Business Coaching

Does your business have a reputation for poor quality or service?

What can you do to change that perception?

There aren’t many businesses that haven’t had to deal with concerns like these, but if you let people know you understand their concerns by speaking the truth, guarantee your customer’s satisfaction and take steps to make necessary changes, your business can actually grow and become stronger.

Just look at Domino’s Pizza.

Domino’s knew it had a major issue with perceptions of quality and service, and faced it head on. Interestingly, this strategy has paid huge dividends for the ubiquitous pizza maker, who has seen its stock price rise 233% since the company began its “brutally honest” campaign in 2009.

In addition to their marketing campaign, Domino’s improved the ease and convenience of their website, even adding a “Pizza Tracker” so people know each step of the process as their pizza is delivered.

Not only has this improved the perception of the company with its customers, but it has also grown their business. Today, more than 25% of Domino’s business is done online.

What is the primary issue facing your business?

For Domino’s the problem was the quality of their product. Years ago, Domino’s delivered one very famous guarantee; getting your pizza within 30 minutes. But speed wasn’t the problem, quality was.

To turn this around, Domino’s faced the reality that people thought it’s pizza wasn’t very good. It was fast, easy and convenient, but tasted bad to most people.

Of course, just a marketing campaign alone couldn’t have changed people’s perceptions, so Domino’s improved the quality of their ingredients before letting people know about the improvement through its latest marketing campaign.

So if your business has a bad reputation, don’t avoid it and hope it will go away. Be proactive like Domino’s and face those challenges head-on. Guarantee that whatever issues plaguing your business will be dealt with and your customers will be happy. But, most importantly, your bottom line will grow.

For any business to be successful, you have to find your niche, that space that no other business occupies but yours. But not every niche is the same.

Some are smaller than others and some are bigger, but can any niche be a business?

From adult kickball leagues to dog-waste pickup and dart-league franchises, there are business opportunities that are extremely niche-oriented.

But, the question is, do these kinds of businesses really have a big enough niche to make money?

Some of these businesses are clearly part time, like the Dart Leagues. You can own a franchise for a one-time fee of $500 and are only obligated to spend six hours per week on the business.

There is very little risk in a venture like that, but what’s the payoff?

But if you investigate WAKA, the World Adult Kickball Association, you’ll find that the buy-in for a franchise can cost as much as $50,000 and any franchisees are required to work full-time in the kickball business.

That’s quite an investment, both in resources and time, and it remains to be seen how successful their franchising model will be, considering they’ve only been franchising since early 2011.

The fact is WAKA has been around since 1998. It is currently in 35 states with about 4000 teams participating, so, obviously, the company is doing something right.

But are the fees paid by players and teams and the sponsorship of local bars enough to make this a legitimately good franchising deal for prospective entrepreneurs?

Once you’ve invested your $50,000 or so (depending on market) how long will it take you to recoup your investment?

And what are they doing differently that any person could do, without buying into a franchise? After all, couldn’t anyone organize a league without buying a franchise?

And finally, what proprietary advantages does the company have that individual operators wouldn’t?

These niche businesses, like WAKA, have managed to generate revenue and grow by focusing on a small, “hungry” segment of population. But does that translate into real cashflow and profits?

Time will tell.

The main lesson is to really investigate your narrow niche.

Is it really enough to support sustainable growth, cashflow and profit?

Is it something people already buy and is the niche a unique segment of a larger proven segment?

When a business is marketed correctly, it isn’t based on price or even what is sold. Instead it’s based on the reputation of the brand itself and how that image connects with the customer base.

Take Red Bull for example. A couple of decades ago the energy drink industry was a very small one that was dominated by Gatorade while coffee was the energy drink of the working man and maybe a cola could provide that boost of caffeine you might need late in the day. Plus a cola tasted good.

Then along came Red Bull. Red Bull was the first energy drink of note and it had a strange taste people weren’t used to at the time. What Red Bull did have was a great way to connect with the customers they wanted and they also had a growing target market.

Over the last few decades, more and more people became adrenaline junkies or developed a taste for “extreme” sports.

Skateboarding, snowboarding, surfing and others were growing in popularity and the people that took part in those activities were exactly who Red Bull wanted as their customers.

So how did they connect with them?

They reached into that community and played an active role in building it. They sponsored both athletes and events, putting the culture on a bigger stage than it had ever been. Soon events like the “X-Games” were on television and there were the ubiquitous Red Bull signs in the background at all of these events. In fact, Red Bull began to sponsor, and produce, many of the events themselves.

Today, more than two decades after selling their first energy drink, Red Bull sponsors literally hundreds of “extreme” athletes.

They also sponsor a number of events around the world, including auto, motorcycle and plane racing, and their own “World Series” events such as The Red Bull X-Fighters World Tour, The Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series and The Red Bull Air Race World Championship.They even produce a monthly magazine that targets extreme athletes.

With all of the events and marketing that Red Bull does, it is important to remember that Red Bull only sells four products, their original energy drink, their sugar-free energy drink, Red Bull Energy Shot and Red Bull Cola.

Yet they sponsor hundreds, if not thousands of events every year in promoting and selling those four products and they are successful (over 4.2 billion cans of Red Bull sold last year alone) because they connect with their target market while building an image much bigger than that of just an energy drink.

With this kind of focus on both product and customer Red Bull has been able to expand not only its business, but the entire “extreme” sports category, creating an ideal synergy between their product’s image and their customer base.

Owners of small or medium sized businesses are often on an island, with no one to turn to when they need some help. The ones that most easily navigate those troubled waters are business owners who have learned what’s important and what isn’t when running a business and more often than not, they learn this information by working with some type of mentor.

Many people can take on the role of a mentor. A mentor can be a good friend who is willing to tell you the truth, not what you want to hear. A mentor can be another business owner who has faced those challenges in the past or even be a Business Coach who is, by definition an unreasonable friend who will always have your business’ best interests at heart.

So no matter who your mentor is, whether they’re just a friend, a family member of even a Business Coach, here are five things they should be able to do for you.

A mentor should hold you accountable:

Business owners may neglect the management and marketing of their business by postponing certain tasks and putting the non-essential ahead of the essential. This is a great way to doom a business.

When you work with a mentor, failing to complete your goals and having your business lapse is simply unacceptable. Your mentor won’t tell you what you want to hear, but what you need to hear to get your business moving in the right direction and keep you accountable for everything that happens in regard to your business.

A mentor will help you refine your ideas into practice:

You may have great ideas, but how will you see them through to implementation? There may be some ideas you can put into practice easily, but others will be raw and need to be refined before you implement them.

Working with a mentor, gives you access to their vast knowledge and wealth of experience. That alone will help you make the changes you need to make in an easier fashion.

A mentor will have a wealth of ideas to grow your business:

Your mentor has seen it and been there before. Through your relationship with your mentor, you will learn and understand principles of business you may not have known before.

Most importantly, you can use the lessons learned from your mentor and can apply them for the rest of your business life.

Mentors have the contacts you need:

Ideally, you should choose a mentor who has been in business and not only knows the basics of running one, but also has a good reputation with the community at large. In this way, you can use your mentor as a networking tool to grow your business.

Your mentor has contacts and knows where to find the information that can help you and your business. They are a valuable resource, so use them as much as possible.

A mentor is someone outside of your business, looking in:

You may be caught up in the day to day of your business, but the right mentor or even Business Coach takes a fresh look at you and your business.

A mentor or coach knows what to look for when it comes to the issues plaguing your business because they can see what your customers see. With this knowledge and vision, your mentor will always give you feedback that will help you build the strongest business possible.

So who are you working with to grow your business? Do you have a mentor or coach that is helping you along the path to success? If you don’t, what are you waiting for?

We like to say in order to earn more, you need to learn more, and reading a steady stream of great business books is one way to do exactly that.

Here are two books we’ve been sharing with our TEAM over the past quarter, both of which offer great insight and perspectives into the world of business.

The first is about the value of customer service …
The Fred Factor: How Passion in Your Work and Life Can Turn the Ordinary into the Extraordinary by Mark Sanborn

… and the second is a somewhat “Politically Incorrect” take on why it’s called “work” …

It’s Called Work for a Reason! Your Success Is Your Own Damn Fault by Larry Winget

You can grab both for your own “business re-education” program by clicking on the above links …

Enjoy!

To create a new idea of your life, a life where you can have ALL that you dream of, not just some little bits of happiness or balance, you’ve got to get the right mindset.

I’ve found there are steps that can help you get your mind right in creating the life you’ve always dreamed of.

You’ve got to consider your life in a positive frame of mind so begin by creating a list of affirmations starting with “I AM”. Affirm things like, I am a leader, I am rich, I am talented, etc. State these affirmations in the positive and present tense out loud every single day.

Secondly, create a dream chart. Find about two dozen magazines full of words and pictures for your new reality. Take several hours and cut out everything in those magazines that match what you want out of life, then glue them to a big sheet of cardboard and put it somewhere where you can see it every morning.

Finally, invest 20 minutes by yourself every single morning visualizing your new reality. Simply close your eyes and focus on everything you’ve pictured in your new reality.

Remember, you are creating a new you and if you’re becoming someone different, you will do things differently.

Since you can only be who you are, you have to change who you are to do things differently.

Your subconscious mind cannot determine the difference between dreams and reality, so feed it dreams often and make that your reality.

Follow these steps, create a bigger picture and then use these techniques to impress this picture on your subconscious.

The rest will take care of itself.

As you change who you are, you’ll change what you do and thus you’ll change what you have. Your new reality will unfold right before your eyes.

Everybody’s online these days, right?

It sure seems that way, but there are still a shocking number of businesses that aren’t taking advantage of the online world to grow.

In fact, almost 40 percent of small businesses in the United States have no online presence at all.

It’s easy to blame uncontrollable factors on failures, but a business that has no online presence and fails has no excuse. There is help for any business if they know where to look.

The economy may be bad, taxes may be high and the economy may be uncertain, but none of those factors mean anything if you aren’t taking full advantage of the opportunities around you and the internet is as powerful a marketing tool as we have ever seen.

People don’t look for the products and services they need in the Yellow Pages anymore.

In fact, many communities have done away with distributing phone books because most people search for what they want online these days and having a massive tome with everyone’s contact information was simply too expensive to produce every year.

For business owners that haven’t gone online with their message yet and then wonder why they aren’t finding enough customers, it’s time to move to the 21st century.  If a business isn’t marketing, it’s dying.

Developing your presence isn’t hard and it shouldn’t take up too much time, but it’s vital to your success.

If a small business doesn’t have an online presence, whether it’s a Facebook fan page or a dedicated, multi-page website, they are missing out on hundreds if not thousands of potential customers.

Online you can build a following of your best customers, interact with them and find easy, cost-effective ways to market your business.

An on-line presence is, arguably, the most important marketing tool available these days, so get online today and don’t lose any more business to your competition.