How Could Giving Yourself A Break Turn Into The Best Thing You Ever Did?
Copyright Henry Winter 2006
-------------------------------------
Big companies do it, medium sized ones do too. But I bet you don’t.
Do I win?
The bet is this:
Do you give yourself and your business a break by having your own “away day”, your own “strategy” day?
A day, just for you, to do nothing but think ON your business not in it.
Thought not.
Nearly every business owner I know rarely does it, but when they do they reap handsome rewards.
Some of these rewards include:
- gaining a deeper and better understanding of their own business
- their market drivers
- new ways to increase sales
- create and retain better life time customer value
- new ways how to outwit their competition.
“Don’t have time for that kind of thing”.
Don't be so blinkered.
Look at it this way - for the cost of a either a luxury hotel room £200-400, room service, great, relaxing, thought inducing locations or a simple, but equally effective, “Travel Lodge” room for @ £46, book time off with yourself and review your business, consult with yourself, take the blinkers off and “go for it”.
Think of every little thing that cheeses you off about your business, your results, your profits. Think of every little thing that makes you money, makes you smile, makes you happy to be alive about your business - and how to get more of it.
This tiny investment in yourself, your time, reveals ideas that could make £000’s more for you, even £Millions.
But if you do not give it a go you will never find out.
Not sure you can gain enough from your own counsel?
Then hire a consultant, someone who has expertise in your field to go on the away day with you.
Why? Because a “good” consultant can make a positive impact on your business. They can ask the questions no one else does.
As an entrepreneur, you are embroiled, immersed, super glued, connected by an invisible umbilical cord, to your business.
And that means much too close and personal, too emotionally involved with every aspect of it.
Thats why you need to detach from it occasionally.
I know it’s tough running your own business, tough for you to identify problems
that can either be solved. To identify the ones that can be turned into great opportunities.
Just give yourself the time and space and you will find them.
There are lots present in your business and just giving yourself a few hours away from the business, in the right environment, will help you find them.
Your own “away day” or advice from a different perspective from a 3rd party will create opportunities - immediately.
From taking just one simple action, your sales and profits could explode.
You may discover new ways to cut costs and increases profit margins.
It's not magic.
Just fresh eyes. Fresh thought. Your thought.
Either your own or someone elses.
Go on do it now.
Book your own away day or call a consultant to support you in taking your business to the next level. Do it now before the opportunity passes and let me know how you get on.
Happy fortune finding,
Henry Winter
PS: If you need help just email me webmaster@livewirebusiness.com
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
What is the cheapest fertiliser to grow your sales?
Copyright Henry Winter 2006
---------------------------------------------------------
Other than your own “verbal” marketing, when you meet people, Email is the cheapest way to keep in front of suspects and prospects. But many business owners fail to use it.
Todays Blog was prompted whilst I was unsubscribing from some of the many of the email lists I subscribe too that have just become "pitch" emails.
Being a bit of a "butterfly" brain, whilst I was doing this, I started thinking about current experiences with some companies I work with.
Companies I have been extolling the virtues of email marketing and autoresponders too. Virtues they have been regulalry ignroing even though the argument is a strong one.
Then I realised one of the reasons they feel email will not work is that their current experience is the same as mine - you receive a load of "junk" email - not JUNK JUNK but poorly thought out, poorly applied email campaigns that color their judgement. Color it so badly they believe emailmarketing will not work for them.
Some business owners argue they don’t want to use email because messages get lost amongst all the hype, you get the wrong readership, worries about spamming and more. Nearly all their concerns mask a reluctance, or ignorance, of how to use it effectively.
If you fail to use email your business will die, not necessarily today or tomorrow, next week, or next year but any head in the sand thinking will ultimately cost you money. Emailing your customers and prospects will make you money. Provided you treat it as the tactical marketing tool it is.
Get exposed
I hate to think on the number of emails I have responded to and bought something, probably after the 7th , 12th perhaps even the 20th email I had from someone.
Why?
Because during the process of getting these emails I learnt something to my benefit, something I wanted to know about.
As a business owner that is exactly why you should use email. Because you can inform, educate, advise, and even treat prospects how to consume your product before they have even bought it.
First, build initial trust by selling, and I mean selling, not with money, but words, your reasons why people should opt in to your email list.
Don’t just expect them too because you ask. You have to sell them on the benefits they will receive when they do. Give them useful reward for doing so. I give away two free ebooks for example, one on web design the other about achieving business profitability.
Then supply QUALITY content, not a pitch fest. Which is sadly what @ 75% of the old emails I used to get turned into after the 3rd of 4th issue!
They do nothing but make you feel conned to have opted in.
The initial content may have been good - for 3 or 4 issues - then suddenly they are all sell you, sell you, sell you. Still a model adopted by lots of people and one, now that email is maturing fast, that is wasting the senders time.
I cannot say my email reading behaviour mirrors yours or everyone elses, but I suspect if mirrors many. These types of email senders do not get read and they ruin the list owners reputations by continuing to send them.
Once I have opted out of that persons list, even though I may still see them as possibly as being worthy of keeping track of, I become very reluctant to re enlist and it takes ages for them to rebuild my "betrayed" trust. How about you?
Trust creates action
On the other hand those email list owners I do respond to are people who have gained my trust and respect. How?
Because they initially supplied useful information, insightful comments, market intelligence, advice, some humour at times but most of all knowledge and experience that I may not have had access to or time to research. AND they still do. Their emails have not turned into pitch fests. Yes, they promote relevant, timely, useful products and ideas but not every email.
For months and months, no make that 3 years at least with one client, I have been extolling the virtues of auto responders and email as in-expensive ways to get messages in front of suspects and moving them on to be prospects then clients. Some are starting to listen, espcially when I have reviewed their own email management and behaviour towards reading emails. They realise that provided they give good content, content part of a well thought out strategy, that it works and works well.
According to some research I read "54% of small businesses surveyed rated email as the top online promotion driving new and existing customers to their websites”. So the message is getting through to your competitors.
But Business Owners Sceptical
Don't be. Even though others remain sceptical, those that have made even a hesitant start are now reaping the benefit, using email as an extra marketing vehicle.
So what should you do?
Email is a direct response medium. By that I do not mean every email has to generate a response.
What I mean is you need to set an objective as to what your use of email is for and set about creating a string of messages that create that end goal.
It could be to drive a free product trial, claim a discount coupon, pick up the phone and so on BUT the messages created to achieve that need to be carefully thought out, and become part of a cohesive plan.
Systemise
The best way to optimise the process is to systemise it, use a commercial auto responder rather than Outlook or Eudora and countless others that were not designed for commercial emailing.
Commerical systems have tracking capabilities and as a regular readers of my materials you know I am a strong advocate of “If you can't measure it, you can't manage it”. So you need to measure opening rates, bounced emails, tracing through the messages and so on.
SPAM law requirements also need to me met and double opt in needs to be catered for. You must have permission to email people so ask them. Either via your system or at your cash desk with a suitable form, office reception and many other “touch points” where you can gather a mailing list.
There are many things to look out for in your emailing. It should be interesting, informative, useful, free of jargon. If you don’t treat every communication you send carefully, and just “bang them out”, they will devalue your business in the recipients eyes quicker than you think.
Divide and Rule
Email list managemnt is also a key element. You can segment your list. That means you can have separate messages for suspects, prospects, customers, regular customers, infrequent customers, high spending customers and so on. Dividing your list makes sure you can target your messages with far greater accuracy. It also means that recipients actually anticipate receiving your email and become more loyal because the more you segment the more relevent your messages to that section of your list.
Email marketing shares some commonality with direct mail in that there are good days and bad days to send them.
From research quoted by Dr Houchin, from an article I had from the Guerrilla Mark eting Association, carried out for Barnes and Nobel, it indicated that Mondays and Fridays were bad days to send out marketing material. Mornings were bad too. If you are like me, you are probably bombarded with email first thing in the morning. At the end of the day unless an email has a very catchy subject line I have got over the habit of ”leaving” it until tomorrow. It gets deleted there and then as my attention may have gone by then.
Dr Houchin’s own research determined the largest percentage of people opened and read their emails at 1PM on a Wednesday. So if you measure it!! You can learn from it and change plans accordingly.
Lastly, let me ask you a question:
“If you had a friend and you had sure fire way for him to make more money with just the click of the mouse, for virtually no cost and he said NO what would you think?”
So make emailing an integrated part of your marketing mix before it's too late.
For more information contact me webmaster@livewirebusiness.com
Copyright Henry Winter 2006
---------------------------------------------------------
Other than your own “verbal” marketing, when you meet people, Email is the cheapest way to keep in front of suspects and prospects. But many business owners fail to use it.
Todays Blog was prompted whilst I was unsubscribing from some of the many of the email lists I subscribe too that have just become "pitch" emails.
Being a bit of a "butterfly" brain, whilst I was doing this, I started thinking about current experiences with some companies I work with.
Companies I have been extolling the virtues of email marketing and autoresponders too. Virtues they have been regulalry ignroing even though the argument is a strong one.
Then I realised one of the reasons they feel email will not work is that their current experience is the same as mine - you receive a load of "junk" email - not JUNK JUNK but poorly thought out, poorly applied email campaigns that color their judgement. Color it so badly they believe emailmarketing will not work for them.
Some business owners argue they don’t want to use email because messages get lost amongst all the hype, you get the wrong readership, worries about spamming and more. Nearly all their concerns mask a reluctance, or ignorance, of how to use it effectively.
If you fail to use email your business will die, not necessarily today or tomorrow, next week, or next year but any head in the sand thinking will ultimately cost you money. Emailing your customers and prospects will make you money. Provided you treat it as the tactical marketing tool it is.
Get exposed
I hate to think on the number of emails I have responded to and bought something, probably after the 7th , 12th perhaps even the 20th email I had from someone.
Why?
Because during the process of getting these emails I learnt something to my benefit, something I wanted to know about.
As a business owner that is exactly why you should use email. Because you can inform, educate, advise, and even treat prospects how to consume your product before they have even bought it.
First, build initial trust by selling, and I mean selling, not with money, but words, your reasons why people should opt in to your email list.
Don’t just expect them too because you ask. You have to sell them on the benefits they will receive when they do. Give them useful reward for doing so. I give away two free ebooks for example, one on web design the other about achieving business profitability.
Then supply QUALITY content, not a pitch fest. Which is sadly what @ 75% of the old emails I used to get turned into after the 3rd of 4th issue!
They do nothing but make you feel conned to have opted in.
The initial content may have been good - for 3 or 4 issues - then suddenly they are all sell you, sell you, sell you. Still a model adopted by lots of people and one, now that email is maturing fast, that is wasting the senders time.
I cannot say my email reading behaviour mirrors yours or everyone elses, but I suspect if mirrors many. These types of email senders do not get read and they ruin the list owners reputations by continuing to send them.
Once I have opted out of that persons list, even though I may still see them as possibly as being worthy of keeping track of, I become very reluctant to re enlist and it takes ages for them to rebuild my "betrayed" trust. How about you?
Trust creates action
On the other hand those email list owners I do respond to are people who have gained my trust and respect. How?
Because they initially supplied useful information, insightful comments, market intelligence, advice, some humour at times but most of all knowledge and experience that I may not have had access to or time to research. AND they still do. Their emails have not turned into pitch fests. Yes, they promote relevant, timely, useful products and ideas but not every email.
For months and months, no make that 3 years at least with one client, I have been extolling the virtues of auto responders and email as in-expensive ways to get messages in front of suspects and moving them on to be prospects then clients. Some are starting to listen, espcially when I have reviewed their own email management and behaviour towards reading emails. They realise that provided they give good content, content part of a well thought out strategy, that it works and works well.
According to some research I read "54% of small businesses surveyed rated email as the top online promotion driving new and existing customers to their websites”. So the message is getting through to your competitors.
But Business Owners Sceptical
Don't be. Even though others remain sceptical, those that have made even a hesitant start are now reaping the benefit, using email as an extra marketing vehicle.
So what should you do?
Email is a direct response medium. By that I do not mean every email has to generate a response.
What I mean is you need to set an objective as to what your use of email is for and set about creating a string of messages that create that end goal.
It could be to drive a free product trial, claim a discount coupon, pick up the phone and so on BUT the messages created to achieve that need to be carefully thought out, and become part of a cohesive plan.
Systemise
The best way to optimise the process is to systemise it, use a commercial auto responder rather than Outlook or Eudora and countless others that were not designed for commercial emailing.
Commerical systems have tracking capabilities and as a regular readers of my materials you know I am a strong advocate of “If you can't measure it, you can't manage it”. So you need to measure opening rates, bounced emails, tracing through the messages and so on.
SPAM law requirements also need to me met and double opt in needs to be catered for. You must have permission to email people so ask them. Either via your system or at your cash desk with a suitable form, office reception and many other “touch points” where you can gather a mailing list.
There are many things to look out for in your emailing. It should be interesting, informative, useful, free of jargon. If you don’t treat every communication you send carefully, and just “bang them out”, they will devalue your business in the recipients eyes quicker than you think.
Divide and Rule
Email list managemnt is also a key element. You can segment your list. That means you can have separate messages for suspects, prospects, customers, regular customers, infrequent customers, high spending customers and so on. Dividing your list makes sure you can target your messages with far greater accuracy. It also means that recipients actually anticipate receiving your email and become more loyal because the more you segment the more relevent your messages to that section of your list.
Email marketing shares some commonality with direct mail in that there are good days and bad days to send them.
From research quoted by Dr Houchin, from an article I had from the Guerrilla Mark eting Association, carried out for Barnes and Nobel, it indicated that Mondays and Fridays were bad days to send out marketing material. Mornings were bad too. If you are like me, you are probably bombarded with email first thing in the morning. At the end of the day unless an email has a very catchy subject line I have got over the habit of ”leaving” it until tomorrow. It gets deleted there and then as my attention may have gone by then.
Dr Houchin’s own research determined the largest percentage of people opened and read their emails at 1PM on a Wednesday. So if you measure it!! You can learn from it and change plans accordingly.
Lastly, let me ask you a question:
“If you had a friend and you had sure fire way for him to make more money with just the click of the mouse, for virtually no cost and he said NO what would you think?”
So make emailing an integrated part of your marketing mix before it's too late.
For more information contact me webmaster@livewirebusiness.com
Saturday, November 04, 2006
Copy write away!
Copyright Henry Winter 2006
-------------------------------------
Wanna be a copywriter?
There is lots of information available to you on the web and through books to to help you craft your sales messages.
For the best of reasons you may not want to do some or all the work yourself.
You have a business to run after all, so spending time to learn all the tricks of the trade may not be the best way to devote your time.
I will assume you come into the category of a business owner who knows exactly what your best at and have decided being a copywriter isn’t one of them.
So how do you choose one to help you?
First, there are two distinct sorts of copy writers.
There is the copy writer
These are the writers who just do copy.
That’s great but copywriting is not just about the “copy”.
Then there is the Copywriter
A true “Copywriter” knows that “copy” is not just about words but the way you use words to get people to do something, take action to contact your company and entice them into your sales funnel or buy straight from you.
That means they recognise the need to help you construct offers that work, and how sales funnels operate (or should).
Even better they help you analyse ways to make sure you extract every possible benefit from your sales process, meaning more money comes your way.
They understand strategy and tactics to achieve a goal.
Which means they also ask a lot of questions, often questions fundamental to a business that many business owners may not have had time to contemplate for a while.
A great copywriter is also a person of contradictive personalities.
Imagineers
They have to have imagination and a massive ability to empathise with your end customer.
Ruthless pursuit of the order
They need to be ruthless in their pursuit of injecting fear, worry and agitation to your prospects to make them take action.
Strategic Tacticians
If that is not much of a contradiction!
They need the ability to look at the bigger picture of your business yet possess attention to detail to make sure every little component, from the written word to entice readers to read, the thread of the copy that will take them by the hand to the order form, and walk them through it without them noticing. They also need to create subtle touches that deal with buyer remorse and immediate post sales follow up.
Insatiable
They are also insatiable, insatiable for every little piece of information about your company, your market, your product or service, buyer profile, habits, motivations and much more. If your copywriter does not ask you for information, does not quiz you about what you have done, who you are trying to sell to, fact up on fact, layer on layer of detail----get another copywriter, because what you get will be average copy at best and rubbish at worst.
Positioning
A great copywriter should have a good understanding of positioning too.
Time after time I have had discussions on USP’s - or the lack of them.
It does not mean something cannot be sold but you have to review how it may be positioned to a market, to your end user. Something a great copywriter will help you achieve.
After all, if they get it wrong they get poor response. A great copywriter will fight with you tooth and nail to button down keys things that will make the offer work and persuade you to eject anything that stops you getting the best possible response. Average copy writers don't fight so hard.
They also need to be contemplative.
They know the use of just one word instead of another can make a massive difference to the success of the offer. From the headline, the sub heads, bullets, body copy, and of course, on the order form or lead generator.
Bluntness
They are also blunt. Sorry, but we need to be.
If the route you want to go down, the approach you or your marketers want to take, “gets in the way” of the sale, you need to be told.
It is sometimes why, for the poorer marketer, they don’t want outside copywriters used because we ask the questions they don’t.
Great marketers have every confidence in what they do and know a great copywriter can only enhance the whole creative and business process. The process that will greatly benefit you, the business owner.
Critical
Great copywriters also need to be scathingly critical of their own work, willing to write, re-write and re-write again until they have sweated every best benefit, analysed every thought, and channelled the readers actions to do just one thing and one thing only, surrender their name or credit card details to your business.
Then what?
Once you have found the right copywriter for you, establish ground rules.
Will the copywriter do all the research and everything else, or will you be able to undertake the research function for them (that helps keep the costs down).
What time frames are you going to work to?
Agree how disputes, creative or otherwise, will be resolved, how much will be paid and when.
A great copywriter will have a solid set of terms for you to review.
Finally are there lots of Copywriters around?
Yes and no.
There are lots of average copy writers.
There are many good ones.
Great Copywriters are harder to find.
They are often even harder to get to work for you because great copywriters make their clients money. Lots of money.
That’s why clients hold on to them, book their time way in advance and why they are in high demand but with limited availability.
So, if in your search, you find a great new copywriter, hang onto them for dear life!
They could just help you make your business reach the heights you seek.
Best regards,
Henry
Copyright Henry Winter 2006
-------------------------------------
Wanna be a copywriter?
There is lots of information available to you on the web and through books to to help you craft your sales messages.
For the best of reasons you may not want to do some or all the work yourself.
You have a business to run after all, so spending time to learn all the tricks of the trade may not be the best way to devote your time.
I will assume you come into the category of a business owner who knows exactly what your best at and have decided being a copywriter isn’t one of them.
So how do you choose one to help you?
First, there are two distinct sorts of copy writers.
There is the copy writer
These are the writers who just do copy.
That’s great but copywriting is not just about the “copy”.
Then there is the Copywriter
A true “Copywriter” knows that “copy” is not just about words but the way you use words to get people to do something, take action to contact your company and entice them into your sales funnel or buy straight from you.
That means they recognise the need to help you construct offers that work, and how sales funnels operate (or should).
Even better they help you analyse ways to make sure you extract every possible benefit from your sales process, meaning more money comes your way.
They understand strategy and tactics to achieve a goal.
Which means they also ask a lot of questions, often questions fundamental to a business that many business owners may not have had time to contemplate for a while.
A great copywriter is also a person of contradictive personalities.
Imagineers
They have to have imagination and a massive ability to empathise with your end customer.
Ruthless pursuit of the order
They need to be ruthless in their pursuit of injecting fear, worry and agitation to your prospects to make them take action.
Strategic Tacticians
If that is not much of a contradiction!
They need the ability to look at the bigger picture of your business yet possess attention to detail to make sure every little component, from the written word to entice readers to read, the thread of the copy that will take them by the hand to the order form, and walk them through it without them noticing. They also need to create subtle touches that deal with buyer remorse and immediate post sales follow up.
Insatiable
They are also insatiable, insatiable for every little piece of information about your company, your market, your product or service, buyer profile, habits, motivations and much more. If your copywriter does not ask you for information, does not quiz you about what you have done, who you are trying to sell to, fact up on fact, layer on layer of detail----get another copywriter, because what you get will be average copy at best and rubbish at worst.
Positioning
A great copywriter should have a good understanding of positioning too.
Time after time I have had discussions on USP’s - or the lack of them.
It does not mean something cannot be sold but you have to review how it may be positioned to a market, to your end user. Something a great copywriter will help you achieve.
After all, if they get it wrong they get poor response. A great copywriter will fight with you tooth and nail to button down keys things that will make the offer work and persuade you to eject anything that stops you getting the best possible response. Average copy writers don't fight so hard.
They also need to be contemplative.
They know the use of just one word instead of another can make a massive difference to the success of the offer. From the headline, the sub heads, bullets, body copy, and of course, on the order form or lead generator.
Bluntness
They are also blunt. Sorry, but we need to be.
If the route you want to go down, the approach you or your marketers want to take, “gets in the way” of the sale, you need to be told.
It is sometimes why, for the poorer marketer, they don’t want outside copywriters used because we ask the questions they don’t.
Great marketers have every confidence in what they do and know a great copywriter can only enhance the whole creative and business process. The process that will greatly benefit you, the business owner.
Critical
Great copywriters also need to be scathingly critical of their own work, willing to write, re-write and re-write again until they have sweated every best benefit, analysed every thought, and channelled the readers actions to do just one thing and one thing only, surrender their name or credit card details to your business.
Then what?
Once you have found the right copywriter for you, establish ground rules.
Will the copywriter do all the research and everything else, or will you be able to undertake the research function for them (that helps keep the costs down).
What time frames are you going to work to?
Agree how disputes, creative or otherwise, will be resolved, how much will be paid and when.
A great copywriter will have a solid set of terms for you to review.
Finally are there lots of Copywriters around?
Yes and no.
There are lots of average copy writers.
There are many good ones.
Great Copywriters are harder to find.
They are often even harder to get to work for you because great copywriters make their clients money. Lots of money.
That’s why clients hold on to them, book their time way in advance and why they are in high demand but with limited availability.
So, if in your search, you find a great new copywriter, hang onto them for dear life!
They could just help you make your business reach the heights you seek.
Best regards,
Henry
Friday, November 03, 2006
Lists, lists, lists!
Copyright 2006 Henry Winter
-----------------------------------
Having your own business, or even being an employee who is involved in helping win new busiuness, means you are involved in networking that business.
I don’t mean networking as in MLM as you don’t build a”downline” or anything like that BUT, some of the techniques used in MLM are very useful in helping you get off the ground.
It is said there is a "300 hundred" rule.
Through family, close friends, and loose friends, and all your business contacts,
if you really think about it, you can create an extrta list of 300 hundred people you could contact to help you get your business more widely known.
It is possible it could be true for you.
However, not all those people will of great use to you.
Some will, some won’t.
Key to having them help you is to decide which of the contacts you have would be in a position to help you the most. So how do you do that?
You filter them by creating a list that enables you to qualify who would be a great contact who can help and those that will be helpful but less so.
To do that you need to score them.
I use what I call the MILE.
An acronym for:Money, Influence, Location, Entrepreneurial.
It works like this:
Depending on which section of the market you plan to operate in, do the contacts you have have enough money to circulate in the circle you want to operate in?
Do they have a role, authority, charisma that enables them to be seen as an influencer in that circle?
Are they in a location that is relevant to what you do?
Do they share an entrepreneurial spirit like you and would be willing to pass your name along?
If you ask your self those 4 questions, for each person you know, for each busines contact you have, you can create a list.
The scores on that list will help you focus your attention on the right people.
The easiest way to score them is relative to yourself/your business, by doing the following:
On a sheet of paper, or in excel, create a 6 column table.
Column one has "Name" as the title, then put the initials M, I, L, E in the next 4 columns. The last column has total" as the heading.
TRhe score each name against yourself.
If they have more of any of the above then you score them 3.
If they have about the same as you score them 2.
If they have less than you score them 1.
As far as location is concerned whilst the person you know may be miles away they may still have connections in your area.
If they do score them 1.
If they do not score them 0.
Ultimately you will end up with a list that has some 10’s and some will be 3’s.
Those that are 7’s and above are most likely to be your best bets to help you get your business known amongst their circle of friends/contacts/business contacts. And it is most likely those friends and contacts/businesses could have a need for your services or at least know someone that might.
This exercisemay take you less than 1 hour but you will be amazed at the names and contacts you had forgotten about, did not think could help you that can.
Best of luck, Henry.
Copyright 2006 Henry Winter
-----------------------------------
Having your own business, or even being an employee who is involved in helping win new busiuness, means you are involved in networking that business.
I don’t mean networking as in MLM as you don’t build a”downline” or anything like that BUT, some of the techniques used in MLM are very useful in helping you get off the ground.
It is said there is a "300 hundred" rule.
Through family, close friends, and loose friends, and all your business contacts,
if you really think about it, you can create an extrta list of 300 hundred people you could contact to help you get your business more widely known.
It is possible it could be true for you.
However, not all those people will of great use to you.
Some will, some won’t.
Key to having them help you is to decide which of the contacts you have would be in a position to help you the most. So how do you do that?
You filter them by creating a list that enables you to qualify who would be a great contact who can help and those that will be helpful but less so.
To do that you need to score them.
I use what I call the MILE.
An acronym for:Money, Influence, Location, Entrepreneurial.
It works like this:
Depending on which section of the market you plan to operate in, do the contacts you have have enough money to circulate in the circle you want to operate in?
Do they have a role, authority, charisma that enables them to be seen as an influencer in that circle?
Are they in a location that is relevant to what you do?
Do they share an entrepreneurial spirit like you and would be willing to pass your name along?
If you ask your self those 4 questions, for each person you know, for each busines contact you have, you can create a list.
The scores on that list will help you focus your attention on the right people.
The easiest way to score them is relative to yourself/your business, by doing the following:
On a sheet of paper, or in excel, create a 6 column table.
Column one has "Name" as the title, then put the initials M, I, L, E in the next 4 columns. The last column has total" as the heading.
TRhe score each name against yourself.
If they have more of any of the above then you score them 3.
If they have about the same as you score them 2.
If they have less than you score them 1.
As far as location is concerned whilst the person you know may be miles away they may still have connections in your area.
If they do score them 1.
If they do not score them 0.
Ultimately you will end up with a list that has some 10’s and some will be 3’s.
Those that are 7’s and above are most likely to be your best bets to help you get your business known amongst their circle of friends/contacts/business contacts. And it is most likely those friends and contacts/businesses could have a need for your services or at least know someone that might.
This exercisemay take you less than 1 hour but you will be amazed at the names and contacts you had forgotten about, did not think could help you that can.
Best of luck, Henry.
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