Margo DeGange's Blog

My 8 Proven Business-Building Tips

Monday Message from Margo   

“The good Lord gave you a body that can stand most anything. It’s your mind you have to convince.” ~Vince Lombardi 
 
This week I will share with you My 8 Proven Business-Building Tips that you can apply to your business (store-front or home-based) to build it to success. Most have to do with your mindset first, which in turn will direct your actions towards precisely focused effort to get you where you desire to be.
 
These practical and very doable tips are research-based and have been proven over and over again. They lead to success for the business professional who will practice them.
 
These tips are easy to put into action. 
 
  
1. When you are not selling, MARKET your business
 
If you do not have an appointment on any given day, market yourself during the time you would normally be on an appointment. Think about a person who is seeking full time employment. To be successful in finding a job quickly (which would in turn generate money quickly), a person seeking a job should make their full time job the task of getting a job. Similarly, if you do not have a client or a lead, make your full time (or part time) job the task of marketing to get leads and appointments. Before long you will have a steady flow of clients.
 
Create Awareness (market) by doing events related to your industry or niche, writing articles, or getting your materials out there in your community. A few examples from my previous decorating business include distributing flyers, doing decorating seminars for the public, partnering with a builder and putting over a dozen sample treatments in his showroom, and writing a decorating advice column every Sunday in the Home Section of an area newspaper in conjunction with a local real estate company, to name just a few. I got many exceptional leads and sales as a result of doing these tasks, and it did not take long at all.
 
2. DON’T pre-judge who you think will buy from you: Target your marketing but be good to EVERYONE
 
Market to your target groups, and then serve every one who comes to you from these activities. NEVER be hasty to judge a book by its cover (especially when that book approaches YOU)!
 
Get out there in your local community and network. At events, strike up conversations and be polite and kind to everyone that you meet. Even if someone is seemingly not your potential client, remember that people have bosses and acquaintances and relatives. People tell people, and people who cannot afford your services right now tell people who can. Someone who cannot afford your products now may be in a position to purchase them later, and they will remember how you interacted with them when they couldn’t buy.
 
One time, when I had a storefront design studio, a woman came in dressed in ragged jeans and a t-shirt, and from her appearance I absolutely assumed she was someone who could not afford my products and services. She just did not look the part AT ALL. I thought she was someone who was waiting for the bus or had missed it, and was just coming into my shop to cool off from the hot Texas summer heat. However, I treated her the same way I did any other prospect (or any person): I was kind, courteous, and gave her my undivided time and attention. Little did I know she lived in one of the biggest homes in the most “well-to-do” subdivision in our area. I ended up doing custom cornices for her very large family room and it was a wonderful job with a very nice profit.
 
3. “Losing” a sale is still a positive thing
 
When you lose a sale, you are a step closer to your closing rate goal. Remember that in order to have an optimal closing rate (60-80% for most industries), you will have to lose some sales. Even a lead that did not become a sale can lead to a referral sale if you remain professional and courteous. Think about it in a positive light. Hearing one “no” means you are much closer to the “YES”!
 
4. Our futures and fortunes are in the follow through!
 
Follow-up on ALL of your prospects, even the ones you KNOW (or rather, think you know) will not buy. Through your follow-up they will see that you care, and through your sincere communication, you may get the real reason for the lost sale. This gives you another opportunity to actually make the sale by helping the prospect to overcome any fear, misconception, or obstacle that was standing in the way for them.
 
Suppose you did not follow-up with a prospect because you just assumed they were not going to buy, so “why bother”. Then, that prospect suddenly realized that they could make the extra room in their budget after all. There is a very great chance that the prospect WILL NOT CALL YOU after the initial sales presentation even if they figured out a way to broaden their budget. Instead, they may just go forward until another buying opportunity presents itself, and someone else will get that sale. On the other hand, if you simply follow-up—perhaps a week later and then maybe again in a month or two— they may interact with you and give you their business. Our fortunes are certainly in the follow through.
 
5. Invest in your business
 
Make room in your business budget to invest in your business so it can grow. Allow resources for the development of new products and services, for education for yourself and your associates, for interesting projects, and for advertising and marketing. Perhaps you could invest in a joint venture with another business owner, or spend a little cash to delegate tasks. You could put resources towards things like search engine optimization for your website, a regular “advice” column in a local community magazine, some yard signs and door hangers, or .towards a company vehicle.
 
Having my car fully wrapped was a good investment for me when I ran my decorating business. I got a lot of attention with my bright and attractive colors, and many people stopped me in parking lots and garages for my business card even though my phone number was clearly visible on my car wrap. I think people just wanted to say hello and strike up a conversation because the wrap was so extensive, so colorful, and so interesting. It was always a lot of fun, and it definitely led to business and great profits, meaning it was worth the investment.
 
6. Know your competition, but do not obsess over them
 
Understand basically how your main competitors function, and have an idea of their products, services, and prices. Then, find what you do that they do not, and brag about it. Know your competition, but never be obsessed with them or give them even one minute more thought than is necessary to serve your clients. FOCUS, FOCUS, FOCUS on what you do well and who YOU are, and shout it out in your wonderful, unique voice! Do not get sidetracked and caught up in the kind of negative energy that comes from fixating on another person or business. Focus on your customers instead, and you will enjoy amazing freedom and greater success.
 
7. Give your business time to grow
 
Do not be pulled off sides by get-rich-quick schemes, and do not expect instant sales and referrals just because you are in business. You must nurture and grow your business, each day doing something positive and meaningful towards your short-term and long-term business goals (which means you must have them and know what they are). This type of effort will definitely pay off, perhaps a little at first, but be patient and faithful in the little and you will see exponential and expedited growth once it all starts to take effect.
 
8. Have fun and be the kind of person people LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to be around
 
When you leave the presence of others, they should feel better for having spent time with you. Who wouldn’t want to do business now and in the future with a fun, positive, fair, and caring individual? You cannot separate “real life” from “business”. We are who we are, and know assuredly that your business success will reflect the kind of person that you choose to be. It IS a choice!

Have a Wildly Successful Week,

Margo

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Comments May 31, 2010

An Exercise in GOAL PLANNING that ACTUALLY WORKS!

Monday Message from  Margo         1-11-2010

“Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.” ~Anthony Robbins

“The reason most people never reach their goals is that they don’t define them, or ever seriously consider them as believable or achievable. Winners can tell you where they are going, what they plan to do along the way, and who will be sharing the adventure with them.”   ~ Denis Watle

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he had imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”  ~ Henry David Thoreau – Walden, or Life in the Woods

 “By recording your dreams and goals on paper, you set in motion the process of becoming the person you most want to be. Put your future in good hands — your own.”     ~ Mark Victor Hansen

 I hope you enjoyed the audio I sent you last week.

This week I promised you a very powerful goal-setting exercise, and here it is.

It WILL take a little bit of time, but the PAYOFF will be TREMENDOUS! If you take it seriously and look at it as a potentially life-changing session, it will put you light years ahead in your life and business. It will guide you step-by-step through a process where you will create MEANINGFUL life and business goals, prioritize them with incredible clarity, and determine with ease the action steps you should take to accomplish what you desire in a realistic amount of time! 

This strategic plan puts YOU in control and allows you to continually move toward your most important personal and professional goals, accomplish them quickly, and bring what you say you want into reality.

Following is the EXACT TEXT and PLAN that I share each year with my coaching clients and my network of professionals. I have also personally guided individuals through this process, to see them realize amazing professional growth and success (at the very end of this message is a testimonial from a client).

PLEASE, invest the time in yourself to do it. You will save YEARS of wasted effort for the hour or so you take to do this exercise!

GOAL PLANNING that ACTUALLY WORKS!

Prioritizing your goals and the specific tasks you invest your time in can make a tremendous difference in the way you experience your life and in the success of your business. Skillful goal setting can free you up to spend more time doing the things you personally want to do—the things that are the most meaningful to you.

I encourage you to start this year off with a strategic plan to focus on what is most important to you and to make room and time for the business goals and activities that will catapult you into financial freedom, leaving you a lot of valuable time for family, friends, new business ventures, and many fun adventures.

You are going to learn how to leave behind all of the unprofitable “busywork” that gets you nowhere, and you will in turn become a Master of your own life and destiny.

You may have just left behind a year of dissatisfaction and frustration. You may have often felt overwhelmed which probably kept you from taking the actions you MOST needed to take. You may have thought about time management. The truth is though, that many of the time management principles that are “out there” would simply tell you how to do more things in less time, or more things in the same amount of time. This approach can pose a HUGE problem if the  “things” you work on are not the right things to begin with! You need a TIME MASTERY APPROACH, where the tasks you spend your effort and energy on or even complete are totally in line with your values and especially your most meaningful business and personal goals.

In a nutshell, you need to:

• Establish meaningful business (and personal) goals
• Prioritize these goals
• Create a list of tasks to accomplish each goal
• Prioritize these tasks based on which are the MOST IMPORTANT
• Concentrate the majority of your daily efforts on those important tasks

Begin with a Goal Planning Session

Mastering your time begins with finding the right direction for your business and for your life in general. You have to know where you are going but more important than that, you have to choose where you want to go! This will require an initial small amount of planning on your part. Let’s call this your “goals planning session” (this can be a “business goals planning session” or a “life goals planning session” or both wrapped up into one). Either way, you should do one of these goals planning sessions about every 6 months since business goals and life priorities do change, and short term goals get accomplished quickly.

Your time mastery session will involve establishing and prioritizing meaningful business and personal goals, and prioritizing projects and specifically tasks in terms of how they fit into your long-term goals, your mid-term goals, and your short-term goals.

Once your goals are set, each day you will take a few minutes out to plan and you will decide DAILY which activities and tasks are most valuable for you to work on to help get you closer to accomplishing your targeted goals and dreams.

With this approach, every day you will inch a little closer to realizing your goals and dreams, even when part of your day is spent on menial tasks and routine items that most of us must do. A time mastery approach will help you to best use some of the prime hours of each day.

Following is THE exercise in goal planning that will change the direction of your life and business for the better. Please don’t make the mistake of believing you do not have the time to do the following exercises. You simply cannot afford not to.

TIME MASTERY Business Goal Planning Session exercise:

• Get out three sheets of paper, one each for your list of your long-term business (where you want to be in 4-5 years), your mid-term goals (where you want to be in 1-3 years), and your short-term goals (things you want to accomplish in the next 6 months). You can adjust the time frames to best suit yourself and your life, but make your short term goals within a few months. Put the labels at the top of each page.

• Take about 3 minutes for each sheet, and write your goals very quickly. Do not stop and think about it. If something comes to your mind, do not judge the thought, just write it down. When you are through with each page of goals, spend an additional minute or two adding to the page or fine-tuning it. Do this exercise for each page.

• It may help to know that a goal is not “something you do”. A task is something you do. A goal describes where you want to be or what you want to accomplish, for example, “I want to my yearly sales revenues to be $300,000.00 within 2 years, or, “I want to write a book on interior lighting”.

• Next, take the sheet of your long-term goals, and circle the 3 most important. Now label them A, B, and C, with A representing the long-term goal you want to focus on first or that you find to be most important  to you at this time in your life, and B and C representing the long-term goals you will work on after long-term goal A is accomplished. Do this same activity for the other two pages (mid-term goals and short-term goals).

• You will now have 9 goals circled; 3 long-term, 3 mid-term, and 3 short-term goals. Each of these goals has an A, B, or C next to it. Now, Take out a clean piece of paper, and transfer the A goal from each sheet onto the new sheet.

• The new sheet will now have 3 top priority goals—-one from each category (a top priority long-term goal, a top priority mid-term goal, and a top priority short-term goal). This is your Focused Goals Target.

• The final step in this goal planning session is to make a list of all of the possible tasks and activities you could do that would help you towards accomplishing each of the three goals on your Focused Goals Target sheet.

• Create a page for each of these three goals (your top priority long-term goal, mid-term goal, and short-term goal) and list everything you can think of that would help you to attain this goal. This is another brainstorming session so you should just write and not make judgments. Take several minutes to do this for each goal. Then revise this list, adding more activities and crossing out others that will not work.

• Now it is time to prioritize tasks to ensure that you will make the best use of your time each day. Go through the list of tasks (do this for each page) and circle the ones you feel will give you the most result for your effort. You may end up circling 6 or 8 of them. Then draw a star next to the ones that you would like to work on first.

• Schedule these tasks into your daily to do’s, focusing on the ones with the stars first. Daily, when you plan your business activities, try to schedule in at least one or two tasks from e ach list to accomplish that day. Before you know it, you will be checking goals off of your Focused Goals Target because you will be accomplishing your business dreams and life goals in record time!

(Testimonial follows)

Congratulations! Have a Wildly Successful Week,

Margo  

 TESTIMONIAL:

I have spent my life in pursuit of a clearer understanding of the life I was searching for.  Having many interests and many responsibilities, I often stayed overwhelmed with too many choices and not enough progress to suit my desires.  Then, I met Margarett (Margo).

In just a few short meetings Margarett was able to assist me in the organizing of the clutter in my mind as she helped me define the basic personality aspects of my individual self.  We skipped labeling and belief-driven needs to get, quickly, to the core of the 3 most important things I needed to achieve in my life in order to have personal, soulful fulfillment.  The process was fast, clear and powerful.

I am happy to say that when I got very clear about what mattered and could articulate it and focus on it with action and intent, EVERY desire came into my life greater than I could have imagined.  Far, far greater.  And fast, too.

Within 30 short, committed days I had created situations that allowed me to call into my life, the clear goals I’d determined were the most important.  I am overjoyed at the results.  Pinching myself, actually.  Smiling, lifting my face to the sun and pinching myself.  This life is real and I am enchanted, clear and on track.

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Comments January 11, 2010

Break It Down to Build It!

 Monday Message from Margo      3-23-09

“A system is a network of interdependent components that work together to try to accomplish the aim of the system. A system must have an aim. Without the aim, there is no system.”            

W. Edwards Deming

There aren’t too many things in our everyday personal and work lives that are really very complicated. Although some things might be complex, they usually break down into small, workable components.

I like to break things down. I always have. When I teach people how to focus on increasing sales, I break the sales process down into simple steps, each of which move closer to getting the sale, and getting a higher sale amount. When I teach people how to make a solid 6-figures in a small business (or more in a larger business), I break it down into specific activities, items, and units. When I teach a class on selling so-called complicated or advanced soft window treatments, I break the treatments down into simple components, so even new people to the design industry can “get it”.

I like to break down the process of making money and achieving greater levels of success. In order to reach higher levels of business success and make more money, you must invest the time in the RIGHT activities that will lead to that result.

There are specific things you should do as a business owner to ensure that your business is thriving and profitable, things such as establishing a reasonable (and not paralyzing) level of quality for the products and services you sell, setting up the pricing in line with your brand and market, creating and managing the budget each year, and hiring the right people to take your business forward. Everything else can be delegated out—even the sales and marketing, but YOU are the ONLY ONE who can create the vision for your company and ensure that the vision is being put into action, and this requires a certain amount of time that you diligently commit to your business-building efforts.

Let’s go back to the idea of breaking things down. When I ran my store front

(I have also been home-based), one of the first things I did in planning for my success was decide how many days a year I would be open to customers. In my particular store, I was open 5 days per week, which included Saturdays. I allowed for a certain number of days to be closed for holidays, including a break between the winter holiday and New Years. That meant I was open 240 days per year. That was my number, 240.

I then decided what I wanted to make each year in sales in my business (this number increased each year). I divided that number by 240 to determine what I needed to sell every day that I was open in order to make my yearly goal. I figured out my weekly projection and monthly projection based on that 240 days.

I am telling you this to get you thinking about breaking things down into small, manageable components that make sense— that you can easily understand and live with. If you are home-based and you want to sell $200,000 per year, you know that you have to sell $4,000 per week assuming you want to take a 2 week vacation each year (I think you should take more time off than that). If your average sale was $1,000, you would have to CLOSE 4 customers a week to meet your yearly goal, but if your average sale to a different type of customer was $2,000, you would only have to sell 2 customers a week.

Breaking things down helps you to manage your business because it allows you to measure whether or not you are on track at any given time, and best of all, it helps you to actually be much more productive because you have a clear goal to shoot for, and that goal is then always in the corner of your mind.

 So here is the gem I have been waiting to share with you.

Remember that as the business owner and visionary, you can delegate out many, many tasks, but YOU and only YOU will do the overall creating, planning, revising, and putting into action the business vision and model, AND, you and only you will make certain that the vision is being carried out. Let’s see how our “breaking it down into components” model can help us here to get to the gem…

Did you know that we all have the same 86,400 seconds in each day, and 3600 seconds in an hour? Suppose you decided to spend JUST ONE ADDITIONAL HOUR each day to create, plan, revise, and carry out your vision for your business (this will involve doing some very specific tasks, which may include hiring the right team, connecting with better resources to bring you forward,  adjusting pricing and looking at expenses, and seeking out innovations to catapult you ahead). That ONE ADDITIONAL HOUR each day (the gem), assuming you are “open for business” 240 days per year, will total a whopping 240 hours! That is equal in one year to the time investment of 6 full-time work weeks! Can you even imagine what that additional planning time could do for your business this year, and next? Let’s get real crazy and assume that you spend 2 additional hours a day creating, planning, revising, and putting into action the business vision and model. The possibilities are ASTONISHING and the potential growth for your business could easily be above and beyond your wildest plans! Best of all, it is VERY DO-ABLE!

What if all you did was spend 2 hours each day on your business-just 2 hours and nothing more, but the 2 hours were spent on the RIGHT activities—creating, planning, revising, and putting into action the business vision and model? Assume you delegated everything else to qualified staff and sales and marketing professionals! You could spend lots of time on the beach with your partner, at the park with your kids, and in your community with your neighbors, and still enjoy AMAZING financial success.

Even if you personally enjoy being involved in the selling and marketing, and many of the activities you now do, try to make it a point to spend ONE ADDITIONAL HOUR each day in the building of a thriving business. Break it down, and look at the components of your sales, your time, and your idea of success. You might be surprised at what you could create and really bring into being by breaking it down and building it up!

 Margo

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Comments March 23, 2009