Simplicity Means Focus

I met with a client this morning and he was telling me about how good it felt to spend last weekend in his office just cleaning out and getting rid of old files and things that he didn't need anymore and it got me thinking about how clutter can keep us from being focused on the things we really need to be doing to move our businesses or sales forward.

When you look at your desk are you constantly trying to figure out where you put something so that you can work on it? When you look at what you should be doing do you have multiple to do lists and post it notes all over the place? When you look at your calendar do you have notes scribbled all over the place and it's hard to figure our what you should be doing next to follow-up with that prospect or client? And finally when you call a meeting does it turn into a free for all because there is no set agenda?

These are all things that creating some simplicity in how you do things can really help you focus. Let's look at each one of them:

• First organizing your desk, keep on your desk only those things that you need to work on for that day, move the rest of it somewhere else or better yet go through it and toss out the stuff you truly don't need. This will keep you on task and not wasting time looking for things.
• Your to do list; I work with my clients and get them to do a weekly worksheet that gets them thinking about organizing their entire week versus just a day at a time, I think this keeps them focused on the big priorities that need to get accomplished and they don't get hung up on the things that are not vitally important. I also encourage them to do time blocking which helps the concentrate on setting critical blocks of time aside to work on revenue generating activities versus time wasters.
• Your calendar and follow-up; get a system that keeps everything organized for you, here's where technology can really help. Look for a system that will keep everything at our fingertips, emails, calendars, documents, etc... and easily accessible. I use a system called BatchBook that is easy to use and syncs with all my devices.
• And last but not least and I've written about this one before, meetings! Set a start time and an end time and have a written agenda. This will help you stay on track and not waste time in meetings. If there is not a specific objective for the meeting then don't have one!!

By simplifying the various things you do on a day to day basis you really can create focus!

Will This Be Your Best Year Ever?

With today being the 11^th day of the New Year already do you know that over 50% of the people that set New Year’s resolutions have already broken them. Are you one of them?

What are the keys to getting out of the blocks fast this year and hitting all the goals or “resolutions” you have set for yourself? First the key is to not focus on them, the more you focus on them and the minute it becomes apparent that you won’t hit them or exceed them they will fall by the wayside.

Instead focus on the actions that need to happen in order for you to hit your goals. Create what I call in my book Ultimate Breakthrough Planning: The Business Funnel Approach key milestones. Those key milestones should be measured on a monthly basis and they should be strictly actions that need to occur in order for you to reach your goals.

An example would be in your marketing area measuring the specific things that need to happen such as the number and type of marketing campaigns that your are doing and the number of people that are receiving them and responding to them.

Make your business as measurable as possible, every possible thing you can measure when it comes to action will allow you to fine tune things until they are working the way you want them to work. And by measuring the actions that are happening if you are hitting the milestones on a regular basis I can guarantee that you will hit your goals and resolutions.

If you really want to take your business to new heights take the Ultimate Breakthrough Planning BusinessBuilder Challenge. We guarantee you will grow your business 20% or more or you pay nothing, check it out here!

Helping Those That Need Help!

This holiday season as the nation tries to dig out from a recession some of the most impacted will be those that help others. Charitable contributions are down significantly throughout the country and because of that many of those people that rely on the help of charitable organizations will be in dire need.

As you look at your business this holiday season I would challenge all business owners to find creative ways to help those organizations that help others. Whether it's financial or material contributions or simply contributions of time those organizations need your help this holiday season.

The Pinecrest Group and Ultimate Breakthrough Planning is going to do our part by launching a new program called "Coaching For Your Cause". In this program for everyone that signs up for our coaching programs from November 1, 2010 to January 1, 2010 we will donate 5% of the cost of the program back to an organization of your choice. And that contribution will be made in your name and on your behalf not ours!

I know that times are tough but anything we can do to help those less fortunate this holiday season, not to mention anytime makes the world a better place!

Business Planning on a Bar Napkin

I've just finished my new e-book, Business Planning on a Bar Napkin. It focuses on a simple method to create an executable business plan to help grow your business. The book is designed as the first step to help businesses create a strategic plan that they can use everyday to help them grow their businesses. If you use it paired with my published book, Ultimate Breakthrough Planning you will have all the tools you need to create your business success gameplan.

You can download a free copy of my e-book at www.thepinecrestgroup.com/free_stuff You'll find valuable ideas that can take your business from where it is today to where you want it to be tomorrow.

Providing Value to Your Customers in Your Service

I'm always interested in the response I get from my clients when I ask them if they deliver good service. Almost all of them say they do and then give me some examples of how they do it. However I get a very different response when I ask them how they deliver value in their service, most of the time I get a quizzical look that says, "What do you mean"?

Providing value in the minds of your clients or customers means that you have taken the time to put yourself in their shoes and have asked the question, "What would I want?" As you look at your service you need to make sure that what your perception of good service is and what your customers perception is are in alignment. Many times I have heard my clients say they give great service by doing something for the customer and then when I go back and ask the customer they say well yes they do that but that really isn't all that important to us.

I believe that one area of service that is critical is communication to your customers, not only when something good or bad happens but also as a means of establishing expectations. If you go about setting written service standards for your business but then don't communicate them to your customers you have done nothing to set the expectations and give yourself the opportunity to exceed those expectations.

Here are a couple of examples that I have recently encountered:

• I occasionally eat at a local Arby's and for a long time now they have been offering a special pick 5 items for $5.95. I thought this was great value and the last time I was there they had taken it off the menu, when I asked about it they said they had taken if off the menu because they were sending out coupons instead. As I was standing there waiting for my meal I must have heard 5 people ask about that special and all got the same response. Now it seems pretty obvious to me that the 5 people and myself could care less about the coupons that we didn't have, we wanted the special that was a value in our minds. They have lost at least one customer because they changed their value proposition.
• I have recently been working on a project with a couple of different companies and to get them to communicate with me on what's going on has been like pulling teeth. I am about to make a considerable investment in what they have to offer and yet to get them to answer an email, return a phone call or keep me in the loop as to what's going on has been virtually impossible. Here all I am asking for is a simple response and they don't seem to think that is important. Again in this case it may cost them a very good customer.

These are just a couple of examples of service that could have made my perception of these companies very different. When you don't get basic answers or perceived value you have a tendency to start looking at the other things that a company or business does and start wondering what else is wrong. So as you look at your service and create a plan that will help you deliver exceptional service make sure you put yourself in your customers or clients shoes and remember the old adage, "what's in it for me".

Where is the Common Sense?

Chicken little is having a hey day today! Between the economy, the auto industry, the mortgage crisis and swine flu the sky is definitely falling! Of course being the eternal optimist I have one big question; what the heck happened to common sense in the world today?

Let's examine a couple of these things:

• The economic crisis, no question it is here and upon us, the interesting thing is a little common sense could have avoided it. Where was the regulation of all the financial instruments that created the problem in the first place, Congress and both parties are quick to lay the blame but if one of the purposes of government is to act for the greater good of it's citizens then why wasn't good old common sense used in the regulatory environment, most of these designed financial instruments were designed out of greed and to take advantage of the system, a little common sense by someone might have brought out that realization.
• Here's my favorite one, swine flu! I saw yesterday that Ft. Worth was closing all it's schools for almost two weeks because of it and of course it's all over the media that we have a pandemic. I'm not quite sure what a pandemic is but right now this flu has accounted of about 160 deaths, each year the flu kills over 36,000 people in the U. S. alone, so does that mean we have an ongoing pandemic? Again a little common sense would tell me that if you take the normal precautions against getting sick you are probably going to be OK and even if you get the flu almost all of the cases have been mild here in the U.S. So like usual in the year of no common sense we overreact and forget about using some!

It would seem to me that what this country really needs to get moving again is simply some common sense, if it doesn't look right it probably isn't, if it doesn't feel right, it probably isn't. And as far as the U.S. media and news goes they are the biggest culprit, because they like creating a frenzy and hysteria and so they report (sometimes skewed) on all of these issues and they get their so-called experts talking about the sky falling and next thing you know Chicken Little is all up in arms! Maybe we should just figure how to unplug them all for a month and get some peace and quiet! Now that's some good old common sense!

Ultimate Breakthrough Planning is a Finalist for Best New Business Book!

I just found out that my book, Ultimate Breakthrough Planning: The Business Funnel Approach is a finalist for best new business book by the Midwest Book Awards, click here to see more. This is a testament to all the work put in by my publisher Scarletta Press and to those that have reviewed the book and given it great reviews! Although is wasn't intentional the book is incredibly timely in that it really gives business owners a blueprint to help them get focus in their businesses. In today's economy that is essential and having a business plan that you will actually use every single day is clearly a way to get through this recession not only surviving but thriving.

I read an interesting article last night that some of the greatest companies have been started during a recession, Microsoft, HP and others came out of set backs and then looking at things differently and creating a business through an opportunity that came about because of the recession. Ultimate Breakthrough Planning takes you through a process to identify where those opportunities might lie in your business and then helps you create a game plan that can capitalize on them. This book can help any business whether it's a new business or one that has been around for awhile. I am thrilled that the book is being so well received but I'm most proud of the fact that I can help businesses find success in these difficult times!

The First 100 Days

In the past week we have witnessed the historic inauguration of Barack Obama as the nations 44th President. As he takes office we hear in the news much about what will happen in his first 100 days of office. He takes the helm in a tumultuous time with a suffering economy, two wars and the historical partisan politics. So how could that relate to your business?

I talk a lot about creating a laser focused game plan for your business to survive and thrive in these difficult times and as you look at the parallels of President Obama's first 100 days in office I find it an interesting comparison. He must move quickly and establish himself as the new commander-in-chief and in addition position himself and his administration as a new way of doing business. Like President Obama your business faces unique challenges right now, with the economy going south like snowbirds from Minnesota you need to decide what fast action you are going to take to keep your business moving forward. Have you developed an action plan for your next 100 days?  How will you make changes in your business and change the way you do business to set the tone for the next 100 days?  These are questions you must answer and answer quickly in order to survive and thrive in these times. 

I would suggest you sit down and work on 5 things you can do and control in the next 100 days that sends a clear message to your mind and to your team that you are not going to sit on the sidelines doing business as usual and wait for this to blow over. Think about what you can do from a marketing perspective, from a sales perspective and from a service perspective that rocks the boat over how you usually do things.  And once you have done that write down the specifics of how you will do it and assign timelines and communicate it to your team. Then execute and measure the execution so that it happens. 

Just as President Obama wants to get his administration off to a fast start in it's first 100 days you should think about getting you business off to a fast start in 2009 and take control of your business and focus on success, not worrying about those things you can't control!

Tis the Season of Self Help!

About the first of December through the first of February it seems that my email inbox gets loaded with every self help guru out there trying to convince me to lose weight, stop smoking, make more money, have a better sex life, be a better writer and on and on.  Of course they are all preying on the fact that we will be making our New Year's resolutions and we will need their help to make those resolutions happen.  By the first of February they stop bugging us because they figure everyone has already fallen off the band wagon.

In the spirit of those self help gurus I would like to offer some simple ideas to you for making your business successful this year no matter what the economic environment and you won't have to buy anything, go to any seminars or click through 50 page sales letters!  Although there have been thousands of business books written about making your business successful there still remains only 3 ways to grow your business; more customers, more sales from existing customers and larger sales from existing customers. As you look at how you will survive and thrive in these challenging times it is absolutely essential that you look at these three areas to make sure that you are doing everything in your sales and marketing efforts to grow all three of these areas. Top business consultant Jay Abraham calls this the "power parthenon strategy" and by focusing on growing each of these areas you geometrically you can grow your business exponentially. 

Of course in order to do that you need a game plan or script so that it happens each and every time the exact way you want it to happen. Your first step might be to analyze your existing customers to look at their buying trends and figuring out how you can get more and larger sales from them. When I work with my clients I am constantly encouraging them to analyze why people buy from them and what else could they be buying from them.  Once you have looked at your existing customers or clients then you need to determining what you need to do to bring in new customers or clients, as you have heard many times before it is much easier to get more business from existing customers than it is to find new ones however you need to make sure that you are using a variety of different marketing tools to get new clients. You should have at least 5 different methods or tools that you are implementing to find and get new clients. And make sure one of those is an active referral system that lets your existing customers bring new ones in the door. 

As you look toward surviving and thriving in a challenging 2009 focus on these three ways to grow your business and you will have success!  And if you want to lose weight, stop smoking or anything else the self help gurus are selling I wish you luck!

Great Marketing Ideas for 2009

I've been getting a little R&R on the beach in Mexico over the last few days and on my way down I picked up a book in the airport. The book is the New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott.  This book has been a real eye opening experience for me in that I thought I was somewhat tech savvy when it comes to marketing but as I found reading David's book I'm just scratching the surface of what I should be doing to market my business, let alone help my clients market their businesses.  David does a fantastic job of laying out the new rules of marketing and how marketing firms, ad agencies and PR firms have done this in the past and how the world of the web, online marketing, blogs, news releases, podcasting and an assortment of other methods have made the old world of marketing and PR obsolete. I generally don't do book reviews in this blog however I have been so impacted by this book I believe I need to let everyone know that reads my blog that they should be incorporating the ideas in this book into their marketing plans. I spend a lot of time in marketing with my clients however I don't consider myself a marketing consultant rather I work with them to create the plans for their marketing that will help them achieve their business goals.  And one thing that became very evident in reading David's book is that I need to focus more on internet based marketing as I work with clients to help them create their plans. 

Internet marketing has come a long ways since it's early days and with all the tools available our there today if you are not taking advantage of some of these things you are completely missing the boat on opportunities to let people know about who you are and what you do. Any business plan should incorporate many of the tools that David discusses in order to get maximum exposure in the marketplace. The best part of this is it is relatively inexpensive and you don't need webmasters and programmers to do it. In my book "Ultimate Breakthrough Planning" I have an entire chapter on looking at your marketing systems and building a business funnel for them.  By taking some of David's ideas and putting them into your funnel you will improve your marketing dramatically.  The best part is that many of the tools David mentions we have typically thought of for large corporations, yet he gives some great examples such as an auto repairman on how they grew their businesses through some of these tools.  

In building your business funnel you should very definitely read David's book as well as visit his blog.  By the way David's not paying me anything for this in fact I don't know David and he doesn't know me however I believe his ideas should be used by every business to make their marketing efforts more targeted and more effective.