Small Business Makeovers

Many years ago Janet was working in a job she hated. Her office was filled with recruiters making tens of thousands of dollars every month. Each time a placement was made for another disk drive engineer, the bell would ring in the office. But it never rang for Janet.

One day she saw a poster for a success seminar. Something about it struck a chord.

Sitting up front at the seminar she listened as a beautiful, articulate woman spoke about how easy it can be to enjoy success. The speaker said you just have to find those things that light you up inside, your passions.

As Janet listened to this remarkable woman, she felt a growing excitement inside. This was it! This was her passion, her purpose in life, to be a speaker like this amazing woman.

The next day when a friend casually asked her how she was doing. Janet answered with excitement, “I’ve found my calling! I’m going to be a speaker.”

Knowing this was her destiny; Janet left her job at the recruiting company. She travelled across the country attending each of her new mentor’s seminars and was finally hired by the woman, Debra Poneman. Today, Janet and Debra are best friends, and she’s living her passion of being a speaker and transformational leader.

Along this long and winding road she learned there is one key secret to living a happy, fulfilling, rewarding life:

“Whenever you are faced with a choice, a decision or an opportunity,
choose in favor of your passions.”

There are two parts to this. First, you have to know what you are passionate about, what it is that matters most to you in your life. That’s why Janet and her business partner, Chris Attwood wrote The Passion Test – The Effortless Path to Discovering Your Destiny. The Passion Test is a simple, yet powerful way to clarify your top passions in life.

The second part is to choose in favor of those passions. When you do this consistently with every significant decision, you will be guaranteed a passionate life.

Stewart Emery, Mark Thompson and Jerry Porras wrote a fabulous book called Success Built to Last – Creating a Life That Matters. They interviewed over 300 people who have enjoyed enduring success for more than twenty years. People like former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, Senator John McCain, Michael Dell, Bill Gates, Lance Armstrong and many others.

All of these very successful people had one important characteristic in common: when faced with a major decision in their life, they always made their choice based on what held deep meaning for them. This is what we mean by choosing in favor of your passions.

Sometimes, when you listen to all the advice that’s available about what is necessary to create a happy, fulfilling, successful life, it can be a bit overwhelming. When you boil it down, if you are able to do nothing else, clarify your passions and then choose in favor of them, and you will discover your life unfolding in exciting, new, unexpected ways.

Now the principles of The Passion Test have been adopted by leading edge companies. These companies have found tremendous value in helping employees discover their own work passions and core passions and then aligning job roles with these passions. As people do work that is meaningful to them as individuals and that is aligned with the organization’s core passions, employee engagement, productivity and profitability skyrockets. That’s the link between people, passion and profit.

“If they don’t try you the first time, then they’ll never try you the second time and they’ll never try you the first time if you don’t give them an irresistible reason to!”

- T. Harv Eker, NY Times Best-selling Author of “Secrets of the Millionaire Mind”

Harv tells a story about an ice cream retail store that was located in a low-visibility location in a strip mall. Business was slow and the owner was on the brink of closing the shop. She had tried all the usual marketing ideas and nothing seemed to work.  The problem was that nobody knew the store was there.

Case Study – Cones ‘R Us

Then Harv explained the concept of the irresistible offer: offer something at a ridiculous price or for free to get people to try you for the first time. So they put up “bandit” signs and posters all over the area that read:

FREE ICE CREAM CONES
Saturday June 12
Cones ‘R Us – 3345 Main St. Plaza

What do you think happened? The little store was swamped with people all day long. There was a line-up out the door of people wanting free ice-cream cones.

Now Cones ‘R Us was on the map. People had tried them the first time. Now the job was to get them to come back. This was accomplished by giving everyone who got a free cone a coupon for a $1 discount on their next purchase of $5 or more. The cost of the ice cream that they gave away was nothing compared to the profits that they made on the repeat sales to all those grateful and enthusiastic customers. Do you think people told other people about the free ice cream? You betcha.

That ice cream store was later sold for a tidy profit, all thanks to the irresistible offer.

Create Your Irresistible Offer

Okay, so maybe your product costs more than ice cream and giving it away would be nuts. I get that. But can you give away a taste, a sample, a trial, some advice, a consultation, an inspection, a seminar, a free report, free video or free CD.

Remember to tell people why you are giving it away from free. The best reason is because you want them to try you out. Other reasons might include that you are so passionate about what you do that you want to help as many people as possible. I’ll talk more about what to ask for in return the next tip.

If you do business locally then regular face-to-face networking with your ideal clients and with those people who are connected to your ideal clients is a must. My personal practice is to attend one networking event per week.

Some formal networking groups such as Business Networking International (BNI) or the Chamber of Commerce require an annual membership fee and on top of that you pay $10 or so per meeting. Others are free to join.

Which Groups to Attend

Depending on your target market, certain networking groups are going to be more suitable (and profitable) than others. For example, my ideal clients are small business owners and self-employed men and women aged 35 to 60 with annual revenues of $50K to $1M who are looking for cost-effective ways to grow their business.

I have discovered that I can connect with my ideal clients at BNI, my local Chamber of Commerce, Roaring Women, local Entrepreneur groups listed on Meetup.com and industry association groups.

Attending BNI as a guest is free and is a great way to see if there is a fit with your business.

Meetup.com is a great free service that has hundreds of niche groups that you can join in your area (right). You can also start a Meetup group of your own.

In many small businesses, referrals or word of mouth advertising is the main source of new clients. This is especially true if you provide a product or service that requires skill or special expertise.

We all prefer to do business with people we know, like and trust and we tend to look to others for recommendations when we are looking for a trusted service provider. In my experience, clients will tell others about you if you deliver great service. And I’ve also discovered that some clients will go out of their way to tell others about your business if you give them an incentive to do so.

Here are just a few businesses that can benefit from a formal referral program:

• Financial Advisor, Mortgage Broker, Realtor, Home Inspector or Insurance Agent
• Health professional: Dentist, Chiropractor, Massage Therapist, Naturopath
• Personal service provider: Esthetician, Hair Stylist, Wedding Planner or Photographer
• Business supplier: Web Designer, Graphic Designer, Lawyer or Accountant
• Home service provider: Plumber, Builder, Electrician, Painter, Flooring Supplier
• Children’s Services: Camp, Lessons, Private School, Tutor, Day Care

Case Study

The rack card on the right was designed to let clients know about the rewards program. For all new referrals, clients receive a choice of two rewards – 1) a night at the movies for two, OR 2) a $50 gift certificate at a nearby spa.

“Now wait a second,” I hear you saying. “That’s going to cost me a lot of money.”

You’re right. It is. And yet it really isn’t. The only marketing dollars you have to spend are to promote the program and you can do this through low cost no cost ways like posters, bill inserts, email, point of purchase hand-outs or rack cards. The back of your business card is another great place to promote your referral program.

Unlike paid advertising, a referral program doesn’t cost you anything until you get a new client! It’s like having your clients as commissioned sales people. The revenue that one new patient will bring will be hundreds or even thousands of dollars. So the cost of promoting the program and giving the rewards is easily justified.

Another benefit is that people will talk about you. I remember when we bought a new horse trailer and told a friend about the great service we received. They soon bought a horse trailer of their own and the dealer sent us a $50 dinner certificate as a thank you. We must have told dozen more “horse” friends about the reward we received and about our trailer. The word of mouth advertising that the dealer got for that $50 was priceless.

What Kind of Rewards Should You Use?

There are many ways to set up a referral program and I’ll cover them all in my “Low Cost No Cost Marketing” Business School video training course for small business owners. Here is just one creative reward idea:

• Partner with one of your clients or suppliers in a joint venture. They provide the reward for free to you (or at a discount) and they benefit by receiving new clients from you. For example, a Chiropractor might partner with a local restaurant. When a referral is made, the person making the referral receives a gift certificate to the restaurant.

An added spin to this is to offer the same reward to the new client as a welcome gift. So now both the referrer and the referral receive rewards. That means you’ll have to clients raving about you!

How Often Should You Reward?

Reward for referrals every time – don’t make your clients reach 3 or 5 or 10 referrals before they receive a reward. People like recognition every time, even if it’s small. By all means, when someone reaches 5 referrals, give them a special bonus.

Referral programs are a great way for you to get creative. Find out what rewards would interest your clients and make them fun and exciting. And remember to tell your other clients about your top referrers in your newsletter so that the buzz spreads.

I’m amazed at how many business owners don’t know about the free services offered by Google that can put your business on page #1 of a search. If you’re not using Google’s services, the first thing you’ll want to do is sign up for a free Google account.

Gmail

When you sign up, make sure you get a gmail account (gmail is Google’s email service) for your business name or key words, not your personal name. For example:

Get: “victorialawyer@gmail.com” – not petersmith@gmail.com

You don’t need to use this email address and you can simply forward all emails from gmail to your regular email account. The reason I recommend setting up the gmail account is that the more services you have with Google, the higher you tend to rank on the search results.

Google Local Business Center

We’ve all done a Google search and seen the little map come up with the pushpins on it like the one below. Those business listings (A – G) are called Google Local Business listings and they’re free. Your business might already be there, especially if you are listed in the phone book. But is your business displaying on the first page?

Notice that in the search results above for “dentist Victoria bc” that only two of the listings (B and G) have a link to their website. These businesses have set up their listings with Google and “claimed their listing”. Now you can click right through to their websites unlike all the others (A, C, D, E & F) who only have a link to maps.google.com

So how do you claim your Google Local listing?

Simple. Go to google.com or google.ca, create your account, login and click on “Business Solutions” (see below). Then click on “Local Business Center” and complete your listing. With Google Local Business Center, you can add keywords, list your products and services, your business hours, upload photos and videos and collect reviews from clients.

When you’ve finished, do another Google search for your business using your key words and city and you might just find your business listed on the first page of Google! When one of my clients, Dr. Geoff Pratt claimed his listing, his practice immediately went to page 1 and his new patients doubled!

According to a 2005 Harris Interactive Survey only 20% of respondents feel very passionate about their jobs, while 33% believe they have reached a dead end in their career and 21% are eager to change careers.

Based on research, there are a number of benefits to be gained from increasing employee engagement. The correlation between passionate, engaged employees, happy customers and profitability is strong.
Passionate, engaged employees have been shown to have a strong, positive effect on customer engagement. The research has shown that engaged employees grow in their ability to positively affect customers.
Overall, most companies have three kinds of employees :

1. Passionate and engaged – Employees work with passion and feel a profound connection to their company. They drive innovation and move the company forward and creates at least $32,000 per year in additional revenue for the company.
2. Not engaged – Employees are essentially “checked out.” They are primarily at work for the pay cheque and they only do what they have to in order to get by.
3. Actively disengaged – Employees who aren’t just unhappy at work; they are actively acting out their unhappiness. Every day these workers undermine what they’re engaged workers accomplish. Disengaged employees cost their companies about $16,000 per year.

In average companies, the ratio of engaged to actively disengaged employees is 1.5:1. In world-class companies, the ratio is 8:1. Our intent is to help our clients get to at least the 8:1 level.

What Can be Done?

Using an innovative model called “The Passion Test for Business” can help management to:

• Clarify the company’s unique value proposition that your clients pay you for.
• Identify the things that matter most for the company to deliver that value. We call these the company’s passions. This is about what you do to deliver your unique value to clients and customers.
• Help employees identify their own top five work-related passions. These are things that matter most to them in their life at work. We also help employees identify their core passions, which means “why” they consider their top five work passions to be so important to them.

The idea is that when you match employees’ passions with job roles that reflect the company’s need to deliver it’s unique value to it’s clients, you create the opportunity for employees to be fully engaged in delivering that value.

Workplace Application

For successful talent management and succession planning, including meaning and passion in the formula for long-term success is the basis for identifying and culturing tomorrow’s leaders. Passionate employees are more engaged. If employers can identify the core passions of their people then jobs and career paths can be planned that align the individual’s core passions with the needs of the organization.

Are you looking for ways to improve your organization’s performance? Leading edge companies now realize that employee engagement can be a huge competitive advantage. Contact Geoff Affleck to schedule an assessment of your organization and see if you can benefit from this innovative approach.