1. Increase your number of clients. This is where almost every entrepreneur or small business looks first, but it really is the hardest, most expensive and most time consuming way to boost the bottom line. Many people are convinced it’s worth meeting with everyone—"because you never know…."

While trying to make proposals to everyone is great, very few of us have the time to it. By qualifying prospects we can have the most impact for our investment of time and effort. Author Michael Port in his book "Book Yourself Solid" calls it the Red Velvet Rope Policy. Creating a red velvet rope policy saves both you and the potential client time and headaches. If you are not the right one for them why waste their time.

Choose your ideal customer. Make a list of the type of people or businesses with whom you do your best work—those clients that inspire you—and then keep that ideal client list forefront when talking to potential customers.

2. Increase the number of times clients buy from your company. Offer existing clients new opportunities to continue their relationship with you. Many business consultants call this the sales funnel.

The idea of a sales funnel created the wrong impression in my mind when I first learned of this concept. When I considered the graphic of a funnel, the first thing that entered my mind was the poor client being "flushed away"—certainly not a good way to visualize your clients. I prefer to think of it as a triangle, I call it the Sales Summit —a gentle little climb up to the sale or in Internet marketing your premium offer.

There is a difference between a traditional sales summit and the Internet sales summit.

3. Increase the dollar amount of each sale. This one is pretty self- explanatory. Offer discounts and bonuses for larger sales and just like the grocery store entices you at the check-out line, consider add-ons, up-sells and premium offers at check out. Have you been to amazon.com lately? They are experts in the up-sell—the sections titled “We have recommendations for you” and “What others who have purchased ‘X’ have also purchased ‘Y’” are great examples of up-selling. Yes, that type of up-selling takes a great deal of sophisticated computer programming, however taking a lesson from them and offering one up-sell or bonus to everyone at checkout can easily be done in most of today’s shopping cart software programs.

And the best value for your time and money in boosting your bottom line is:

4. Give your current customers confidence with excellent customer service. When you hear of a concern, address it within a reasonable amount of time—no more than 48 hours. Be specific with what you can do and when it will get done, then do it on time. Be reliable.

Excellent customer service is a guaranteed way to improve a company’s bottom line—a customer with confidence is a customer for life.

This week is the one-year anniversary of the car accident and subsequent recovery. I’ve noticed this past year that the same focus and attention you need to be successful in business is applicable when you need to recover from any of life’s situations.

When crises like this happen, they sure put real-life into perspective. Thankful that my recovery continues to progress, I’ve found myself reflecting on a few things I’ve discovered from this past year. Here are three lessons learned:

First, if you have been blessed with good health and energy, be grateful every day because you’re already far ahead of the game. Show appreciation everyday. Express love and gratitude to your family and friends. Hug your kids. Smile. Enjoy the moments of life.

Second, give yourself grace and accept help from your support team. Being independent business people it can sometimes be hard to accept help and support from others. Your network of family and friends can be incredibly helpful during these times.

Talk to more than one expert and find out as much as you can about the situation from a variety of sources. Professionals may give excellent advice, but they do not know everything. So, take your time—do your research and you will know which decisions to trust. It was only last week, I finally got a diagnosis on the cause of the continued vertigo. Finally, don’t learn the hard way, leverage the experience of others. People are happy to help and to share lessons learned.

Third, it is far too easy to fall into "professional victim-hood" when life doesn’t go as planned. You do not always get to decide what affects you in life—you only get to choose how it affects you and the effect you make on life.

I am not suggesting that all victims are not real. I was a victim of a car accident, but that is not the label I’ve given myself, it just is… I am writing about people who choose the mindset of victimization. They tend not to see the choices they make that lead them into their current situation or make any choices to get themselves out of a situation. Professional victims justify even their everyday choices, actions, inactions, and failures.

If you’ve ever come across a “professional victim” they are hard to forget. If you know a professional victim refuse to play their game. Your sympathy only enables them to not ever have to make the choice to change. As harsh as it may sound, they have to choose to change. You cannot do it for them.The stories they tell always make others responsible for their lot-in-life. They use exaggerations, deceit and even lies to become the victim of their story, all the while doing harm to others without accepting any responsibility, shame or guilt.

Embrace reality. Accepting what is, as it just is, is the start of healing—refusing to be stuck or labeled is the key to true recovery and long-term success.

Have a great day in whatever your adventure,
To Success! To Life!

Download your weekly printable Action Quote. What affects you in life…pdf

p.s. I want to take just one more moment to again publicly thank those that rallied around. Your help, thoughts and prayers are always an encouragement.

p.p.s. Early into the recovery, my dear friend Susan shared with me Bryon Katie’s book, Loving What Is. This book gives a straightforward way to put the trying moments in life into perspective. It can be found at www.thework.com

How can people like you and I create brand names?

EASY
With Impression Engineer’s simple, 5 step-by-step system!

Your Break-Out Power Brand walks you through bringing your passion and vision to LIFE. Creating your own brand, your own style is to sell without selling.

Show your customers what makes you and your products unique… If your customers could just see and know how great you are—if they could just experience it—you know they would be knocking down your door.

Here’s a little secret: It’s OK to be different, in fact that’s what you want—to show your customers what makes you different and how those differences benefit them. You’ll get more customers than you can possibly handle simply by letting your customers know who you REALLY are.

Your Break-Out Power Brand shows you how to change your presence, importance and status to those around you.

Find out more about creating your own power brand.

How to make sure you get what you need and pay for from your web design company.

1. Just like when you hire any sort of contractor, check references—not only seeing the referenced sites on the Internet, but calling the companies and asking for feedback. Reliable web companies are happy to give references. You can have success with off-shore or virtual companies, but it is sure hard to have face-to-face meetings when it might be needed. There is little recourse in the virtual world.

2. Be very clear on your specifications, provide samples if possible. Have the web company give you a timeline of when the site should be able to go live. Test your site on the developer’s testing site before going live. Have trusted employees or friends review your site before it goes live. Sometimes you can get to close to a layout–that old problem of not seeing the forest for the trees…

3. I can’t stress this one enough, we see it all the time… Own your domain name (URL or .com). Do not let the web company register your domain name (URL) in their name. If they own the URL, they have complete say over what happens to the web name, so, say you were unhappy with the company’s performance and you wanted to move to another developer, if you do not own your URL you cannot move your site. There is nothing worse than being held hostage to a web company because they own your domain name. Be sure there is a wording in the contract that you own the material i.e., copy, art, etc.; and that you have the right to use it however you want.

Talk to more than one expert and find out as much as you can from a variety of sources. Professionals may give excellent advice, but they do not know everything. So, take your time—do your research and you will know which decisions to trust.  Finally, don’t learn the hard way, leverage the experience of others. People are happy to help and to share lessons learned.

Have you ever wondered how to increase your online presnce in your local area?  Read the rest of this entry »

E=MC2 — it’s all relative.

Sometimes it just takes a little help to overcome the fear of speaking in public. It’s all relative. It’s all about energy and connecting with your audience.

Surveys show that the fear of public speaking is the number one fear in the US. Fear takes a lot of energy.  When people learn to redirect the energy placed into fear public speaking comes naturally and easily.

Read the rest of this entry »