While there is a little less talk in the media about economic woes, I still hear a good deal about it from almost all my clients.  In working with them I keep going through these 8 ways to take advantage of the current economic times to increase your bottom line.

1. Develop your sales and negotiation skills. Always ask for a better deal – what do you have to lose? Remember that whatever you save goes right to the bottom line.
2. Double, triple or quadruple your sales and marketing activities. You will maximize results now because so many people are convinced no one is buying that they have stopped trying . . .
3. Demand more value from the media you are working with.
4. Consider repackaging your products and/or services (More on this next week.)
5. Go through all your processes and procedures. Do you have benchmarks that serve as indicators to see what is working well and what needs to improve? Define measurable targets for each area in your business and set improvement goals.
6. Do you have operational holes that drain resources and need to be plugged? Make sure you are not losing time or money unnecessarily.
7. Block out an undisturbed hour to take a critical look at your processes. You will be amazed at the difference a little thought can make to how you do things. For example, a financial planning client was able to increase revenues by 20%, simply by changing the order in which they scheduled their clients for reviews: They moved away from scheduling the easiest clients first to scheduling their wealthiest and best clients first and working everyone else in between those plum appointments.
8. Often thousands of dollars can be saved by simply focusing your attention on reducing seemingly fixed expenses. For example, a call to your delivery, telephone or credit card company can get you on a better plan that puts hundreds of dollars back into your pocket each month. You have nothing to lose!

What do you think? Can you spend at least an hour over the course of the next week trying out a few of these ways? Let me know how it goes for you by leaving a comment below. And if you have any other ways to take advantage of the current economic times, please feel free to share your thoughts below.

In a previous post we mentioned that a low cost or no cost marketing tip was to use vendors to find new customers. Here are 4 more reasons to build better relationships with your vendors.

1. Vendors control your costs (money saved on vendor-expenses goes straight to your bottom line – which is why the question “Is that the best you can do?” is something to ask about EVERY price quoted to you.)
2. Vendors know if your competitors are in trouble, and can help you find out if there is there an opportunity to buy a business at a discount.
3. Vendors want you to succeed AND can refer you business.
4. They will often supplement your marketing dollars, provide promotional giveaways and/or sponsor your events

Can you think of other reasons to build vendor relationships? You can share your tips by leaving a comment below.

I know that it seems counter intuitive, but do you realize that relaxation can actually make you MORE successful?

That is because the foundation of all true success is the skill of mastering your personal energy.

Being able to deeply relax means mastering your mind and body through the right use of your attention. Mastering your attention means mastering the use of your brain. The wrong use of attention often leads to lethargy and failure. The right use of attention energizes your whole body and catapults you in the direction of greater success.

Here are six things you will find when you have cultivated the ability to deeply relax:

• Your productivity will increase.
• You will feel better.
• Your memory will improve.
• Your mental faculties will be faster and sharper,
• Your immune system will function better and better.
• All of your relationships will be enhanced.

Being able to relax deeply whenever you want to is easiest when you have a trigger. One of the most powerful triggers of all is your language. A trigger is a conditioned response, like Pavlovian conditioning.

Human beings have bigger brains and can learn habits much faster. Do you have triggers that help you relax physically and mentally?

What you focus your attention often determines what you feel. How you feel determines what you do, how you do it and consequently the results you get. And the best results are those achieved with relaxed focus.

Relaxed focus is a learned response that comes when you learn to stop worrying and concentrate your attention on the RIGHT things. I will be discussing HOW you do that in my tele-seminar on April 20th. (STOP Worrying and START Living! )

Imagine your world without worry– where truly soothing, comfortable states of mind and body propel you away from problems and toward success in all the areas of your life. What are the possibilities?

How To Get Into A State Of Relaxed Awareness

The Silva 5-1 Method

(We will teach you how to set up these automatic triggers in the Silva Life Systems Seminar in May)

5 – Eyelid fatigue
4 – Closed eyes
3 — Physical relaxation
2 – Mental Relaxation
1 – Relaxed Focus

The Silva 3-1 Method
3 — Physical relaxation (Take a deep breath and while exhaling visualize and mentally repeat the number 3 three times.  Create a wave of relaxation from your head to your toes)
2 – Mental Relaxation (Take a deep breath and while exhaling visualize and mentally repeat the number 2 three times. Visualize tranquil  scenes.)
1 – Relaxed awareness

The Three-finger technique

A shortcut or trigger to achieving a state of relaxed focus in seconds.

When you “install” it, it works as follows:

• Eyes open or closed
  
• Put your thumb and first two fingers together of either hand or both hands & disconnect for a second
• Disconnect for a second
  
• Experience relaxed focus
  

Do you like these techniques? Learn more on my FREE Teleclass on 4/20.

Last week we talked about ways to leverage your existing marketing dollars and today we’ll look at 10 low cost or no cost ways to market your small business.

1. Ask for referrals from existing clients
2. Offer yourself as a speaker to groups in your target market. (If you havent already done so, post your “speaker profile” on http://www.freespeakerbureau.com a site I set up to connect local experts with nonprofits and associations looking for speakers  for their meetings and events. )
   
3. Participate in networking groups AND get involved in the organization
4. Write articles for trade publications that reach your target market
5. Send press releases to your local media
6. Compile a mailing list to send informative emails and/or blog entries
7. Host a free internet talk radio show in which you interview industry experts on your website (a great way to get traffic to your business website)
8. Create some videos answering the 10 most frequently asked questions regarding your business and post to YouTube
9. Post your services on Craig’s list and other places that offer free advertising
10. Let your vendors help you grow. Always be helpful and gracious to your vendors, and remember that they are a supremely valuable (and often overlooked!) resource

Can you think of other low-cost or no-cost marketing tips? Please share by leaving a comment below.

For the past several weeks we’ve been talking about various ways to increase your bottom line and create more income for your business. Today we’re going to talk about leveraging your marketing dollars. You’ll start by gathering data about where your current clients and customers are coming from.

Do a thorough FACTUAL analysis of where your business comes from and what those sources actually cost. Because your mind can mislead you, don’t base your findings on what you think are the sources of business. Really check and verify what it is exactly that brings you business. In my work with hundreds of business owners over the past fourteen years, this kind of factual analysis almost always offers happy surprises.

Here’s what to do with the results:

1. Put more resources into the strategies that are shown to give you better return on your investment.
2. Eliminate less effective strategies altogether.
3. Carefully invest 10% -20% of your budget into new media that you have not yet tried (such as postcard mailings, endorsed mailings, internet advertising, “pay per click,” and/or online social networking sites.) Let your vendors know that if you get good results you will increase your budget. Negotiate the best deal and then negotiate a little more.

Important: You must monitor the results of EVERY new action you take, and measure the effect of those new actions on your bottom line. This is always a good idea, but is critical when market forces are putting pressure on your business. Every dollar AND minute counts.

Feel free to share with me by leaving a comment below ways you have found to leverage your marketing dollars.

In an established business with consistent sales, many small improvements to the sales process will almost always yield better bottom-line results than a dramatic, expensive marketing strategy. That is because there is almost always room for improvement to raise closing ratios, shorten the sales cycle and/or increase the size or frequency of the purchase. At little or no cost these gains then translate into better results for all your marketing efforts.

Setting targets and then deliberately implementing improvements to each part of the sales process will effectively leverage every marketing dollar you spend.

A client of mine – I’ll call him Jim — is an insurance agent who first came to me to find out how to increase his income, and wanted my help in finding more prospects so he could reach his higher income goal. This is a common misperception: that increasing the NUMBER of prospects is the ONLY way to increase personal income.

In Jim’s case we did a thorough inventory of each part of his sales process and together we determined what type of improvements could give him the most leverage.

We set new goals for select parts of the sales process that represented very small improvements in outcome. So for example, we set a do-able target of two additional appointments per month for his phone work. As a consequence he went from ten opening appointments to twelve appointments.

Then we got to work enhancing his number of second or follow-up appointments. His average was good, about 76%. By having Jim listen to an excellent sales training audio and implementing some of the methods suggested, he increased his numbers by a few percentage points and enhanced his closing ratio.

Jim was already a good sales person but he was open enough to learn a few simple ways to make his closing easier and more conversational. He practiced and applied these methods, and added percentage points of success to his closing.

Next we added 20% to all his product recommendations, so that when he DID close, he had a slightly higher commission on the sale.

Now, notice the pattern.

It would have required a lot more time, money and energy to create those same results simply from marketing and attracting new prospects into the fold. Instead we focused on incremental gains in four areas…

With four minor changes to his existing process his monthly average income went from $15,300 per month to $28,546.

What small changes could you make to your existing sales processes to bring in an additional 4 or 5 figures this month? Please share with me your successes or questions by leaving a comment below.

What’s the one thing you can’t afford NOT to pay attention to during these lean economic times?

Lead Preservation.

Leads are equivalent to a food source in the wild.

Imagine roaming the wilderness, hungry and searching for food. Suddenly you come upon an apple tree with a few crisp, ripe, delicious juicy apples and hundreds of small unripe fruit.

What would the value of that tree be to you? How would you treat it? Would you leave its protection and care to the least experienced person on your team? Would you casually walk away, and do your best to “try and remember” where the tree is? I don’t think so.

Most likely you would immediately entrust the tree’s protection and care to the most experienced, reliable and competent member of your party. You would make sure you knew exactly where it was and you would periodically check to make sure that that tree was given all the care it could possibly need.  And you wouldn’t let the ripe fruit fall and rot on the ground.

That is how to treat your leads.

You can’t afford to carelessly lose or forget any of them – especially when times are lean. But many people do. They meet a “ripe” prospect on Friday night and by Monday they are forgotten. Then in six months when you are cleaning out your purse, wallet or briefcase, you find their business card and it is too late because they are already doing business with someone else.

What’s your biggest struggle when it comes to lead preservation? Please leave your comments and answers to this question below.

If you wanting to brand yourself in any way then its important to always be aware of what is being said or written about you. Google Alerts is a free tool that is super easy to use and will help you keep up with what’s being said about you. Here is a list of things you should set up alerts for:

• your name
• your twitter id
• your company name
• your blogs name
• your product names
• your employees or clients names
• your clients companies
• your competitors
• your competitors’ company name
• your competitors’ products
• industry news
• industry blogs
• industry keywords

When tracking industry keywords think about using this content for future blog posts, articles or newsletters. It helps to use advanced search operators to help you narrow your searches.

For example if you were a commercial Realtor in Miami then you might want to create an alert for [Commercial Real Estate+Miami] so that you got information only about Commercial Real Estate in Miami. You’ll have to play with this feature a bit but after a few tweaks it can prove to be VERY powerful information.

Google Alerts is also great for learning that you’re NOT being talked about. While this can be painful to realize it is an important indicator of your online marketing efforts. One of the quickest and easiest ways to get people talking is through the use of social media like Twitter, Facebook or Blogs. On Thursday, March 25 I’ll be sharing the Secrets of Social Media Marketing that independent professionals, authors and coaches must utilize in 2010 to stay ahead of the competition. Will you be joining us?

To Your Online Success,

Mande White

Founder, FreeSocialMediaHelp.com

Social Media Advisor for Priority Living Systems

Connect with me:

I heard a nice quote about profit margins the other day…”Gross is for Vanity and Net is for Sanity”. Kinda cute huh?  So in today’s post I’d like to explore 5 ways you can increase your bottom line or net profits. After all its easier to squeeze more money from current income streams than it is to go about creating new one.

1. Get to know your customers & their preferences. As best you can, offer things that they are interested in. (A client interview can help you find that out easily.) You can use this information to segment your mailing and emailing lists, and match special promotions to people that are most likely to buy what you have to offer. Matching the offers to the list-members will save you time and money, and make your offers more interesting and compelling to your customers.
2. Focus on tangible transactions and/or tangible benefits rather than concepts. Remember that when market forces put you in survival mode, most of your clients are ALSO in survival mode, which means they need to better justify their purchases as needs rather than wants. This is easier to do if the benefits are tangible. (If you are selling large flat screen TVs, for example, concentrate on the benefit of more enjoyable time at home – versus going out and spending money—rather than the prestige of having the best TV in the neighborhood.
3. Develop Niche Markets – Be really specific about who you can help.
   
4. If appropriate, dress your product as an affordable luxury
5. Target industries that prosper from economic downturns and/or those that are less vulnerable to economic conditions such as:

• debt collection firms
• attorneys
• healthcare and medical services
• debt consolidation/ credit repair services
• process servers
• discount retailers
• court reporting agencies
• repair services
• security-related services
• accountants
• staple goods manufacturers and distributors
• companies that service essential government contracts
• insurance services

See how many of these 5 you can start implementing this week. Please leave a comment below and let me know your question or keep me updated on your successes!

Coaches are USUALLY behind the scenes, kind of like a movie director.

When Apolo Anton Ohno set a world record for most medals won during a Winter Olympics, one of the commentators made a important observation: Ohno’s success in the 2010 games was no coincidence. And it wasn’t simply the result of hard work.

Since the Turino games, Ohno had reached out beyond what he had done before by hiring not one, not two, but several coaches to help him improve his skills, his performance, his state of mind and his endurance. Ohno hired nutritional coaches, sports performance coaches and skating coaches. As a result he stuck to his plan and grew into a version of himself that broke through his previous performance barriers.

This is an important reminder…

*Being passionate and committed is good, but it doesn’t get you the gold.*

To really make the most of your potential, to become the best version of yourself, you need a personalized plan and workable strategies to consistently improve performance.

As importantly, you need objective feedback and expert guidance from someone who has no hidden agendas or ulterior motive — and who knows exactly what to look for when evaluating your progress.

This is true of Olympic coaching, and especially true of Success coaching.

Of course, not everyone has the drive and determination to achieve outstanding success. But if you know anyone who does, they can certainly benefit from having a proven coach on their team.

Here’s what they (or you) can do: Pick up the phone and call my office at 954-587-8873 for an honest conversation to explore the process and possibilities.

To your success,

Mandy Bass
Priority Living Systems
954-587-8873