I realized I had developed a full fledged habit the other day when my daughter used my standard ‘morning’ phrase to me when I was leaving the house the other day.

With parenting, I’ve come to realize that there’s not really a good way to prepare for everything you’re supposed to do – as the kids get older, you encounter new situations and as the parent, you’re supposed to know what’s going on and what to do.

As an example, a few years ago when our kids starting going to school and waiting for the bus, I realized that I should probably send them out into the world with something a little more directional and (hopefully) inspiring than just – ‘See ya’ or the ever popular and simple ‘Good-bye’ as they walked out the door.

But what do you say in those kinds of situations?  I still haven’t found the user’s manual for our kids and I’m not sure it would cover those kinds of things anyway.

I played around with some gimmicky ideas like “Go get ‘em Tiger!’ or “Knock ‘em dead!”, but those didn’t feel right and actually don’t contain any real useful ideas.

Although I’m afraid it shows my lack of creativity, I ended up with:

“Be Good, Have Fun, Learn Something”.

Although it’s not catchy, now that I’ve been using it for a few years, I think I’m onto something.  I didn’t really intend it this way – but if you think about it, it’s a pretty good mantra to live by.

Be Good

Although I think some rules were made to be broken and that it’s sometimes better to ask forgiveness rather than permission, in general it’s important to do the right thing and not get in trouble (especially for kids) – you really can’t go wrong with this one.

Have Fun

This is a piece of advice that I really feel strongly about (and it’s generally not considered important for adults).

When you think about it, most working adults spend more time with their business or their job then anything else they do – in a lot of cases, it’s more than half of your waking hours!

Don’t you think you ought to do more than just tolerate that time?  If you’re not in a position where you legitimately have fun at your job or your business (and I wasn’t a couple of years ago) – start making plans to fix that as soon as you can.

Life is too short.

Learn Something

This is another that I think gets overlooked a lot – who has time to learn anything?  In my opinion, if you’re not learning something, then you’re on the path to oblivion.  There are so many cool things out there that you could learn and it doesn’t take that much effort to get exposed to new ideas.

For me – I try to learn new stuff every day – a lot of it’s about technology or business, but I get a fair share of new ideas about philosophy or what makes people tick as well.  Someday I’d like to learn to play the guitar or relearn how to play Tennis or Golf or cool places to travel or how to take better pictures or…well you get the idea.

What do you live by?

I’m curious what other people use as a guiding principle for this kind of thing.

What’s your mantra – either to your kids or to yourself.

Share your thoughts here – I’d love to hear them.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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But beyond the success, Stephen has created something that’s bigger.  He’s created a product that his customers talk about – and go out of their way to tell others about.  He’s created a large number of advocates that are the biggest key to his success.

So what’s his secret – how has he transformed his buyers into advocates that go out and sell on his behalf?

First let’s take a look at some of the struggles:

Shotgun approach to Marketing

Like a lot of small business owners, Stephen struggled to find a formula that really worked for his business.  Although he has a fairly narrow target market in the sense that it’s parents of Juniors in high school, logistically there’s a challenge in the best way to really get in front of that group in the most effective way.

Again, like a lot of small business owners, Stephen tried out many different kinds of marketing – magazines, advanced networking (Stephen joined 11 Chambers at once), direct mail, and various PR ideas.  None of these was necessarily a bad choice and they did have the benefit of getting his name out into the marketplace, but with money and cash flow always an issue it was impossible to be consistent.  Which meant it was difficult to be effective.

Studies show that prospects need to see your message multiple times before they are really going to notice and consider buying.  By jumping across lots of different marketing efforts, a lot of the target market didn’t get a consistent message – largely wasting a lot of that effort (and a lot of money…)!

Being the focal point for the business (working IN the business)

Stephen is a fascinating guy – a former marine that’s currently pursuing an MBA, extremely well read, doesn’t own a television and confident in many strong  opinions on diverse topics like religion, politics, education and business.

However, Stephen made the mistake that a lot of business owners make early on (often because they don’t have a choice) and did everything in the business himself.

Every key decision, every detail and most of the actual work was done by Stephen.  As a small business owner, that’ may be the way you have to start out, but as you grow it’s critical that you build something that’s bigger than you can be by yourself.  Eventually you have to be able to successfully delegate and let go of the reins.  You still need to know what’s going on, but you have to take yourself out of the critical path. 

Your job as the business owner is to look at the strategic picture and work ON your business.

Stephen aggressively started pursuing that idea towards the end of last year and as of last week he believes that he has achieved a situation where the business can run, successfully, without his active presence (if it had to).  (Which is a good thing since he’s going to school almost full time to get his Master’s degree…).

The big reason for his success…!

There are several reasons why Stephen is successful – here are a few of the highlights:

1. Stephen is a first class tutor on his own (formerly freelance) before starting Get Smarter.  He developed the company by leveraging those skills and only working with other instructors that demonstrate the ability to be first class tutors as well.
2. Stephen turned the Test Prep model on it’s side by offering unlimited Friday office hours to the students at no additional cost and using materials directly from the Test Creators instead of developing his own materials and selling them for extra profit – which is what a lot of the other Test Prep companies do.
3. Stephen has committed to a Student to Teacher ratio of 8:1 for his classes – the lowest ratio in the country for Test Prep (or other instruction for that matter).

As you can probably imagine, the decisions above aren’t the low cost approach.  Stephen offers a superior product at a price point that’s higher than most of the industry.  However the results clearly indicate that you do get what you pay for.  When an improved score can generate thousands of dollars in scholarships, that extra investment of a couple hundred dollars is certainly well worth it.

But beyond all of that, what has really made Stephen successful is the relationships that he (and the company overall) have developed with their clients.  Not only does he consistently over deliver (on purpose) but he and his staff go out of their way to develop positive, helpful relationships with the students and the parents.

One example that happened recently is that Stephen had some late sign-ups that inadvertently created the situation of 9 Students in 2 of the classes.  Since the 8 to 1 ratio is really just an internal guideline, Stephen could have easily and justifiably let the situation slip and let it go at that.

Instead he wrote a letter to the parents of all the students in those 2 classes apologizing for going for the 9 students in a class (instead of 8)…and he wrote everyone of those customers a $100 check and an offer to talk with them in further detail if necessary – that’s $1800 that he didn’t need to spend (and couldn’t necessarily afford…) just to make sure he was doing the right thing for his customers.

Is it any wonder that his customers go out of their way to be an advocate for Get Smarter?

Shawn Kinkade Kansas City Business Coach

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For those that don’t know, Twitter is a ‘micro-blogging’ platform that limits you to 140 characters per post (or Tweet).

What’s the point?

Well that’s the interesting thing – I have no idea how planned this product was and there are a lot of opinions out there, but I think the forced brevity encourages more of a true conversation format.  You can leave short posts on what you’re doing, you can share sites that you found interesting or you can engage people.

There are a lot of ways to participate in Twitter – here’s a few that I’ve noticed so far:

1.  Follow ‘thought leaders’, industry lights, movers and shakers.

If they’re active posters, you can get a real sense of what they do, how they think, how they interact and how genuine (or not) they are.  It’s kind of like being behind someone on the escalator as they’re talking to who ever they’re walking with.

2.  Meet people, participate, mix it up.

Twitter is about as democratic platform as you’re going to find.  People are generally interested in activity and I get the sense that you could build up a respectable ‘following’ in a short period of time.  I have a friend that has really leveraged Twitter and Brightkite to meet a lot of new people and solidify existing relationships.

3.  Solidify existing relationships

The way the tool is set up, it’s easy to reinforce activities and ties with people that you like or work with.  With minimal time, you can reach out and share ideas, things you find on the web or just reminders in a real time, non-obtrusive way.  It’s actually pretty cool.

4.  Promote yourself

Like most Social Networking applications, you have the potential to get in front of people and share what you’re doing, what’s important to you and give people an opportunity to Know, Like and Trust you (which is the precursor to doing business or partnering with you…).  It’s easy to set up an announcement of blog posts or to highlight other things you might be up to.

A couple of resources:

A couple of weeks ago, John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing put together and shared a great getting started resource in his blog post on Twitter for Business.  Easy to read and will give you some background and ideas.

You might have noticed the stylish avatar picture above (it’s supposed to be me, but I’m not sure I succeeded).  A few days ago I ran across the Twitting Point post on Mashable about an application that lets you create your own Manga style avatar – it’s a lot like the Mii editor on the Wii – a lot of fun to play with.

You can find me on Twitter at Twitter.com/Aspire_Shawn – when you sign up, let me know and I can follow you.

Share your thoughts on twitter here!

Shawn Kinkade Kansas City Business CoachSimilar Posts:

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Smiling and Dialing!

I’ve had several conversations with clients recently specifically on the topic of cold calling.  Most of the people I talk to feel fairly strongly that it’s not effective and more than likely it’s counterproductive because it annoys potential prospects.  On top of that – they really hate doing it.  Most people don’t want to be perceived as annoying.

There’s a reason why there are state and federal laws that prohibit telemarketing to consumers.  People became so fed up with the annoying intrusions into their life that they demanded legislation.

Why would we think that business owners would feel any differently about receiving cold calls?

Having said that, if you need to generate business quickly, you don’t have a lot of options – here a few things that you might consider to make it better.

Warm Up the Call

Part of the problem with a cold call is that by definition you are dealing with a total stranger.  You likely no very little about them (other than some demographics from your list) and they certainly don’t know anything about you.  Here are a couple of ideas to help warm up those calls:

1.  Combine the calls with Direct Mail

The idea is to find a very targeted list for your services and then send them a series of direct mail pieces (postcards, letters, maybe a combination) with then intent of educating them on what problems you solve, who you are and why you would be worthwhile to talk to.

A local company here in Kansas City has really perfected this approach and they now offer a solution on painless cold calling as a very inexpensive product.  In fact they also offer a service to do the initial mailings for you – leaving you with just a warmed up call.

Their personal results from using this system increased their positive response rate by 3 to 4 times compared to just making a cold call by itself.

2.  Put yourself in their shoes…

Hopefully the list  you’re calling from is based on something other than a straight alphabetical listing.  Ideally you’ve identified a target market that generally has a problem that your product or service can solve.

Assuming that’s the case, start the call by letting the prospect know that you’ve successfully helped people just like them previously and would they be interested in learning more. 

As an example, I have a client that uses an advanced eBay auction process to successfully sell retired Longaberger Collectible Baskets online.  This is a problem for a lot of salespeople that don’t have a good way to get rid of last year’s baskets.  By demonstrating up front that he understands this issue and has a solution, they are much more likely to want to talk to him.

3.  Get an introduction before the call

We already said that this was a cold call – by definition you don’t know the prospect you’re calling…but depending on the situation, there may be a good chance that someone you know does know that prospect (or at least someone at that company).

This probably works better when you’re targeting bigger companies, but it’s worth a try – especially if your product or service is a little higher dollar.

My recommendation would be to use a tool like Linked In and do some quick research on the company you’re trying to sell into.  Linked In currently has over 25 Million users with hundreds of thousand more being added every month.  If it’s a decent size company, there’s a good chance that someone there is on Linked In.  Once you find the right contact, then work back through your network and see if you know anyone that knows that contact.

Ask for an introduction and suddenly your cold call is much, much warmer. 

Try something different…

Because you and 10,000 other people are trying to cold call your prospect for a quick sale, it’s likely worth your while to try a different angle.

4.  Don’t sell – educate

When ever you’re calling someone, they are looking for the hard sell and they are prepared to shut it down.  It’s what buyers have been trained to do over the years.

However if you’re not trying to sell them anything and instead you want to give them an educational piece that actually has value to them, you will likely find a much warmer reception.

Here are a couple of keys to make this work:

• Your report (or whatever) cannot be a sales document.
• You must provide education and help for the problem at hand
• Make it easy for them to follow-up if they’re interested

Obviously your report is going to list your product or service as a solution, but if it is truly a useful document that will almost be an unnoticed afterthought, putting you in a much more credible position when you follow-up with them.

5.  Spend your time going after referrals instead

You likely know hundreds of people fairly well (through your neighborhood, church, schools, kid’s sports, work, whatever).  Those people also know hundreds of people – many who are probably good candidates for your product or service.

Enter into a formalized referral network with people that you know that are likely to have good contacts for you.  If you’re starting out, you could offer compensation for good referrals that generate business or you could get the process started by finding them a referral first.

A networking group like BNI is a good way to facilitate this process – if you’re interested in learning more about BNI or coming to visit the chapter that I’m in, just let me know.

If you’re in a strong referral group, it’s possible to get more than half of your total new business from that group (some people do more than that).

It can be less painful than the drill

Prospecting is a challenge and the longer term answer is to make sure you are using multiple  marketing techniques to keep you from having to rely solely on a cold calling approach.

If you’ve got suggestions on other ways to make cold calling more effective, share them below.                                            

  Photo by tanakawho

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business CoachSimilar Posts:

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Photo by scottwills

I can’t think of too many other topics that generate the same level of confusion, controversy and frustration as Search Engine Optimization or SEO.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”                         – Arthur C. Clarke

From a business owner’s perspective, you really don’t want to mess with something like SEO.  You’re trying to run a business, get a product (or service) out the door…and oh by the way, it would be great if you made some money and got some time off eventually!

However – you also probably realize how helpful it would be to have your website show up – ideally on the first page, when people searched on the right term.  Having a top spot for the right search term is big!

Unfortunately the combination of being mysterious, complicated and potentially very important to the success of your business has led to a very profitable industry of people claiming to be able to sprinkle some fairy dust and drive lots of traffic to your website, all through the magic of SEO and Google ad-campaigns.

Although there are plenty of legitimate service providers, there are also a lot of schemers, many of them using tactics that either don’t work at all or using questionable tactics that could get you in trouble with the Search Engines.

The good news is that a lot of the complexity with SEO has been overstated or doesn’t really apply to the typical small business owner.

What’s the ‘Secret’ to Search Engine Optimization?

Great news…if you just think pure thoughts and imagine yourself higher on the search results…oh wait, that’s the other ‘Secret’!

So here’s the real secret: 

Google is very, very successful.  They got to be so very successful by following a simple principle of doing everything they can to give people what they want when they search.

What do people want?  They want valid results that have meaningful, contextual content for whatever it is they searched for.  They want to find the answer to their question.

If you type in the phrase ‘Square Watermelons’ , you expect to find information on the what, how, who, when and where Square Watermelons are all about.  You don’t expect to find Joe’s House of Fun online store where Joe happened to add Square Watermelons to his Keywords tag to trick the system.

Although there’s always room for improvement, in general Google has pretty much delivered on this promise (which is why they are so successful).  As long as you give Google what they want – quality information on the topic requested, you will rank well on the search engine.

How do I use the SEO Secret?

Here’s the good news.  By making minor changes to your website and finding some creative ways to get some other sites to link to you, anyone can dramatically move up the Search Results.  This ties directly back to the idea that you tell Google what your site is about, you have content to back that up and it’s high enough quality that other people are linking to it.

Depending on your competition (other websites targeting the same keyword / search term as you), you may very well be able to move up to the first page or even the first spot (cough…Kansas City Business Coach) by using this simple approach.

Now If you’re up against a lot of stiff competition (think big companies or really well established websites) for your preferred search term, then you either need to be creative and find other search terms or it may now be time to invest in a legitimate SEO professional – just make sure there’s a worthwhile Return on Investment because in a situation like that, they will justifiably cost a lot (and be earning their keep if they succeed).

Meanwhile, if you’d like to see how your site ranks against a particular search term, there’s a great free tool to check out your Search Engine Results.  If you get a not found, that just means that your site isn’t showing up on the first 10 pages (100 positions) for that search engine for that search term.

If you’d like to learn more details on how to put this into play for your own site, I’m going to be covering this topic and some related things at my next Workshop on August 21st – How To Market Online.  If you’re interested, give me a call or sign up on that page.

Have any SEO horror stories?  Share them here.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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