Mastermind Your Way to Significant Business Growth

As the head of your own company, you are constantly making decisions that will hopefully help your company grow. When you need advice, whom do you turn to? One option is to join a group of non-competing peers who contribute their creativity, objectivity, and wisdom to help you fast-track your company’s growth. This is called masterminding.

What is a Mastermind?

A mastermind group is composed of eight to twelve highly committed noncompeting peers who meet regularly to discuss each others’ business successes, failures, and challenges.

The members are carefully chosen by a facilitator or coach who runs the program. The characteristics of a great mastermind member include:

• A willingness to grow and an ability to take coaching or constructive criticism
• Complete confidentiality
• A team player who is willing to contribute to the other members’ successes

The characteristics of a great mastermind group are:

• Members that are at the same revenue level.
• Members from all different industries so that new ideas flow plentifully and perspectives are always opened wider.
• Complete commitment to the group: on time, present, and engaged.

Benefits of Masterminds

As many of you know, I’m in a mastermind group this year. Just a few of the benefits I’ve received include:

• A peek into other company’s revenue models, processes, and team structures so that I can learn and apply great ideas to my business.
• A forward look at what is selling and what is not selling right now (and that’s pretty priceless info).
• Killer advice and feedback from smart “A” players who are committed and serious about their business.
• Instant clients and project partners (half of the mastermind group is now doing business with me).
• Red carpet opportunities.
• Lifelong friends.

A Mastermind Agenda

If you are looking for an edge for your business and possibly feeling “lonely at the top,” a mastermind is the perfect solution. It provides a safe sounding board for you to air your issues as well as bounce your craziest ideas off of. The best mastermind groups allow for:

• Time for each member to be spotlighted so that other members can get to know their businesses.
• Hot seat time, where members invite the group to coach them on a particular issue.
• Informal, get to know each other personally, time.
• Training that is relevant to the group and timely for the issues they have.
• Professional facilitation so that all members have equal time.
• Coaching by a leader who has been where the others are trying to go.

You Don’t Have to Do It Alone

There is enormous synergy in bringing great entrepreneurial minds together that can fast track your business’s growth.

If you’re interested in a group like this for yourself, please visit http://www.leveragegroupgenius.com or email me at support@sandismith.com. I’ll be facilitating mastermind groups in early 2011 for individuals who are earning less than $1 million in revenues and who are serious about taking their businesses to the next level. If you’re interested or just curious, please contact me so I can invite you to a complimentary sample strategy meeting so you can see for yourself how these mastermind meetings work.

Nine Networking Tips to Speed Sales and Referrals

Networking is an essential part of building your business. Whether you network locally, nationally, or internationally, there are some tips that are common to all businesses.

1. Be crystal clear about what you do and how people can use you. Also know exactly who your ideal client is in case you’re asked. If you don’t do this, you’ll leave people scratching their heads about you and they won’t know how to connect with you even if they wanted to.
2. Follow up like crazy. Write on the back of the business card what you talked about and email the new contact the next day. Offer a free, short session over the phone to see how you might help each other. (I don’t’ recommend meeting for coffee; it’s too time-consuming.) I followed up several times with a prospect who couldn’t afford me and who then turned around and referred a friend to me. I would have never gotten that referral without following up several times.
3. Be in a giving frame of mind. Ask the people you meet how you can help them. You might be able to make an introduction, share a tip, or give a referral. Always ask people who their ideal client is and keep a note in your database.
4. Be open-minded. Don’t just look for prospects who could become clients. Look for potential partners, vendors, and friends. I will likely end up doing a terrific project with a “competitor” because we were open-minded and saw how we complemented each other with different specialties within the same field of business.
5. Bring an agenda to a national or international networking opportunity such as a conference. Know who will be there and invite them weeks in advance (so they can adjust airfare and hotel if necessary) to a one-on-one meeting to discuss possible partnerships.
6. Face-to-face trumps all other marketing methods. When possible, be visible. Go to meetings, accept speaking engagements, volunteer, and display your products at an exhibitor table when they are available.
7. Keep going to the same group over and over again rather than flitting from group to group once. It takes three to six months before people get to know you well enough to refer you. Choose a giving community that best matches your ideal client, and if for some reason you haven’t gotten business after nine months, cut your losses and find another group.
8. Use tools such as an ezine, FaceBook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to stay in touch and keep you visible once you’ve met in person. Friend, follow, and connect with each entrepreneur you’ve met at your networking meetings.
9. Offer something free that is compelling so people can get a low-risk taste of your product or service. A free newsletter that helps people make money, a free workshop or teleseminar, or a free no-strings one-on-one phone session are three options that work great to help people get to know you better, which will increase referrals.

Try these power networking ideas to bring new clients into your business.

For more networking tips, grab your copy of my book “Get More Clients”
http://sandismith.com/getmoreclients.html.

Why Is Marketing So Expensive?

Just about every small business owner I know dislikes the time and expense it takes to market their business. They’re networking at meetings, running ads, or joining groups to attract clients. They have a limited budget and they have limited time. They aren’t necessarily getting the results they need in the form of new clients. It’s hit and miss. They’re not really sure how to get the best return from their methods, so they’re trying a lot of things and getting varied results.

If this sounds like you, you’re not alone. This is a tough area to crack for many entrepreneurs, and the reason it’s tough is that it’s not completely a marketing problem. Here are three things you can do immediately to get clarity in this area of your business:

1. Understand that marketing can be systematized, and until it is, it will continue to drain your time and money. For example, once you get your main marketing message clear, you will want to select three marketing channels to find prospects. Then you’ll develop a set of procedures that staff can execute to attract those clients within those channels. Include steps for measuring results, and you’ve greatly lowered your marketing costs. You’ll know what works and what doesn’t and you’ll be able to refine. Even better, you can delegate marketing tasks and free up your time for client work or strategy sessions.
   
   Let’s say you offer a monthly open house at your office to attract new clients. Each step can be systematized and delegated to staff. All you should have to do is show up.
   
   Another example might be using local networking events to attract clients. You’ll want to create procedures for your elevator speech, follow up system, and community interaction. Once you approach this systematically instead of attending the next networking meeting that looks good (and leaving the business cards you got in a stack by the computer), your results will increase.
   
2. There is great synergy in completing foundational work before you begin to market. You’ll want to know exactly who your market is, how they think, and why they would use your services. From there, you can develop a message that is coherent and consistent that will work across all marketing channels.
   
   Once you complete your foundational work, which you only have to do once (until your offering or the market changes), your message will be crystal clear to your prospects. Then you can market your message everywhere.
   
3. Executing your marketing strategy is your last step and one that will be continually repeated. (The two above steps only have to be done once.) This step follows the procedures laid out in #1 and communicates the message created in #2.
   
   This is actually going to the networking meeting or conducting the open house, or running the ad.
   

The take home message in this article is that most entrepreneurs have “marketing” grouped together with systematization, messaging, and the actual marketing execution. That’s why it’s so expensive. When you can separate these and make each area efficient, you will greatly reduce costs and increase the effectiveness of your marketing programs.

Rise to the Top with a Fresh Elevator Speech

An elevator speech is that short and sweet 30-second answer to the question “What do you do?” In networking circles, it’s critical that your elevator speech is clear and interesting. If it’s not, people will be confused, and no one who is confused will know how to refer you to others.

The typical networker recites their elevator speech by listing everything they do. For example, I recently heard an insurance agent say, “We insure your auto, car, home, life, …” Well, I heard part of it. She listed a dozen more things – the kitchen sink may have been in there – and I bet some of those services haven’t been sold in years.

Tip #1: There’s no use in listing every single thing you do, so drop the laundry list.

I know that you want to make sure you don’t miss every opportunity. But this isn’t the result. The result is a buyer who tunes you out. All you have to mention is the service that gets 90% of your customers in the door. They’ll buy the rest when they get to know you better, so focus on the one thing that gets prospects in the door to become customers.

Another thing I see at networking meetings, especially with people brand new in their positions is presentation fright. They are so fearful they cannot get their message out with clarity, much less confidence. Fortunately, networkers are amazingly forgiving and polite, but unfortunately, very few people are going to buy from someone who is not confident.

Tip #2: Work with a coach to build your confidence before you attend networking meetings.

I know how everyone tells you how nice you are and how great you did. But if you are not getting sales, then the true message should be loud and clear: you need to exude confidence and positive energy about your product or service before anyone wants to hang out with you, much less buy from you.

A more subtle form of nervousness (or boredom) is when you deliver a fairly decent elevator speech, but it sounds like the 4 millionth time you’ve said it. One participant was looking all over the room, laughing in all the wrong places, and horsing around while perfectly executing her speech. Talk about gestures that didn’t match the message; our internal skeptic meter goes off when people are inauthentic.

Tip #3: Slow down, and regain the passion about what you do.

Another symptom of boredom (or nervousness) is to repeat your name, company, and phone or website so fast that no one can understand you or has time to write it down. A couple of remedies: practice pausing, rewrite your elevator speech so that you have a new one, and take some time off to re-kindle your excitement about what you do.

Could your elevator speech use a, well, lift? In a very short time, I’ll be announcing a new product that will help you collect every business card in the room with your punchy elevator speech. Stay subscribed; details coming soon.

Mastering the Game of Following Up with Your Prospect

It seems there are hundreds of questions swirling around how to follow up with prospects. The raw truth is that very few people follow up at all. Kristy Rogers, Executive Managing Director of South Bay Chapters of eWomen Network, says that, on average, only 2 percent of people buy on the first contact with a vendor.

So if you’re not following up, you’re walking away from 98 percent of your sales.

Here are my tips to maximize sales and take the pain out of following up:

1. Understand the difference between a real prospect and a new contact. You will make several new contacts, but many of them will never buy from you. Both are valuable: a new contact can refer you business, while a prospect may become a client. But you need to know the difference so you don’t turn them off when you send follow up messages.To a prospect, you would ask them about their problem that your service or product will solve. To a contact, you will ask them who their ideal client is so that you can be a good referral source for them.
2. Create a follow-up system. This can be a spreadsheet, a web app such as salesforce.com, or would you believe I use Ziploc bags (to put the business cards in)! It doesn’t matter what it looks like; you just want to know when to follow up. I recommend sending the first follow-up email right after the first meeting. Then plan to send a second one 1-2 weeks later. Plan out up to 6-30 touches, as marketers call them.
3. If you begin to interact with a prospect for business, always ask when you should follow up before you wrap up the present conversation. That way, you’re not worrying about whether it’s too soon or too late or too pushy, etc. Just ask.For example, when someone expresses interest, ask when they have time to have a more detailed conversation. Then before you hang up from that one (if you haven’t gotten the business yet), agree on when you should follow-up and how (email, phone call). And so forth. This idea takes the guesswork (and especially the angst!) out of the process.
4. Better yet, learn how to get people coming to you, rather than chasing them. There are several terrific ways to do this depending on your industry, and is best mastered with a marketing coach (like me) because it is so breakthrough and you have to make some habit changes.

Following up can actually be fun. It’s all about getting to know people, building respect and trust, and working together for mutual benefit.