How to Assume Yes When You’re Afraid of No

I’ve had a revelation over the last few months. It became really clear to me after attending conferences this fall and meeting so many business owners.

I realized it after hearing story after story from business owners how much they realized they need to be better at marketing.  But I’ve yet to meet someone who acknowledges they need to spend more time selling.  Marketing and sales are not the same thing. Many business owners learning about online marketing have bought into the idea that sales come from capturing email addresses, hanging around on Facebook and Twitter, and sending out an electronic newsletter frequently. They don’t most of the time; if you’re in a service business, you’re eventually going to have to talk with a real live person.

I have met very few business owners who like the process of selling. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that those who do are highly successful.

But making a sale is the point in business, whether money is your motivator, or not. So mastering how to do it in a way that is comfortable for you is very important.

What I have found to be true is that often our discomfort is less about the “sale” and more about the meaning we associate with it.

Here are some common variations that come up for many of us:

• Selling is sleazy. I don’t want to come across like a car salesperson.
• Selling is about being forceful. That’s not my style. I don’t want to have to pressure someone. I shouldn’t have to convince someone.
• The value of what I offer is obvious. Once I present my information logically, the person who is interested will buy. I shouldn’t have to ask, they’ll tell me when they’re interested.

Selling is a skill that can be developed, and like any effective skill, has a technique and a process. There are lots of training tools and tips around. I encourage you to learn as much as you can. But to make it easier for you, I’m going to share the most valuable lesson I’ve ever learned. It didn’t come to me through business, but through the years I spent involved with the fundraising profession (I’ve been on both sides of the equation – donor and fundraiser).

Fundraising is not for the faint of heart, and I think that’s why so many ex-non profit employees and volunteer fundraisers end up being very successful in business. The fundraisers I’ve known are some of the nicest and most savvy people I’ve met. As a fundraiser, you work for months and even years to build relationships with potential donors. There is a cycle of identifying and attracting good potential donors, cultivating relationships with them, encouraging them to make bigger and longer term gifts, and encouraging  their willingness to continue making financial gifts year after year. When you think about it, it’s the ideal strategy for a business should follow.

So what do successful fundraisers do, besides have a strategy and a carefully designed process? They have two golden rules.

1. Assume the yes.
2. Ask!

This advice is probably more important than having the perfect thing to say, or beautiful sales packages.  Provided you’re clear in who you want to attract as a client, what value you provide to them, and how to explain your services in a way that is meaningful the answer should be yes most of the time. How often depends on you and your business. The answer might not be yes today, and it might not be yes to everything you offer. Your clients will not decide to buy according to when you want them to because you need the money today. You can control this to some degree by the way you design your packages and services, and this is why you do need to carefully craft options for your potential clients that also provide you with the best chance for continuous cash flow. But the point is, no mostly means not yet.

There are lots of steps you can take that would take several pages to detail. But the most important thing you need to get over, if you’re afraid the answer is going to be no, is you. Know your value, create the packages of services that your customers want, and be able to confidently explain them. Listen to their needs, respond to them in a way that is human and shows you understand and can help them, and give them examples of how you can do so. Make suggestions, and ask them if they’d like to know more about working with you. The more you approach it this way, the less like selling it will feel. Based on the discussion and what you know about them already, you’ll know without a doubt that you can help them. Making the ask (often called closing the sale) is natural, and because you’re able to then confidently quote your price and your terms, the answer will more often be yes.

When you get a no, don’t feel discouraged and rejected. Be prepared with responses to common objections, and have a consistent process to follow up again. It’s common for someone to say no several times, over a length of time, before becoming a valued customer. The problem is, if you assume the answer is no, give up to soon, and fail to ask again, you’ll never know!

Want to use this article? You can as long as you include this footer: Sherri Garrity is the Chief Corporate Fugitive and creator of the Five Keys Success SystemTM for ex-corporate employees and aspiring entrepreneurs who want to break free from the confines of their corporate experience and live outside of the ordinary. The Corporate Fugitive system demystifies the business of setting up, managing, marketing and growing a successful and extraordinary business. Visit www.corporatefugitive.com for information and step-by-step resources to take you from overwhelmed employee to extraordinary entrepreneur.

Seven Ways to Wrap Up Your Year

It’s that time again when it’s natural to look back and reflect on the past 12 months, and look ahead to a fresh start in the new year.

Instead of setting resolutions that are unrealistic and plucked from the clouds, I prefer to focus instead on looking at my past year with an honest and clinical eye and assess what worked and what didn’t. Then I look at what I want to achieve, and make sure that I don’t set myself up to repeat the actions or approaches that didn’t work for me before.

Here’s a list of seven actions you can take to finish strong and start the new year with a bang. Seven is a lucky number for me, so I’m sending good fortune your way:

1. Put aside your judgement hat and take an objective look at what you did this year in your business (or the steps you’re taking toward it). Did you set goals? Did you meet them? Did you exceed them? Did you drift? Did you play small or live large? Look at the results you got, and what actions worked for you or against you. Pat yourself on the back for what you accomplished, and if you didn’t achieve what you wanted, accept the lessons from your experience, have compassion for yourself, and put it behind you. Stop beating yourself up for your shortcomings, and focus your energy on all that’s possible instead.
2. Take a look at what you may be settling for. One of my own coaches uses a tool she calls the List of Tolerations. Make a list of all of the things that are less than ideal in your life that you’re putting up with. It could be a client relationship, or it may be something in your house or personal life that needs fixing. The point is to clear out as much as you can or take baby steps at least so that you can start with a clean slate in 2010.
3. Clean up your finances. If you aren’t on top of either your business or personal finances and you tend to wait until tax time to panic it is worth your while money-wise and stress-wise to set aside a day or a few hours over the next few weeks to take stop. You might need to collect payments or clear bills before the end of the year, and who knows, some business expenses might be just what you need to reduce your tax bill or get a bigger refund at tax time.
4. Clean up your processes. If you tend to operate with a ‘fly-by-the-seat’ approach, chances are your processes are inconsistent or nonexistent. Lack of procedures and systems cause an inconsistent level of service for your customers, and an accumulation of stress and wasted time (equalling lost profit) for you.
5. Clear your space. Literally and figuratively, make room for the blessings of the new year. Tidy up your office, give it a little facelift and be ready to usher in new business. Each year at this time I love choosing a new calendar and creating a new vision collage for the bulletin board beside my desk.
6. Get help. As you think about how your year went, and how you’d like the next one to go, think about the support structures you need in place to allow your business and life to operate at peak potential. You may need to add people to your team, get a coach or professional advisor. On the health and home front perhaps you need support in the form of a housecleaner, nutritional coach or other. Get creative about the support you need and start assembling your dream team – whether you are ready to bring them on or not right now.
7. Visualize your life and business and how you wish both to feel and look. Last year I added a personal and business vision board to my yearly goal setting ritual. Something about the visual representation of my goals made them come to life in a way that was more meaningful for me. And guess what, they all showed up for me in 2009, in some of the most unlikely places!

Of course, the other step is to create a plan to reach the goals and dreams you’ve set for yourself…but that’s a whole other topic. Happy holidays!

Money and Marketing Fog and The Perfect Storm

Are you creating the perfect storm in your business? If you’re going about your day-to-day life and work in a money and marketing fog, you’re creating the perfect conditions to sink your finances and all of your hard work. If you’ve heard of the true story of the Andrea Gail and the movie The Perfect Storm, you know that the conditions were brewing for catastrophe and that the doomed swordfishing boat ended up right in its path.

In business there are two areas you need to keep a watchful eye on at all times: your money, and your marketing. I first heard the term “money fog”  from Mikelann Valterra, founder of the Women’s Earning Institute and a certified money expert (Mikelann is one of the featured experts in an upcoming Corporate Fugitive product).

She calls it “suffering from vagueness” and I think this is both succinct and brilliant. In the context of running a business, it simply means not knowing where you are or where you’re going with the money side of your business. If you’re also in a marketing fog, you’re in for big trouble!

There are many ways you can be in this haze, but one of the worst is when you have no clear financial goal and no plan to attain it.

When I speak with business owners about helping them design their business, the early discussion includes asking how much do you want to make, and how do you plan to get there? The reality is that for most, it’s pretty loose.

Their difficulty setting clear financial targets can be caused by a variety of reasons – lack of knowledge about the market, inexperience (completely reasonable, if you’re new to it!), difficulty coming up with pricing and packaging that will sell, and a whole host of mental roadblocks that often pop up.

When you’re operating without knowing your goals, your expenses, and what you need to profit, you’re in a money fog in your business. You’re likely underearning because you aren’t charging enough, or your rates are decent but because you’re spending too much and aren’t on top of this, your profit eludes you. If you only rarely look at your expenses against your targets, you’ll fail to see the warning signs that could alert you to get out of the storm’s path.

As well, if you have a wishy-washy dollar goal, and no real idea of what you need to sell in order to attain it and make a profit, this money fog seeps over to the marketing side of your business. You’ll have no clear way to price, target market and sell your services.

Marketing and your future cash flow are directly related. Marketing doesn’t bring you in money today, so if your marketing plan consists of “sales are down, what kind of promotion can I do in the next two weeks” then it’s not very likely to work. It has to be an ongoing function of your business – and it has to be based on your business objectives and tracked in relation to your sales.

Here are some of the money numbers you need to watch that relate to your marketing:

• Know what it costs you to run your business
• Know how much you need to make after all of your costs are covered to deliver a specific product or service and make a profit
• Know how many leads it generally takes you to get one sale, and how long it takes on average for a potential lead to become a customer
• Know how much it costs you to acquire a client:

State your average marketing cost per month

State your average amount of new customers per month

Divide the first number by figure two to determine your Average Customer Acquisition Cost.

• Know how much your customer is worth to you over a lifetime:

State your estimated average sale

State the estimated number of times a customer reorders

Multiply figure one by figure to the determine your Average Customer Lifetime Value.

(there is a spreadsheet you can use to determine this)

I’m more a words than numbers person and spreadsheets make me crazy, but these numbers are important. Once you know how many leads you need, and how much a customer is worth to you, you can:

• Keep track of how many contacts you’re making with prospects and know how many you need to fill a given program or meet a certain target. If you only convert 3 out of 10 people, and your goal is to obtain 9 new clients, you’d need to have 30 prospects on average, for example.
• Plan and adjust your marketing and promotions based on real numbers and not just a creative strategy. If your sales are down and you realize that you’ve had 50 per cent less meetings with prospective customers than you did in previous months, you can see that you need to focus more on getting leads.
• Have a number by which to assess your marketing and customer acquisition costs. If you know a customer is worth $3,000 to you over the lifetime of their relationship with you, it gives you a benchmark to measure your investments.

Of course, it goes without saying that your marketing efforts need to be focused directly on the ideal clients you want to attract. The clearer you are on who they are and where to find them, the more targeted and more successful the outcome will be. These numbers can guide you on how to set your prices and packages in a way to attain profit and your income goals, as well as how to know if your marketing is resulting in its core purpose – to lead to a sale.

Want to use this article? You can as long as you include this footer: Sherri Garrity is the Chief Corporate Fugitive and creator of the Five Keys Success SystemTM for ex-corporate employees and aspiring entrepreneurs who want to break free from the confines of their corporate experience and live outside of the ordinary. The Corporate Fugitive system demystifies the business of setting up, managing, marketing and growing a successful and extraordinary business. Visit www.corporatefugitive.com for information and step-by-step resources to take you from overwhelmed employee to extraordinary entrepreneur.