Monthly Archives: January 2012

How Business Coaching Will Benefit Your Business

Posted on by petergwaction
Copyright © 2012 Brad Sugars, Founder of ActionCOACH business coaching

Challenges are hard to anticipate in any business, but they’re easier to overcome with business coaching.

Business coaching is just like sports coaching. Just as a sports coach coaches an athlete and trains him or her to get better, business coaching not only helps businesses establish organized plans for every challenge they come across, coaching helps set those plans in motion. Companies worldwide that have business coaching tackle challenges two ways: with a plan and business strategy from the business owner’s view, and an outside view—the business coach. This way, the company achieves its desired outcome.

Here are some general statistics about business coaching:

  • Annual spending on executive coaching in the United States is estimated at $1 billion. (Harvard Business Review)
  • A recent study estimates that 40,000 people in the U.S. work as coaches (work or life) and the $2.4 billion market is growing at a fast-paced 18% per year. (MarketData Report)
  • Coaching is the second-fastest growing profession in the world, rivaled only by information technology. (National Post)
  • Use of coaching is widespread in UK organizations, with almost nine in ten respondents reporting that they now use coaching in their organization (88%). (University of Bristol Newsletter)
  • The Australian Institute of Management says 70% of its member companies hire coaches. (Inside Business Channel 2)

What Do These Statistics Mean?

The statistics and reports don’t lie. Business coaching is expanding because it’s a successful industry. Just like sports athletes have to keep ahead of their competitors with a coach, business industries, especially in this recession, are getting extremely competitive.

Think about if a sports athlete didn’t have a coach. He might keep doing the same things that have worked for him many times before, and he might be fine for a while. But eventually, since he’s doing the same things and not necessarily getting better at his sport or his skills, the competition will surpass him.

It’s the same with business. With all the industry changes, innovations and management strategies, business owners can’t keep doing the same thing they’ve been doing. Eventually the competition will surpass them.

It’s even true with the big brands. McDonald’s, Starbucks, Google, and Coca-Cola are constantly ahead of the game and dealing with challenges. Especially in the recession. How many brands that used to be around (Bombay Co., Sharper Image, etc.) aren’t anymore?

With competition and other factors in the mix, business coaching is a sound investment in your company’s future.

It’s still a relatively new business industry, but the statistics don’t lie: business coaching is becoming a popular way for companies to edge out competitors.\

Business coaching is the second fastest growing industry for several of the following reasons:

  • Business coaching increases performance. Coaching develops the best qualities of people and teams, making the most of everyone’s qualities and significantly increasing productivity, making the most of everyone’s talents and skills for the company.
  • Business coaching enables owners to motivate their staff. Coaching helps people to work to their utmost potential, increase their self-esteem and thus raise the quality of their work and increase productivity at the same time.
  • Business coaching improves staff development. Staff development means not only educational seminars and trainings, but also unlocking the inner potential of the company’s employees. Whether the employees are going to develop themselves or not depends mainly on the company’s management style. Initially, all of us have a great potential which can be revealed through coaching. Coaching allows the employees to develop themselves directly in the workplace, thus increasing their efficiency.

If you’re convinced, you’re one step closer to bettering your business.

Call (775) 284-3768 to find a coach near you, or visit www.actioncoachcalteam.com. At ActionCOACH, our success is based entirely on yours. No games. No gimmicks. Just results.

EFFECTIVE MARKETING STRATEGIES THAT ARE PRACTICALLY FREE

Posted on by petergwaction

Posted on January 19, 2012, 6:32 pm, by robertbritz@actioncoach.com

 

Traditionally, marketing was expensive. It involved running costly ads in publications, or hiring a PR firm to manage a campaign for your company.

Yet, there are many ways that a small business with a tight or limited marketing budget can get great results with marketing efforts that are run in-house for very little money. Here are six ideas:

  1. Blog. You should definitely have a blog that links to your Web site, and that you are posting content to each week. It takes time, we know, but it’s free and your business can get really great results from it if you’re doing it right. Here’s a fabulous how-to from Hub-Spot which will give you some good pointers on how to blog properly for the most return on your time invested: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/30766/7-Fatal-Business-Blogging-Mistakes-And-Easy-Fixes.aspx
  2. Post to social media. OK, so now that you are writing blogs at least once per week, it’s easy to leverage your posts across social media platforms. Your company should already have a Facebook business page, a LinkedIn page, a Twitter account and a Google+ Business page. If you don’t they are super easy to create, and they’re free! Once you have these set, post what you have in your blog to them each week. This keeps the feed live and interesting.
  3. Track your leads. When you blog and do social media, carefully track where you are getting a following or comments. What type of content are people gravitating toward? Post more of that. The more original content you post, the better. Become a thought-leader in your field. This gives your brand credibility and when people start to perceive you this way, you get that organic validation that even the most expensive marketing campaign can’t promise.
  4. Email marketing. Do an email blast at least once per quarter. Create a newsletter format in which you provide its readers with valuable information (don’t just sell your product or service!) which will make them want to open it. Provide some sort of discount or incentive to buy from you which will also get them excited to open the email. (If you use MailChimp to send your blasts, it’s completely free until you reach 1,000 contacts!)
  5. Network. Where do you get the email addresses to email your email blast to? Networking events! Go to as many events as you can handle and add them to your email list.
  6. Re-connect with previous customers. It’s a proven fact that it is much easier to make a sale to a customer who has already purchased from you than it is to convert a new lead. So sit down with your list of previous customers and give them a call. At the least you will make these or potential customer, your sphere of contacts grows. Feel good that you are reaching out to them to see what their needs are, and at best, will likely get a few repeat buys.

As you can see, there are many tactics that can be employed to help market your business which don’t have to cost very much. If you like what you’ve read here, we have many other insightful business strategies which will help you become the business you’ve always envisioned. Contact us for a complimentary coaching session to see if business coaching is right for you.

« HOW DOES “WHO YOU ARE” AFFECT YOUR BUSINESS GROWTH?

PK Electrical Wins Entrepreneur of the Year Award

Posted on by petergwaction

Every year NCET (Nevada’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology) awards individuals and companies that have shown significant leadership and growth. On February 16th of this year, PK Electrical of Reno was awarded Entrepreneur of the Year Award for medium-sized businesses.

The Reno Gazette Journal recently reported that “PK Electrical, Inc., under principal Karen Purcell, added 18 new clients and one new employee in 2011, improved staff qualifications when three staff members passed the LEED exam and one passed the ICC commercial inspector exam, and grew revenue 18 percent. The company has plans to open a second office in the next 12 to 18 months.
In 2011, Purcell also wrote and published a book and launched a nonprofit, STEMspire, to encourage young women to go into science, technology, engineering and math careers. Her goal is to help young women take advantage of rewarding career opportunities in STEM fields.”
PK Electrical’s business coach, ActionCOACH Master Licensee, Peter Williamson states, “Karen and her business partner Alan Wiskus have done a stellar job navigating PK through a very challenging market the past 3 years. The results speak for themselves. This award is well deserved recognition for a really great team who has built a great company!” Williamson has worked with PK Electrical over the past five years, coaching them on strategies, processes, and building revenue. ActionCOACH is committed to innovation, business excellence and business re-education for owners and teams who operate and work in small-and-medium sized businesses.
Other NCET awards will be given to Bennett Medical Services for (Large Company) Entrepreneur of the Year, and SunScience Corporation (Small Company) Entrepreneur of the Year. Additional winners include MerchantsXL, Noble Studios, The Peppermill, Understand.com, 3G Studios, Digital Solid State Propulsion LLC, and Leap Forward Gaming. The Hall of Fame award will go to IGT. Individual awards will be presented to: Chad Hallert — Eldorado Hotel Casino & Silver Legacy Resort Casino, and Jim Belosic of ShortStack Labs.
The Awards will be presented by Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki at an awards dinner held at the Eldorado Hotel Casino on Feb. 16.

PK Electrical Logo        NCET | Awards

For information on business coaching, contact Peter Williamson, 775-284-3768

KEEPING YOUR CLIENTS FOR THE LONG HAUL

Posted on by petergwaction

Let’s keep your clients happy and coming back over and over to your business, shall we? Post New Year regrets come home to roost in many a business as clients evaluate their commitments amid new-found doubts. That sounds so dark and dim but there’s a reason for why clients go through this process. Luckily, there are also ways to help them out of it so that they keep being good clients for your business.

If you’ve every embarked on a new gym membership, you know when you sign up that you’ll have to work harder on your mindset than your body to keep your commitment to weight loss alive. You’ll notice that the gym only has a start-up fee and a monthly pay option. There is no end date to the agreement. Why? Because many commitments we make become suspect at the halfway mark.

Half way is when the normal client will begin to re-evaluate the relationship. So like a gym, avoid the halfway mark altogether in your business- don’t offer an “end date” to divide in two. Personal trainers often prescribe programs that take 2, 3 or 6 months. It’s important for them to regroup at the halfway point and motivate their client to continue. Personal trainers and floor staff ensure the experience continues beyond the hump.

Well that’s simple, but what if you do have a fixed contract? You might be a contractor building a house, or an Information Technology (IT) Professional installing a network, or even a clothing store with a personal shopper. All of you have a point in your delivery process that the client must get over to keep going. When building a home, it’s when the owner gets to selecting the finishes – paint, fixtures, carpet – that they get burned out and want to quit. It becomes the cranky phase for the owner that often leads them to withhold part of the payment in the end. They can’t leave but they want to.

So how does a contractor keep the client moving forward? By setting an upfront agreement at the onset: “If we all agree that this particular phase or that will be trying, how do I encourage you through that when we get there?” Pre-loading the expectations of the client almost always helps when things get tough. When expectations are outlined and reinforced throughout the process, the client is less likely to try to get off the bus before their scheduled stop.

What if your product is complicated? If you’re in IT, installing a network is often subject to the 90/10 rule. It takes 90 percent of the time to install the actual infrastructure, and the last 10 percent takes 90 percent more time again to finish. Clients become frustrated when they don’t understand the product fully enough to appreciate the complexity. Often, projects creep with issues surrounding data migration or new code or many other issues that frustrate clients.

Education is the key along the way to ensure the client knows what is happening and why. Let them know of any anticipated issues as they arrive so as to avoid surprises and costs. When the intellectual level of the project exceeds the knowledge level of the customer, it’s time to stop and bring them up to speed to keep them on board (and as your client) for the long term. An appropriately educated customer is often a much happier customer from start to finish, and generally pays on time.

If you’re struggling with your sales or delivery processes, a complementary consultation with an ActionCOACH can assess where the bottleneck might be in your method: www.actioncoach.com/robertbritz

What if your product lends itself to the “multitude of choice” issue? Men’s clothing is pretty simple; waist and length, black, brown, beige – done. Women’s clothing is not so simple. (Keep in mind that I am a guy and in dangerous territory, but here goes.) Many fine women’s stores have personal shoppers. But why, you may ask? Isn’t that an extra cost to the store? Not really. A trained personal shopper will help pull together outfits, find the right accessories and hopefully be honest with the customer that the outfit works. Not only do they increase the average sale for the store, women who enjoy shopping will return because of the relationship they develop with the shopper. The difficult part in this sale is having 10 -15 items picked out and deciding which ones to actually purchase!

Shoppers often tire mid-way through the process if left on their own and end up leaving stores with little or nothing. Adding a personal shopper to the mix will not only make the experience better, but the store is more likely to have repeat business in the long run. Keep your customers moving through the process by providing specialized employees or re-purposed employees to keep them engaged.

In every case above, the solution is human intervention. In a fast growing world of social media, the answer isn’t always another tweet, but could be a human spoken word or a smile that makes the difference. Use social media to get them there, and when they’re yours, do all in your power to set expectations, give advice and educate, and coach them through the process.

At ActionCOACH we help clients understand  65+ ways to deliver their products and services better so that their clients are satisfied, and their business thrives as well. To find out more about ActionCOACH or arrange for a complementary consultation go to: www.actioncoach.com/robertbritz

For more great information, check out Effective Marketing Strategies that are Practically FREE!

HOW DOES “WHO YOU ARE” AFFECT YOUR BUSINESS GROWTH?

Posted on by petergwaction

Posted on January 17, 2012, 5:55 pm, by robertbritz

How could who you are NOT affect your business is the real question. Some people just seem to be successful. They constantly seem to win, dress the part every day, are probably fit and have great attitudes whether they’re winning or losing. How is all that possible?

It all starts with ice. Actually an iceberg if you will. You see all of us live like icebergs showing only a small part of who we are above the water line. How these people behave helps us predict how they’re going to act in various situations; it’s about what they do. Below the waves are a myriad of factors that governs what happens above the surface. If you were to dive down and look beneath the water’s surface of one of these successful people, you’d be surprised what you’d discover.

The first thing we’d see is that they have a net full of SKILLS. Skills they learned in college, skills they learned from experience, and things they just learned from life. All of us have skills stacked and sorted, some of them used, some of them not so much. The more skills you can use in your day, the more effective you’ll be in business and in life. Use what you’ve got.

A few feet further down and you’d run into their BELIEFS. Beliefs are simply things that are held to be true but are not proven by facts. For many people their faith or spirituality is just that. But used in life, these beliefs become powerful assumptions that are applied to every situation. It may be called the lens through which people view the world. These beliefs impact which skills we acquire and which skills we use in creating the behavior for each situation. Limiting beliefs are also just as real. If you believe you are not good in sales, that may be something you believe but may not be proven out by fact. Beliefs are like the gas and brake pedals on a car, propelling us forward if the message is positive, or limiting us if it’s not.

Dropping another few feet in the water we find VALUES. Values are the things that tell a successful person why they do what they do. For example:

  • If you enjoy the use of money you’d be considered utilitarian in nature, appreciating what money does.
  • If you constantly seek knowledge for knowledge sake, reading book after book, taking course after course, earning degree upon degree, you’d be motivated by knowledge itself.
  • If the most important thing to you is harmony in the workplace or the home, then an aesthetics motivation would keep the peace.
  • If you strive to be a winner, you may enjoy the limelight and want to be compensated for your contribution to the team – people like this tend to be individualistic in their goals and motivations.

Looking back into history, the law or other bodies of documented success take a more traditional view and are motivated by the anchors of society and methods. Finally there are the social animals who derive much of their worth and well-being through encouraging and being with others. They bring the party to the rest of the world and enjoy doing it in every way. The good news is most of us are motivated by our top two of the six values listed. Successful business owners can be any of these combinations because they are driven by their beliefs which are applied to their skills and expressed in their behavior.

Lastly and most important near the bottom of the mass of ice is our identity. Identity is often in successful people, tied to their role. They are defined by their assumed dentity. Some options you may choose could include: SUCCESSFUL, HUMBLE, CARING, SLOW TO ANGER, RELIGIOUS, SPIRITUAL, HEALTHY, HUSBAND, WIFE, PARTNER, ATTENTIVE, PEACEFUL, CLEAN, SON, DAUGHTER, MENTOR, GROUNDED, WEALTHY, OUTDOORSMAN, ARTIST, NON-JUDGMENTAL, PROBLEM SOLVER, FRIEND. Each of these might be a part of your identity (Take a moment and write down yours).

I put success first because most people who are in business want to be successful. The problem with success is you can’t acquire it, you can only attract it to you by being the type of person that desires it. The same is true of wealth, love or money. You have to attract these things by being the type of person who has the same dreams and motivations as those who are those things.

So ask yourself, “What’s my dream identity? How is it different perhaps than who I am now?”

What do you want out of life anyway? Make yourself a Dream Board with clips from magazines that represent who you WANT to be, and put it up on your office wall 22 x 34” so you can see it daily.

What makes up the dreams you have assuming you’ve given yourself permission to lean back and dream? Who else is personally involved in your dream attainment? What are you reading? Do you have a dream board? Who do you share your dreams with? Do you keep a list or a journal and check them off when they become real? Then, do you dare to dream again?

Identity is fascinating when you find a business owner who has dreams and is living them. I met a businessman in San Francisco about business coaching. Already successful, I asked him what one thing he did to ensure his success. Earning over $600,000 per year, every year for the past 8 years, he leaned back and said it was simple. It almost always is simple. This man made a “To Achieve” list every Monday and spent 3-4 hours deciding what and to whom he could delegate among his staff of 125 employees. He kept only the most important 1-2 for himself and worked the rest of the week on those only- a pattern of success worth replicating down the line. His identity was that of a successful leader, who trusted his employees explicitly and whose business grew beyond his and his wife’s wildest dreams.

So now that you’re in deep, let’s look at how all this puts itself together. The results you have today are from the behaviors you have exhibited. What you Do creates what you Have. Most people when asked how to double their income would say Do more–Do Double to Have Double.

The truth is, you have to Be a different person to Do things differently, to Have what your goals indicate that you want. Create an Identity Shift to Be that new person that you’re dreams say you are. Start with a dream board and give yourself permission to dream…

Wait! That’s not practical, that’s not possible you say? Now that’s a limiting Belief that should be worked on.

IT’S LONELY AT THE TOP: WHY YOU NEED AN ActionCOACH

Posted on by petergwaction

by Bob Britz –  robertbritz@actioncoach.com

To get the truth about how you are running your company, you need someone with an outside, neutral perspective. It’s not enough these days to analyze reports, or get feedback from a trusted employee; that’s why having a business coach has become very common.

Nearly all coaches will tell you that the most important benefit they provide their clients is to be a trusted sounding board. Business owners say they appreciate their coach more than anything for much-needed objectivity.

When you are a business owner, the decisions you make can have huge consequences for your company’s success, as well as for the lives of your employees. They are weighty choices, and it’s crazy to make them in a vacuum. The perception of a lone CEO cowboy is not only outdated, it’s being phased out because you make more money and are actually happier when you make decisions with others involved.

Good coaches will tell you like it is. They will assess the situation and using their years of experience in working with CEOs and businesses of all kinds, will not hold back on their frank evaluation. They strive to be honest with ideas, suggestions and opinions. They will test your assumptions (possibly the single-most destructive problem CEO’s have is taking as hard fact something that is only their belief). A good coach will gain your trust throughout this process. Their role in your life as a business owner is singularly unique.

So, while it may feel as if it’s lonely at the top, it doesn’t have to be. A business coach is your ally. Like all of our current and past clients will tell you, their businesses grew in direct proportion to the amount of weight lifted from their shoulders when they brought a business coach onto their leadership team.