You Should Be Getting Far More Referrals- Here's How

Most businesses and service professionals do not gain nearly the number of referrals they could and should.  The main reason is this: they don't know how to.  Most people believe that referrals mostly come to them when they are deserved and that getting referrals in not really something you can proactively engage in.  They're wrong.  Here is a step by step process to gain FAR more referrals for your business and to develop better relationships in the meantime.
First, establish a list of people who already know, like, and trust you.  Think of those who would do most anything for you if you asked.  Most people can come up with between 10-30 of these people.  They may be family, friends, neighbors, business associates or clients, childhood friends, etc.
Next, call them or email them with a message that includes the following line: "So, ____, I am currently working to build my client base, and I was wondering if you'd be willing to help me?  Would you be willing to meet (or connect by phone if they're distant) on either Tues or Thursday for coffee/lunch/dinner?"  It's critical for you to use the words "help" and to avoid the word "referral".  People love to help but they hate to refer.  Most of these people will be very happy to "help" you, and so they'll respond "sure".
Next, create a profile of the types of people you're looking to be put in contact with.  It should include 4 or 5 descriptions of your top target markets (if you don't know who your top target markets are, stop reading this and figure that out before all else).  Include in this list who they are and what types of people they are.  The most specific you are the better.  For example, "business people who work in the Twin Cities are" is not nearly specific enough.  "Business owners in the Twin Cities who feel like they are working too many hours and making too little money" is much better.
Send a one page or less description of these people over to your soon-to-be referral partner the day before you meet.  Not more because if you send it out a week before they won't consider it pertinent yet and will just overlook it.
Meet with them and start off by ensuring them that you only want to brainstorm with them and that you will NOT contact anyone that you discuss unless they specifically say that you should at the end of your conversation.  Proceed for 30-60 minutes accessing their different mental "file folders" of people.  Ask them "who do you know who....is a member of your Rotary group that fits this? Who do you know who goes to XYZ club and fits this description...." and so on.  The more specific you on this, the more people they'll magically think of.
After you go through this you should have a list of 10-30 names.  Now comes the fun part.  Tell them to rank their names on a scale of 1-10 on how well they'd fit you as a referral, 10 being the best fit.  Then start with the ones and ask, "why is Jack not a 10?"  Regardless of the answer, make a dramatic line through Jack's name and say something like "No matter, we'll take him off the list.  Next." and proceed until you're either about half way through the list or until your partner says "OK OK, stop! The rest are really good!" (most of them will say this).  The reason is because they really do want to help you and don't want to waste their time.  The brilliant thing about this is that they now become an ADVOCATE for the fact that you should be talking with these people, and their tensions about you calling those they weren't sure about are gone!  Brilliant.
Next, ask them how they'd like to let these people know about you the following way: "OK____, would you like to contact these people in person, by mail, or by phone?" The reason for doing this is that most people would chose email if you offered it.  Don't offer it.  Emails are too easy to ignore.  Get them to call their referrals and JUST GET PERMISSION FOR YOU TO HAVE A VERY BRIEF PHONE CHAT WITH THEM.  That's all they have to do.  Coach them on how to talk to people about you.  But make it clear that all they need to do is get permission for you to call them.  Don't let them try to sell them on your services. (when you do call them, make sure you are faithful to this- try to convince them to schedule a time to talk with you within a short conversation).
Lastly, set a follow up day/time.  Agree on a day that's 3-7 days out for you to have a follow up conversation.  This is important to ensure your referral partner doesn't go back to their office and get busy and forget about it.  Be sure to follow up at the agreed upon time.
At this point you're at a very good place.  You've got a bunch of names to be referred to you and someone doing the referring who believes in you.  The rest is in your hands.
This is one way to create a PROACTIVE referral strategy.  This should be worked into the marketing process for most companies and professionals in my opinion.  I've personally used this and taught it to many people who have used it successfully.
If you'd like a copy of my step by step document that includes all the scripts for each step of this process, please email me and I will send you a copy, free of charge.  jonomalley@jccompanies.net or call 651-705-6625

Time Management Secrets of Millionaires

In my opinion there's nothing more important regarding being successful than how we decide to spend our time each and every day. So it's no surprise that there are millions of books in print and enormous numbers of bloggers, speakers, and other experts on the subject. That being said, it's also my belief that humans are GREAT at over-complicating most things in life, time management being no exception. So here's the simple process that I teach my business coaching clients (I am a business coach located near Minneapolis St Paul, MN), with great success.

First, know where you're going. Know your final destination. If you're a business owner, know where you're working to bring the company. Are you planning to eventually sell it? Or just build it for additional cash flow? Will you have more locations, offices, employees, etc.? And how about personally: what, specifically, will you do with the money you make (there's an old saying that you'll never make a dollar unless you have a plan for where that dollar will go). Why do you need to know these things for the purposes of time management? Good question. Your vision for the future is rarely discussed in the context of time management. But I've found time and again that it's the most important contributing factor to a person being disciplined around the time management process they create. In other words, if you're not clear on WHY you need to get more done in a day, you probably won't get more done in a day. And if you're self-employed, this spells doom because you can always get away with not being disciplined- the only one who suffers is you/your family. But nobody will fire you (other than perhaps your customers/clients!).

Secondly, get in the habit of creating a daily priorities list. Most people who do this already do it poorly. Psychologist have shown time and again that almost no one can accomplish more than about 6 priorities in a day. But most who make priority lists every day tend to create long lists. But ask yourself this question: on any given day, what are the most profitable/productive tasks on your list? Are they the ones that are "easier" or "harder"? More often than not they are the harder tasks. Now what if I ask: Which ones do you usually do first? Most people will admit that they tend to do the "quicker" tasks first and leave the ones that take more time (the most profitable/productive priorities) to do later in the day. The problem is, "later in the day" usually becomes tomorrow. And as we all know, "tomorrow never comes". This process repeats over and over again and in the mean time there are incredible opportunities and profits missed.

Third, once your "List of 6" priorities for the day is created, order them and work the order. As you work through the day, work on your list in the order you've set, and don't let yourself sneak to the easiest ones. Remember, you PRIORitize them so that you'll do the most profitable/productive ones PRIOR to the others. Stick to your plan.

Fourth: Review! Most people fail to improve themselves because they fail to examine on a regular basis the successes and failures. Take time daily to asses your discipline that day. Just a minute or two. This practice will do more for your productivity than almost any other. I recommend purchasing a modestly expensive journal to write your thoughts in as most people will then be more likely to actually utilize it. The key here is to keep it short so it doesn't become a nuisance.

If you make the commitment to follow these simple steps, I assure you that you will find yourself accomplishing more and therefore experiencing more success in your endeavors.

Find Better Employees in Less Time

Finding great employees can be one of most annoying and daunting aspects of owning a business. Ever get that terrible pain in your stomach when a key employee informs you that he/she is quitting? IT DOES NOT NEED TO BE THAT WAY. There are a few, simple steps you can take to make sure that finding great employees is fast and easy (the key word here is 'great' because it's always easy to find anemployee. Here is how to free yourself from this fear (I've trained many of my clients to use this process to successfully hire new, great employees in less than 4 hours!):

1. Create a voice mail account with either a local number or an 800 number. You can use Google Voice (free) or go to www.onebox.com for a monthly subscription (around $15/month). In the greeting on the voice mail box, introduce your business and the position, then ask three questions such as these: "Tell us about your past experience", "Why do you think you're right for this job?" and "Give us a few of your strengths and weaknesses". Remember, especially if this person will be in contact with your customers, they need to be a decent speaker. If they can't speak well on the phone, they won't be able to speak well in person either.

2. Direct your advertising to this voice mail box. Craigslist.org is one of the best places employers are finding employees right now. It's also free in most market places. To get best results, post your ad or ads every 2 days at least. Do not include an email address or phone number to your business. Direct them to your voice mail number. Also, don't list your business name. You'd be amazed at how many people will not follow your instructions and will just call you or email you their resume.

3. Check the voice mails when convenient for you. Those who sound like good candidates, take their contact info down. Those who don't sound interesting... delete (compare this to having to get an email and read through a resume. Takes a minimum of several minutes. You'll see that many times you can figure out that you're not interested in some candidates within the first minute. Time saved).

4. Instead of inviting those who are interesting to individual interviews, set a date, time, and location for a group interview. That's right. Get all the interesting sounding candidates to gather together in one room. Put together a list of 5-10 questions (the bigger the group the less questions you'll get through) and go around the group listening to their answers and taking notes. If you can bring along a trusted employee, colleague, or Business Coach, it helps to collaborate and evaluate them. This will take around 90 minutes. If you have 15 candidates, you just spent 90 minutes interviewing them! Usually that would take 10-15 hours!

5. Invite those who stood out in the group interview to do a 30 minute individual interview. Be sure to ask tough questions! You don't want to be overly polite when you only have a couple hours with a person who you may have to live with for 8 or so hours a day for the next several years. Ask the tough questions now so you don't wish you'd asked them later.

6. Take the best 2 candidates for a "Test Drive". Invite them into your office for a half day or a day and tell them to work just how they would work if you hired them. This works differently for all types of positions and is totally impossible for some that require immense amounts of training, but for those that it works for it is very telling of who that person really is and what they know/don't know.

7. Make your offer to the best candidate ONLY if there is a candidate that really stood out to you. Hiring someone is far too important to chose someone just because there was nobody better available. If you need to, start the process all over. It was cost far less time, money, effort, and mental energy than if you hire the wrong person the first time.

And if you'd like more help on the details of each of these steps, just call or email me. I'd be happy to help you find a GREAT employee. 651-705-6625 jonomalley@jccompanies.net

Save America By Becoming Rich

The first line of the great book The Richest Man of Babylon says

"Our prosperity as a nation depends upon the personal financial prosperity of each of us as individuals."

We, as individuals, are failing our country. American families are swimming in personal debt. Our savings levels have decreased year after year (until the Great Recession where they trended up for a short while, and are apparently already trending back down again as we leave the Recession). If our well being as a nation is dependent upon us individually, then I'd like to make a plea to all individuals: Help save our nation by becoming wealthy! My idea of "wealthy" is relative here. For some people, just getting their personal financial state to being debt free with nothing yet invested would be great improvement. For others, to go from consistently spending 100% of their monthly earnings to saving/investing 10% each month would be an enormous gain. For others, perhaps learning more about how to invest, safely, to build what they do have. Here are some practical and achievable steps to improve your personal financial situation:

1. Get out of debt

As of late people in America have been fooled into thinking that debt is ok, and some even think it's good. This is a bad thing for us individually as well as for our country. Right now our economy is far too dependent upon "consumer spending". What this means is that unless people keep spending within our country, our economy could slow. The reason this is bad is because we as a country need to sell more to people outside our country so that we're not just dependent upon using each other's money to keep things going. The reason for this is because every year we have a trade deficit, more money goes out than comes in. It's only a matter of time before far too much money is gone out of our country. Right now this is being subsidized by our borrowing habits. We just keep borrowing more and more money so it FEELS like it's not bad, because there's still plenty of money to go around. This cannot continue forever. And the answer to this problem is innovation. We need to create more products and services that can be sold outside the US. This will only happen when Americans feel the pain of stopping the House of Cards economy by starting to save aggressively- and then out of necessity will come innovation. Americans will never just go without. We've always been hard working and innovative. But with this idiotic mentality that borrowing money is a good thing has come some laziness (why go through the pain and hard work of innovating when you can just borrow more money?). We need to get back to innovation and hard work.

2. Save 10% of all your earnings

Once you're out of debt. Decide that never again will you ever spend 100% of your earnings. This sounds simple, but it requires serious determination by those who have not developed the habit. Because our desires will always out pace our earnings, it will be hard to learn the habit of not spending all of what you make. This leads me to

3. Create and Use a Monthly Budget

This is critical for all families. No matter how much or how little you make, it is necessary to budget how much money will be allocated to different areas of life each month. I believe almost nobody will save 10% of their earnings unless they utilize a budget that is frequently revisited (monthly at least). If you don't like the word "budget", use "monthly cash flow plan".

4. Once out of Debt, Invest

Once you're no longer in debt and you've saved enough for an emergency fund (should be 3-6 months of your monthly earnings), then start investing your money. In The Richest Man of Babylon, George Clason refers to invested money (gold pieces in Babylon) as "golden slaves, each laboring and earning more gold". Have your money produce more money by taking advantage of investing opportunities.

5. Build Enough for Retirement

Everyone is different in what they're looking for in retirement. Some want to retire with more money than they had in their working years, others are willing to live more modestly. Either way, it's far more prudent to ensure your social security in old age than to be dependent upon a government that is apparently in a state of drunken love with deficits and borrowing, with little care for the future other than individual re-elections. Be sure you'll have enough. I personally know too many elderly people right now who are desperate because they have no money and social security is nowhere enough to support them. It is one of the saddest things I've witnessed in my life. Secure your own future. Invest aggressively and say no to the daily temptations we're all faced with. Those things that you purchase today will quickly fade. Your savings and investments will reward you far longer and they will also multiply.

6. Give Aggressively

I believe that those who give more liberally now will also receive more now. I've worked hard to give as much as I can while still preparing, saving, and investing for the future. God has blessed me greatly along the way. I strongly advocate giving 10-15% of what is earned back to those around us who are in need. I also believe that by doing better financially that I will have far more to give in my older years. So give aggressively both now and when you do achieve greater financial freedom. God will reward you in ways unexpected.

What "Targeted Marketing" Really Is...and Is Not

First, it's vitally important to understand the meaning of "targeted marketing".  From my experience, most business owners who have learned about this still don't really understand it well enough.  When I talk about "targeted marketing" I mean marketing with a laser beam rather than a shot gun.  Imagine there is a shooting target with the red rings and the bullseye 50 feet away from you.  Some people would consider it "target marketing" to shoot at that target with a shot gun.  In other words, they understand that their target market is out there, and if they market in enough different places, they'll get in front of them.  But why not shoot at that target with a rifle and a laser focus?  With the shot gun you'll probably hit the bullseye with one or a couple of the shot gun's sprayed BBs.  But with the laser focused rifle you can hit the bullseye with the entire bullet and put a much bigger hole in the target.  By "rifle target marketing" I mean finding your target market in more condenced, smaller groups, and marketing to them again and again.  Here's an example: let's say Mr. Business has $1500 to spend on a marketing campaign.  He's in the Twin Cities which has a total population, with suburbs, of around 1.5 million people.  So Mr. Business has a choice to put out some marketing that will reach many of the 1.5 million people, or he could try to locate his target market in smaller groups and market to them several times.  For $1500 he can probably only market to a larger portion of the 1.5 million people once.  But if he finds his target audience in smaller groups, it's far less expensive to market to them and so he can do so multiple times for the $1500.  Let's say to have a successful campaign he needs 20 new customers from it.  Now, many times business owners look at this and say, "I only need 20, for $1500 I can get XYZ to about a million people.  I should get 20 customers from that many people." Well, let's go back to the gun target.  Imagine that the target represents the entire 1.5 million people.  Let's look at how much money we can spend per person for $1500: the average home has 3 people, so that would be 500,000 homes ($1500 divided by 500,000 homes).  So that would leave us about 3 tenths of one cent per home.  Now, let's imagine that we find our target audience in groupings totaling about 6,000 homes.  Now we can spend about 25 cents per home ($1500 divided by 6,000).  Which do you think will get better results?  The ladder will inevitably get better results almost every single time.  So, why do most business owners not do this?  A) I believe most still really think that "casting a wider net" is always better because they don't want to miss any prospects, and B) I think those that do understand it sometimes just don't go through the work of narrowing down who their target market or audience really is (it's actually usually fairly simple to do this, but that's for a later article).  

So, get out there and find your target audience in small groupings and save a lot of money and frustration by marketing to them with much better results.  During a recessing economy, nobody can afford to spend money on ineffective marketing.  This is THE BEST strategy to use to develop killer marketing campaigns without spending insane amounts of money.  

This brings me to my second principle: Now is not a time to experiment in marketing, unless you've never marketed before.  Businesses need to really focus on the basics right now regarding marketing.  Whatever has worked in the past, do more.  Whatever has performed poorly, dump it now.  Those that you're not sure about: start tracking with extraordinary diligence.  If you're at least breaking even on them, keep them (my opinion is that if you break even attaining a new client, it's a good campaign because of potential repeat business and referrals).  If not, dump them.  It's not a good time to experiment with new marketing ventures.  When cash is tight, you don't want to get burned on a new marketing campaign that fizzled.  Go back to all the marketing ads and basics that have always worked or worked in the past.  Also, review your marketing messages (particularly your headlines) and be sure to adjust them to an audience that is afraid to spend money.  

If you're a business owner and would like to learn more, call or email my office: 651-275-8999/ jonomalley@actioncoach.com

Don't Listen to Advertising Companies on "How to Advertise"

As the owner of several companies, I have noticed in the last couple of months a slew of invitations coming through my mail box and email box for seminars and workshops promising to teach me how to market during a recession.  The odd thing is that most of these are being put on by advertising companies.  It would make sense to me if the advertising companies would bring in a third party to present to us, but they typically aren't.  I just got an invitation from the St. Paul Pioneer Press to attend a workshop on advertising.  What do you think they'll be "promoting" during that seminar?  I doubt it will be on the effectiveness of television advertising.  Or direct mail. Or online.  They're going to preach the gospel of newspaper advertising and be very biased in the information that they offer.  That's a very good reason for me to avoid these seminars.  How about a seminar on marketing that is not offered by a marketing company.  Well, this is what I've been doing for months.  I am a Business Coach and I offer a seminar called "5 Steps to Bigger Profits: How to Leverage Your Marketing Dollars".  I have no tie-ins or kick backs from any marketing groups or companies.  I teach the business owners in the room how to do better marketing from an unbiased standpoint.  I believe in "Education Based Marketing".  If the people in the room get value from what I teach them, they request a meeting with me, and I will end up working with a certain number of them.  I throw that out there for any of you business owners who are receiving a plentitude of invitations from biased sources who are using seminars only as a sales tool rather than as an educational too.  Look for seminars and workshops that will offer unbiased information so that you get real, accurate marketing information and ideas.  

If you're a business owner and would like more information, call my office or email me: 651-275-8999/jonomalley@actioncoach.com

Three Most Important Ingredients to Dominate During a Recession

In this current business climate when our economy is apparently shrinking slightly, there are three things that will help you as a business owner weather this storm.  They are:

1. Keeping a healthy, postive mindset.  

Who is the most important person in any company?  Most people understand that the leader of any group is the most important figure to that organization.  And what is the one thing about that person that will most effect how successful he or she is?  Their mindset.  The most successful western entrepreneurs (Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Donald Trump, etc.) have unbreakable "can-do" mindsets.  They seem to never come up against a problem that can't be solved.  And they never ever fall into the pervasive trap of "going below the line", i.e. blaming others for their mistakes, making excuses for failures, or denying their role in something that was unsuccessful or mistaken.  They maintain positive attitudes even amongst times of challenge.  All of those listed above have endured a great number of trials and tribulations in growing their companies to success.  This is, in my opinion, the #1 and most important requirement of anyone seeking to be more successful than the average person.

2. Determining what the most productive use of their time will be.  

As entrepreneurs, it's very easy to get pulled in a thousand different directions on any given day.  We have all sorts of outside influences that, if allowed, can determine exactly where we spend our time each day if we allow them.  The problem is this: I use an analogy with my clients that every business is like a large sail boat.  The sail boat has a large sail on it.  The business owner is the captain.  The wind is any outside influence on the ship.  Now, if the captain is running around the ship and nobody is steering the ship, it will go wherever the wind blows it.  This is how many business owners operate on a daily/weekly/monthly basis without knowing it.  How they spend their time on a daily basis is often determined by outside forces (the wind), like: telephone calls, emails, employee questions and problems, customers calling, etc.  Obviously these things are all important to be dealt with, but how they are dealt with is often the problem.  How many times have you finished working a full day and thought, "What did I actually accomplish today?"  This question comes as a result of spending time on non-productive or low productive activities.  It's like letting the wind determine where the ship goes.  And when the wind is determining where the ship goes, it's most certainly not going to arrive at the desired location.  As entreprenuers we MUST decide what the most productive use of our time will be today, and then, come hell or high water, get those things done.  

3. Discipline.  

This is, in my opinion, the most common differentiator between successful and unsuccessful businesses and people.  In a study of CEOs who have grown $100 million plus companies, the final conclusion was that DISCIPLINE was the one most common golden thread running between those who were able to achieve the $100 million mark.  And when taking into consideration numbers 1 and 2 above, they both take great discipline to do consistantly.  This is why many companies, when searching for new hires, often seek runners and ex-military as employees.  They know that to be a runner takes a great deal of discipline and that, generally speaking, ex-military personel are more disciplined than the average person.  And discplined people produce greater results than people who lack discipline.  The problem is that discipline is something so fundamental that there is only one way to attain it: through practicing it.  In other words, if you want to get disciplined, be disciplined.  It's a choice more than anything else.  But in business, especially in a shaky econonmy, this will no longer be optional for most business owners.  What entrepreneurs got away with doing or not doing during good economic times, they will not get away with during worsening times.  They'll have to decide to start doing what they know they should be doing (making prospecting calls, learning how to effectively market a company, wake up earlier, plan their schedules, etc.) if they plan to be around when things pick up again.  The good news: those who do will be far better, have more market share, more systematic and efficient companies, and will make a lot more money when the economy picks back up again.  And that should be motivation for any business owner to make the decision to be more disciplined starting today...

If you're a business owner and would like to learn more, call my office or email me today: 651-275-8999/jonomalley@actioncoach.com