Do you know what your priorities are?

OK, I admit - at the beginning of last week, I had 87 tasks on my to-do list. These mainly consisted of tasks that I wanted to get out of the way before Christmas. But with only 2 weeks to go before we 'break up' for 2 weeks, I finally had to be realistic with myself and realise that much as I'd like to, I wasn't going to get everything finished.

So, in order to be clearer with myself, I asked the question of "what are my priorities?" between now and the 18th December? And the answer was "finishing off the website."

Once I'd focused, I cleared my to-do list and on it are only items involved with finishing off the website. Because I now know what my priorities are, it's meant that I'm much more likely to get this finished instead of trying to do everything.

So in the last two weeks before Christmas, do you know what your priorities are for your business? This isn't your to-do list, this is asking yourself what the big things are that you want to get finished and out of the way. Once you know, you'll be much more focused and can work on finishing off these tasks.

Use Christmas to promote your business

It’s getting close to that time of year again – when everyone starts to talk about the ‘C’ word and looks forward to their two week break. Before you look forward too much to your break though, I want you to stop for a minute and just think about promoting over the Christmas period.

It’s actually a great time to promote – after all, you were probably planning to send people a Christmas Card anyway, weren’t you? We might as well kill two birds with one stone.

Let’s have a look at some of the ways you could promote your business over this festive time.

1. Send out vouchers
My first suggestion is to send out vouchers with your Christmas Cards – what have you got to lose? If you can make it relevant to a product or service that people have to take advantage of before the New Year, you’ll also get people acting now rather than forgetting about it when January comes.

2. Thank your current customers
Christmas is always the time of year when we tell our customers how much we appreciate them, so they’ll be expecting this anyway. Why not think about doing something a bit different for them? Perhaps invite them for a few drinks or visit them in person to say thank you.

3. Have a Christmassy offer
People need a reason to act before Christmas – otherwise they’ll just leave things until the New Year. Last year, we produced a CD on marketing that we told people about over December. This worked great because it was a low cost offer (they just had to pay for P&P) and it was something many people wanted to listen to over the Christmas period. What could you do?

4. The ‘Money Mountain’
Several radio stations do a ‘Money Mountain’ in early December, which is about raising money to help good causes. You can donate a product or service and in return you will get free publicity on the radio for an hour or so on the day of the auction. How great is that? Get involved – you might be surprised at the result.

5. Do you have plans for a January sale?
Everyone likes to feel that they’re getting a bargain when they buy something. Are you planning to have a sale for your customers? It could also be a big incentive for those who’ve been thinking about buying your products or services to do something about it.

6. Put in place a marketing plan for next year
While you’ve got a bit of breathing space between Christmas and the New Year, why not put a marketing plan for 2010 in place? A bit of thinking time is often just what’s needed to decide on your goals for next year and how you’re going to accomplish them.

7. Remember to be realistic
While you have all the best intentions to get more business over the Christmas period, remember that everyone is going to be starting to wind down between now and the beginning of January so if you run a service business and are expecting loads of customers, think again. Don’t be too discouraged about it though – use the time wisely to give yourself a kick start for the New Year.

Exceptional Thinking (http://www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk) provides help and advice to small businesses on their marketing and to people starting up in business.

Can't be bothered moments...

This morning I had a "can't be bothered moment". It probably resulted from having cold all week and not sleeping properly, but all I wanted to do was go home and go back to bed. Knowing I couldn't really do that (it doesn't really set a good example to my team), I procrasinated for a couple of hours and then (just before I wrote this post), I gave myself a good talking to and decided to get on with completing just 5 things.

While some would argue that I shouldn't have pushed myself at that point and had the afternoon off, my argument is that none of us can really afford to do that. We all have deadlines, things that need to be done, planned and completed before we can have a break.

It's not like I don't have anything to do and for the most part I'm pretty excited about doing them. And if I don't, who will?

So, next time you have a "can't be bothered moment", give yourself a shake and make yourself get on with just a few tasks. Believe me (I'm currently on task 3 of 5), I feel loads better already and when I've done the 5, maybe I'll challenge myself to go for 10 tasks!

Looking After Yourself and Your Staff at Work

Wouldn’t it be great if our bodies could diagnose and fix themselves so we wouldn’t have to worry about going to the dentist, or visiting the doctor and you’d never fall foul of the usual round of cold and flu viruses that magically appear at this time of year?

Unfortunately, there isn’t yet a Matrix style programme that we can download into heads to sort out our health. And yet most of us, if we stopped to listen to our bodies and took some simple measures, could actually prevent a lot of the illnesses we have.

Ok so you’re rushing around trying to meet with clients, grabbing a quick lunch and preparing an important presentation, but a small amount of time spent on yourself and the welfare of your staff could pay dividends in the future. It’s one of those investments that we should make but often don’t to our cost.

Healthy Environment
Providing a healthy environment for you and your staff is vital to help reduce accidents and keeping people safe. It everyone’s responsibility to ensure not only that their working area is tidy but that their equipment is up to scratch. It’s also good to check they are sitting in the correct positions and are following the correct guidelines when using equipment. However, as their boss, it’s up to you to make sure they are aware of their responsibilities and that all new staff are given adequate guidelines and the appropriate training.

Reduce Stress
A tense environment can quickly escalate causing staff to burn out and is one of the main factors why people fall ill. They may even end up leaving if this pattern keeps repeating itself, and in extreme cases this can result in staff taking their employer to court. Using humour in the workplace can foster wellness, improve stress management and increase productivity and morale. Also ensuring you and your staff take regular breaks and use up their holidays on a regular basis will not only minimise the build up of stress but also help avoid the glut of holidays that workaholics always seem to find themselves with before the year end.

Staff Training
Providing training gives your staff the tools to help grow your business. After all, you’ve spent time and money choosing good staff so why wouldn’t you invest the time to train them? It’s not just about providing your staff with training on a regular basis but also coaching and mentoring them. Your input is vital in guiding your staff through tough times and gives them direction. They also need to know why they are being asked to do something and are much more likely to do a better job if they understand its importance

Recognise and Praise Achievements
When was the last time you gave your staff a pat on the back, or thanked them properly for their efforts? If you don’t praise them at least once a day then you’re not praising them enough. Everybody likes to be praised for a doing a good job and its important to ensure you do this on the same day. It makes staff feel valued and keeps them motivated. It’s the easiest thing to do and a simple courtesy costs nothing but is worth everything.

Rewards and Benefits
Bonuses schemes are always popular with staff as they recognise their achievements. However, they don’t always have to be monetary. Giving away mini rewards such as gift certificates or taking your staff out to lunch can make a big difference. Just as importantly though are the types of benefits your company can offer staff. These can also go a long way in making your staff feel valued whilst promoting loyalty and a ‘feel-good’ factor. Many companies offer benefits to their staff but one of the most important are health schemes. They let your staff know you are concerned about their wellbeing, particularly if they offer costs towards routine dental and optical treatment, eye tests and prescription charges or even in-patient and day patient care.

That’s why Exceptional Thinking recommends health policies such as Wellness cover from WPA http://www.wpa.org.uk/keithiliffe/. From as little as £15.00 each your staff can be covered for dental and optical, eye tests, prescription charges, hospital in-patient and day-patient allowances, specialist or second opinion, post hospital recovery bonus, allowance for attending A&E, physiotherapy, Health Screening, Maternity and Paternity and even a confidential stress counselling service.

Exceptional Thinking http://www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk/ provides help and advice to small business owners on their marketing and to people setting up in business.

Changes are afoot...

There's been lots of changes happening at Exceptional Thinking recently and I feel very much like Willy Wonka keeping everything secret so that everything can be revealed at the same time.
But, gradually things are coming together and this is what will be happening in the New Year:

• We will be launching our brand new website. It's getting close to the point of completion now and we'll be looking to test it shortly. By the way, if you'd like to be one of the testers and get a sneak preview, please email me on helen.dowling@exceptionalthinking.co.uk
• We will also be launching a new members area where members will have much more help with their marketing from us without paying a fortune. They will get access to calls, action plans, marketing audits and 1-2-1 meetings with me to name but a few things. Very excited about this - watch this space!
• We'll also be doing more workshops, more telecalls, and lots more working with people individually to help them get the most out of their marketing.

We've recently taken on Nicky Benton to help us out in addition to Trudi Hayden and I hope by the end of 2010, we'll have another person on board too.

So, there's lots of changes afoot for the year ahead and I'm really excited about sharing the new changes with you. Keep checking back for more...

Focus on educating your customers

When customers are not buying, it’s very easy to take it personally, think the whole world’s against you and get very demotivated with the whole thing. And then of course, that makes the situation even worse – because customers can sense a mile off if you’re not happy and even though you desperately want more customers, they don’t want to work with you.

So, what do you do to break out of this circle? Well, an easy way (and often a better way) to think about your marketing is to focus instead on educating your customers. That means, rather than trying to convince them to buy, all you want to do instead is pass on useful tips and information to help people.

The impact of this can be dramatic. Firstly, you start to perceive yourself in a different way. The emphasis is no longer on getting people to buy - you’re now an educator, a teacher in your subject. If you think of yourself in this way, you’ll find that you no longer worry if people don’t buy from you immediately. At least, if nothing else, you’ve been helpful to someone.

The second impact is that the world of marketing suddenly opens its door to you. If you focus on educating your customers, there are a multitude of ways in which you can do this, from writing articles to giving speeches and seminars. These methods will help you to reach more potential customers who will also all perceive you as being an expert in your field – can’t be bad!

Thirdly, customers receive a taster from you of what you can do. If you’re giving a seminar for instance, potential customers get to meet you and get to understand what you can do in a way they wouldn’t otherwise experience. Compare this method for instance to cold calling, where potential customers only get a call explaining what you do and no education at all.

Focusing on educating your customers takes all the pressure off for you and is (in my humble opinion) a far nicer way to do marketing. We have had some tremendous successes from employing this method in my business and clients of ours have received great results too.

But can every business focus on education rather than selling? For instance a customer of mine told me the other day that their business was different – their customers wouldn’t want any education; they either needed the service or they didn’t.

My answer was rubbish – every business can use the focus of education to market their business. No matter what product or service you supply, people always want useful information and tips to help them make a decision.

After all, isn’t that how we buy? Many of us go to the web these days and search for information on a particular product or service before we make a decision to purchase. And if you’re the one providing this useful information for free, who are they more likely to buy from?

Education is a great way to market your business and if you want 50 free ways to promote your business containing many ways to educate your customers, just send me an email – details in the profile.

Exceptional Thinking (http://www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk) provides help and advice to small business owners on their marketing and to people starting up in business. For a copy of our 50 free ways to promote your business, just email me on helen.dowling@exceptionalthinking.co.uk

It's your business...

At a meeting earlier today I asked a client why she was doing things in a certain way. She replied that she had to do things like that. I went deeper and asked her why to which she didn't really have an answer.

It's a pretty hard thing to get your head around but when you run a business, it's your business - no one elses and you say what goes. When you run your own business, you really do start each day with a blank piece of paper and it's up to you how you fill it.

Yes, there may be consequences if you don't do things, but make sure before you agree to any task or put any job down on your to-do list that you're 100% happy with it. If you're not, all that will happen is that it will stay on your to-do list and not get done. You'll put it off week after week until eventually it doesn't have to be done anymore.

Remember, it's your business. You say how it's run and what's ok and what's not. That means if you want to go out for a walk at 2pm in the afternoon, you can and if you don't want to take on a particular client you don't have to.

After all, that's why you started this business isn't it? To have freedom and enjoy life. Make sure you do!

How to do business effectively while on the move

I don’t know about you, but there have been days when I’ve been out and about and not been near the office once. On days like this, it’s difficult to get any work done let alone any marketing.

So, what can you do? Here are my top tips to do business effectively when you’re on the move.

1) Plan in advance – how often have you had to rush because you needed petrol and didn’t get it before? Or, had to get up early to print out materials that you needed for the day? Yes – me too! But, if you plan in advance and do these things before the day you know you’re going to be out, you’ll find your life is much smoother.

2) Use Technology – there are so many things out there now to help us organise our lives better, so why not use them? Blackberrys and IPhones are fantastic for managing your emails and Notebooks are great for travelling with – they’re so much lighter than laptops and are often free if you sign up for mobile broadband. I got a new Notebook recently for just £20 a month!

3) Use a call minding company – manage any phone calls you receive while you’re out and about by using a call answering service. They will answer your calls in your company name and will send any messages to your emails or by text to you. People far appreciate speaking to a human being rather than an answering machine, making you look more professional too. We use Professional Call Minders who are fantastic.

4) Scale down your workload - much as we’d like to get everything done if you’re out working, your time will be limited. Recognise this and scale back your workload accordingly – sounds obvious, but we very often don’t do this leaving us feeling stressed because we haven’t done as much as we would like.

5) Outsource tasks – if outsourcing tasks is an option for you, it is definitely something that’s worth doing to help you manage work while you’re out of the office. If you can outsource to a company or an individual, you’ll have confidence that the work is being done even if you’re not there to do it.

6) Set up systems – ultimately if you can set up systems in your business meaning that marketing and work get done while you’re not there. This can of course, include outsourcing tasks. A simple example of a system is to use a programme that sends people who visit your website emails to help you build a relationship with them. Start by looking at everything you do in your business and see if you can set up a system to streamline things. You will speed up your tasks and eventually your business will operate efficiently even if you’re not there.

While it’s hard to manage everything when you’re out of the office, setting up system and using the tools that are available to manage things will help you to feel less stressed and make sure things still get done.

Exceptional Thinking (http://www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk) provides help and advice to small businesses on their marketing and to people setting up in business.

Do people read?

You know I keep bleating on about why you have to keep repeating your message, not just tell people what it is once - well the reason for this is because people DON'T read.



Let me give you an example - I've just run a free call on Using Articles to Promote your Business. I sent out several emails to the people who were registered and in those and the promotional material put that if they couldn't make the call, not to worry as it would be available as a recording after the call.



And yet, I've lost count of the number of emails I've received telling me that people couldn't make the call and would a recording be available!



If you want people to pay attention to things you need to keep repeating your message, explain things in a different order and highlight different areas just so you hopefully catch the eye of whoever is reading your info. It has to literally hit them in the face otherwise people will just ignore it.



I think next time I do a call, I will put this bit in the subject header - made a mental note!

Just what is an autoresponder?

The word ‘Autoresponders’ has been used more and more over the last few months and pretty much all of us have now experienced them even if you don’t yet realise it.

But just what is an autoresponder and why should you think about using one in your business?

Well, let me explain.

The simplest form of an autoresponder is when you send a message to someone and you immediately receive an email back that tells you that person is out of office. This email will have been sent automatically (no human response was required) and it will have responded to you – hence the name autoresponder.

You will have also probably seen an autoresponder if you’ve purchased products off of a website. Take Amazon for example or Ebay. If you’ve purchased something from Amazon or made a bid on Ebay, the chances are high that you will have immediately received an email from the company confirming your purchase or your bid.

And you may have seen autoresponders at work if you’ve subscribed to a newsletter from a website. In most cases now, you will have immediately receive an email from the company concerned welcoming you to the website with a copy of the newsletter.

Now, trust me when I say that a human is not sitting there at all times of the day or night responding to messages that come in from a website or order confirmations – these emails are sent automatically from you by a computer programme that has been specifically written for this purpose.

But, why should you care? What has this got to do with your business?

Now (hopefully) you’ve got your head around what an autoresponder is, I want you just to think for a minute about the power of autoresponders and how they can help your business.

Imagine that while you’re on holiday, a potential customer visits your website. On your website, you have a mechanism to allow someone to subscribe to receive some top tips about your product or service. The potential customer is interested in what you do and then signs up to receive these.

These tips are sent to the customer automatically while you’re relaxing on your holiday. Over the next few days, the customer receives more tips and helpful information all while you’re soaking up the sun on the beach. By the time you come back, the customer has been so impressed with all the free information that they’ve been receiving that they’ve placed an order for your products or services.

Now ok, there is a bit of work required here – you’ll need to write the tips and useful information in advance and put them into a series of emails that the customer receives over the next few days or weeks. But, once you’ve done that, a potential customer will receive this series of emails over time from you even while you’re asleep.

And it will happen with every new customer without you even thinking about it. You’ll be perceived as being helpful and useful and you’ll be building a relationship with your potential customer while massively reducing the time you take on this activity.

You can even set up a series of emails so that everytime a customer purchases a product or service from you, they get emails automatically to encourage them to purchase more from you.

I’m only giving you a brief introduction to autoresponders here, but the power of them for building a relationship with your customers and reducing the amount of time you spend doing your marketing is immense.

So, where do you go to get an autoresponder? Well, there are a number of packages already out there including Constant Contact, 1ShoppingCart and theautoresponder to mention but a few. Have a look at them and see whether they are for you.

But for now, just consider the benefits that autoresponders could make to your business – if you understand that, you can definitely take your business to the next level – automatically!

Exceptional Thinking (http://www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk) provides help and advice to small businesses on their marketing and to people starting up in business.

What are you running a business for?

Last week, I was sent an article (thank you to the person who sent this to me by the way) which was on the subject of "What are you running a business for?" - in other words if you're putting in all this hard work and can't go off and enjoy yourself occasionally, what's the point?

Reading through the article made me realise that what I'd written on my earlier blogs over the last couple of weeks might have been misconstrued. You see, I'm actually very clear on what I'm running a business for and what I want to get out of it.

Up until fairly recently, what I wanted to do was get the business to a point where it was established and to where it could start to run without me necessarily being there. We've now done that and the next phase is to put structures in place to support it over the next 5-10 years so that the business grows; we can provide service and quality to more people and so that the business is not reliant on me.

As we enter this new phase, it's presenting its own challenges and I am being tested and I'm writing about my experiences because a) we are all human and b) I hope my experiences will be useful to others going through the same situation.

But, I haven't lost sight of why I'm running the business or what I want out of it for me personally or what the end goal for the business is - although it may seem like it at times. Knowing why you're doing things and what you're running a business for is a vital question - but to take time off and go out for lunch etc occasionally is often not the prime reason for everyone. Without a doubt for me, it's much more than that!

Is it a good idea to have some time off from your business?

Yesterday, I went out to lunch - which was lovely by the way and I really enjoyed it. That's the second time in three weeks that I've done this, but it's unusual for me and I think I've only done this twice since the business started.

Yes, sure I've gone out for business lunches and met clients etc, but going out for lunch for pleasure during work hours is completely alien to me.

What's worse is I didn't do any work when I came back either (shock, horror)!

And do you know what - I didn't feel any guilt at all. I've worked incredibly hard this year and have decided it's now high time to start treating myself. Not every day, but every couple of weeks or so - especially when I've worked hard.

I read an article recently about taking time off to recover BEFORE you start on a major project and maybe the author was right - I feel much better this morning and ready to get cracking.

It's easy to feel guilty about taking time off when you're supposed to be working, but if you deserve it, don't! I guarantee it will make you feel better and more motivated and you'll want to do more work as a result.

Tell me what questions you want answered...

Thanks for signing up for our free call on "Using articles to promote your business" - if you haven't signed up yet, you can do so by going to: http://www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk/articlecall.htm

For you to get the most out of this call, I'll be trying to answer as many of your questions about writing articles to promote your business as I can.

If you'd like to ask a question, just leave a comment on this blog and I'll make sure I cover it during the call. Don't worry, you can stay anonymous if you like - just indicate this in your comment below.

Thanks and I look forward to you joining me on the call on Tuesday 3rd November between 2pm and 3pm GMT.

Have you taken action on your marketing yet?

I had an interesting conversation with someone the other day about our newsletters. He said he received them and I asked him whether he found them useful. He said he did, but mentioned that 70% of what I included, he already knew.

Good point, I thought – but often it’s not about what you already know is it? There’s very few new things in this world, so the chances are fairly high that you’re going to come across what I cover somewhere else.

The point really is this – even though you heard my messages before or come across them somewhere else, have you actually done anything about it? Have you taken any action on your marketing?

Now, I know we’re all busy; I know we’ve all got things we need to do and get on with, but if you don’t take action on your marketing and put into place some of what I talk about, you’re missing a massive opportunity for your business.

I’m not exaggerating when I use the word ‘massive’ here. If you’re getting business and you’re doing little or no marketing, just imagine what could happen if you actually did some marketing?

There are usually three things that stop small businesses doing any marketing – I thought I’d cover them in this article and then (hopefully) you’ll have no excuse and you’ll have to get on with it.

Reason number 1 is the fear of being too busy. People really talk themselves into this one. If they got tons of new customers from doing some marketing, how would they cope with the extra workload?

I can understand this fear to some extent. After all, you may not want to take on anyone else and you may not want to get that big in your business.

But, let’s also be realistic here. The chances of you being snowed under with work after doing some marketing are very remote. If you did some marketing today, it would take between 2-3 months to actually see the results of that marketing. You would also be able to see business increasing and then choose to scale down your marketing accordingly.

When people give me this reason for not doing marketing, I always tell them that we should get them to the point of being too busy first and then we’ll worry about it. Getting too busy will take a lot longer than you think and doing a bit more marketing than you’re doing already is unlikely to get you to the point where you need to employ someone else – it is likely just to even out the peaks and the troughs, which is probably not a bad thing.

Reason number 2 is not knowing what to do. When you first start in business, most of us try the traditional marketing methods of advertising, cold calling, direct mail or leaflet drops and networking. If these don’t work as well as we want them too, it’s very difficult to know what to do next.

If you’re not sure what to do next to market your business, most of us fall back to relying on word of mouth and referrals in order to get business.

What if I told you that there are over 100 different methods to get business, most of which cost nothing at all to do? If you’d like to see 50 ideas to promote your business, just drop me an email – details at the bottom.

Reason number 3 is just not having any time to do marketing. This reason is an accumulation of the first two reasons – in that, because people don’t know what to do and they’re worried about getting too busy, marketing doesn’t look very attractive to them.

Consequently many small business owners find lots of other things to do before they get on with doing any marketing. And as I said earlier in this article, if you’ve got customers with little or no marketing, you probably do have lots of other things to do too.

With this reason, I would suggest a couple of solutions. The first is to get yourself a marketing coach who will work with you to keep you motivated on marketing. I’m putting together a new membership group launching in 2010 called The Marketing Gym to address this very problem – more about this shortly.

The other solution is to get a company to do your marketing for you – again I’m very happy to have a chat about this – just give us a call.

The simple fact is that even though you know that you should be doing all of these things I talk about, it’s hard to actually get motivated to do them. The first two reasons for not taking action are relatively easy to sort out, but if you really haven’t got the time to concentrate on marketing, drop us a line. That way, your marketing will get done, leaving you time to do what your best at – running your business.

Exceptional Thinking (http://www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk) provides help and advice to small business owners on their marketing and to people setting up in business. If you’d like a free copy of our 50 ways to promote your business, just email us on helen.dowling@exceptionalthinking.co.uk

Learning to let go

Last week was a tough week emotionally. For the first time, I had a real appreciation of why, when larger companies are asked to participate and give money to charities and organisations, they say "no" more often than not. It's because they don't have the time, energy or money to participate in everything.

Sadly though, the charities and organisations that are asking very often don't understand and get angry with the response given back to them.

I realised how these companies feel because last week I had to face the same situation. My natural tendency is to get involved in things and say "yes" to voluntary activities. This was fine when the business was young and getting involved helped me to get known and to get established.

But, we're not in the same situation anymore. The business is growing up, meaning that we haven't got as much time as we once did. It's more important now more than ever to stay focused on where we want to be and what we need to do to get there, rather than being distracted by things that take us away from this.

As a consequence, I'm slowly learning that we have to say "no" to more things, be firmer and not let people take advantage, but this is tough for someone who's been used to being helpful and getting involved.

Last week, I had to deal with 5 situations that really tested my resolve and because I'm still learning to say "no" I didn't handle the situation as well as I could have. It was tough emotionally and the team and I felt a bit demotivated.

So, time to move on this week - let go of the past and move the business forward. Be firm and don't agree to things that take my focus away from this. I'll let you know how I get on.

How to use articles to promote your business

Have you ever longed for people to knock on your door wanting to do business with you? Um – doesn’t often happen does it?

Actually that’s not quite true. There is a way to get people knocking at your door, but it doesn’t just happen by itself. You need to influence this. And how you do that is to build relationships with people so that they perceive you as an expert and know, like and trust your approach.

That sounds so easy doesn’t it? Well, I know it’s not. One of the best ways to help people to perceive you in this way though is to write articles.

Articles are great for loads of things. They’re great for building your reputation as an expert in your field and they have the added advantage that once you’ve written one article, you can then use it in tons of places.

Some ideas of where you can use your articles include in your newsletter, in other people’s newsletter, post them on-line to build your presence on the internet and on social networks, send them to the press, include them in a book, put them on your blog, send them out to your clients and contacts as useful information or you could swap your article in exchange for people’s contact details on your website.

Just in the last few months, articles that I’ve written have been included in three books (two are still being published, but one is on the bookshelves as we speak), got me several clients and I’ve also been ask to speak in several places too. How much free publicity is that?

I’m not telling you this to boast – I’m telling you this so that you can realise that writing articles is a powerful marketing tool that can really help you pitch yourself as an expert in your field. After all, do you think your clients would rather work with an expert? Yes, of course they would!

I’m constantly amazed though how many things put small businesses off from writing articles – from what to write about to where to put the article when it’s finished. And I’ve often heard people saying that an article takes them weeks and weeks to write and as a result, they’re put off from writing any more as it’s too time consuming.

The message I want to give out with this article is this. Articles are great – they can be fantastic for promoting your business, giving you the status of an expert and you can use them time and time again in different places. But you need to keep writing articles. You can’t just write one article and be done with it – you need to keep writing them and getting them out there.

So, because people seem to find articles really hard to do, I thought I’d talk to you about them on a call happening on Tuesday 3rd November between 2pm and 3pm GMT. You can get all the details by going to www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk/articlecall.htm It’s a free call and on it, I’ll be breaking down everything to do with writing an article including:

· What to write about
· Who to write the article for
· How to come up with a great title that people want to read
· Where to use your articles
· How to get started with writing an article
· Keeping motivated so that you keep writing
· How to get an article written and completely finished in ½ an hour
· Getting business from writing articles

If you’d like to join me, just register for this call by clicking on www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk/articlecall.htm. As soon as you register you’ll receive all the call details and I’ll remind you again shortly before the call too. Don’t worry if you can’t make the date or the time either – if you register for the call, I’ll give you access to the recording afterwards.

Make sure you don’t miss out on this call – register by clicking on www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk/articlecall.htm

Exceptional Thinking (http://www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk) provides help and advice to small business owners on their marketing and to people just setting up in business.

Talking till I'm blue in the face

Ahhh! How many times do I have to repeat myself?

I have talked before about BUILDING a relationship with people before you ask them for something and yet I have two requests in the last two weeks that want me to just do things for people even though I don't know them, trust them or know anything about them.

Both of these requests have been to speak on our workshops. Fact is, it takes a lot of time and effort to get bums on seats for these - why should I let someone come along and take advantage of that and speak on it when we've done all the hard work? Oh and did I mention these people want to be paid for speaking as well!!

As you can see, I'm pretty passionate about this subject.

Please, please, please remember that most small business owners have NO time, are VERY busy and if you want something out of them, you really need to think about what's in it for them. Why should they do something that benefits only you?

These business owners could have said:

• Would you like to run a workshop together - we can both jointly market it to our lists?
• I'm happy to come and speak for free
• In return for me speaking at your event, I'd like to invite you to come and speak at mine

And so on...

Then, I might have been more willing to consider this. But, until the day comes that some small businesses actually think about more than themselves, I guess I'm just going to be posting furious posts about this subject.

Anyone else experienced this?

Should you advertise?

Advertising is one of those things that just about every small business owner considers at some point. After all, that’s how big companies promote their businesses, right? So, shouldn’t you be doing it as well?

Well, while advertising has its place in promotion, it has a number of drawbacks which means it’s often not the best method for small business owners. Let’s have a look at some of these.

Firstly, advertising is great for generating awareness of your business. It tells everyone who you are and what you do and people will notice you and realise that you’re around. However, while it’s great for building awareness, it’s not too good at getting customers. Only 1-2% of people seeing, listening or watching adverts actually buy directly from the advert.

Secondly, advertising needs to be repeated often in order for it to stand any chance of being effective. You need to be repeating it at least three times: let’s face it you might see the advert and mean to do something about it, but not get around to it. And if you need to repeat it, this can become effective.

Which brings me to my third point, advertising is a pretty expensive way of doing marketing – the average cost of an advert in your local paper (and I’m talking about a small advert here) is around £150+VAT. If you need to repeat your ad at least three times, that’s £450+VAT before you even start. And if you do radio or television advertising, the costs can end up being astronomical.

With all these drawbacks, my preference isn’t to advertise, but to concentrate on free or low-cost methods of marketing that have the same impact. After all, if advertising is better for awareness than getting customers, believe me there are at least 50 different ways I can think of, just off the top of my head that will create the same result, but cost nothing to do.

Having said that, there are some good deals around at the moment if you negotiate and are not afraid of walking away if you can’t reach the price you’re prepared to pay. And there are quite a few places where it’s very cheap to advertise and might well be worth exploring. For instance, church magazines tend to be very cheap to do as do adverts in post offices or supermarkets.

Advertising in the yellow pages is also free and is a must for all small businesses – remember yellow pages is where people go if they know your name but can’t remember your contact details. Don’t be tempted to pay for an advert until you know it works. If you get business from a free advert, you’ll definitely get business from a paid advert in there. Test it first.

If you’d like a copy of my 50 free ways to promote your business which is now a 14 page factsheet, please feel free to contact me on helen.dowling@exceptionalthinking.co.uk

Exceptional Thinking (http://www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk) provides help and advice for small business owners on their marketing and to people setting up in business.

How easy it is to make silly mistakes

I had an email from a client this week entitled "Your phones aren't working". He'd tried to call us and found it went through to some completely random person we'd never heard of.

Turns out that it was completely our fault and we'd just diverted the phones wrongly instead of to our call minding company who answer the phones for us when we can't.

But it got me thinking about how easy it is to make silly mistakes. And while the above mistake wasn't serious and it was corrected easily, it does have an impact on how people perceive us.

Now I know mistakes will happen in the future and I think that's just one of those things we'll have to accept, there are procedures and systems we can put in place to minimise mistakes happening. For instance, I can put the number to our call minding company on the wall next to my desk so that I can refer it to as I'm typing it into the phone. I can also listen to the number as the automated voice reads it back to check I've done this correctly.

If you look at any business, there are probably loads of simple systems and procedures that can be put into place that minimise mistakes from happening, but also speed things up too. I can think of several I'm going to be implementing in ET over the next few months. What simple systems could you put into place in your business?

The importance of backing up

You know how businesses who provide computer services are always talking about the importance of backing up your documents? Well, this week I found out why.

I was working on a marketing tender to send into an organisation that was looking for a marketing company. I'd just reached page 54 because the organisation wanted your inside leg measurement when my computer crashed and I honestly thought for a second that I'd lost the lot.

Luckily my computer restored the document for me and I didn't lose my work, but this experience really did make me realise why those computer companies stress this as crucial. Imagine if it wasn't just that document, but our whole client files and our databases that went missing!

We do back up on a regular basis, but it's weekly rather than daily - backing up more often is definitely on my to-do list now!

Does Marketing Work?

I was at a networking event the other day, explaining to someone what we did. In response, I received a smile back and the comment “well, marketing doesn’t really work anyway does it?”

Interesting question! And I can completely understand why he said that. For a lot of small business owners, that’s exactly what they find – that marketing doesn’t work. The result is that many business owners feel frustrated with marketing and give up on the process, choosing to rely instead on referrals and word of mouth.

But actually the answer to the question “Does marketing work?” is yes, absolutely. In order to make it work for you though, it’s important to understand why marketing doesn’t work.

There are three main reasons why marketing doesn’t work for small businesses:

1. Whenever you do some marketing, it’s important to understand that not everything you do will get you business. What I mean by this is that most of the marketing methods you use will be great a making people aware of what you do and will also be good for building your reputation as an expert. However, there are very few marketing activities that are just good at getting you customers. There’s something else you need to do to accomplish this which I’ll come onto in a minute.

2. The second reason is that most business owners don’t follow up with people. They do a marketing activity just once and when they don’t get the results they’re looking for, they just drop that and move onto something else. Marketing though requires persistence and once you have contacted someone, you must follow-up in order to properly see results.

3. The final reason is just not doing marketing. Marketing can be very frustrating especially if you’re not seeing results. As a result, after a while, most small business owners just give up and rely on word of mouth and referrals so not doing marketing is another big reason why marketing doesn’t work.

So what do you do about these three reasons? Well, here’s how to make marketing work for you.

The first thing we need to do is turn marketing activities into customers. To do this, whatever marketing activity you choose, you MUST find a way to capture the contact details of people. The easiest way to do this is to offer them something that’s free and of value to them. If people give you their contact details, what they’re telling you is that they’re interested in what you do. It’s now up to you to find out how interested they are.

How we do this is to follow up with people. I’m not talking about hassling people here. I’m talking about building a relationship with them so that they feel comfortable buying from you. As they say, we do business with people that we know, like and trust, so the more people know you, the easier they will find it to work with you.

Once you understand this basic principle of marketing and find that it does work for you, hopefully you’ll be more motivated to do marketing. This is absolutely vital if you want to get business from your marketing. Especially in these turbulent times, it’s not enough to sit back and wait for business to knock on your door. You have to go out there and generate it.

So, marketing does work. You just have to know how to work the system to your advantage. Have a go and see if this difference works for you.

If you want a copy of 50 ways to promote your business for free, drop me a line to helen.dowling@exceptionalthinking.co.uk.

Exceptional Thinking (http://www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk) provides help and advice to small business owners on their marketing and to people starting up in business.

Trying out my first meeting by web cam today - excited about the new possibilities!

How to get people's contact details from your website: http://ping.fm/lCZL0

Who's stealing your time? http://ping.fm/jIAKN

Who's stealing your time?

I reached a shocking conclusion the other day - I can't do everything! (Yes I know. I bet you're as shocked as I am).

That means that I have to prioritise what I want or need to get done and then get around to the little things that don't really matter or don't have an impact on the business as and when.

But it also does mean that I have to be a lot firmer with my time and recognise when people are trying to steal it. Have a think about all the things you're involved in right now. All the things you volunteer for or are happy to do because you're a nice person. Well, I've had to be ruthless and ask the question "Can I justify this person/this activity using up my time?"

To be honest, it's not something that I like doing - I like getting involved in things and I like being helpful. But I also do recognise that if I want to take ET to the next level, I'm going to have to cut out this "helping" behaviour and say "no".

So, my question today is who or what is stealing your time? Are you happy to continue to let people or things steal your time and if not, what are you going to do to stop it happening?

It's definitely a very satisfying feeling when you get rid of all of your emails and you have a clear in-box!

Wow - lots of people want courses for cold-calling, social networking and networking events in-house at the moment. Can't complain.

Here's why I don't neccessarily agree with networking groups: http://ping.fm/6rAc4

Why I don't neccessarily agree with networking groups

Last week, I went to a well known networking group as a visitor. While I was there, the Chair of the group gave a speech about the fact that some people go to networking events purely as hunters. These are the people who email everyone afterwards, he said, just pushing their own services.

He then went onto explain why the networking group wasn't like that and then spent the next hour trying to sell the group.

Here's where I disagree. I'm a great believer in that if you just go to a networking event once and don't contact anyone afterwards, then very little business will come out of this as a result. You do need to follow up with people.

That's why these networking groups work - because you're seeing people every time the groups meet, you're effectively following up with everyone there on a continuous basis. However, you're not selling - you're just building a relationship with them. I'm not knocking this approach - it does work!

But, if the event you attend isn't a membership group or for some reason you don't want to join it, you also need to follow up with people, albeit in a different way. This though shouldn't be purely emailing people selling your own services. My approach is to follow up with people after the event to see whether they would like to have a 15 minute chat on the phone.

The aim of this is NOT to sell. The aim of this (like the networking events) is to build a RELATIONSHIP with people. My approach has worked for me and my clients for years and as far as I'm concerned there's nothing wrong with this.

So, yes if after a networking event all you do is contact people with the aim of SELLING your products and services, I completely agree with this Chairman that you're a hunter. However, if you contact people with the aim of building a RELATIONSHIP, perhaps the networking approach and my approach are exactly the same.

How do you get people to visit your website: http://ping.fm/f100B

M is for Marketing

If you’re just starting up in business, marketing is probably the most crucial element for you. Get this wrong and you don’t have a business. Get it right and you could take off like a rocket!

So what do you need to know? At this stage, there is no point in me telling you fancy and clever ways to do marketing (you’ll have your own ideas and know what’s best for you) – we’ll concentrate on the basics.

First, do your homework. Who are your target customers? Are they male or female? What age are they? If you’re appealing to companies – what size of company? Who do you need to talk to in there? The more stereotypical you can be about your customers, the easier you will find marketing.

Put your customers into boxes. If you have more than one box of customers, that’s fine as long as you recognise that you will need to market and promote to them differently.

You also need to get everything in place so that when you start marketing, you have things already available. This includes things like sorting out your prices, creating a website (if you feel you need one), having some literature in place, getting some business cards and so on.

The third stage is to think about where your customers might go to find your products and services. The easiest way for you to find new customers is to go where they go.

The most common ways for new start-ups to get business are:

1. Advertising
2. Mail shots or leaflet drops
3. Cold Calling
4. Networking

Feel free to give these methods a go, but don’t be afraid to experiment with your marketing and try new and innovative new methods too. I have a list of 50 free ways to promote your business and if you want a copy, please email me (details in the resource box).

When you first start marketing your business, you don’t know which methods are going to work for you and which ones won’t, so it’s important to try lots of different things and keep your costs as low as possible. It’s a lot easier to keep motivated if you’ve only spent £5 as opposed to one lady who spent over £10,000 on advertising with no results!

The most important thing is to actually do some marketing. The more you do, the more it’s likely to work for you. But if you don’t do any or just rely on others referring work over to you, there’s a good chance you’ll be struggling to get customers.

So go for it! Have a plan and put it into practice. Marketing is one of those things that you learn while you’re doing it and you’ll quickly grasp what’s going to work for you and what’s not. Don’t be afraid to experiment and don’t give up if your marketing isn’t working. Just because one marketing idea doesn’t work, another one might if you give it a chance.

Exceptional Thinking (http://www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk) provides help and advice on marketing your small business. They also help people start up in business too. For 50 ideas to promote your business, please email info@exceptionalthinking.co.uk

We have two new starters joining us over the next couple of weeks, so busy sorting out their training for the first few weeks.

Blog: When do you go against the grain? http://ping.fm/2hxcf

When do you go against the grain?

This week, I have the opportunity to interview two students under a scheme called Graduate Challenge. This means that I get a student for free for 4 months to complete a project. Yes, ok I'll have to buy a desk and a couple of other bits and pieces, but what a great opportunity for both ET and the student!

That's my thoughts anyway. I've always been a great believer in looking for other ways to do things based on the assumption that if plan A doesn't work, there's always another way.

But, you'd be amazed at the amount of people who disagree with me and think if you want something doing, you MUST pay for it and you MUST go down the traditional route. Talking to people with the 'you can't do that' attitude does tend to knock your confidence.

So, my question this week is when do you go against the grain? At what point do you say "I'm a bigger business now, I must go more down the traditional route?" Or, do you continue to be innovative and look for other ways to do things?

Very interested to hear your thoughts.

Out and about today with lots of meetings. But hopefully will get chance to do some work too inbetween.

Do people know what you do?

I was with a business contact of mine the other day and mentioned a project that we were working on for a client of ours. To my surprise he said to me, “I didn’t know you did that!”

That made me think. Just because YOU know what you do, does that mean other people do?

Remember, people will have probably seen you wearing different hats and may not necessarily associate you with EVERYTHING that you do.

That’s why it’s so important to just remind your contacts occasionally about what you’re doing. You may think that they know about the latest product or service that you’ve introduced recently, but how will they know unless you have taken the time and trouble to tell them?
The contact I was talking to knew that we did the marketing workshops and produced various products like the CD, but he didn’t realise that we also DO marketing for small businesses and can also do the marketing for them too. Here’s just an example of what we’ve done for our clients:

• Make calls to potential companies on behalf of your business or follow up by phone on a letter that you’ve sent out.
• Organise workshops and find attendees to come on your courses.
• Internet marketing to increase your presence on Google.
• Create and sent out email newsletters on a monthly basis.
• Email marketing campaigns.
• Create and send out press releases, tips sheets and articles to the press.
• Design adverts, leaflets, brochures and websites.
• And many, many more...

We’re happy to do just one of the activities mentioned above, but we can also implement a combination of marketing ideas too. And if there’s something you want that you don’t see, please don’t hesitate to ask.

For me, this conversation was an excellent reminder that all of us need to jog the memories of our contacts occasionally and tell them again what we do.

So, hopefully I’ve let YOU know what we do in more detail and reminded you – so, when will you be reminding your contacts?

Exceptional Thinking (http://www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk) helps small businesses with their marketing and new businesses to start up in business.

Blog post on the importance of planning: http://ping.fm/N5BXf

Have you planned your strategy yet?

Well, September is just around the corner. That means, if you start your financial year in April, 6 months have almost gone.

So, how are you doing on your plan this year? Is it time to dig out what you wrote down earlier in the year and give it an update?

September is always a good time to just check in with yourself and make sure you're still on track with everything. Perhaps some of the ideas you came up with are no longer valid and you need to change your plans.

Whatever the situation, it's time to gear up again after your August break, so dig out your plans, update them if necessary so that you're all set and ready to go come September.

Just sent my newsletter on the biggest marketing mistake people make: http://ping.fm/jWA0k

8 things to do with an article

If you’re going to take the time and trouble to write an article, I’m a big believer that you should try to re-use it as many times as you possibly can. Apart from the reason you’ve written it in the first place, which presumably one of the reasons is to help your build your credibility as an expert, here are eight other things you can do once you’ve completed your article:

1. Put it into your blog
Blogs or on-line diaries are a great place for you to express your opinion or publish views and news. You can set one up for free using Blogger or Wordpress and then once you’ve got one, you’ll be able to copy and paste your article in here to help you build your credibility throughout the internet.

2. Publish it on-line
If you type “free article websites” into Google, you’ll come up with thousands of sites where you can publish your article for free. Not only does this help build your credibility on the internet, but if you include a link back to your site, it will help bring new visitors to your website.

3. Use it in your newsletter
If you have a newsletter, you can use the article you’ve written in there to save you having to come up with something new.

4. Send it out as tips to your contacts
If you don’t have a newsletter, you could just use the article to send to your contacts. Giving your contacts free tips and items of value is a great way to build a relationship with them and convince them that they might want to work with you in the future.

5. Use your article in other people’s newsletters
I’m sure you’ve got several contacts that already publish a newsletter. Why not ask them if they’d be willing to use your article in their newsletter? Not only does it save them a job (they don’t have to think of something to write that week), it also strengthens your relationship and gives you an opportunity to work together.

6. Record your article
Once you’ve written your article, you could record it onto an audio recording and give it or sell it as a CD, send it out to your contacts or even send it into to your local radio station to see if they want to work with you in the future.

7. Publish it in a magazine or a newspaper
Once you’ve written an article, why not send it out to magazines and newspapers that your customers are likely to read. Many are looking for good quality articles that they can just use in their publication.

8. Write a book
Once you’ve written a few articles, all you need to do is edit and format them and you’ve got your first book!

Whatever you choose to do with your article, it’s such a shame if you spend a lot of time writing and putting it together to use it just the once. Make sure you use your article as much as possible and you’ll be well on your way to establishing yourself as an expert in your field.

Exceptional Thinking (http://www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk) helps small businesses with their marketing and new businesses to start up in business.

If you could name just one marketing method…what would it be?

Small business owners often ask me if I could pick just one marketing method what would it be. Well, don’t worry I’m not going to say to you that it depends on your target market or on what you do. I really do have just one marketing method that I would pick above all others. Do you want to know what it is?

This marketing method is following up with people.

Surprised? Did you expect me to say cold calling or leaflet dropping or something else?

The reason that I’ve picked this marketing method above anything else is because no matter what you do, if you don’t follow up it won’t result in business.

Let’s imagine you go to a networking event. You pick up business cards and maybe the attendee list. And then you get back to your desk and you’re selective about who you contact so you only touch base with one or two people. How do you know that the ones you haven’t followed up with aren’t the ones that could give you business?

Another example could be if you’ve been talking to someone about doing some business with you. You’ve sent them a proposal and spoken to them a couple of times after you’ve sent it over. But, they haven’t come back to you and it’s gone a bit quiet. If you don’t follow up with them now, you’re missing a massive opportunity to get more business.

The same could be said if you’ve just done some cold calling and the person you needed to speak to wasn’t there. If you don’t keep chasing them and following up, you’re likely to miss out on some massive profits.

Following up is THE one thing that small business owners don’t like doing that could really pay off if you make it one of your daily jobs. You need to be following up with:

· Past contacts and customers
· Current contacts and customers
· Potential future contacts and customers

In fact, this marketing activity is so vital that it’s my number one marketing activity if I was going to give you one and only one thing you could do.

I ran a workshop on following up with people back in January and I’ve put all the tips and techniques onto a CD along with all of our other workshops. If you want to grab your copy for just a nominal fee to cover packing and posting, you can by visiting http://www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk/CD2.htm

Exceptional Thinking (http://www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk) provides help and advice on marketing for small business owners and to people starting out in business.

Can other people tell what we're thinking?

Last night, I was reading an article about whether other people are better at telling us what we're thinking than we are ourselves. I'm a firm believer that other people can absolutely pick up on how we're feeling.

Have you ever been to a networking event and not been feeling your best? Do you find yourself surrounded by other people or do they naturally stay away from you? If it's the latter, other people may be picking up on your vibes and stay away from you even if you're trying your hardest to hide how you're really feeling.

This also means that if you're desperate for business and are feeling quite depressed about things, others will pick up on this and stay away from you when you want them to do the opposite.

If you want to attract rather than repel people, you need to be giving out the message that you want people to come and speak to you and to do this, you need to really believe it. So, try thinking positively for the next couple of days and see what difference it makes!

Simple and quick tips to get clients fast

August is traditionally a time when things go quiet for a lot of businesses as potential customers get back into the swing of things. When you need customers fast though, knowing that is no help at all. So, here’s my top simple and quick ways to get customers fast.

1. Talk to your past clients
Have you kept in touch with your past clients? Maybe they’re looking for your products and services right now. Drop them a line (either by phone, email or post) just to see how they’re getting on. When you’re looking for customers fast, your past clients are often a great source of leads.

2. Analyse what’s worked in the past
Write down a list of your current and past customers and next to each name, write down where this customer came from. Be specific – if it was a networking event, which one; if it was a referral – who sent it to you? Analysing your marketing in this way should give you a very clear idea of which marketing methods are working for you and which are not. Then you can go out and do more of the methods that are working for you.

3. Offer your customers something special in return for referrals
I’m sure in your business, you’ve had at least one referral in the past and when you need customers fast, referrals are a great quick source. Approach your current customers and past ones and offer them something in return for a referral – it could be a free e-book with quick tips; a bottle of wine; discounts of your future products and services. Try it, you might be surprised.

4. Go where your customers go
If you’re stuck for marketing ideas and want to find customers fast, one of the best ways is to look at your customers and have a think about where they would naturally congregate i.e. it might be at conferences; at the gym; on Facebook etc. Wherever it is, make sure you’re in these places too – you’ll meet your target customers very quickly and then you can start talking to them about what you do.

5. Give away free samples
Free samples, demonstrations, reports, tips sheets, e-books, audio recordings and so on are a fantastic way to build credibility quickly and allow your potential customers to experience your services. This way, they’re more likely to trust you and your company and feel that you can help them.

6. Go through your ‘potentials’ list
Most businesses have a list of potential customers that were interested in their products or services, but didn’t buy at the time. Dig those out and go through them all. While the vast majority may not buy, some will still have been thinking about using you and may well be in a position to buy.

7. Do some marketing
Finally, don’t sit there moaning and groaning that you haven’t got any customers. Get out there and do some marketing. Go to networking events, write some articles, call some people – it doesn’t matter what the marketing is; what matters is doing something and the more you do, the better you will feel and the more impact you will have.

Marketing does take a while to have an impact so if you want some customers, do some marketing today.

Exceptional Thinking (http://www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk) provides help and advice to small businesses on marketing and to people who are thinking about setting up in business.

Burning the candle at both ends

In an effort to have more of a work-life balance recently, my husband and I set some boundaries. We would only work 8-5.30pm, have weekends off and go out with friends more for socialising.

So, a heavy weekend and 5 late nights socialising with friends later, I've decided that burning the candle at both ends probably isn't the best thing to do in the world. It's all very well having a life, but there's the thing about the balance that I seem to be missing.

I've decided that waking up with a headache and not feeling your best is definitely not the way to a great working day and neither is all work and no play.

How do we get that balance then?

Well, it's certainly not about going from one extreme to the other. Maybe it's about both work and life in moderation. I'll be practising the balancing in the future then.

Do you enter business awards?

It’s business awards season again – the time when just about every company out there launches an award. Do you enter them? If you don’t, here’s why you should.

Firstly, if nothing else, business awards are fantastic for teaching you how to write about your business in a positive way. If you’re planning to ever write tenders, you’ll know how important this skill is. Also, because you only have a small amount of space available to write why you should be considered for the award, you’ll need to be able to write about your business in a very succinct way.

And then, once you’ve entered the award, if you are declared a finalist and if you’re lucky enough to win, the PR opportunities can be enormous. I know one of my contacts didn’t have to do any promotion at all, the year she won a massive business award.

Having said that, small businesses in particular don’t often enter business awards because “we’re too small and we won’t win anyway.” My answer to this is how do you know? If every small business felt like that, we wouldn’t stand a chance out there when compared to the big companies.

So, come on – as long as the business award is free or very low cost to enter, why not? Here’s some of the business awards out there right now (please note, if you’re holding a business award and your award isn’t on the list, please don’t be offended – it’s simply that I didn’t know about you).

Social Enterprise Awards - http://www.socialenterpriseawards.org.uk/pages/socialenterpriseawards.html - closing date 28th September 2009

iAwards - http://www.iawards.org.uk/ - closing date 16th September 2009

Essence of the Entrepreneur - http://www.essenceoftheentrepreneur.co.uk/2009/intro/ - closing date 31st August 2009

O2 X Awards - http://o2-business.com/Business/ - closing date 1st August 2009

Remote workers Awards - http://www.remoteemployment.com/awards2.aspx - closing date 31st July 2009

Midlands Business Awards - http://www.midlandsbusinessawards.com/businessawards2009.html - closing date 31st August 2009

Everywoman Business Awards - http://www.everywoman.com/everywomanAwards/TheNatWesteverywomanAwards/ - closing date 31st July 2009

If you want to enter though, be quick. Some of the awards expire very shortly. But please remember to enter them. If you don’t enter, you can’t win and winning will be fantastic for your business…

Exceptional Thinking (http://www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk) provides help and advice for small businesses on their marketing and to people starting up in business.

When is the right time to change suppliers?

When you're running a small business, you will inevitability have suppliers that provide products or services to you. From website designers to accountants to banks, several companies will be providing you with a service.

But sometimes, the supplier you're with isn't performing up to scratch and now (with the economy like it is) you may be considering changing them. So, the question you need to ask yourself is should you stick with the devil you know or change to someone else who could provide you with a better service?

If you're considering changing suppliers, the first thing you should do before you change them is talk/email your existing supplier and tell them what you're not happy with. You'll be amazed how often they'll be prepared to bend over backwards to accommodate your request. A recent supplier of ours cut their prices in half when we asked about it. But you won't know unless you ask.

If talking doesn't work, then you'll need to start shopping around. Always ask for a trial with a new supplier. That way, it gives you a chance to try them out while still sticking with your existing supplier. If you don't like the new supplier, you haven't lost out by dropping your old supplier.

Be specific about the service and product that you're expecting from the new supplier and make sure it's written down. That way, if there's problems, you've got something to refer to.

Trial periods and being specific should help to cut down on any problems with new suppliers, but remember talking to your existing provider can work wonders too.

Why you need to make sure you know what you're doing

This morning, I did a teleconference with a marketing person - the aim being to give this away as a free recording to my contacts.

I'd done a bit of research and had come up with a site called No Cost Conference - www.nocostconference.co.uk which looks liked it was the ideal site for me. Ok, the controls didn't exactly seem to be intuitive, but once I'd found my way around I thought I knew what I was doing.

So, Kim (the marketing person) and I did the call at 10.30am this morning. It went great, sounded great and I was really looking forward to downloading my recording of it.

I went back into the control panel after the call and to my horror, discovered that it wasn't there. Actually, what I needed to do (which they hadn't pointed out) is press the record button on the control panel - I assumed that this would happen automatically.

Nightmare! We're now going to have to the call again, which is a great shame as both of us have just wasted an hour doing something which didn't record.

Now do I wish I'd check to make sure I knew what I was doing and how it worked before I started the conference. Yep! Don't think I'll make that mistake again!

How to get business from social networking

Social networking a.k.a. the likes of Twitter, Facebook, Ecademy, LinkedIn and so on have become the new marketing buzzwords. Everyone is interested in finding out about them and knowing how to use them to get business in through the door.

So, if you’re interested and want to use them in your business, where should you start? Here’s my top ten tips:

1) Don’t expect to see clients immediately. Social networking is a long term strategy. It’s about relationship building. The more people see you adding information and content to online networking sites, the more people will get to know you and want to do business with you.

2) New social networking sites are springing up all the time, so don’t expect to keep up with all of them. Choose 3-4 to keep on top of and work on these. That means setting up your profile and regular posting on there so that people can get to know you.

3) Write a generic profile of your business and about you on Word and then use it on all of the social networking sites you’re going to try out. That way, if you get invited to start using another one, your profile is already written.

4) Link your social networking sites as much as possible. By that I mean, use sites like www.ping.fm to help you manage all of your sites. That way, you can post on one site i.e. Twitter and have the content automatically sent to all of the other social networking sites you’re using.

5) Write as much content as you can. Put your articles on there, give your opinion or views on topics and write down tips. You can write absolutely anything on social networking sites, so get creative.

6) Write as often as you can. It’s no good setting everything up and then ignoring it. For social networking to work for you people have to get to know you and that means you need to write as often as you can i.e. at least once a day.

7) Use tools like www.tweetlater.com to set up posts in advance. That way, even if you can’t physically post something, packages like this will do it for you.

8) Remember to find out about other people. It’s not just all about you. Contact some of the people that request you add them as friends and find out about them. The more you build that relationship, the more likely it is that people will want to do business with you.

9) Very often on social networking sites, groups of like-minded individuals and businesses have been set up. That means it’s easy to find all the people interested in what you do. Join these groups and start participating. You never know what could happen.

10) Finally, please be careful out there. Remember that anyone can write anything on the web, so although you may be genuine, the person you’re communicating with may not be. Take extra care when doing business on the internet.

Because all this is hard work, complicated and very, very new to the marketing world, I’ve just created a free factsheet on social networking. If you’d like a copy, please email me on helen.dowling@exceptionalthinking.co.uk or follow my twitter posts at http://twitter.com/helen350

Exceptional Thinking (http://www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk) provides help and advice to small business owners on their marketing and to people setting up in business.

The consequences of not doing things

This morning, I decided not to attend a networking event that I was booked onto. Why? Well, three reasons really. The first was the pile of stuff sitting on my desk looking at me and the second and probably more honest reason is that my hubby is in China at the moment with work and I hadn't spoken to him for 3 days. Because of the time difference, the only opportunity that I have to speak to him would have been when I was at the networking event. Oh and the third reason was the 1 hour travelling time either side.

So, I decided not to go.

But, not going to places has consequences. There could have been a contact there who really needed what we do. The speaker could have been excellent and given me lots of ideas to help develop the business and of course, I have missed the opportunity to spread the awareness around about ET and what we do.

Weighing up the two sides of the argument, it begs an interesting question - when do you say that you're not doing to go to that networking event in favour of other work?

I guess that depends on you and your business, but at the moment, in the current economic climate, I think that probably I made the wrong call this morning. Surely, now more than ever it's important to get your message out there and take advantage of all the opportunities that come along.

Lesson learnt!

The easiest way of doing a difficult task

We’ve all heard the saying that the best way to eat an elephant is a piece at a time. And we’ve probably all been told that if we’ve got a task to do that is difficult, we should break it down into small chunks.

But, have you ever tried it – I mean really tried it?

I’ve known this principle for a while, but I haven’t really tried breaking a task right down until very recently.

Sometimes on my to-do list though, there’s a task that I really, really don’t want to do. Even if it won’t take very long, if I don’t want to do it, it will literally sit there for days and days. And sometimes, even weeks!

I know when it’s a difficult task too because it feels like hard work and I’d rather do ANYTHING instead of that task.

Over the last couple of days though, I’ve found a possible way around that – to break the task down and keep breaking it down until it feels manageable. Let me give you an example. I’m making some calls at the moment for a company – only 10 of them, but they feel like really hard work.

So instead of putting “Do calls for x” on my to-do list, I’ve put “Do call 1 for x”, “Do call 2 for x”, “Do call 3 for x” and so on and really been specific about what the task is.

What’s great about this is that when I’ve done one call, I can tick it off my to-do list instead of having to wait until I’ve done all of them. It’s a lot more motivating I can tell you. And you know what – all the calls are done now too!

So, if you’re stuck on a task, try really breaking it down until the point where it doesn’t feel like hard work and then get on with it. Even if you do the task one bite at a time, I promise you’ll eat the whole elephant.

I've got a business idea - what's next?

One question I get asked a lot goes something like “I’ve got an idea for a business. I need to get finance from the bank, buy stationery and equipment and do some research. I’m not sure how to plan everything that I need to do.”

Do you feel like this? Do you have a business idea and so much to do to get it up and running, that you feel overwhelmed and don’t know where to start?

If so, you’re not alone. Thousands of new business owners feel like this and that’s why it’s vital to put down on paper what you need to do. Here’s how:

Take a big piece of paper and then write down everything that comes into your head that you’ll need to do to set up your business. Don’t worry if it sounds silly – just get it down. You might want to carry this piece of paper round with you for a couple of days just in case you think of anything else you need to do.

Once you’ve got down the vast majority of all the things you’ll need to do, now is the time to start organising them. The first thing to do is group them. For example, anything to do with finance, group them all together (you could do this using a highlighter pen or writing them in groups on a separate sheet of paper); anything to do with getting a loan, group this too. Keep grouping the categories until you have five or six main headings to do.

With grouping, what you’re trying to do is firstly realise that a lot of the tasks you need to do are related and can be done together and secondly reduce the number of things you need to do into five or six areas. As such, if when you do this exercise, you find that some things don’t quite fit into a category, that’s fine – feel free to break them out into another heading.

When you’ve got your groups, take a good long look at them. Is there a logical order in which they need to be done? For example, if you need to get a loan from the bank, you have to write a business plan first before you can do that and research and cashflow things need to go into your business plan.

Are there things that can be done together? I don’t mean literally – but are there things which are not dependent on something else happening first. For instance, could you write a business plan at the same time as you go on a business start-up course?

Your task now is to prioritise your categories and give them an order in which to be done. Here’s my task list:

1) Write a business plan. Do market research and create cashflow.
2) Research banks (could be done while doing the business plan)
3) Go to the bank to talk to them about getting a loan.
4) Once I’ve got a loan, buy equipment and create website
5) Start marketing the business to get my first customer

Bear in mind, what’s on your list might be different to mine. Don’t worry about that – every business is different. The important thing is to get a concrete list of 5 or 6 things to do. Your initial notes will have broken down the detail of what needs to be done in each category.

Finally, once you have a list of things to do – go do them. Only you can make this happen, so go out there and make a difference. Good luck.

Exceptional Thinking (http://www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk) provides advice and help for people setting up in business and for small businesses on their marketing.

Not everything is an invitation

I beretted myself this morning for sending out the newsletter with the words of "I'm running the Race for Life shortly and I'm dreading it."

Or rather I was fine with putting that out until I got three responses from lifecoaches telling me how they could help me with that. Then I thought "Ah...I wasn't expecting that response."

Fact is, I was exaggerating a little. Firstly to get sympathy; secondly to get sponsorshop - by the way if you want to sponsor me (please please) you can at: http://www.justgiving.com/helendowling and finally to have something to write as an introduction to the newsletter.

My comment though was not an invitation to pitch services to me - on the one hand, I suppose they deserve a well done for taking advantage of the opportunity. On the other, it's more work for me having to explain why I'm not looking for their services.

I know everyone is looking for new business at the moment, but remember if you do marketing in other ways, people will have heard about you and will be approaching YOU rather than the other way round.

A better response, may have been to send me an article that you've written (or quickly put together) on this subject with some handy tips about what to do about it. I'm much more likely to consider you then if I'm in the market for your services.

So, think carefully about how you could respond to this type of comment - there may well be a better way than just pitching your services directly.

What can the Apprentice teach us?

So, were you, like me gripped to the Apprentice final on Sunday night? I don’t know about you, but I was routing for Kate who I thought developed the best product and executed better than Yasmina. Why then, did Yasmina emerge as the ultimate winner?

Well, having given this some thought, I think Yasmina displayed some of the traits that we can all learn from when we run our businesses.

Firstly, she didn’t give up. Her chocolates ended up not tasting how she had hoped, but still she persevered and carried on through regardless. She explained this in the Boardroom by saying that her team only had 30 minutes with the chocolatier and she would have spent a week with them if she was doing this properly.

Also, even when she realised that her idea of selling chocolate to men wouldn’t work, she didn’t fall over and refuse to continue – she simply picked herself up, tweaked the idea and got on with it.

Secondly, she got on with things that pushed her comfort zone. Yasmina hated giving presentations to other people and yet, she stood up there and gave it her all. Yes, ok it wasn’t the best presentation in the world, yet she still gave it and got on with the task at hand despite not looking forward to it.

Thirdly, she showed her passion to want to succeed. She had already achieved by creating a successful restaurant, but she showed how much she really wanted to win which shone through in the final.

Also, she understood her target market, really doing her research and then pitching her prices at £5 rather than Kate’s over the top £13!

Finally, she understood her costings and was able to explain how she’d got to these and what profit the manufacturer would make from the sales. When Kate was asked the same question, she brushed over the answer and didn’t make it clear.

So, what skills have we got there?

Perseverance, tenacity, commitment to learning and growing, knowing your market, having a real passion to succeed and understanding your costs.

Although Kate developed a good product, that’s only half of the story and Yasmina displayed the skills necessary to win the Apprentice and be an excellent business woman in the process.

And these sound like skills that could be really useful in business, especially at this turbulent time – do you agree?

Exceptional Thinking (http://www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk) provides help and advice for small business owners on their marketing and to people starting up in business.

The key to staying positive

As small business owners, one thing that tends to happen is that we get to know ourselves very well. We know what stresses us out; what makes us end the day on a high and we learn what makes us stay positive or results in us feeling down.

The key for me staying positive (and it may well work for you too) is this. Whenever I feel down, it's usually because I haven't set some goals to achieve - I know that if I've got goals in place that motivate me and make me want to get up in a morning, I'm more likely to stay positive.

And if I can see that I've got an action plan in place to achieve these goals, that's going to make me feel motivated for longer too.

So, how are you feeling at the moment? If you're not feeling great, why not try setting yourself some goals that get you excited again? Set up an action plan to get cracking on them and see whether you feel any differently.

Why I decided not to vote in the local/European elections yesterday

I didn't vote in the elections yesterday, which is highly unusual for me. In the past, I've always voted reasoning that if you're given the right to vote, you really should have your say.

But yesterday, I decided to abstain from my right and not vote. Why? Well quite frankly, if small business owners had behaved the way that MPs have in the past few weeks with their expenses, I think most of us would have gone to jail.

All of them seem to be as bad as each other at the moment and it makes me very angry that the very people who set the rules and instruct small businesses to pay tax, national insurance, P.A.Y.E and VAT, which the vast majority of us do on time without question, have themselves abused the system.

So, had there been a box on the voting form that says "I do not wish to vote" I would have ticked this, but as there was not, I consciously decided not to vote on this occasion. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

If you don't know, don't guess...

At a networking event this morning, an old business contact came up to me and said "that's really interesting. I was just thinking about HR advisors as I was driving here and now you've turned up so you should be flattered."

I assured him that I was very flattered, but that I didn't actually do HR! Whoops.

I then had to remind him that we did marketing for small businesses and he ended up feeling embarrassed; I ended up feeling embarrassed and he took me to one side afterwards and apologised. I bet that was a great start to his day at 7am this morning.

The moral of this story is that is you don't know who someone is or what someone does, don't guess. Either make polite noises and then look them up when you get back to the office or ask them. If you guess, I'm pretty willing to bed that your guess will be wrong and then you'll be embarrassed as both my contact and I were this morning.

This encounter was memorable for all the wrong reasons! Don't let it happen to you.

There's a new breed out there

Is it just me, or does there seem to be a new breed of people out there – I’m noticing them when I’m driving around. Several times over the last few months, I’ve had people crossing the road when my car is coming quickly towards them.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I certainly have no desire to knock these people over, but they don’t seem to have any regard of other people – only themselves. Have you seen them too?

So, why am I mentoring this new group of people?

Well, these reckless people who only seem to think about themselves seem to be spilling out into the business world too.

You see, over the last six months or so, a new breed of customers has been emerging – these are more demanding; want more for less; take advantage and more importantly they know how to play the game.

And if you don’t know how to deal with these new customers in your business, you’re in trouble. Here’s why.

In 2009, as a small business owner, chances are your instinct is to grab a new customer everytime one comes along. Nothing wrong with this you might think. But these days instead of taking on the right customers, we’re tending to take on everyone no matter who they are, what they want or what they want to pay.

We’re doing this because we have an underlying fear that we might not get customers in the future – “we’d better get them now” – we think. Even if they want loads from us and don’t want to pay for it, they’re still a customer and we should grab them with both hands.

The thing is this new breed of customers know that! They know that you want them no matter what – and they know that they can make unreasonable demands and you’ll say ok.

I was talking to a contact yesterday who told me he’d taken on a nightmare customer who he would have stayed well clear of if things in the economy were ok. And I have people recently who’ve received my free tips and then wanted us to do the actual service for free as well.

So what do you do?

Well, the solution to this one is confidence. Confidence that things in the economy are not as bad as the press are making out. Right now, you need to be strong and recognise that not everyone is a customer for you. If the economy was ok, would you take on this type of customer? Probably not.

Don’t let fear make you panic. There will be other customers.

But what do you do if you either have no choice but to take on this sort of customer or if you’ve taken them on already?

Well, even if you do take on these customers, be strong and don’t let yourself be pushed around. It’s the easiest thing in the world to think that you have to put up with difficult customers because you might lose them.

Not true!

Set some expectations for yourself – decide what is ok for your customers to do and what’s not. Don’t be afraid to push back – tell your customers for instance, that you would be happy to meet their demands…BUT…the price will be going up if they want you to do that.

Don’t worry – you won’t lose them, but I’m willing to bet, they won’t be so confident to demand as much in the future! Remember, we’re very good at being reasonable to our customers, but are you being reasonable to yourself and your business?

Exceptional Thinking provides help and support to small businesses on their marketing and to people starting up in business. For free marketing tips and ideas, please visit http://www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk and sign up to our newsletter.

Why you have to repeat your message

Yesterday, I received an email from a contact of mine. He referred to a promotion I'd been running and asked why I was not keeping the promotion going if it was working so well.

From his email, he'd completely missed the fact that I'd actually been running the promotion for the last two weeks and had reached the deadline I had told everyone about. As such, I needed to end the promotion for that reason.

It made me realise that although we're always told people have to see a message 7-10 times before they register it, this is sooo true.

On hindsight, I should have referred to the promotion in the latest email and said that the deadline had passed and it was ending - because my contact had only noticed this email, it appeared out of context and didn't make sense to him.

So, yes you absolutely need to repeat your message and keep repeating it, but I also learnt a valuable lesson in that I need to refer to the relevant promotion in each communication. It may be the 5th message from me, but it may have only just caught someone's eye and they need to know what I'm talking about too.