As a business coach I always try to stress that your business should not be your end all.  It should be the vehicle to help you get what you really want out of life.  Your life shouldn’t be your business.  Your business should get you more out of life.

Here are what I believe to be are the 7 keys to improving ourselves and achieving the quality life we want and deserve.

1. Quality of Results – To increase our quality of life we need to get better results.  That’s easier said than done.  How do we increase the quality of our results?
2. Quality of Actions – By increasing the quality of our action we will improve the quality of results.  So how, you might ask?
3. Quality of Decisions – To increase the quality of our actions we need to make better decisions.  The next key will help us to increase the quality of our decisions.
4. Quality of Questions – The better the questions, the better the decisions you will make.  One of the key ways that I help my clients as a business coach is by asking the difficult questions and coaching my clients to start asking themselves those difficult questions. 
5. Quality of Beliefs & Dreams – You can’t ask better questions if you don’t know what you don’t know.  When you have strong beliefs and big dreams you begin to start asking better questions because you need to know why.  You’ll start asking yourself what is keeping me from achieving that success.  But how can someone build better and bigger dreams and stronger belief system?
6. Quality of Education – By increasing our quality of education, always trying to learn more, our beliefs will get stronger and our dreams will get bigger.
7. Quality of Mentor/Teacher – We have to first admit that we don’t know everything.  Today we have the ability to access many mentors and teachers not necessarily personally but through their workshops, books, CD’s, DVD’s, etc.

One person I consider to be my mentor but have never actually met is Jim Rohn.  He just recently passed away and will be missed by many. He said two things that have always stuck with me, “You have to work harder on yourself than you do on your job” and “Don’t wish that your life was easier, wish that you were better”.

If we strive to have a mentor who can teach us and mentor us to look at the world and ourselves from a new light, we will increase the quality of our education which will lead to higher quality beliefs and dreams, which will allow us to ask better questions to make better decisions, which will allow us to take better actions which will lead to achieving better results and thus increase your quality of life.

Steve Goranson
Certified ActionCOACH
stevegoranson@actioncoach.com
www.JacksonvilleCOACH.com

I recently read that social media is not a fad but a fun mental shift in the way we communicate.  Buying mailing lists to target potential prospects will soon be a thing of the past. 

Your social media contacts and their connections will be your interactive database.  Here are 4 basic rules to successfully communicate with your new interactive database.

1.  Be Human-  As Jeffery Gitomer says, people buy from people they like

2. Add Value - Sales is about building relationships.  What can you do to provide value to your social media contacts and their connections?

3. Interact - Create a dialog with your contacts to build trusts and a relationship with your contacts

4. Promote - Don’t hard sell.  Use soft promotion to communicate how you can help your contacts get what they want.

Most importantly remember tip #1 Be Human.  You communicating with a live human being and not a computer or a smart phone

Steve Goranson
ActionCOACH
904-739-0200
www.JacksonvilleCOACH.com

This past week I attended ActionCOACH’s North American Conference.  This is where approximately 300 ActionCOACH coaches from the United States, Canada, & Mexico come together to learn best practices, celebrate our wins and to discuss our challenges and losses.

The founder of ActionCOACH worldwide, Brad Sugars shared with us the lessons he learned from businesses working in 2009 recession. 

Below are the top lessons from which we can gain insight and learn from to improve our business in the year ahead.

1.     Businesses got fat and happy

2.     Businesses got re-active

3.     Productivity dropped

4.     Businesses focused more on activity than on dollars

5.     Too much working on our “BE” and not enough “DO”

6.     Businesses worked too much “on” and not enough “in” the business

7.     Businesses focused too much on operations and not enough on sales

8.     There was too little measurement

9.     Businesses took clients for granted

10.  The saying is “Make hay when the sun shines” but businesses didn’t put enough away for the “raining days” or slow times

11.   We Can Do Better! 

Steve Goranson, MBA
ActionCOACH
904-739-0200
www.JacksonvilleCOACH.com

With the challenges the economy has presented, many small business owners may find themselves working longer hours, trying to do more with fewer resources. This can lead to burnout. How do you personally avoid burnout and (hopefully) establish a good balance between work and the rest of your life?

Let’s first look at what is the real cause of burnout?  It’s the feeling that you get when you put in the effort but you don’t feel that you are progressing; you’re just spinning your wheels. 

To avoid burnout you must have clarity, focus, & purpose. 

A lot of business owners seek me out when they are burnt out.  By working with them to clarify their vision & purpose and at the same time creating worthwhile meaningful goals, they now become motivated and re-energized doing the same activities that made them feel burnt out in the first place. 

If you stay focused on your goals, you will maintain your motivation and avoid burnout.

Someone once told me that to be successful that sometimes you have to slow down to speed up. This is definitely true when it comes to advertising and marketing.

In my opinion a lot of marketing and advertising for small and medium sized businesses are not successful because businesses don’t take the time to focus and give the appropriate time to the 3 main elements of successful marketing campaign. Even when we do focus on these 3 elements, we tend to spend too much time on the least important aspect.

The 3 elements in order of importance are: 1) Target 2) Offer 3) Copy

Too many times marketers will devote too much time to the writing of copy and spend too little time determining who the copy is suppose to be talking to and if the offer is something the target really wants.

In reality you should spend:

• 60% of your time determining who your target audience is and where can you find them.
• 40% of your time determining what your target wants, what to offer them, and why they would want to buy your offer.
• 10% of your time determining how you will communicate your offer to your target and how you want them to respond.

By taking the appropriate time in each of these areas of Target-Offer-Copy you will speed up the success of your campaign and your business.

I was listening the other day to Brad Sugar’s Master Mentor Series (http://www.actioncoach.com/master_mentor/) where he was interviewing Keith Cunningham. Keith is a business profitability expert who is responsible for writing the course seminar that world-renowned Robert Kiyosaki turned into the best selling book Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Of the many gems I received from listening to this interview, I would like to share one with you.

Most of us would agree that our business isn’t growing as fast as we would like. In fact if we had to describe the speed of our growth we would compare it to the speed of a tricycle. Most of us are peddling away as fast as we can, but on a tricycle we can only peddle just so fast and to stay at that fast pace takes a lot of energy.

So what can we do to increase our business growth from the pace of the tricycle to that of an automobile or jet airplane? We need to add systems, dials, & knowledge.

1. Systems – When we look at a tricycle it has only 3 systems to make it move; a steering system, a 3 wheel system, and a peddling system. None of these systems need to be monitored or need much knowledge to operate. In fact these systems are so simple even a “caveman”, sorry, I mean a 2 or 3 year can operate it. What allows an automobile or jet to move fast? It has systems. No longer is our acceleration powered solely by our effort, but by using an automobile or jet we are using systems to accelerate our growth but using less energy on our part.

2. Dials – If our systems are not working properly, we may not be moving at all or it may even lead to an accident or someone’s death. To prevent system failure, we need dials or a dashboard to monitor our speed and acceleration because if we are moving at the speed of a jet and we make a mistake, it could lead to some serious consequences.

3. Knowledge – As we mentioned above, just about anyone can ride a tricycle. It doesn’t take much knowledge or training compared to that of an automobile or jet. However, just having a pilot’s license isn’t enough to make you qualified to fly jets. You need continuous and more strenuous training.

In summary to move your business ahead at jet speed, you need to:

1. Create new or improve the systems that you have. Remember, the reason a jet moves faster than a propelled aircraft is its systems.

2. Create a dashboard of KPI’s (smart numbers) in your business to monitor the effectiveness and efficiency of your system. If not, you might be in spiral spin downward and won’t know about it until you crash.

3. Continuously increase the knowledge of you and your team to run your systems better.

When I speak to business owners today the most common challenge I hear is generating more business. Then they continue with I don’t have any money to pay for advertising. They are right, lead generation can be costly if not done correctly.

By creating a referral based business you can lower you customer acquisition cost, increase the lifetime value of your customer base, as well as increase your company’s profitability. Here’ ActionCOACH’s 10 key steps to creating a referral based business.

1. Determine your ideal customer – This is who do you actually want to be referred to your business? If you don’t do this you’ll be chasing referrals that are a waste of your time.
2. Determine your current acquisition cost per customer – Go thru your current customer list and your ideal customer criteria; work out how much each & every one of your current customers cost you;
3. Create acquisition cost goal - Decide how much you are willing to invest to buy your new customers.
4. Keep in touch – Keep in touch with your current customers at least every 3 months & teach them why it is good for them to give you referrals.
5. Give awesome service – Create “delighted advocates” instead of satisfied customers
6. Say thank you – Make sure you thank your customers & ask them to tell their friends about you
7. Ask! – Just be daring…ask people for referrals when they buy from you and even when they don’t buy from you. You need to let your customers know that you will be asking for referral later on. Make giving you referrals a condition of doing business with you.
8. Special Offers - Create a reward card with special prices if they give you a certain # of referrals; let customers give a special gift to associates, family or friends
9. Referral Cards – Place a referral card with all your orders or just drop in the shopping bag.
10. Bring a friend sale – Have a special event for your past customers and invite them to bring a friend for a special offer.
10.1 Measure & Test – Measure and test all results. Remember if you don’t measure it you can’t improve it!

When I ask business owners where most of their customers come from, they say “word of mouth”. Then when I did deeper and ask what specific strategies they use to create their referral based business, they tell me they don’t have any specific strategies for referrals. So how would you create a referral based business?

Let’s consider what makes a strategy successful. It’s pointless to have a strategy in place if it doesn’t contribute to your bottom line. There are a number of elements which, when combined, make a referral strategy successful. There are two things you need to understand above all else…

First, your service must be extraordinary - Having good or great service just won’t do it.

If you want people to refer their friends then make sure your service is 1st rate. How do your customers feel about doing business with you? Customers EXPECT to be satisfied. They have a need to be satisfied, they want to be satisfied. They go to the trouble of finding out which businesses can satisfy that need. They then either call you up or go to your business.

What happens next will determine the lasting impression they have of your business. They EXPECT Satisfaction, but will actually talk to others about your business if they get more than they expect. You need to give them something to talk about.

Secondly, you need to give them a good reason to do business with you or your strategy will fail.

Next you need to decide who your idea customer is and who you actually want to be referred to your business; because referrals that don’t turn into business aren’t referrals at all.

I would like to see if we can help each other out. What are your best referral strategies that you use in your business? My #1 Referral strategy is just ASK. Ask for a referral when people buy and even if they don’t buy from you.

Another strategy; you can introduce yourself to a whole new market with a bring-a-friend sale. What’s yours?

A man walks into a psychiatrist’s office. “Doc, every time I see nickels, dimes, and quarters, I have a panic attack! What can the problem be?

“Oh that’s easy” the doctor answers. “You’re just afraid of change”.
How many of us go through life virtually paralyzed because we are afraid of change, to try something new or different. This fear keeps us from expanding our growth, knowledge, and success and limits our lot in life.

To break out of this cycle of fear we need to understand what fear really is. Fear really stands for;
False
Expectations
Appearing
Real

So how do we change or how can we be a change agent for others?

If someone is satisfied with their lives, will they change? No, because they are satisfied. If someone is unfit, overweight, or unhealthy, but they are satisfied with that, they are still unlikely to change. Many of us have the ability to change the instant we become unhappy with our lives. Others of us have to wait for a stroke or another disaster before we realize the need to change.

We see that there are two ends of the scale. Some wait until the end and some change right at the beginning and some change just for the sake of change. Somewhere in there, there is a happy medium for you.

There is a simple formula that will allow us to understand the process of change and what we can do to affect positive changes in ourselves and in others.

D x V +FS > R

The “R” stands for resistance. To overcome the resistance to change, what needs to be greater? What can tip the scale to overcome our fear of change? Let’s take a closer look.

The “D” in the formula stands for Dissatisfaction. Before you can change you have to have a level of dissatisfaction… What builds dissatisfaction more than anything else? “V” for Vision.

Let’s say that you are a kid living in an impoverished neighborhood. You don’t know any better life than that. Are you dissatisfied with your life? Not necessarily, you may be satisfied because you don’t know any better.

Why is it that when you are in business you need to consistently improve your business education? Why do people hire a business coach or have a mentor, to help push them thru their comfort zone and to help them grow their vision. They need help to look at what their next level is supposed to be.

Dissatisfaction takes a belief that there is something else out there. One of the things I do as a business coach is to help my clients feel a level of dissatisfaction or discomfort, if they don’t do the work required to change. Without a coach or a mentor you stay in your comfort zone because people don’t like feeling dissatisfied.

Dissatisfaction comes first but then we have to have vision and a belief that the vision is possible. Those kids living in the impoverished neighborhoods can watch television and they can see other places in the world, but most have no belief that a different life is possible for them. However, some do get a belief that it is possible. Some of you reading this article are where you are today, because of the vision and the belief you had of a better life. You believed it was possible. That is why you have worked to make a better life for yourself.

My question is, how do we raise the dissatisfaction level for where you are now and how do we raise the vision of where you want to go? Most of us are not experiencing change.

One of the fastest ways that I have found to raise people’s dissatisfaction is by having them write a check into their own investment accounts at the first of the month. This check is from your business into your own investment or profit account.

An investment or profit account is an account that you can’t get direct access to. If you take out $10,000, $5,000, $1,000 or even $100 a month, you then have little or no money left to pay the bills. Is there going to be a level of dissatisfaction going on? Absolutely!

How much harder are you going to work to pay off your creditor that calls you every day? You have to create a vacuum that needs to be filled. You have to start stretching yourself and expanding out of your comfort zones.

The next step of the equation is “FS” which stands for First Steps. We have dissatisfaction, we’ve created a vision of what we want, but we don’t know how to start. This is where a mentor or a coach can help. Don’t look at eating the whole elephant all at once, just take it on one bite at a time.

Lee Iaacoca, states that the discipline of writing something down is the first step toward making it happen. Take the time to write out your plan and break it into bite size chunks and get into Action. By doing so, you will begin to break through the barriers in your life and stretch your comfort zone to reach a level of success you’ve only dreamed of.

The formula of change can be used both in your personal and professional life. The most successful sales people are agents of change. When you break it down as a professional sales people we are not only trying to change peoples buying habits but also trying to show your customer that by changing to your product or service they will be better off.

You can use the formula of change to create a sales process.

Step 1: Develop dissatisfaction. First you need to think of all the reasons why someone would dissatisfied working with someone in your industry or your competitor’s product or service. Next develop a list of questions that will bring out their dissatisfaction.

Step 2: Create a vision of what it is suppose to be. Now ask the client what is it they want the product or service to do for them. By asking questions you can build a huge gap between what the prospect is doing now and where they want to be. This will help to increase the level of dissatisfaction.

Step 3: Provide First Steps. This is where you provide solutions to the prospect on how you and your product or service and help fill that gap and get them want they want.

The formula is simple. Use it not only to help facilitate change in your life but to be an agent of change in the life of others. Help them to understand and qualify their dissatisfaction, help them to build their vision what they want to achieve, and finally give them the first steps to move toward that goal. By following this simple formula you can truly become an agent of change in your life as well as the life of others.

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