next step is to weave those questions and answers into the conversation on the call itself, and ask if there are MORE questions or comments around them. This will give you more in-depth and insightful information for your purposes, as well as be valuable to those on the call. This is when you really want to give the space and the time for your participants to talk (count 5 Mississippi’s if you have to to stop yourself from filling any silence while people are thinking).
Be sure to record the call so you can listen carefully to the conversation again and take notes about what you hear that your participants are looking for in terms of solutions to their problems.
4. Send a follow-up email
As soon as possible after the call, send a follow-up email thanking your attendees for their time and participation. Include notes from the call that you’ve cleaned up and converted to a neat PDF file for them as well for added value.
What you’ve done with this is type of ‘Open House’ teleseminar is invited your attendees to ask you anything they want about your area of expertise. With the information you glean, you can easily tailor your next product around the things they most want, which equals a successful offering for you!
I’ve been spending a lot of time lately getting ready for 2011 – planning, organizing, strategizing, visioning, and more. Once again, there are many transitions and transformations on the horizon for me and my business, and much to do to prepare for them, so I’m making space and opening the flow.
In Part 1 of this article, I shared 3 ways you can make space in your business. Now here are 3 ways I’m opening the flow in my business that you can do too:
1. Escape Email Overwhelm
The number one distraction to moving your business forward by leaps instead of baby steps is email. So here’s my system for handling email overload. If you can practice this 80% of the time, you’ll be way ahead of the game.
a. Delete: scan and delete junk emails first
b. Move: move any emails into an appropriate folder – and create a rule to make that happen automatically
c. Delegate: delegate any emails that should be responded to by someone else
d. Respond: respond to any emails that only YOU can respond to
The goal is to only have emails in your inbox that require action from you!
2. Track your money
One of the easiest ways to open the flow of money in your business is to start tracking exactly how much comes in on a daily basis. I give each of my Platinum clients a money tracking sheet that makes it super-simple for them to implement this tip, but you can create your own very easily.
Just create a simple form that lists the days of the month, with your monthly money goal listed as well. Each day fill in the amount of money that came into your business, and don’t forget to include affiliate payments and any other sources of revenue as well.
Just by paying attention to what’s coming in will open the flow to more, and before you know it, all the days of the month will be filled in with a number!
3. Don’t overbook
When putting together your master plan for 2011, make sure you don’t overbook yourself. If you do, you won’t leave space for other opportunities to show up that you likely aren’t aware of yet.
When I completed my own master plan for 2011, and then just recently with my Private Platinum clients, it was complete, but not overbooked. There was time off, as well as space for other exciting possibilities to come up.
I’ve been spending a lot of time lately getting ready for 2011 – planning, organizing, strategizing, visioning, and more. Once again, there are many transitions and transformations on the horizon for me and my business, and much to do to prepare for them, so I’m making space and opening the flow.
Here are some of the ways I’m doing this in my business that you can do too:
1. Clean Up Your Business Time
Time is your only non-renewable resource. If you’ve ever experienced days when you don’t know where the time has gone, but you do know you haven’t accomplished much, then you need to take a serious look at just what is eating up those precious minutes. My coach’s request of you is to track your time for the next two weeks. Like a food diary makes you intensely aware of what you’re eating, a time log will allow you to quickly and easily identify where you’re frittering time away.
Most likely culprits?… Email and TV (yes, I know some of you are ‘watching’ TV while you’re online, and no, that’s not multi-tasking, that’s just pure distraction).
Once you are aware of where your time is going, make a conscious effort to redirect it to more productive – or even more restful – activities. Turn the TV off (or TIVO/DVR whatever it is you must watch and give it your full attention later). And don’t leave your email open all day long! Allot specific time to read and respond to it instead.
You’ll be amazed at how just doing this simple exercise will free up the time you want for more important (and fun!) things. (Be sure to read Part 2 of this article next week where I’ll share more specific and effective tips for handling email overload.)
2. Clean Up Your Business Space
Now is a great time to go through your files – computer and physical – and delete or organize them for moving forward to 2011. I spent several hours going through my physical files recently, shredding lots of documents (I love to purge!), and setting up new files for my new Platinum clients as well as empty files for the ones yet to come. During this process both online and off, I also found a lot of gems I’d forgotten about – pieces of content, systems and processes, tools, resources, audios, and more.
And now that I have a recent visual in my mind of what’s in my files, it’s literally at my fingertips as I move forward in building my business. As for my computer, I actually went so far as to purchase a brand new laptop, and I’m being very discerning about what gets transferred over from my old PC to the new. Energetically and electronically, I can feel how much more open the flow is by doing this.
3. Clean up Your Business Circle
This one can be a bit difficult, but it’s necessary to prune the people you surround yourself with from time to time. It doesn’t mean you have to completely disconnect from them (unless they’re just weighing you down energetically), but do make a conscious choice to spend more time in the company of those who lift you up.
Let me give you a simple example. If you’re on someone’s ezine list just because everyone else is or you feel like you should be, but you either a) don’t read it or b) don’t feel good when you do read it, just unsubscribe and allow the space for something that resonates with you to take its place.
Or maybe you’re part of a mastermind group that you feel you’ve outgrown. Now is the time to graciously bow out. Once you do, you open the space for a new group to form around you that better supports where you are now.
How are you making space and opening the flow for the new year?
As we head into the season of giving, now is a great time to show appreciation to your clients and customers. Taking the time to give thanks to your clients will set you apart, increase loyalty, improve retention, inspire more sales, and deepen relationships that last long after the initial sale.
Here are 10 easy ways you can say thank you to your clients:
1. Greeting Cards
My husband often teases me that I should own stock in Hallmark for the amount of money I spend a year on cards. I love to send cards, for a specific reason or for no reason at all.
For business, you’ve probably heard of SendOutCards (and no, I’m not an affiliate or a distributor). I get a lot of cards this way and it helps to deepen the relationship for me. And it’s a super-easy way for you to do that with your customers too.
2. Personal Notes
I love to send personal notes too. I have specially designed notecards that I send when I just want to connect with someone after a particularly powerful coaching call, when someone makes an investment in Platinum, when I’ve made a special connection with someone in person, or when a client just needs a little cheer.
3. Invitations
One of the things you can do for your top clients is to invite them to a special event just for them. It can be a lunch or dinner at an event you’ll all be at, or carve out a portion of your own live event to spend time just with them.
You can also invite them to special teleseminar or webinar where you offer them free content just for being your top clients.
4. Small Gifts
Flowers, books, a mug, or something more specific are all thoughtful gifts for clients. They can be sent for certain occasions or just because (that’s actually my favorite way to send a gift).
5. Gift Cards
These days you can get gift cards for almost any product or service. Some companies, like Starbucks, offer having your logo or business name imprinted on them. Other ideas besides coffee include restaurants, movies, bookstores, office supplies and online vendors like Amazon.
6. Referral and Affiliate Rewards
Even if your referral or affiliate programs offer a commission on each referral, sending a personalized note along with it will go further in encouraging your network to continue to promote your offers into the future.
7. Reverse Referrals
Whenever appropriate, refer your clients and customers to others whom they will benefit from. Making this a part of the way you run your business will come back to you ten-fold as it shows the Universe your belief in abundance.
8. Customer Appreciation Days
Pick one day a year to designate as a Customer Appreciation Day to celebrate your clients. Make a special offer only to them and make a lasting impression.
9. Host Events
Host a gathering at the next event where your clients and customers are likely to gather. A Tweetup is a popular way to connect with both current and prospective clients and they are super-simple to set up and cost you nothing but a bit of time. You can also hold a virtual event anytime you want to bring your clients and customers together.
10. Life Events
Weddings, baby showers, major moves, book contracts, big speaking gigs, TV spots, or any other major event warrants an acknowledgment. A nice card or personal note, or even a quick phone call, will make you memorable for sure.
Spending time in Vegas is not my favorite thing to do. However, Ali Brown’s SHINE conference made it definitely worthwhile. And although I had many light bulb moments during those three days, I wanted to share with you 10 of my top take-aways.
1. Your personal income cannot exceed the work you’ve done on yourself.
This is something I know to be true, based on my own experience as well as that of my clients. I know that the more I grow inside, the more my business grows on the outside. Your business (and your life) IS a mirror for what’s going on inside your mind, your heart and your soul. The more you work on yourself, the more your business will grow.
2. There’s always turbulence before the next level.
Another truism! Take a moment and think back to how you were feeling and what was going on in your business just BEFORE you broke through to the level you’re at now. Did it feel rocky, off-center, uncertain? Even just a little bit? The higher level you aspire to, the more off-kilter things will feel. Remember that it’s an indicator that you’re on the right course.
3. People buy from people.
You may know this, but it bears repeating: people buy from people they know, like and trust. The more YOU you put into your marketing, the more people will get to know, like and trust you, and the more sales you’ll make.
4. When you are yourself, you have no competition.
Enough said.
5. Frequency will always outpull a single blast.
You have to get comfortable not with just asking for the sale, but with asking for it a lot. It’s taking a lot more marketing these days to fill programs, enroll clients, and sell products, so one of the best and most immediate things you can do for your business growth is to get really comfortable with increasing how much you market your offer.
6. Luck favors the prepared.
Are you ready for the next level of business success that you desire? Do you have the systems in place? Do you have the team in place? Do you have your mindset ready to receive the abundance that’s coming?
7. Your best ideas don’t come from sitting at your desk.
My best ideas come to me in the car. Or sitting on the dock in the early morning of summer. I created this business under a palapa in the Turks & Caicos. Where do your best ideas come to you? When you’re stuck or need to hit the refresh button, go where your best ideas are able to pop into your mind.
8. Does __________ represent where I’m going?
This one really struck me. Fill in the blank with all the pieces of your business.
For example:
“Does my website represent where I’m going?”
“Does my team represent where I’m going?”
“Does my photo represent where I’m going?”
“Does my brand represent where I’m going”
“Does my business model represent where I’m going?”
Etc.
Well, do they? If not, what do you need to do to make sure that they DO represent where you’re going?
9. Be serious about your numbers.
You have to pay attention to your numbers if you’re serious about running a successful and sustainable business for the long haul.
Track what’s coming in, what’s going out, how many people you have in each program, what that adds up to, how many subscribers/fans/friends/followers you have, etc.
It ALL counts – you need to know your numbers!
10. You’ve got to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Being an entrepreneur will bring up all your stuff. 🙂 Most of the time, that’s going to make you uncomfortable. You have to be ok with that and recognize that it’s just an indicator that you’re moving through whatever you need to in order to grow and reach the next level. If you can remember that, it’s actually pretty exciting, isn’t it?
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