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Business >
Simple Marketing
Strategies
You can be the
best at whatever you do in business -- and it won't matter at all if you don't
know how to RELATE well with other people. People skills are an enormous part
of being a successful entrepreneur. You have to be able to COMMUNICATE your
ideas, quickly build a rapport with strangers, and show that you stand by your
word in order to earn the TRUST of others.
One of the best
ways to develop relationships with customers and keep your business "top of
mind" without very much effort is through a consistent email marketing
program.
"I don't have
TIME to market." It's a common complaint from self-employed professionals.
When you are the only one who can serve the clients, manage the business, and
perform all the sales and marketing functions, time becomes the most precious
commodity you have. How can you find time for building business RELATIONSHIPS
with so many other important priorities? but relationships are the key.....
FINDING MORE TIME
There are many time management techniques at your disposal, of course. You can
defer tasks or delegate them, chunk down projects to smaller steps, and set
aside time on your calendar for making calls, writing letters, or updating
marketing materials. Perhaps you have already tried all those methods and
discovered that time is still scarce. Maybe the real answer is not to find
more time for marketing, but to MAKE time. Every day, you take part in many
time-consuming activities that don't include marketing. What if you could
INTEGRATE marketing with all those things you are already doing? Here are some
examples of how that can work:
Every bit of
marketing that you do has one common element. The FOLLOW-THROUGH. No matter if
it’s that one-minute elevator speech you made, that press release you sent
out, or an event that you attended, you must follow-up that action with a
second action. In that first encounter, you planted a seed. With your second
effort, you NURTURE that seed of interest to grow.
FOLLOW-THROUGH: PERSONAL ENCOUNTER
We have all run into someone we have not seen in a long time or someone with
whom we have only had a brief acquaintance in the past. You stop and have a
friendly CHAT. Sometimes that chat includes questions about your business and
sometimes it does not. Either way, don’t miss the OPPORTUNITY to follow up.
Send out a note that expresses your pleasure at seeing them and tell them you
wanted to show them what you are doing now, and include your brochure. Or,
tell them you enjoyed talking to them about your business and wanted to send
them a brochure so they would have your number at hand.
FOLLOW-THROUGH: POTENTIAL CLIENT INQUIRIES
You fielded the email or phone call from someone interested in HIRING you and
you happily answered their questions. Don’t forget to follow-through. Mail
them a letter thanking them for their interest in your company. Tuck in, or
attach, a brochure or a page of tips that they might find useful. Keep a list
of these contacts and check back again in a few months. It sometimes takes
people a bit of TIME to make a move on a project.
So many of us have our days scheduled with meeting after
meeting.
Once a meeting starts late it probably will run late and the domino
affect hits each subsequent meeting of the day. Or, you're running from one
meeting to the next without time to breathe.
Scott Berkun gives some impactful thoughts on starting meetings on time in his
article: How to Start Meetings on Time. Some of his key thoughts: If you call
a meeting, do your job; enforce the clock; and most importantly: only have
meetings that matter.
You may find it's effect to say, "We're aiming to keep this a 30-minute
meeting so we must move on to another topic."
How to start meetings on time (the honest version)
Starting and stopping on time is easy. One person with power simply has to
decide to care, the rest follows.
Having recently survived a tragicomic 8 way international conference call, an
experience worthy of the 4th level of hell, I’m here to offer 5 honest tips
that would have saved the day:
If you called the meeting, do your %*?@?! job. Everyone claims they know about
facilitation, but few do it. If you called the meeting, it’s your job to 1)
get there on time 2) write a bullet list agenda on the wall 3) Manage the
conversation so no one hogs the floor and the right people get a voice at the
right time 4) make sure side issues get delegated out of the room. If you
don’t do all 4, any meeting problems are your fault.
Meetings start when royalty arrives. Watch the behavior of the senior person
on a team. Most meetings won’t start until they arrive and people know it. If
the VP is never late, no one else will be either. If the VP is always 10
minutes behind, everyone else will follow. If you’re a team manager, and
meetings always start late, know (and blame) thyself. If you need a VP/VIP
know where they’ll be before your meeting and escort them yourself.
Someone must enforce the clock. Every meeting should start with someone
assigned to watch the clock. I don’t know that you need a giant clock like
Google is claimed to use, but it’s someones job to say “We’re 20 minutes in”,
“we have 15 minutes left”, “we have 5 minutes, so lets wrap up”. You’d be
amazed how many meetings ramble for half the allotted time on topics not
central to the reason for the meeting. Three breakpoints are all you need to
remind everyone to stay on track.
Plan to end 5 minutes early. It’s insane but in all our infinite wisdom we
continually plan meetings back to back with zero alloted time to get from
meeting A to meeting B. Whose idea was this? If you always go to the last
second, or go over, guess what you’re doing? You’re screwing over the next
batch of meetings people need to get to. You’ll make unexpected friends by
always ending early, which is easy if you watch the clock.
Only have meetings that matter . If you had a meeting called “Lets discuss how
awesome you are and how we can triple your salary” people will arrive right on
time - the concept of a meeting isn’t bad, it’s what you fill it with that
matters. If everyone is always late they’re telling you: this meeting is not
important. Either learn how to make the meeting worthy of their time or don’t
have the meeting. Ask for opinions at perennially late or poorly attended
meetings: why does this meeting suck? How can this be more useful? Is there a
better way to |insert why you think you need a meeting here|?
Of course there are many different kinds of meetings so YMMV - But if you want
more on this check out chapter 10, How not to annoy people, from of The art of
project management.
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