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August 24th

Noon Eastern - 1:00 p.m.

Scott Reiser - Adapting Technologies in Atlanta, Ga - serving the country’s technology needs

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/125179113

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One way to turn cold calls into warm calls (most sales professionals would rather have their teeth pulled without anesthetic than make cold calls on a daily basis) is by deploying Rule 1/12/50. A way to stimulate inbound inquiries regarding your services/products is via Rule 1/12/50. A way to reach out to never-before-contacted suspects or prospects, and make their acquaintance in a non-threatening manner, is via Rule 1/12/50. A powerful way to ensure that your sales funnel (review Mini-Seminar 14) always remains full of leads is via Rule 1/12/50.

So what is Rule 1/12/50? It is a systematic approach to selling which compliments your efforts with manageable marketing efforts.  Coach your sales professionals to realize precisely what they should do, regardless of any other efforts being initiated by their organization.

Rule 1 / 12 / 50

1 = represents the actions which should take place the first part of every month, whether that is day one or the first days of the first week of each month - make it work for your sales professional’s schedule.

12 = represents a consistent approach for all 12 months of the year, before any analysis is undertaken as to whether to continue the approach, stop the approach, or adjust the approach.

50 = represents the targeted number of outbound contacts to be initiated every month. Identify the best 50 suspects to which you want to attempt to introduce yourself, or the best 50 prospects to whom you want to make a specific offer, or the best 50 customers (active or inactive) in front of whom you want to place a specific offer.

The specific contact action is a personalized, direct marketing approach. That monthly action can be:

1. A hand-written note card with hand-written envelope (studies reveal that hand-written envelopes are opened first in a stack of mail and hand-written notes are read from beginning to end and not scanned!).  Always include several of your business cards!

2. A personal letter with a suggested approach via one of your products/services of which they may not be aware.  Always include several of your business cards!

3. An email announcement, offer, request, etc.

4. A faxable note and a fax-back response request form for more information or requested follow-up (How might you achieve the same effect with social media?).

5. A direct mail card announcing who you are, something great that is now available, and ways for them to find out more or contact you.

6. A copy of any press releases or press clippings that may be of intrigue to the contact and stimulate them to contact you for more information.

Brainstorm with your sales professionals about different ways to contact suspects, prospects, and customers. Also brainstorm powerful messages you could include.  Now cold calls become warm calls. A sales professional can now make an outbound call to a suspect, prospect, or customer and the call can sound as follows:

“Hello, this is ________ with _________, I sent you a recent note on __________, have you had the opportunity to read it?”

1. If the answer is yes, then proceed with your conversational sales process.

2. If the answer is no, then “That’s all right, the reason I sent it to you is….”

Coach the sales professionals to realize that Rule 1/12/50 helps to fill one’s Sales Funnel to contact at all three levels, it may stimulate some contacts to call you, and it may even add to one’s bottom line, merely from a simple letter and postage stamp. WOW, low-cost marketing, high-yield sales.

Activity 31-A
Using Rule 1/12/50 To Continually Connect

Compliment your selling efforts by designing a direct marketing contact campaign to continually feed your selling efforts and your sales funnel via Rule 1/12/50.

Identify below specific industries, markets, geographies, groups, associations, types of individuals, etc. which would serve as lucrative target audiences to which to direct your letters/faxes/emails, etc. on a monthly basis:

SUSPECT POOL    PROSPECT POOL    CUSTOMER POOL

Month One:        ______________    _______________    ________________
Month Two:        ______________    _______________    ________________
Month Three:        ______________    _______________    ________________
Month Four:        ______________    _______________    ________________
Month Five:        ______________    _______________    ________________
Month Six:        ______________    _______________    ________________
Month Seven:        ______________    _______________    ________________
Month Eight:        ______________    _______________    ________________
Month Nine:        ______________    _______________    ________________
Month Ten:        ______________    _______________    ________________
Month Eleven:        ______________    _______________    ________________
Month Twelve:        ______________    _______________    ________________

* Transfer each of the monthly action plans above to your personal calendar system on the first portion of each corresponding month. This will assist in motivating you to action!

Month One Offer:    ___________________________________________________
Month Two Offer:    ___________________________________________________
Month Three Offer:    __________________________________________________
Month Four Offer:    ___________________________________________________
Month Five Offer:    ___________________________________________________
Month Six Offer:    ____________________________________________________
Month Seven Offer:    __________________________________________________
Month Eight Offer:    ___________________________________________________
Month Nine Offer:    ___________________________________________________
Month Ten Offer:    ____________________________________________________
Month Eleven Offer:    __________________________________________________
Month Twelve Offer:    __________________________________________________

Month One Specific Offer In Text Form: _____________________________________
___________________________________________________________________

I want to hear from you!
Be careful that you are not always simply bombarding your clients / prospects with sales pitches.  Rather, try to find good information that they might want to learn, or that will help them solve a problem in their life or their business.  What information, report(s) or studies can you provide? Or even better, how can you take raw information and make it meaningful to your customers?  Use this time as an opportunity to make connections, share ideas, and be a resource.

–
Dr. Jeff Magee
Dr. Jeff Magee
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Have you ever wondered how you could keep your customer completely satisfied with you and your business??????

Out of the blue, send them a Thank You card. Why? Just because!

As business owners we get so caught up in the day to day; chasing the next sale, tracking the past invoice, stocking pallets of boxes, paying the bills that keep the lights on. We rarely don’t take time to thank the people that allow us to stay crazy busy all of the time - our customers.

We especially don’t think about thanking them ‘just because’ you can - and you want to. For no reason - not a new sale or for finally paying that invoice, not for a holiday or their birthday. Just because you were grateful that they are you customer.

Think about it  - how would you feel if suddenly there was a card in an envelope and a stamp waiting in your mailbox for you….. how would you feel.

I know I would have a smile on my face for days!!!!!!

Try it and see what it does for you, and have a grateful August!

Bernadette

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How are you doing? How did your business do in the first half of 2010?
Are you on target to achieve or exceed your goals you laid out?
What goals did you define for yourself and your business for 2010?

June is a great time for you as entrepreneur and more importantly CEO of your business OR you life, to look at the goals you laid out for yourself and the progress you made toward those goals.

If you did not define goals were you successful in reaching where you wanted to be by now? Can you say with certainty if you achieved what you were CAPABLE of achieving had you defined that brass ring of a goal?

To often I find individuals and business owners who do not have well defined goals. And if they have goals they are not executing on those goals, ensuring that everything that they do is helping them to accomplish that one or two goals they laid out. Then worse yet, they never assess how they did in order for them to adjust their future plans so they can ensure success!

2010 is half way over! It continues to amaze me how fast life moves. Do you really want another 6 months of your LIFE to go by and not have executed and achieved what you want out of this ONE life you have?? I hope not

Here are a few tips:

• If you have goals defined - take the time NOW to assess how you are doing on them and ADJUSTING what needs to get done to achieve them
• If you do NOT have goals defined for your Life, Business, Finances, Family and Relationships and Health, take 30 minutes to sit down and give some real thought about it
• WRITE THEM DOWN
• Use the SMART method to detail them out specifically so they are actionable - DOWNLOAD OUR GOAL SETTING TO PROSPERITY VIDEO ON OUR EVENTS PAGE
• Focus squarely on your goals from July - December to make up, achieve or exceed those goals

2010 will be a great year. But you have to do your part though - Your family, your business, your employees, and YOU deserve it!

Good luck

Bernadette

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Though I am a solopreneur myself with a part time contract assistant, my own business model and business survival is dependent on the partnerships and alliances I have formed, formally or casually, with many other smart, connected, and results oriented individuals - business people.

Those partnerships are critical for a number of reasons:

• Their experience and expertise - that I do not have
• Their network and connections - that could benefit me in referrals or leads
• Their products and services - that not only I may need but my clients may need
• Their motivation, support and challenges - that keep me moving forward, not allowing me to fall backward
• Their perspectives, debates, and collaboration - that ensures I am always thinking outside the box and not getting tunnel vision

I could go on, but hopefully you get the picture.

Having other people in my immediate circle provides huge benefits to not only me personally, but my business, and my clients. They are there to help me grow, my business prosper, and my clients to be loyal and fully supportive.

The benefits of partnerships outweigh any risks or downsides; i.e. the partner does not have the same values of you, so issues arise. The way I see it, any issue with a partner is my lack of qualifying them based on a criteria and value based philosophy that I work and live by. Therefore if you lay out what you want in a partner or alliance and you qualify and set that expectation clearly, there are no downsides to partnering.

Business owners will often tell me they do not know how to go about forming partnerships - so here are 5 tips to help you navigate the Partner and Alliance plan:

1. Define  clearly what role, values, requirements, results, and objectives you would want from a partner/alliance
   • If there are referral or affiliate plans desired, define them
2. Document that in a one pager that can be shared with anyone that you qualify
3. Identify 3-5 functions, roles or areas of business that you, your business or your clients could benefit from a third party partner.
   • Keep in mind, Partners can fill skill and talent gaps you or your business are missing
4. Take your time and either identify on your own individuals you would like to qualify as partners, or that you ask others for recommendations (which is even better if you have a strong relationship with the person providing you a recommendation.
5. Interview several and ask them for results or references
   • You can even test run them on a small project if desired

And if you are hesitant or nervous about pursuing partnerships consider the benefits again listed above. They far outweigh the anxiety of pursing them, making mistakes along the way, or not doing it at all.

Good luck, Bernadette

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I spend a great deal of time at my local Caribou Coffee on the weekends - about seven hours a day writing my first book. Being a regular there I have mastered the lay of the land - which table to sit at for the view/comfort/and outlets, as well as how to lay out my belongings on the small cafe like tables to get the most from the small space. The other 4 or 5 regulars have their own routines and we often watch out for one another.

A week ago Saturday I was settled in at my corner high top table having a very productive day of writing. I paid little mind to the background noise of music, chatter and the occasional hacking of a guy who has a gagging tick.

My laptop was opened creating a barrier between me and the next table, but I could certainly see over it at stuff going on around me. My cell phone and my wallet sat to the left of me and the laptop in view. And when a young guy walked up behind my laptop screen, between my table and my neighbors, there was no mind as he appeared to be looking out the window into the parking lot for a friend.

Ten seconds or more he moved on and I continued my typing. Then my cell phone text alarm began to go off, not ten minutes later. It was Bank of America asking me to call them as there had been fraudulent activity on my credit card. Not sure if even that was a real alert I grabbed my wallet and went off to call them.

The woman immediately asked if I had my business credit card with me (which happened to be a debit card). I automatically said yes, even before looking into my wallet and seeing that indeed I did not have it. “Oh man” I said.

She then asked if I had been at a Shell station and then Target in the last 20 minutes. “20 minutes, no, I have been sitting here at a coffee shop all morning.” She then alerted me that my card had been used for $30.00 of gas, and an unbelievable $650.00 at Target - both of them right down the street from the coffee shop.

Unbelievable I thought.

I then asked, “I shop Target and Shell all of them time, how did you ever notice that it was a fraud?”

The woman said “Because you do not shop at either of those places on your Business credit card!”

“WOWWWWWWW” I said. “You picked up on that one irregularity?”

Absolutely she said.

Now, there are a lot of issues and perceptions where banks are concerned; but I will tell you - that absolutely impressed the hell out of me. The fact that the data and especially the people where there in real time able to respond to irregular data trends in my activity is SOOOO impressive.

And what makes this even more impressive - I used to work for the database company, Teradata, that build Bank of America their terabyte size data warehouse that does all of that analysis for them (as well for the Walmarts, Lowe’s and other massive businesses)….. I know what is involved in doing that analysis - and to be the receiver of the great results that those mega-size databases generate - makes me THRILLLLED that I am a Bank of America customer.

If I ever thought of leaving Bank of America for a smaller size bank (sure maybe with less fees but may not have this level of support), I am certainly rethinking it.

Thank you Bank of America - companies big and small should be targeting to deliver that level of customer service (with or without massive size databases and technologies)….. just the female customer service rep herself provided me such relief and support.

You have a loyal customer in me!

Business Owners, listen up…… strive for high level of customer service and you too will have loyal, repeat, rebuy customers.

Bernadette

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I absolutely love this quote…..it really hits home with what a lot of us deal with on a daily basis - MOTIVATION and FOCUS.

I don’t know about you but when my To Do list is lonnnnngg, the degree of motivation I have to shrink it decreases - as opposed to increases. I get overwhelmed by the mere size of it and the next thing you know I am doing not any of it.

What is up with that?

And yet I know that when I start scratching things off from that To Do list it feels great!!!! But the lines and lines of things to do just drains all of my energies.

Instead I take Dale’s advice with a little twist:

Regardless of how long or short my To Do List is, I pick 3 of the most important ones that I need to do.

Depending on the degree of effort or how big those tasks are, I won’t start with the most critical to do, but I may start with the easiest or fastest one to do.

See, if I am drained of motivation or focus the one way I have found I can find myself momentum is simply to get one or two items on my To Do list scratched off and completed. That makes me excited and gives me a sense of accomplishment. Then I can move on to the bigger and more difficult or involved tasks.

ADDED BONUS - if your To Do list is really long, picking just 3 of the most important tasks off your list and ONLY focusing on those 3 will prevent you from getting overwhelmed.

Give it a shot…… and let me know how it goes! Dale would be proud.

Bernadette

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I then asked a question that I hoped would provoke her to speak up: “How many hours a day do you work?”

Though every one of the women reacted with an awkward giggle;  the quiet woman let out a gasp that sounded as if she had it pented up inside of her for years. That gave me the opening to ask her directly a question or two?

• How many hours are you working? “It feels like 24 hours a day.”
• What is causing you do that? “I have pages and pages of To Do’s to get done”
• How many of those To Do’s have you prioritized to be critical must do’s…. and how many nice to do?  - No response

That is typical for most of the business owners that I meet on a daily basis.

If they happen to actually set goals or even lay out a To Do list they are definitely one huge step in front of most. I find that about 1% of business owners (male or female) set goals, lay them out on paper, and defines what needs to be done to achieve those goals.

Less than 1% actually prioritize those To Do’s so they can focus on ONLY those things that are critical to their goal.

In this group of women a number of them have lists of things to do - personal and business. But like most women, where they get overwhelmed is trying to do all of it with the same degree of urgency, priority, and must do. I am here to tell you, “You CANNOT have more than 1 top To Do!”………………Agree?

If you truly believe that then your list of To Do’s have things on the list that are Critical, Must Do, Nice to Do, Not Needed…. and therefore that is how you need to chop up that long list.

Tip 1 - Indicate on your list what the Critical items are that you have to do in order to accomplish your goals……..

Tip 2 - To minimize being overwhelmed, ONLY focus on executing on those Critical items… do not even work forward to the Must Do’s

Tip 3 - Now, of those Critical items, you have to even prioritize 1,2,3…. those items

Tip 4 - Focus single mindedly on ONLY #1…… until it is 100% complete. Only then focus on #2…….. then #3.

Tip 5 - Try this for 1 week and assess your level of confidence, energy, motivation and focus….. it will be GREAT

Tip 6 - Now move on to Week 2……. assess…. Week 3…… assess

Tip 7 - Accept that you will NOT stay on course every day. Assess, re-prioritize, re-focus and continue moving forward…….

Keep going!!!!  Like a lot of new skills or habits, you need to be patient and keep working on mastering it. Do not give up

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Rains in Atlanta while I was gone prevented regular yard maintenance and provided an opportunity for mother nature to do her work. However it wreaked havoc on not only my neighborhood presence, but also on my mind. Very much like a cluttered desk preventing a free flow of creativity and thought, my overgrown yard created feelings of claustrophobia and itching…… it really played with my head.

Though the landscaping would get done just a few short days after my return, I couldn’t wake. My home value and professional productivity depended on it  being cleaned up. So, one day prior to the real work getting done, I took a weed whacker and bush clippers to my yard - at least the back yard where I spend most of my time with Charlie. The back yard is also where I find my calm and creativity - as I stare out the over sized windows from my home office desk.

Being that I am a business owner and dependent only on me (and a small staff)  to market to my prospects and clients, take care of those clients, and generate revenue, it is critical for me to be energized and productive from the moment my alarm clock goes off in the morning.  Overgrown shrubs and weeds can impact that if it impacts me………

So, what do you do to keep your mind and spirit free of weeds….. here are 5 tips I use and promote to stay motivated and productive:

1) Kills the weeds - mentally and physically. Clear your head by breathing deep, repeating your favorite affirmation, and mentally psyching yourself up toward a very successful day.

• Having negative thoughts or emotions about what you need to accomplish will insure you do NOT meet your goals.
• Clear your head

2) Take 15 minutes and sit down and write out clearly what your key goal is to accomplish that day (week or month) - be sure it is specific, measurable and time bound

3) Write out the mental, physical, financial, professional or personal impact it will have on you - this is your BIG WHY….that goal is so important

4) Post that goal and statement on your laptop, office wall, put it in your car - anywhere that will allow you to focus on it until you have worked yourself out of the weeds

5) Remember - weeds will only grow if left untreated and will sooner or later wrap itself around and kill whatever is around them. Do not allow weeds to kill your spirit and energy.

I am off to focus my new found energies into weekend writing (of my book), paying bills, and preparing for the new month ahead.

Have a fantastic memorial day weekend. Be safe!

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I love to blog because I love to write. I have been journaling life since I was about ten - simply telling the stories of my days, experiences and overall life. The writing is for me and only me as I have found it to be a very inexpensive therapist over the years - as well it doesn’t argue with me or tell me I am wrong or right.

I have on average 60 journals filled with my life and another 50 that just sit on shelves waiting for me to use them or for me to find someone else that could benefit from journaling their life.

But I will admit that the need to consistently type and blog on business subjects as well as personal topics that would be valuable to my readers, I have found it to be difficult over the last several months as other activities and work have taken priority…. so I am ashamed to admit that a couple of weeks have gone by without me sharing and educating my blog readers.

Have you run into that same challenge - finding the focus and consistency in your blogging?

We all know how valuable it can be for both the readers and for the blogger - so why don’t we do it?

I can only tell you why i do not - and yet I do not want to make excuses so I will not focus on that. What I will share with you are tips that have helped me stay focused and consistent with my knowledge sharing and educating:

1. Block time out on your schedule daily or 3 times a week for writing your blog
2. Block out a larger time block and focus on creating content for multiple blog entries that you can have done and ready to go for the week
3. Create a monthly theme or topic that all of your blog postings would involve - that will help you to focus on a specific topic
   1. Examples of topics I wrote on - 30 Days of my own quotes, 30 Time Management Tips, 20 Traits of an Entrepreneur, etc….
4. Read other blogs, include comments to theirs or use theirs to stimulate ideas of your own that you can use
5. Sit down, give yourself 10 minutes with a timer, and write out any and all topics, subjects, hobbies, business ideas, etc.. that come to your mind - without giving it much thought. Just write…..scribble out one or two words to describe it - and try to create as many one liners as you can come up with. That can serve as your list of blogging ideas.

I promise to you and myself to practice what I preach and re-energize myself to focus on the above as I am always interested in educating and training you and others on various topics of business and life.

People want to hear from you as well! So if you are ever challenged with consistently writing your blog - consider the above.

Good luck

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