Can you believe New Year’s Eve is almost here?  We are closing in on 2012 very quickly and It’s that time of year when everyone starts reviewing the goals they had for 2011 and thinking about 2012 goals. 

The approach and complexity of this process is all over the board. From the dreamers who repeat the same goals from year to year yet they never seem to get out of the starting blocks to the serious analytical types who have meticulously measured every step of progress from day one and are constantly reevaluating their direction.  Although there’s not 1 right way to do things, my hope is you tilt more towards the latter of the two approaches.

A goal is a dream with a deadline. – Napoleon Hill

Since you are reading this I am going to take the liberty of assuming:

#1) You have some goals.

#2) Your goals are in writing.

#3) Your goals are tracked at least in some degree.

But at the end of the day, what is the differentiator that propels some people to achieve their goals while others appear to be working just as diligently, but are not having the same level of success?

If you have ever been involved in any type of manufacturing, you are probably familiar with the word, Kaizen. It is a Japanese word meaning “improvement” and it defines a way of thinking.  In manufacturing it is about continuous improvement and is the foundation of the Six Sigma and Lean movements. 

With Kaizen, you are continuously looking for the bottle neck that is keeping you from doing something better, cheaper, faster, and more efficiently. Companies embracing this “continuous improvement” mentality assemble teams to dissect specific areas of manufacturing to determine what the biggest bottle neck is and how they can improve/reduce/remove it. These are called “Kaizen Events”. The results of these events are often transformational for the business.

Try this!

My challenge to you and your team as you think about 2012 and your goals is to perform a “Kaizen Event” on the goals you have struggled to achieve in this past year. What is the bottle neck that is challenged you in achieving it? How can you improve/reduce/remove it? Blaming it on the economy is unacceptable. Whatever your industry, I am sure we can find examples of like businesses who are succeeding. So skip the easy way out and find the real obstacles.

Then, as you establish your goals for 2012, incorporate your findings and use the same process going forward into the New Year when ever you get stuck.  I think you will find it very empowering…and you’ll make a lot more progress!

If you can to this with a group of your peers you will have more success, so I would encourage you not to complete this solo. Understand, self-diagnostics can work, but you risk becoming a race horse with blinders on – be aware of that. Whatever your approach, find the bottle necks in your goals and open them up.

Have you ever looked for the obstacles in your goals? How did you open up the bottle neck? Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.

Chris Steinlage  Kansas City Business Coach

Photo by meddygarnet

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“My hands are locked up tight in fists
My mind is racing, filled with lists
of things to do and things I’ve done
Another sleepless night’s begun”.

Who Needs Sleep – The Bare Naked Ladies

It’s tough to be a business owner and you will have more than your fair share of stress and sleepless nights.  Whether you’re in your first year and ramping up or several years into your business and dealing with difficult clients, employees, competitors…there are a lot of things that can cause you to feel like you’ve been run over by a truck and keep you from getting the sleep that you need.

The good news is that you can address your issues and risks (and your sleeplessness…), here are some key things to watch out for:

1. Over Promising (and under delivering)

There will be a time when you really need to close a sale…or maybe this is just your standard approach.  Either way the quickest way to cause stress, disappoint your clients and get them talking about you…in a bad way, is to set their expectations high and then fail to meet them!

Better approach: Sell them on reality and things you know you can easily hit…and then ‘wow’ them!  Have you ever been to a restaurant where they surprised you with something extra?  I bet you told several people what a great experience it was!  Great word of mouth comes from clients who had their expectations exceeded and were ‘wowed’ somewhere along the way!

2.  Not truly delegating

Whether you’re a ‘control freak’ or you don’t have the time to train someone or you just know that you can do it better than anyone else, not giving up responsibility is a sure path to working too long, limiting your opportunities and having lots of sleepless nights!

Better Approach: Put the right people in the right seats, make sure everyone is clear on roles and responsibilities and then let them do their job.  This is going to be really hard at first, and there will be some challenges, but if you can hold on, you will substantially increase your capabilities (and give yourself some time to sleep).

3. Constantly fighting fires (living in Quadrant 1)

If you are consistently spending your time responding to things, fighting fires, answering emails, voicemails, letters, bills, etc., then you are flying blind (and you probably feel really stressed and overwhelmed since you have little control or visibility over where you’re going).  You’re being a hero in your business…and that’s not good.

Better Approach: It’s counter-intuitive, when you don’t have enough time to get things done, that’s exactly when you need to take some time out of your schedule and work on planning and mapping out where you want to go.  Start consciously spending much of your time in what Stephen Covey refers to as Quadrant II activities.

4. Being Afraid

The myth: the entrepreneur is fearless.  The reality:  most small business owners are everyday people, often without much of a lifeline or reserve should things go wrong.  It’s natural to be afraid, but if that fear causes indecision or just drives you to be overly cautious, you’re going to have problems (and it’s likely you’re not getting much sleep).

Better Approach: Recognize the risks that are causing the fear and develop contingency plans in case things go badly.  You can’t control everything, but you can plan for the worst and hope for the best.  Talk to peers, friends (a coach…), a mentor if you find yourself really getting bogged down.  The worst thing you can do is to just fret.

5. Lack of Consistency

One of the biggest issues that business owners face is the dreaded rollercoaster effect – ramp up for sales and marketing, land some work (…stop marketing) and then when work slows down again, start ramping up marketing and sales again and hope there’s not too much of a dry period in between.  Getting whipsawed isn’t fun and it doesn’t work in the long run.

Better Approach: Implement a marketing system and make sure that you are doing some marketing and sales activities all the time.  In order for Marketing to be effective over the long run, it has to be consistent.  Find a handful of marketing tactics that you enjoy (or at least don’t mind) and put them on the calendar as regular activities.

6. Chasing Shiny Objects (not being focused)

As a business owner it’s in your nature to look for new opportunities – different, better ways to make money.  The problem is when you start chasing all of the shiny objects, you take your eye off the ball on your baseline core business and all of the sudden you’ve got nothing tangible going on (and you’re exhausted).  You’re off the map and drifting.

Better Approach: Be very clear (with yourself and your team) about what’s most important for business success.  Know where you’re going.  If something new and shiny comes along that’s not part of that equation, take note of it, but keep your focus.  If it’s too good to pass up, then determine what you’re going to STOP doing when you start going after the new opportunity – you can’t do everything (and if you try you’ll fail).

7. Going it alone

You didn’t become a business owner because you needed direction or a lot of help.  You’re independent and proud of it!  However the reality is that big success happens when you find other people that you can lean on, learn from and collaborate with.

Better Approach: Find someone to talk to about your business.  That could be a Peer Group Advisory Board, a formal board of directors, a mastermind group that you pull together on your own or a business or two that you can partner with.  Find a way to tie into a network of people who can help you see into your blind spots, encourage you or kick you in the ass…whatever’s needed!  Every successful business out there has someone they got help from – you can’t do it by yourself and hope to succeed in the long run.

8. Not Sleeping or taking care of yourself

Maybe it’s obvious, but a lack of sleep or just generally not taking care of yourself will lead to stress, poor decisions and performance and…additional lack of sleep.  It doesn’t take long to dig a pretty deep hole.

Better Approach: Set serious guidelines and barriers for when you’re working and when you’re not working and stick to them.  Put time in your schedule for exercise (even just taking a walk), make sure you’re eating right…consider joining a gym or the ‘Y’.  Find time to hang out with friends and family.  You likely think you don’t have time for any of that, but it will make a lot of difference in the long run.

2011 – the year to get some sleep!

Now’s a great time to start identifying those things in your business that are causing you stress and sleepless nights and finding a way to make them better.  It won’t be easy, but climbing that hill will put you into a great position to grow your business (and free yourself up) in a healthy way.  If you’d like help identifying what’s going on with your business or what you could do about it – contact me for a free session.

What keeps you up at night?  Share your thoughts in the comments below, I’d love to hear them.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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Marketing is the lifeblood of any business – without marketing that works, you’re left wondering where everyone went, with the crickets chirping in the background. 

I’ve said it before – whatever business you’re in, you are also in the business of marketing, or you won’t be in business for long – especially these days.  Unfortunately a lot of business owners don’t really get marketing – maybe they’ll occasionally throw some money at it – buy some advertising and hope it all works out.  But they don’t make it a core process of their business. 

Maybe that worked 10 or 15 years ago, but with the explosion of competition, messages and media everywhere, it won’t work today.

Here are 8 reasons why your marketing isn’t working (and why you’re hearing crickets when you’d rather be hearing paying customers)!

Odds are that not all of these apply to you, but if more than one or two of them do then you need to carve out some time to fix some things (or get some help!):

It’s all about you!

Established in 1923!  Located at the corner of 10th and Main!  Using our proprietary process, we deliver results!  We train our people extensively and use only the finest components to create great products!

I hate to break it to you, but your prospective customers don’t care about you and if you create marketing materials that are all about you…they won’t care about that either.  What do they care about?  Your prospective customers care about their problems…and more specifically solutions to their problems.

Try this:  Check out one of your marketing pieces – your website, a brochure, whatever and use a red pen and circle anything that refers to your company (usually starts with We, Our, company name).  Now use a blue pen and circle anything that refers to solving your customer’s pain (usually starts with You, You’re, Our customers).  The Blue should outweigh the Red substantially – if not, talk to your customers and start learning why they work with you and talk about those things!

You’re boring and you look like everyone else

Well maybe you personally aren’t boring, but your marketing is.  Sadly a lot of business owners will look at around at what their competitors are doing and just do the same thing.  If your message and approach is a lot like everyone else, you are throwing away your money, plain and simple.

There are a lot of ways to stand out – lighten up a little and have some fun with it.  Find or create an angle on what you do that’s different – think Gates BBQ and their signature “Hi May I help you?”.  If you really don’t have anything you do that’s different in any way than your competition, then you’re just competing on price, which is going to be a losing proposition.

Here’s an example of a basic business that has a unique approach – it’s not boring and you will remember it:  Check out Cullman Liquidation Center (funniest commercial I’ve seen in a long time).  How could you stand out – at least a little?

You believe your customer is anyone who fogs a mirror

I hear this all the time from business owners:  “We sell to anyone who has money” – “Everyone can use what we sell”. 

If you’re trying to sell to everyone you are going to fail.  Let’s flip this around, let’s say that you are trying to solve a problem and you’re willing to spend some money to do it.  Do you go with the vendor who sells a product that works for everyone?  Or would you be more interested in the vendor who specializes in working with people just like you?

Odds are, if it’s a problem you really want solved, you’d be willing to pay a premium for the solution that’s tailored to your problem as opposed to the one size fits all.  Don’t you think your customers would feel the same?

You can’t be found online

Go to google and do a search on your name.  Now do a search on your business name.  Finally do a search on a likely way that people are going to try and find you if they don’t know who you are – for me that’s a search for Kansas City Business Coach, for you it might be around the problem you solve or some other niche keyword.

If you and your business name don’t come up in the first 5 or 6 results for those searches, you have a serious problem (obviously if you don’t have a website you have an even more serious problem). 

David Meerman Scott – author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR , does a great job of illustrating why it’s so important to be online in his Keynote Speech at the Business Marketing Association conference last year (check out the first 2 minutes of this video).  Where are you spending your marketing efforts?

You don’t have a compelling offer

In a lot of cases, there might not be any offer at all.  If you are actively trying to market your business, you must include an offer…a call to action…give them a clear next step.  If your marketing just tells people you’re great and you’ve been around for 20 years, it’s a waste of time and money.

Assuming you have an offer – it needs to be compelling.  You should have an Overt Benefit that appeals to your target market.  Fed Ex knocked it out of the park when they shared their benefit of “When it absolutely has to be there overnight”.  On top of a clear next step and a clear benefit, you also need to generate a sense of urgency – “space is limited, call today!”, “Offer ends at the end of the month – sign up now!”.

Take a look at what you’re currently offering in your marketing?  Is it compelling?

You don’t follow-up

I see a lot of business owners doing the hard work of marketing and then stopping just short of where they will start seeing the payoff. 

How many times have you gone to a networking event and connected with a few people who could be good referral partners or good prospects but you never took a next step with them and followed up for another meeting?  I know business owners who have received leads and referrals but are too busy to follow-up on them…they slow down in a couple of weeks, but by then the potential customers have moved on.

Do you have a systematic process for making sure that you follow-up on opportunities and nothing falls through the cracks?

You’re not taking advantage of all the tools that are out there

Social networking is no longer the fringe new kid on the block.  Facebook has over 400 Million people with profiles.  LinkedIn has o
ver 60 Million and a majority of those are listed as executives or business owners.  People are spending more time online with social media than anywhere else.  Social Media isn’t a silver bullet for marketing, but if you don’t have some sort of presence – if you’re not participating at all, then you’re seriously missing the boat.

Email marketing isn’t new, but I talk to business owners all the time who don’t use it, despite the fact that it has the highest ROI (return on investment) of any direct marketing tactic.

Blogging has been around for at least 10 years and has also become much more mainstream when it comes to being an effective business marketing tactic.  However most smaller business owners haven’t made that leap despite all of the benefits that blogging can bring to them.

What tools could you use that you’re currently not considering?

You’re not focusing on your current customers

I imagine everyone has heard a variation on the idea that it costs 5X to 7X as much to acquire a new customer as compared to retaining an existing customer.  Unfortunately that doesn’t translate to very many tangible programs or efforts towards really rewarding your existing customers.

Here’s a quick summary of why it’s important that you focus 50% or more of your efforts towards existing customers.

• Your best chance of making a new sale is selling to someone who’s already happy with you as a customer. 
• Your best chance of getting a great referral is from someone who really knows how you work and the benefits you deliver. 
• Your best chance of not losing ongoing revenue from a customer is to keep them happy.

Not losing 10% of revenue is the same as adding 10% of new revenue and likely a lot easier to do.

How much time and focus do you spend on your current customers?

Is your marketing succeeding?

Where do you stand on all of these areas with your marketing?  Are there some key things I missed?  Are you making marketing a real priority for your business?  Are you tracking results (and improving as you go)?  I’d love to hear your thoughts – share them in the comments below or let me know if you thought this post was helpful.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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