Mindsets that make money

Jim Rohn, in my opinion, one of the best business mentors ever, always said that "the thing that will make the biggest difference to your health, relationships and your bank account in the next 12 months, is your philosophy"

Mindset is super important for the success of small business. Having been running our own small businesses for over 20 years, and having made more mistakes than I care to remember, I've come to the conclusion that there is a priority in small business that needs to be paid attention to, that by and large is not.

In my experience the area of marketing is the most important and least understood and least focused on area of small a business. Small business owners tend to focus on pretty much from most other areas of the business (the ones they find comfortable) except for the marketing.

You could have a business where you are lousy at people management, customer service, administration and even sales, but were outstanding at marketing, you could still survive. Granted it would be an ugly stress filled business, but surviving.

Marketing is much more than sticking an ad in the paper or Yellow Pages. You need to understand psychology and to be able to implement a measurable, evolving strategy.

An outstanding marketer knows that most of their ideas will fail, but also knows if they continue to implement, measure and test, they will find a marketing strategy that will blow the competition out of the water. That's the great thing about becoming committed to marketing, is that if you are prepared to fail enough, and keep going, you are guaranteed success!

The biggest mistake I see, is far too many small business owners making delegate responsibility for their marketing strategy to which ever sales representative walks through the door from the Yellow Pages or local radio or TV station. You need to understand that their motivation is to make their business successful, it is your responsibility to make your business successful.

Show Them How It's Done

I'm sure you will agree from the last post that measurement is essential for a successful small business. There are many things that can be measured, but they tend to fly under the radar because we are “too busy".

I always remember the story told by Jim Rohn, sadly departed but one of the world's best ever business coaches and mentors. He would paint the picture of the sales manager talking to a salesperson, and asking the salesperson how many sales calls he had made this week. The salesperson began with a reply "well…" And Jim would butt in and say “John, I don't need a story, that's why I made the box so small, so a story wouldn't fit, I just need a number".

I always get a giggle when remembering that story, and when I tell it to others you can bet any money they start to think that I should use that to measure my people's performance. And that's okay you can, but what if you were to use it for yourself.

As the leader of an organisation no matter how big or small, you should be leading from the front, and having your own scorecard, to ensure that you perform the essential daily, weekly and monthly tasks. It is of course significantly more effective in encouraging your team members to measure their performance, when you do it first

Invest more time measuring and less time worrying

How do you measure and test in your business?

I suspect that the majority of people reading this post, would not have formal measurement processes for many parts of their business. In fact in my experience, very few businesses measure anything at all, other than the level of the bank account.

The more I delve into this space, the more it seems essential to begin to formally measure various parts of the business. It turns out that many things, for example, parts of a marketing strategy, don't work the way we think they should. And strangely enough, when things are tested the results are often the exact opposite of both what we thought and our personal preferences.

As an example of this, a number of the world's top Internet marketers have done extensive measurement and testing on “ugly" websites that sell product versus “pretty" websites that sell product. And of course there are exceptions to the rule, but in the main, ugly websites, ugly sales letters and ugly video sales letters significantly outperform the prettier and more professionally produced websites, sales letters and video sales letters.

The challenging thing for most Business owners is that their ego gets in the way and they choose a website, for example, that they prefer themselves rather than testing and measuring to see which performs better.

This is just one example, but there are many areas of the small business that could and should be tested and measured to improve performance. A focus in these areas can often add thousands of dollars to the bottom line very quickly and with little to no expense. By just knowing your metrics and making a few simple tweaks and changes.

If it's not measured, it won't be managed.

How do you make your customers feel appreciated?

I want to tell you about a recent study I was reading about. The study was measuring the value of tips left by a restaurant patron. The 1st thing that was compared was the difference between delivering the bill to the patron, and delivering the bill along with a chocolate. The bill that included chocolate, increased the level of tip by 3%.

Interestingly enough, adding a 2nd chocolate, increased the level of tip to 14% higher than the Bill delivered by itself. The 3rd experiment had the waiter deliver the bill with a chocolate, then turn away from the table and begin to walk away, but then after a few steps, stop, return to the table and reach into their pocket, and add a 2nd chocolate for each patron. With the addition of this way of delivering the 2nd chocolate, tips increased by 23% compared to the Bill delivered with no chocolate.

So what can we glean from this study for your business?

This whole study reflects the power and strength of “the law of reciprocity". It shows that not only working out ways to thank and appreciate your customers with simple small gifts will enhance the customer experience, but also the way that those gifts are delivered can increase the perceived value considerably.

Take action and brainstorm with your team a number of ways to show your appreciation to your customers. Test each method to see which ones get the best response and use that as the control. Then make it a regular part of your team discussions to come up with new and better ways to show your appreciation to your customer for choosing you to do business with over your competition.

Using the law of reciprocity in your business.

You have probably heard the saying “givers gain". The basic premise of the law of reciprocity is, we tend to get back in life, what we give out.

It seems to be very common within most small businesses, that most of the decisions on how the customer is treated is based on what it will either cost or make for the business. Rather than what the customers experience will be, that will cause them return over and over, or walk away never to return.

There are many ways in small business that the law reciprocity can be used to build the customer base as well as profits. Get a team together and brainstorm as many ways as possible that we can create little gifts and/or positive experiences for the customers when ever they come in contact with the business. A great way to positively impact the customer is to create a series of high perceived value surprise bonuses, that I never talked about before the sale, but are just delivered as a surprise after the sale is made. This will come as a very unexpected positive experience to the customer, and because it is such a rare thing to happen, it will most definitely differentiate your business from your competitors.

This Mistake Will Cost You Valuable Sales

So, should we use pain or pleasure in our marketing message?

Well clearly the answer is both. It would be wise to remember that the majority of people are twice as likely to take action to avoid pain, than they are to gain pleasure. Effective marketing messages will always aggravate the problem the target market is already thinking about. But it can actually be counter-productive to your sales if you simply create additional fear with your marketing message, without giving a clear and concise, spelled-out, step-by-step process of actions to take for your customer to eliminate the fear or pain, or fix their problem.

Studies have shown that the majority of people, when presented with a message about imminent danger, will often block out that message, or consider it not about applicable to them, in the absence of the clearly spelled out steps to take to avoid the danger.

So remember to always include clearly defined action steps in any of your marketing messages that include a call to action.

More Or Less, This Is The Question

Is it better to give your customers more or less choice?

In previous posts I have mentioned that it is far more profitable to find new products for existing customers, than it is to find new customers for existing products. If you follow this line, you will obviously end up with extensive numbers of products. The challenge here is to make sure that you don't offer your customers all of these products at once through any of your marketing and advertising strategies.

It seems many business owners feel that it is better to offer their customers, or potential customers many choices, in an attempt to get them across the line and make a sale. The truth of the matter is, the more choices you offer the less sales you will make. People are funny animals, when presented with multiple choices, the predominant choice tends to be doing nothing at all.

Check out these numbers from a study done in a supermarket on a jam display. Tests were conducted over different times of the day, and different days of the week, where the display was changed from displaying either 6 Jams to taste test, or 24 Jams to taste test. The results were clear and astonishing. Whenever there were 24 jams on the display, only 3% of people made a purchase. When the display contained only 6 jams, 30% of taste testers purchased.

So whilst it is a good idea to be continually looking for new products for your existing customers, it is important that through your marketing and advertising messages you do not muddy the waters with too many choices.

How to be twice as productive, without going to a seminar!

If I were asked to do the world's shortest time management seminar, I would simply talk about words and language.

Around 20 years ago, when I 1st started listening to people like Anthony Robbins, I remember him saying that "nothing has any meaning other than the meaning we give it". What he was suggesting was that the words that we use, give what we are observing the meaning.

Over the many years that we have been running workshops and training, it is being common for me to tell people “change your words and you will change your life". This is never more true than any area of time management. You would have probably heard yourself say, as well as many others around you say “I didn't get time to do that" or 'I don't have time for this". Other derivations of these types of sayings could be “I ran out of time, or I didn't get a chance".

Unfortunately, believe it or not, everyone gets the same amount of time each day, it all comes down to the choices you make. So, here's my guarantee... If you will eliminate the types of words and phrases that I spoke about earlier, and replace them with phrases that put you back in control such as “I choose to do this, and I chose not to do that", you will start to take back control and feel significantly better, and best of all become unbelievably more productive.

Take this idea on a lightly at your peril. This could quite conceivably be some of the best personal and professional information that you could ever implement.

The Best Investment You Can Make!

In a recent book called “conquer the chaos" the authors suggest that if you are in small business they will be chaos. The secret is to reduce the huge amount of self-created chaos.

A simple discipline of a written plan every day can have a profound effect on how much self-created crisis can be eliminated. A secret for creating an effective daily action plan, to make sure the list doesn't contain more activities in the time available that day to complete them. Your daily action list should not be a storage facility, it simply create overwhelm which is not the most effective emotion.

It is important to have the right mindset about planning. Unfortunately many people see planning as “time spent". The truth if you are doing high-quality written daily plan is, that it is time invested. In fact every moment invested in high quality planning, or make every other moment in your day significantly more valuable.