New Book Available: Chapter 7 Excerpt

So this time around we are up to Chapter 7 of BYOB- Build Your Own Business, Don't Be Your Own Boss 2nd Ed.

This chapter is all about PR and marketing principals that are extremely important for technology consulting companies. Whether you are a VAR, break fix computer specialist, networking specialist, MSP or an engineering consultant.

There are a lot of "marketing gurus" out there and I'm not claiming to be one but I have been in your shoes as a technology business owner and did figure out a thing or 2 in my day that brought me a million in sales revenue. So I will say I'm pretty good and I know your business/SMB clients pretty well.

So let's get into it.




Chapter 7
Marketing Principles: Positioning Your Business as the Leader to Your Niche Audience

Let’s get to work on the subject of marketing systems. In a nutshell, this consists of
• Positioning your business as the “go to” people
• Determining your business niche or niches
• Laser focusing on the best prospects possible, known as your target audience, and
• Marketing to them to put them into your sales funnel.

What we are going to focus on is ways to find your target audience and the most effective ways for a consulting or service business to pursue this audience.

Positioning Vs. Prospecting

Let’s start this out with a very important statement. The top reason for a long sale cycle is lack of positioning.

Let me explain positioning with a quick example. How often do you get mail at home or at your office from a lawyer? Let me take that back. You do get letters from lawyers advertising themselves sometimes. They are called ambulance chasers. Let’s continue with our example.

Say you need a litigation lawyer. You don’t know him and he doesn’t know you. Do you trust someone you found in the phone book? Some people do and many get burned and don’t do it again. Normally, you would look up someone a colleague has used/recommended or go ask a trusted resource like your accountant. Now you have yourself a top notch litigation lawyer.

Since you don’t know him, why should you trust him? You trust him because he has positioned himself as a leader in his industry. And that’s not by any accident either. He is perceived as the expert because he knows something you don’t and he put it out there that he’s got that expertise.

He may not even be the best of the best but either you or your referral resource has been informed that he’s the “go to” guy. You needed a specialist, he’s the one whose name came up in your research and he’s the one you’re going to listen to.

Since you sought him out, you will most likely pay whatever price he throws at you to get rid of your pain. As a matter of fact, if he charges too little, you might take a step back and question his position as an expert.

Are you starting to see the picture I’m painting?

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The chapter continues on to talk about:
More on positioning
PR and Lead Generation Tactics
Audience Selection
The Perfect Client
List Selection
Marketing Funnels

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This is a fairly long chapter with no fluff and a lot of items to put into practice in a true marketing system. Like the chapter on Client Management states, when you properly set up client management systems, marketing becomes much easier.

The book will be shipping in the next week or so. Be sure to pick it up right here
http://consultantscoach.com/byobbook.php


To Your Business Success-

George Sierchio
The Consultant's Coach

A Great Time to Fill the Favor Bank

Have you ever heard of the Favor Bank? It's actually the best bank in the world and it pays the greatest dividends you could ever hope for as a business owner.

It serves all businesses whether you are a VAR, MSP, break fix computer service, system integrator, engineering consultant or any other tech or non-tech business. As a matter of fact, this bank can be used for any part of your life. Most people do use it everyday but it seems to get overlooked as far as small business owners go.

So how does the favor bank work? Simple. You open an account for each client, potential client, vendor, sub contractor, employee, etc. that is involved with your business. Next you start depositing "favors" whenever you get a chance for each one of these individual entities. They don't have to be big deposits as small and regualr deposits will add up quick enough.

So why make these deposits? Because when you accumulate enough, you get to start making withdrawls. And those withdrawls are where the big dividends are seen. Two small deposits into a specific client labeled account can result in a HUGE withdrawl when the time comes, for example.

Before you think I have completely lost my marbles (which could be possible with the Seattle like weather we've been having in NJ all this month), let me explain.

You see, the favor bank is something we've been using all of our lives to get things in return. As an example, as a kid you may have deposited some favors labeled "Dad's account" so that when the time came to borrow the car for a big date, Dad just couldn't resist. You know how difficult that may have been if you didn't give, give, give before you asked to take.

Well the favor bank works the same for business. It's great for marketing, client management, vendor management, employee management etc etc.

So let's do a business example with marketing to new clients. Say you have a nice website. On it you not only let potential clients know what you do, but give them free information that could teach them something, save them money, or make them money (like the free video on my consultantscoach.com site). They take you up on that then you offer a free analysis or a free round of services or something of that nature (like the free strategy session in the back of my latest book).

You just made two nice deposits into the favor bank for them. As human nature works, those deposits make it much harder to resist when you ask them for what you really want... to make them a paying client of your valuable services.

You can do the same with current clients as part of your client management process. Once a client, if you keep putting great information and over the top services in front of them, they are going to be less resistant to buying your other services, etc as well as open to giving you a referral or testimonial when you ask for it.

Do you see how the favor bank works? By making small deposits that really don't hurt your pocket,they add up to being able to ask for things that will fill your pockets up when withdrawl time comes.

So set up that favor bank in all parts of your business right now. And don't forget it also works great with neighbors and significant others ;-)





To Your Business Success-

George Sierchio
The Consultant's Coach

Book Available in Pre-Release: Chapter 6 Excerpt

One of the most taboo small business subjects, especially when involving technology based businesses, is that of hiring. Many say they don't ever want to hire people because they like being a 1-person show. But most are really thinking about the possible headaches, pressure to pay/keep them happy, and other of the other joys of employees.

But what many don't realize is that they already use other people to help their business out and to truly maximize profitability, they will need to use more. That's why although Chapter 6 is about not only employees, because you can certainly live without them , but about vendors and subcontractors as well. Read on to get a taste:

Chapter 6
Employee & Subcontractor Management: Recruiting, Hiring, Retention & Firing

Some of you reading this book might be asking yourself why I’m talking to you about hiring employees when you either just opened your doors not long ago or you are a one person show and plan on continuing as one.

It’s simple. No matter the structure of your business, you just will not be able to do everything yourself. That is unless you are terrific at all aspects of business plus the technical side of your business and truly do want to work 70+ hours a weeks forever.

If that’s the case, you’re right, you can skip this chapter. If it’s not the case then you will be using vendors for things such as website design and accounting, sub contractors to take part of the work load or parts of a job not in the realm of your business, virtual assistants to take over admin and other time consuming issues you don’t need to do yourself and yes, maybe some actual employees.

Although the hiring/retention/firing process may be slightly, and I emphasize slightly, different for each one of these cases, they are still there and you will be able to pick up pointers as I concentrate on actual employees.


If You Already Thought Hiring Was Scary…

Hiring and dealing with employees is one of the most difficult things a small business deals with, especially for the business owners who will almost always have a hand in any recruiting, hiring, firing or retention process. Why is it so difficult?

•Huge decision regarding each and every employee (need, timing, money, training, etc)
•More involvement in the hiring, retention, firing than when an employee elsewhere
•Very rare to have all skills involved in every phase of the hiring through retention process without some outside help
•Involves more personal contact in every phase than as an employee
•Realization that one employee could cause enough problems to ruin your business

Let’s go over some very important facts about using others to help you grow your business. A bad hire can potentially cost a business 15 times that person’s salary after 1 year of employment.
Of course this takes into account:

•wasted time in the hiring process,
•wasted cost of training time and resources
•lost dollars due to the employee’s mistakes (such as losing your best client or causing good employees to quit),
•unrealized money due to the employee’s mistakes (such as botching a big deal to land a new long term client),
•actual salary and benefits costs,
•severance cost,
•possible lawsuit costs and
•a few other possible money headaches.

Can you see where this will start to add up?

*****

The chapter goes on to talk about subjects for hiring anyone to help you out such as:

Recruiting- It’s Not What You Think
Hiring is a Process, Not a Search for a New Friend
Employee Retention- Protect Your Investment
Firing- How to Make It the Least Painful for You and Them

*****

There are many aspects to your technology business that are better suited for others to do the work for you regardless of whether or not you every want to give up doing the work on the technical side of the business. Grab the book and see the whol big picture.

http://consultantscoach.com/byobbook.php


To Your Business Success-

George J Sierchio
The Consultant's Coach