Get More Sales by Asking These Questions

Get More Sales by Asking These Questions

Have you ever stuck with “We can’t” or “That won’t work” statements in your business?

When crafting sales and marketing strategy, shut off the negative thinking and let out the creativity to the ideas you can come up with.

You have to cultivate an environment where there’s no fear of ideas being seen as crazy or stupid. You will need to overcome the fear of thinking outside the box and support and encourage risk taking within your team.

The big point here is not to make statements like,”That would never work for us”, rather ask the question, “How can I apply that to my business?”

With this, here are some aspects in business strategy and customer relations that you need to start considering in order to break away from traditional thinking in sales:

In business strategy, you need to know the following: (1) objective, (2) targets, (3) actions to double your revenue, (3) other strategies you need to consider, (4) obstacles needed to overcome, (5) outsourcing experts you will hire, and (6) establishing structures to ensure effectivity.

For customer relations, the following are to be considered: (1) your target market, (2) demand from the customer, (3) what they do and read, (4) how can you target them, (5) the best time and way to contact them, and (6) why they need your product or service.

These guiding questions are tested and proven in terms of how I incorporate it into my business strategy and customer relations.

How to find your customers?

Do You Know How to Find Your Ideal Customer?

Starting a business requires diverse set of skills and talents. 

But, do you know what’s the biggest asset of a business?

A strong customer base.

If you really want your business to take off the ground, you need to know who your customers are, how to find them and how to make them loyal to your product or service.

Here are some tips you can use to build your customer base for your business:

1 – Identify who you want as customers

When you settle the niche of your business, the next thing to do is to figure out what type of customers you want to attract. A specialized business will attract more prospective customers with less competition. So, when the time comes for you to open your business, you will have more sense of your customers and it will be much easier to drum up interest in what your business can offer.

2 – Take consideration of your customer profile

After identifying your ideal customer, you should begin to develop a strategy on how to attract this particular demographic. As a guide, you can start by asking these questions: What do they look for? What type of deals and promotions will they respond to? The goal is to attract customers at certain income level who is interested with your product or service.

3 – Use the power of analytics

Analytics has been around for some time, but not all entrepreneurs use them. Modern software allows entrepreneurs to track every aspect of the customer’s behaviors. Hence, analytics do not only tell you who your customers are, but what they commonly look for. 

All of your entrepreneurial skills will be useless if your business do not have a strong customer base. It isn’t just good enough to be a great planner, salesperson, or innovator. You need a leverage over the customers you want to sell your products or services with.

This is related with the learning gap I am talking about on every Discovery Day. The gap from where your point now in your business to where you want it to be.

For more information on how to do this comment below or email me on dean@entrepreneursuccess.ie

What are the things to avoid when managing your team?

What are the things to avoid when managing your team?

Have you ever heard about the nightmare boss?

You might even be that person whether intentionally or unintentionally.

There are many articles written by managers, CEOs and executives on this topic but, despite the information, a lot of team leaders still don’t know what does and doesn’t work. 

As an entrepreneur, you are in the position of authority over people and being aware of failures and shortcomings of other team leaders will help you become a better one.

Here are some pitfalls in management that can cause your employees to be dissatisfied with their jobs:

1 – By Not Keeping Your Word

Your word is synonymous with your perception as a leader. Promising things to your team and then forgetting or failing to do them will destroy their trust in you as a leader. Don’t be that person. If you say you train a person for a new position, do it. If you promise a certain project to your team, do it. This will show your team that you deserve their loyalty and respect which will make them work harder for you.

2 – By Showing Favoritism

Favoritism is when the team leader is showing preference to an employee based on personal matters. Sometimes, they are a relative or maybe you hang out with them after work. Whatever the circumstance is, you are giving the person more than they deserve and it’s unfair to everyone else in the team. It’s understandable that you might prefer the company of one person over another, but don’t let that cloud your judgment. When you base your appraisals on results and not personal factors, you get so much more from your team.

3 – By Basing Decisions on Emotions and Not Facts

As the team leader, you are tasked with doing the best for the business. You might have heard about someone who got fired because they caught their boss on a bad day. You might also know somebody who should’ve been fired, but didn’t because of an effective sob story. Regardless of what your temperament is, you have to distance yourself enough to do what is right. Make sure to always back up your decisions with solid facts and evidence.

I can go all day with all the things you need to avoid in managing your team, but there’s only a little space for me share everything.

If you want to know more, send me a message to know more.

How do you inspire your team?

How do you inspire your team?

Are you a business owner that loses yourself in day-to-day tasks and forgot how to connect with your employees?

In the workplace, employees don’t only strive to be heard, but to find purpose of their efforts

To help you build loyalty and boost employee morale, here are some tips to inspire your team:

1 – You should value people over profit.
Your employees walk through office each day in different shape, form, and way. Whether it’s about work-related or personal stuff, it has difference from each person.

2 –  You should encourage ownership.
Accountability is one thing, ownership is another. Provide prospects for end-result and empower your employees and communicate to them how you trust them.

3 –  You should foster collaboration
Many of our employees’ work go unnoticed. To inspire your team, encourage them to give their inputs, because this is the best way to foster collaboration.

Your employees are one of the most important assets of your business so if you inspire your team they will be a lot more motivated for the business to succeed into the future!

Are you too busy to get anything done?

Are you too busy to get anything done?

Have you ever just stare blankly at your computer for 20 minutes before start working?

Do you wait for boredom, inspiration, and frustration to kick in before diving in to the task?

If this is you, then it’s time to revisit your priorities and align them to what you want to accomplish.

You need to overcome unproductive busyness by allotting time and choosing a place you are going to work on the task you’ve been avoiding.

When distractions come along the way, such as phone, email, co-workers, do everything you can to redirect your focus to the task at hand.

Productivity is getting important tasks done with consistency.

If your life is too busy and not allowing you to get important things done, you will need to slow down and regain your focus.

Now that you’ve learned a quick tip of how to beat unproductive busyness, it’s time to use this tip into action.

If you want to learn more, comment down below or drop me a message.

How to keep staff motivated

What is the best way to keep staff motivated?

You have probably asked yourself this question a lot of times since you started your business.

If you really want to increase productivity and performance of your workforce, the key aspect is MOTIVATION.

Every business has a goal and all employees need to be on-board to achieve this.

If employees lack motivation, low productivity and dissatisfaction are bound to be the results.

Over the years I have found that If you want to boost your employees’ morale, then use these tips to ensure a highly motivated workforce:
1 – Recognize their Efforts
Your business can recognize employee efforts through employee recognition program. In this program, the productive and efficient employee can choose a reward from a set of options. By recognizing their efforts through reward, they will feel valued and more loyal towards the organization.
2 – Increase their Responsibilities
One highly motivating element for an employee is additional responsibilities. It makes them enjoy a sense of ownership that makes them strive for your business success.

If you want to guarantee business success, you need to ensure high employee motivation levels with high work performance and efficiency.

If you’d like more information drop me a message below or drop me an email at dean@entrepreneursuccess.ie

Happy Working Environment

Keeping a happy working environment is easier than you think

Do you need the total package to have a successful business?

Do you really need to have both interpersonal and technical skills to be a successful entrepreneur?

Only a few have the total package of interpersonal and technical skills and this is why business owners hire people to do the bulk work and to bring skills and strengths that allows the business to grow and expand. Customer and sales are the two things we looked very closely, but some entrepreneurs and managers tend to forget to consider the third facet:

EMPLOYEES SATISFACTION

While it may not show up in customer sales and overall sales, a dissatisfied worker will drag the business down.

Workers are more likely to quit, won’t put much effort into their jobs, and won’t go above and beyond in what they do.

Here are three proven in keeping your workers happy at home:

1 – Give a clear and defined objectives to your employees
If it’s not clear to your employees what are expected from them, then they won’t know how to perform their job. If you come in clear goals and expectations, your workers will work hard to achieve them.

2 – Give the support they need in the workplace
A big problem to some employees is that they might feel that the workplace doesn’t offer a comfortable and safe working environment. If an employee’s productivity suffers because he/she just recently lost a loved one, how you respond goes a long way. Your employees have lives outside work and when they feel like their work is intruding into their lives, the tendency is that they might not feel engaged and ready to give their all.

3 – Give them a stake in the business
If your employees see their job as nothing more than a paycheck, then they will never be motivated to do more than the bare minimum. You can give them a goal with an incentive added to reach it – bonuses, raise, etc. If you give workers something they will fight for, they will work harder to reach that goal.

Keeping a conducive workplace for employees is as important as customer relations and sales. Without your employees there’s no one who will drive the force for your business.

All this and more are discussed in our Discovery Day and if you want to learn one to many strategies to expand and grow your business don’t hesitate to drop me a message.

Do you lack delegation?

Do you know how to delegate tasks effectively?

Do you lack delegation, do you give too much delegation, micromanaging, or do you put the wrong person in the wrong place?

If you are either one of these, you are clearly experiencing problems in management skills that could lead in a dysfunctional workplace and you need to hear this out.

As entrepreneurs, we are the boss of our own workplace.

As a boss, we will be responsible for deciding who goes where and who does what.

As a leader, much of our workplace productivity and morale will depend not only on our ability to lead, but to lead well.

This is why it’s important to delegate tasks effectively and if you are uncertain how to delegate them well, here are some points you can keep in mind to best match the right person with the right job:

1 – Put aces in their places
You put your star workers out and put them in the spots they are very best at. Assign the workers you know are best at a certain task and keep them there as long as needed.

2 – Match personality with their job
It helps to align the job with what you know they can adopt better if you’re delegating a task to a person. A high-pressure sales job will be better to an extroverted worker, whereas a desk job in an office will be better fit to an introverted person.

3 – Keep the right distance to your employees
In the workplace, each person is different and each job has different demands. Employees prefer more autonomy than less. Micromanaging a person would suggest that they can’t be trusted to perform the basic tasks. On the other end, most employees can’t be left unsupervised.

For the most part, delegating tasks effectively is about knowing how to delegate.

As a business owner, you can’t perform everything by yourself, thus, you need to make sure that you delegate the right tasks to the right person.

Do you know how to set realistic sales targets?

Do you know how to set realistic sales targets?

Have you experienced problems in your business’ financial situation?

As entrepreneurs, we need to share the burden with our salespeople to resolve financial problems.

If you are experiencing this one or you have experienced this one before, here are some tips and suggestions on how to set goals for your business sales:

1 – Set your clear targets and give your sales team a clear idea of what you want them to achieve.

2 – Explain why these targets need to be met and outline your financial situation.

3 – Offer appealing bonuses for accomplishment to motivate your sales team to achieve the targets.

Most importantly, inspire your salespeople to perform by providing plenty of encouragement to them.

There are many things that I can share to you about setting your sales targets and if you want to know more drop a message or comment down below.

Time Management vs Self Management

Do you have a time management or self-management problem?

Are you like most entrepreneurs struggling to find time to breathe?

Do you have unfinished plans and strategies that you can’t focus on because you don’t have time?

Vision without action means time management and self-management issues.

How can you overcome these challenges you currently face to create the business you’ve always envisioned?

The essential tip is to break down the challenges you are facing and identify key solutions to each problem:

Challenge: You don’t have enough time and you don’t delegate that much
Solution: You need to identify tasks that you don’t like doing and assign and train team members to do it for you.

Challenge: You’re not doing tasks that you know you should be doing
Solution: You have to develop a default calendar where you put all the important things you need to do and block it as an appointment then hold yourself accountable to it.

These challenges are only some of the many challenges we face as entrepreneurs and how I wish I learned some of these tips earlier than I did.

This is exactly what we do in EntrepreneurSuccess, we help entrepreneurs realise their goals and help them through it.

And if you’re one of those who faced these challenges, come and join us in our Discovery Day so I could help you get a solution.