All Posts by Chris

Why Your View of Personal Finance is Crucial for Business Success

Over the last five Mondays, I reviewed five stages in realising your business purpose.  It helps to have a separate financial purpose, informed by your view of personal finance.  This encourages you to think about business finance independently of business purpose.

I often quote John Kay, a contemporary economist, who says:

“Profit is no more the purpose of business than breathing is the purpose of life.”

Breathing is not why you are alive but you must breathe!  Profit is not why you are in business but you must make profit.

So, let’s deal with two mistaken positions.

Too Positive about Finance

It is possible to focus solely on money.  You can accumulate wealth that generates income.  If you do this you can, through activities such as real estate, trading shares, referral marketing; generate a monthly income for your old age.  This way the need to work recedes as you grow older, meaning you choose when to retire or fund experimental business ventures.

This is not everyone’s cup of tea.  I question this approach when someone accumulates vast amounts of wealth, way beyond their capacity to spend it.  This has an adverse impact on the business economy.

Passive income is a viable approach to finance, possibly finance for your business.  But note it is about what you do with your income.  It is not about how you get finance from your business.  You can choose to build passive income but my focus here is how you get the finance you need to build the passive income in the first place.

Question Money-Making Claims

The danger is financial concerns dominate business purpose.  This is why I suspect anyone who guarantees vast sums of money if I follow their method.  There are a number of very good reasons to question such claims:

The solution is to work out your financial strategy as you design your business.  This helps you assess the claims made by marketers.

Too Negative about Finance

The other common mistake to take a too negative view of finance.  Obviously, taken to extreme, this will lead to business failure.  If you are in business, you are open to the possibility to making money!

A negative attitude to money expresses itself in more subtle ways.  These include low prices, giving services away free or at cut prices, fear of asking for money.

This attitude betrays a lack of empathy for customers and prospects.  The problem is not so much your relationship with money as your attitude to people.

People pay for something if they believe they need it.  They find the money if they need your offer.  You want customers ready to make a sacrifice; they are the ones committed to the success of your coaching.

If you fear letting them down, you must ask yourself why you are in business.  You can solve their problem and so they will pay for it if they want your solution enough.  Your confidence plays a large part in conveying your ability to deliver the solution.

If you genuinely believe only bad people charge high prices, why are you, a good person, so determined bad people get all the money?  It is monstrous to think charging high prices is somehow dishonest.  We shall see in later posts other good reasons for charging high prices.

Conclusion

So, this boils down to pricing.  You need to find a realistic price that delivers the income you need.  You need confidence in your offer and its price to ask for money and close the deal

In my next post I look at pricing your offer and suggest price is integral to your offer’s credibility.

Visit my new website, Market Together to sign up to my list so that you don’t miss any posts and hear about the exciting plans I’m working on to promote an alternative approach to marketing.

Please comment and let me know what you like about this post.  What would you like me to write about further?

What Will Your Coaching Business Change?

In this new sequence, I explore relational marketing in-depth.  The challenge is to build a new questionnaire to help coaches, consultants and freelancers work with their relational marketing strategy.  Today’s focus is: what will your coaching business change?

Each post is in three short sections.  A thought for the day, a few questions and a call to action.  Feel free to share thoughts and actions in the comments.

If You Act, You Change Things

Marketing leads to change.  If nothing changes as a result of marketing then you are not marketing and you do not have a business.

Change can be accidental and unintended.  Even with great planning, prepare for unintended consequences from your actions.  These can be positive or negative.

Good marketers look beyond their customers to the change they want to see in the wider world.  Their invitation to their customers is to join them in making that change.

Your Vision

1. What change are you seeking? This is your vision or business purpose.
2. What are the existing and likely outcomes of your current marketing campaign?
3. What could you change to align your vision with your marketing?

Finding Your Vision

Your vision does not necessarily come solely from your head.  It is better if you can build your vision from observations of the changes your business is making already.  This may be hard if you have a new business but take stock of the changes you see and build on them.

The word Vision implies things you see.  Even a ladder to the stars has to be secured to the ground.

This is the first post in a sequence to help businesses plan their relational marketing.  Sign up below to get a weekly round-up of my posts and a pdf about how you can make sure you are charging what your business is worth.  Most weeks you will receive an email with useful news or pointers to how you can tackle these questions.

How to Promote Your Purpose through Business Outcomes

In this post, we complete the sequence about business purpose, from vision to offer to marketing to outputs with business outcomes.  This progression is sequential although there can be loops, especially between offer and marketing. Sometimes things happen at once, eg outputs and outcomes can develop in parallel.

What is a Business Outcome?

Outcomes result from your client’s outputs.  So, when someone completes your package and begins to meet their goals, their context changes. Perhaps as they intended, although there will be surprises too.

Outcomes can be hard to identify because they are usually qualitative.  Mostly outputs are easy to measure but measurements lack meaning.  You get 20 people to a training session, they all complete it and say they’re happy with it.  How have things changed as a result of their training?  It is sometimes possible to follow-up but they will present evidence as stories.  Stories are not easy to summarise as evidence and so trainers are likely to neglect this step.

Let’s say your client wants to change management in their industry for the better.  You address this by coaching the client to be a better manager.  If they are a better manager, this should be reflected in their outputs.   But how has management improved generally in their industry?  There could be a delay of several years, before the client shows their approach works better than the industry standard, assuming nothing knocks them off course.

Not all outcomes are difficult.  Wider benefits can happen instantly and so long as someone takes note, they are easier to capture and prove.  So, let’s take a look at some examples:

Outcomes for the Client

The relationship between outputs and outcomes can be straightforward.  Your client gets more clients or better results from working with their clients.  They see their business growing and the changes that follow to their lifestyle.

Are these positive or negative changes?  Increased numbers of client increases income and this may result in positive changes for their family.  But if it means the client spends more time working, this may affect family relationships adversely.

It is not uncommon to meet outputs and find the outcomes are not as comfortable as predicted.  Underestimating the work that goes into increased outputs may be one reason.  This is why many promises made by coaches are misleading because the cost of their delivery is not considered.

Not all outcomes relate to lifestyle.  If the client has a business purpose, they expect to see it met through their outcomes.  So, a business coach’s client wants to see change in the management culture of their organisation.  They learn to become a better manager and use their example to show others the way forward.

They will be judged under the prevailing culture of their industry.  Does their new approach deliver what the industry needs to deliver, usually profit?  The pressure will be to use tried and tested approaches, especially if early outputs are disappointing.  The result can be entrenched positions.

This does not take into account unexpected outcomes.  Something unpredicted that in retrospect is caused by the changes.

The coach must help the client understand likely outcomes.  The line between genius and folly can be very fine.  The coach helps the client anticipate issues and consider how to handle them.

Outcomes for the Coach

The client’s outcomes are also the coach’s.  There is a risk in depending on someone else’s behaviour to generate your outcomes.

Positive outcomes are not infrequent and usually clients, delighted with them, become supporters of their coach.

Negative outcomes are not infrequent and the coach must not deny responsibility for them.  They should take on clients, who take responsibility for their own decisions.  The coach helps clients make decisions but they must not be the coach’s decisions.  To return to the coach and say “I tried what we discussed last time and things went pear-shaped – can you help me work out what to do next?” is ideal.  The world is essentially unpredictable and trying new things is no guarantee of success.

The return of the client chastened by circumstance for more help is a brilliant outcome for the coach.  It demonstrates trust.  The client understands their business and need for an informed sounding board during a crisis.

For the coach, this is an important outcome because it shows a change in the client towards a calmer, better informed worldview.

Outcomes and Vision

Is this enough to meet the coach’s vision?  The knack is to see the outcomes of your work and compare with your original vision.  Ask how the vision manifests in the changes you have caused.  Real life is always messier than visions of possible futures.

A negative outcome might contain elements of the original vision.  There may be clues that show how the vision may to be modified.

If you intend to change your vision in the light of outcomes, ask whether the change covers up failure.  Or have you identified new needs and so need to change your vision so that it is more relevant?

The pathway from vision to offer to marketing to outputs to outcomes is not set in stone.  It should be malleable as you learn more about the changes you want to see.  Your vision in five years’ time may be very different to today’s and yet you should be able to see the path you took. So each revised vision is more relevant, informed by similar values.

Visit my new website, Market Together to sign up to my list so that you don’t miss any posts and hear about the exciting plans I’m working on to promote an alternative approach to marketing.

Please comment and let me know what you like about this post.  What would you like me to write about further?

How to Find Opportunities for Joint Ventures

Joint Ventures are among the most challenging business approaches.  There are other possibilities for marketing together.  Opportunities for Joint Ventures are not always high-end.

I shall use the Awareness Ladder (follow the link to remind yourself of the steps) to demonstrate collaboration throughout the marketing cycle.  Keep your eyes and ears open for other possibilities!

Assume collaboration between businesses with shared interests.  They could be competitors but competition is likely to obscure opportunities for collaboration.

Remember, the further down the Awareness Ladder, the more people there will be and the harder it is to move them up the ladder.  But if they move up the ladder there are more prospects for all the businesses involved.

Research into Potential Markets

Rung 0 is where prospects are unaware of their problem.  The aim is to get them to Rung 1, where they are aware.

Businesses need to campaign to increase awareness of the problem.  You need to know who your markets are, where they are found and the arguments or incentives they need to become aware of their problem.

Even with much competition, there is likely to be scope for collaboration.  Moving people to Rung 1 is most difficult and so pooled resources by businesses addressing the same problem, makes a lot of sense.

There will be more people aware of the problem and so more opportunities for all the partners.  Remember partners have a variety of offers and so the next challenge is to help prospects work out which offer suits them best.

Finding Pros and Cons

The move from Rung 1, awareness of the problem, to Rung 2, awareness of solutions, needs continued collaboration.  The aim is to promote the options available to people aware of the problem.

If people are unaware of solutions they will not take action.  Many people live with a problem for years because they believe there is no solution and so do not seek it.

Help them make a good first choice.  An outline of the pros and cons of each solution helps.  The temptation is to debunk your competitors; you could list all the solutions on the market and why they don’t work, apart from your own.  The problem is this is not true.

A better approach is to describe the best customer for each approach.  “Use this approach if you are … , don’t use it if you are …”.

This acts as a guide to the offers on the market and helps prospects make a good first choice.  When you meet them, you can ask why they chose your offer and so assess whether you are in fact best placed to help them.

Referrals

Now we move from Rung 2, a general awareness of solutions to Rung 3, awareness of one particular solution.  For the coach or consultant, this stage is where you arrange an enrolment meeting, an opportunity to work out whether there is a good fit between your offer and the prospect’s problem and context.

It may become clear there is no match on closer inspection; to make a deal would be a big mistake for one or both parties.

The ability to make a good referral is crucial.  If you have collaborated with competitors, making a good referral can strengthen relationships.  If it goes well, you will have a grateful competitor and their new client will be grateful too.  Ask how you can use this to your advantage.

Endorsements

Moving from awareness of your offer, Rung 3 to Rung 4, full understanding of and trust in your offer, should be easier so long as you have evidence in place.  You can show your prospect evidence, depending on what interests them, eg past projects, qualifications, testimonials, etc.  One powerful source of evidence is endorsements.

Usually, we think of celebrity endorsements and these can help some businesses.  But why not endorsements from competitors?  These could increase trust between partners as well as between you and your prospects.

If an endorsement can be backed with a promise that competing businesses will collaborate to support their partner businesses, when they are working with a client, this can strengthen the case you make to your prospect.

This collaboration falls short of a full Joint Venture but includes anything from offering you advice through to subcontracting elements of the deal to other businesses.

Joint Ventures

The final step from full understanding at Rung 4 to making a purchase, Rung 5, could be a Joint Venture.

You might share a high-end offer with another business.  If either business encounters someone who might benefit, they offer the JV offer.  You need to agree whether both need to be present.  The prospect may want to meet the other party before they commit.

There’s no reason this has to be a high-end offer.  You could experiment with low-end offers but income from them, divided between at least 2 parties, may mean there is a point where it is not worthwhile.

Conclusion

There is potential for collaboration between competitors at all stages of your marketing.

The attitude that competitors are the enemy is prevalent and may be hard to dislodge but the truth is they have shared interests and with collaboration there is potential for increased business for all.  Businesses with similar interests can collaborate for mutual benefit.

There are possibilities for collaboration between businesses, where they are not competing, so this post explores only one approach to collaboration.

Collaboration between competitors is likely to be fruitful if they agree a strategy.  Use the Awareness Ladder as a guide and agree at which rungs you wish to collaborate and how far you want to go.  As trust builds, you can do more together.  Whatever you agree, get it in writing so you can settle disputes and then focus on building trust.

In my email to subscribers this week, I shall write about building support with prospects.  To make sure you see everything, complete the form below to go on my mailing list.  You’ll get notice of future blog posts and receive my Thursday emails.

In these posts and emails I am forging a new approach to marketing.  Please comment and let me know what you think, whether you agree or disagree.

How to Use Your Outputs to Promote Your Business Purpose

Outputs are the direct benefits your clients experience.  Align your marketing plan to your vision and offers and to deliver your marketing promises, then you will see outputs.

Potential Benefits to Your Clients

Consider potential benefits for your client.  Some are more important than others and what’s most important depends on the client.

Coaches, consultants and freelancers have many different outputs because their reasons for being in business vary.  Here are a few possibilities:

Measurable Outputs

Outputs are measurable or it is possible to point to evidence something has changed.

You or Your Client’s Responsibility?

There is another dimension to outputs and that is who delivers them.  You need to be clear about expectations:

Expert Consultancy

Expert consultants deliver outputs.  This can be simple.  You deliver a website, that’s an output and you’re finished.  A good website designer can offer a more effective service.

Some offer to design a website and optimise it for sales.  If you increase income from the site, you can agree a share of profits.  A designer, working with a business with potential, can make a lot of money that way.  Some businesses pay huge retainers to designers to keep their site optimal.

This is a big responsibility for the consultant and requires a good relationship with the client.  The rewards can be significant.   If you can do this, you have a big advantage in the marketplace.

Non-Directive Consultancy or Coaching

Here the responsibility is with the client.  Typically, client and coach work together on some problem; the coach helps or challenge the client to meet their goals.

Be clear from the outset, the responsibility to meet the goals is with the client.  The coach does not profit directly from the client’s success but charges fees that reflect the value of their support to the client.

Remember, the client may not understand this approach and so be clear where responsibility for outputs lie.  I tell my prospects they remain in the driving seat, they make the decisions.  My role is to challenge what they are doing, make suggestions and help them progress and stay focused.

Coaches help with some tasks but no-one is good at everything and the client must understand they may need additional assistance.  I work with my clients to identify what needs to be done, how to do it and who does it.  Sometimes a client needs help to brief and supervise someone who works for them.

For a coach, lack of knowledge of their client’s business can be a big advantage.  It removes the temptation to take over their business and it is easier to build a relationship of equals.  The coach brings coaching skills and specialist knowledge and the client brings their specialist skills.  The coach presents them with options, helps them choose and may help carry out their choice.

What Do You Think?

Remember, outputs or benefits to the client are one dimension of the benefits of the coach or consultant’s work.  Next time, we’ll look at wider outcomes.

Visit my new website, Market Together to sign up to my list so that you don’t miss any posts and hear about the exciting plans I’m working on to promote an alternative approach to marketing.

Please comment and let me know what you like about this post.  What would you like me to write about further?

Why You Must Aim to Transform Your Business Environment

Your purpose is to transform your business environment and you need to be clear transformation always takes place in wider society when we work with clients and collaborate with other businesses.

The Inevitability of Transformation

Business causes transformation whatever the business owner’s intention.  Some don’t think about transformation or care what happens.  Businesses have unintended consequences, even though the business owner plans for transformation.  And sometimes businesses get it right!

Some people see profit as the purpose of business.  They may not appreciate the consequences of their actions on the world around them.  Not only will their business have direct consequences for their immediate environment but it contributes to the general attitude transformation is not the purpose of business.

We cannot afford that attitude today.  This is not only about asking businesses to take their responsibilities seriously but to go further and expect business owners to take a lead transforming things for the better.

An Invisible Hand?

It is interesting how Adam Smith’s concept of an invisible hand justifies neoliberalism today.  Smith uses the term “invisible hand” very few times and in his Wealth of Nations, he uses it to critique the approach we call neo-liberalism.  He argues self-interested business people will not trade abroad because their loyalty to the country draws them to business practices that benefit all, as if by an invisible hand.

The term is memorable and so over the years, everyone uses it to justify their economic beliefs.  The original idea was the rich, acting selfishly, benefit all because to produce their wealth and spend it, eg on servants, they redistribute their money to the benefit of all; a dubious idea, sometimes called “trickle down”.  At least, Smith intended money to stay in circulation.

Neo-liberalism uses the idea of a free market to justify practices that constrain the market.  Arguably, a market is free where money flows freely.  If the wealthy hoard money, then they are not contributing to a free market.  This is why regulation of free markets is crucial.

This problem stems from an old debate about whether businesses should aim for transformation.  Perhaps the most convincing argument against transformation through business is from externalities.

Externalities are the unintended consequences attendant upon any business activity, eg pollution.  The argument goes these will undermine any positive aim the business has and so an invisible hand is more effective than intention.

It Takes Time to Change Things

Transformation is an indirect result of actions taken by people.  In other words we cannot predict the outcomes of our actions because we don’t know how others will respond.  You can promise to deliver 100 widgets on time for a price and mostly you will deliver.  You cannot accurately predict the environmental impact of manufacturing the widgets or the impact their use will have.

Furthermore, the transformation we witness today may be completely different in 3 months, 6 months or 6 years.

Regulation mitigates the negative consequences of business activity but we must grow more confident understanding and owning the consequences of the actions we take.

For coaches, a business purpose helps their marketing because it is communicates values and shared values are important to the coaching relationship; working with people, trying things together, to find the most effective way forward.  Transformation is iterative, moves forward slowly, using trial and error.  This way businesses learn together.

The dilemma we face comes from those who deprive businesses of the means to effect change through withholding money from the economy.  Somehow the truth is twisted round to favour those who seek power through hoarding finance.

Businesses committed to a place, to enhancing lives in that place, are the heirs to the vision: a  vibrant marketplace at the heart of every community.

In my email to subscribers this week, I shall write about practical approaches to transformation.  To make sure you see everything, complete the form below to go on my mailing list.  You’ll get notice of future blog posts and receive my Thursday emails.

In these posts and emails, experience a new approach to marketing.  Please comment and let me know what you think, whether you agree or disagree.

How Your Marketing Plan Makes Your Business Purpose Real

In previous posts, I have shown how your vision leads to your offer.  This next step is once you have your offer, you market it.  “Vision to offer to marketing” is the logical sequence; an observer would conclude.  However, for practical purposes your marketing plan comes before development of your offer.  How so?

Prepare Marketing before Your Packages

It makes sense to prepare marketing copy before you design your offer packages.  The big mistake many entrepreneurs make is to prioritise service delivery over marketing.  The fact is without marketing you do not have a business.

Look at this way.  There is no point developing any package until you know how you’re going to market it.  You need to test the market, check out it exists.  And to do that you need to know how you are going to reach your potential market.

So, prepare your marketing plan first, including draft marketing copy.  It is possible, once you prepare your offer, you shall want to tweak your copy.  But if you find your offer is completely different from your draft copy, the chances are you have designed the wrong thing!

Indeed, some business people do not prepare their package until they have customers.  I don’t necessarily recommend this.  You could plan a workshop far enough ahead to allow you to sign people up and allow a week or so to develop the package, once you know you have the numbers.

Another possibility is to design a basic package you tweak each time you market it.  This means you experiment with marketing campaigns, to find the most effective ways to promote your package.

Align Your Vision and Marketing

The challenge is to develop a marketing campaign that aligns with your vision.  Then your offer becomes part of your marketing campaign.  Your offer is what you deliver to further your vision.  Your marketing campaign is how you make your vision a reality.

So, usually we think of a vision leading to a package, something to offer the world.  This is then marketed to the likely people who will consider buying the package.

An alternative is to design a marketing campaign that implements your vision.  Your customers are the people you recruit to further your vision.  You collaborate because you share the vision.  Your prospects share your vision and may help you further it.

Your vision is close to the promise your offer makes to your customers.  You help them solve a particular problem.

Let’s say you worked in an industry for several decades and experienced a variety of management approaches, some good and some bad.  Your vision is to improve management in your industry.  Your prospects are managers in your industry, who share your concerns and believe in your approach.

You need to establish yourself as the industry leader in your approach to management.  This way you become known to managers who value your guidance.  They may begin to request coaching or suggest workshop opportunities.  You may find your marketing generates requests for packages you had not considered before.  Your packages are one way you realise your vision through marketing.

Most freelancers stumble upon this, having started by designing something in line with their vision.  Usually, you revisit your offers as your marketing develops, adapting them to whatever opportunities present themselves.

Please comment and let me know what you like about this post.  What would you like me to write about further?

Visit my new website, Market Together to sign up to my list so that you don’t miss any posts and hear about the exciting plans I’m working on to promote an alternative approach to marketing.

How to Engage In-Person and Online Marketing

For years, I’ve said in my one minute elevator pitch : I help people engage their in-person and online marketing.  Few people have asked me about this.  It is a radical stance but many don’t see it that way.  Most people don’t appreciate the massive change the business world has experienced over the last few years.

Broadcast versus Intimacy

For most of my life, I’ve experienced broadcast marketing: advertising hoardings, newspaper and magazine adverts, television and radio commercials.  These were pretty much the all there was until the Internet.

Broadcast media is expensive.  You needed sales skills far more than marketing skills because unless you were good at sales, you did not have the resources to invest in marketing.

With the Internet you can get your message out to people at far lower costs.  You can do some marketing for free and the costs where there are charges are modest.  Broadcast marketing is still important for national or global markets but local marketing is particularly enhanced because we can combine in-person and online marketing.

Intimacy is another difference between broadcast and online marketing.  Modern marketing allows us to build relationships with people we never meet in person.  With mobile phones we link directly with people as they go about their daily business.  But it is also intimate in the sense, local marketing communicates both in-person and online.

Web Design is Dead

Allow me to use website design as an example.  In its early days, website design was difficult.  You needed to design a graphic image, slice it into bits and assemble it on the webpage, using tables.  You did this using html.

CSS simplified web design. It was still an acquired skill. If you wanted a website, it was usually more economic to hire a designer than to go on a course and learn to do it yourself.

Today, with platforms such as WordPress with hundreds of themes and plug-ins, you can do almost anything yourself.  There will be times when you need professional assistance.  You may hire someone because you don’t wish to devote your time to building a website.  But that is your choice.

The real issue is not graphic design or the layout of your site, it is the content.  What do you want your site to do?  It’s not the latest technology that matters so much as knowing what you need from your site.  If you don’t know what you need, no-one can honestly say to you: “we have the latest thing that exactly fits what you need to do.”

For someone to do that for you, you must open up about your vision, trust they keep it confidential and know enough to help you get what you need.

Systemic Marketing

Systemic marketing means marketing that takes into account the entirety of your business.  This means you are ill-advised to approach marketing by picking at bits of it.  “I need a website.”  How do you know that?  It isn’t good enough to say you need a website because your competitors have one.  You need to understand its purpose in your marketing plan and how to manage it so it achieves that purpose during your marketing campaign.

If you invest time and money in a website or anything else, how do you assess the return on your investment?  You could spend a lot on something that brings no return whatsoever.

One thing I learned early in my career as a community development worker, was copying ideas does not work.  Something may work brilliantly in one time and place.  It will not work in yours.  It worked the first time because someone got the measure of a place and tried the right thing.

Co-operatives and Franchises

By all means look at what others do for inspiration.  The retail co-operative movement is an example where copying worked well; it offered a model that worked pretty much all over the country.  I’ve never seen any figures showing how many co-ops failed.  Their approach worked in most places but we do not see records of false starts.  The co-ops were in effect an early franchise and in the business world we see many such enterprises.

Franchises are replicable businesses, not noted for innovation.  That criticism could be made of the retail co-ops.  There were many proposals for other forms of co-ops, primarily worker co-ops.  These never really worked in the UK, although successful worker co-op movements can be found in Southern Europe.

If you want a franchise, you get a lot of support including a decision whether the franchise will work in your place.  This does not encourage innovation and so this is where small businesses come into play.

Most businesses fail within a few years.  There are many reasons for this including poor management and marketing.  But where businesses are well-managed, many still fail because they are not viable.  They are in the wrong place and time.

Identify Viability Before You Invest

A systemic approach to marketing helps you find what is viable before you invest in something that will not work.  A successful franchise begins with a local trial, refining the approach until there is something replicable.  Few businesses set out to become franchises; they become possible depending on how a local business develops.

That’s the point.  As a business develops, new opportunities appear.  Your task is to see and take advantage of opportunities and for that you need to be familiar with your business, not just one aspect of it.

Next time I shall look at the transformations businesses are responsible for in wider society.

In these posts and emails I am forging a new approach to marketing.  Please comment and let me know what you think, whether you agree or disagree.

To make sure you see everything, complete the form below to go on my mailing list.  You’ll get notice of future blog posts and receive my Thursday emails.

Use Your Offer to Promote Your Business Purpose

Your business purpose is primarily your vision for the changes your business makes to your clients and their wider community.  The next step is to ask: what is your offer and is it aligned with your vision?

Hourly Rates or Packages?

Many coaches make the mistake of offering an hourly rate to clients.  There are at least two issues you need to consider.

1. An hourly rate encourages the view your work is entirely face-to-face with your client. In fact you put in many hours of work not visible to the client; both direct work on preparation and follow-up and indirect work, including marketing.  A package charges for the benefit to the client.  The client does not see your hours and is not encouraged to convert your charges into an hourly rate.  After all they are hiring you for your expertise and you need to be rewarded for the hours you have put in over years to get there!
2. Whatever the change you promise, it is unlikely you will make any significant difference in a single session. To offer a package, says it takes this long to get the result you’re after.

How to Align Your Packages with Your Vision

Your packages flow from your vision.  The way you name and present them shows the expected outputs and outcomes.  You are asking the client to work with you to achieve your vision.

The client may agree with you, work needs to be done to improve the quality of management in their industry.  They work with you and so you both work for change with that goal.  The customer wants to see benefits to their specific problem but also their wider context.

Website Design as an Example

Let’s say you are coaching someone in website design.  They expect to be better website designers as a result of working with you but they also need to consider the wider context in which they work.  What changes must take place in their business or industry, to accept the approach to online marketing your client learns?

Website design has never been solely a technical skill.  In the past the technicalities were difficult to master.  Now it is easier and the focus has moved towards organisational issues.  If the website changes, how will the organisation rise to the challenge?  What you don’t want is a website that works and is never used by its owners because it is not understood.

Whatever your packages do, these days they need to be interdisciplinary, offering a systemic approach because if they don’t they won’t work for the client or anyone else.

This may be a daunting task.  “I’m a website designer, I don’t know anything about organisations!”  But your client may know something about organisations.  This is the value of working together, to solve problems.  You get the credit even if the client solves the problem!  Chances are they would not have understood the issue without you.

Your package should give you both permission to work on the implications of what you are doing, not solely on acquiring technical skills.

And then, of course, you need to market your package and that is another things altogether.

Visit my new website, Market Together to sign up to my list so that you don’t miss any posts and hear about the exciting plans I’m working on to promote an alternative approach to marketing.

Please comment and let me know what you like about this post.  What would you like me to write about further?

Increased Business Growth by Slowed Marketing

In the last couple of posts, I’ve shown why it’s important to validate and upgrade your business.  These increase your confidence when talking about your business and set you up for the most crucial dimension to your marketing plan, campaign design.  This is where you put together a marketing plan for increased business growth.

The big mistake businesses make is to embark on campaign design without validation or upgrade.  This invites losses in time and money.  Without validation, how can you understand what marketing methods you need for your business?  Without upgrade, how can you know you are marketing the best possible version of your business?  What a waste, when you discover part way through your campaign, you could have made improvements before you started!

Campaign design with foundations in validation and upgrading, is more likely to be effective, easier and quicker to develop and faster bringing your business to those most likely to buy.

So, here are some advantages you have as you design your marketing campaign.

Confidence Closing the Deal

If you are not confident about closing deals, you are likely to avoid situations where you get close to closing the deal.  Obviously, this is a fatal problem for any business!

Most people who experience this problem seek help through training or coaching.  So, let’s assume you have done the coaching and understand closing.

If you have validated and upgraded your business, you are clearer about what you offer and so more likely to attract prospects.  And you are confident enough to make an offer.

You will know how to find those you can help and communicate your confidence to them.

Solving Problems

Validation and upgrading help you solve your clients’ problems and they help you solve your own marketing problems.

A big problem business owners face is they find they are marketing using a method they do not  enjoy.  You could argue the aim is to promote your business not enjoy marketing but if you enjoy marketing, you are more likely to do it and communicate your enthusiasm.

The question is: how do I find a method I enjoy and design a campaign that will work for my business?  Chances are the skills you already use delivering your offer can be used to market it.  This way your business is coherent across marketing, sales and delivery.

Handling Objections

Upgrading shows you where you need to go out on a limb.  You take an extreme position in your campaign and that attracts objections.

When you get objections, it shows you are making an impact.  You have confidence to respond to them positively.  Remember, your response should speak to your market.  The person who makes the objection may not be in your market.  They may not be able to see the point because it is not for them.  Turn this to your advantage.

Leadership

If you establish your own space as an expert, you draw a group of people around you.  You become a leader!  You build credibility and credibility means more work and more sales.

Leadership is something people fear but deep knowledge of your business means you can be confident your leadership is well-received.  Good will is valuable so long as you come up with the next step and keep on innovating.

Having a System

Campaign design is basically developing a system whereby you automate aspects of your business.  You can do this online and this is usually what people think about when they design a marketing campaign.

But they need a system that involves their customers, prospects and other contacts.  There are Customer Relationship Management (CRM) packages available online and one of these may be helpful.  But you need to clear what your CRM is for – what do you want your contacts to do for your business?  What incentives can you offer for them?

You need a system that works for the front end (outreach / targeting) and backend of your business (CRM).  A sales systems at both ends can be complex but saves time and energy if you get it right.

There is more to campaign design than many businesses offering marketing tools acknowledge.  The only person who can hold the complete picture is you – marketing companies cannot do this for you.  You need to work closely with those you hire to deliver your marketing strategy.  If you don’t know what you need, don’t expect anyone else to!

Next time, I’ll dig deeper into campaign design for local marketing.

In these posts and emails I am forging a new approach to marketing.  Please comment and let me know what you think, whether you agree or disagree.

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