Mike Michalowicz's Blog, page 79

The Generic Label Trap: How To Break It

Integrated Counsel Trumps Lawyer

When you hear the word lawyer, what do you think? Costly. Paperwork. Stressful. Reserved. Antagonistic.

When you hear integrated counsel, what do you think? Probably nothing comes to mind, since you never heard it before. If you are asking yourself what does that mean. . . I just broke the generic label trap.

 

Shut Up! I Already Know What You Do.

The term lawyer is a generic label. So is accountant, and social media specialist, and computer guy. Any term that a prospect can immediately categorize you with is a generic label. In other words, when they hear your generic label they conclude that they already know what you do. Even if they really don’t. And that is a big problem for you.

For example, if you tell prospects you are a lawyer, they don’t need to hear any more. They already know what you do. They already know that you are costly, and are antagonistic, and reserved, and did I mention costly?

Once a prospect hears a generic label, you no longer can explain how you are different. I mean, you can try. But they won’t listen. They already “know you.”

 

I’m Sorry. What Does That Mean?

You can break the generic label trap by using a unique name that explains a specific benefit of what you do. Consider integrated counsel. Since a prospect can’t instantly categorize you, you have the ability to explain why you are unique. This time they will listen. A unique label, that customers haven’t heard before, gets their attention.

When you share your unique label, and you hear your prospect mutter those magic words “what does that mean?” you have received an invite to highlight your differences.

The dialog can now go something like this: “As an integrate counsel, one of our legal experts will work at your facility for the length of the project. They will integrate into your environment and get a hands on awareness of what your corporate culture and social network is like.” Putting the nail in the competitors coffin, the dialog may continue with: “We do all the legal work that ordinary lawyers do. That’s the easy part. It’s the integral understanding of your culture that allows us to write legal documents providing both the necessary legal protection and to address your cultural objectives that you need to thrive.”

Break your industry’s generic label trap. Your prospects will finally listen to what makes you great (and finally pay you what you are worth).

The Ultimate Sales Close

It’s that pivotal moment. The client is just a few perfect words away from the sale. What do you say? What will make sure they write out that check?

How about saying, “You are free to proceed anyway you like.”

Sounds absurd, doesn’t it.  It doesn’t sound like the ultimate sales close. It sounds more like the ultimate sales un-close. But that is why it works so well. By freeing up your prospect to make their own decision, they feel that they are not being cornered or pressured. They are in a much more comfortable position and with the freedom of choice will buy more confidently.

Researchers say that this closing technique not only increases close rates, it also eradicates buyers remorse.

So when it comes to getting more sales, this closing phrase is one of the best. And when it comes to keeping clients for life, this technique is the ultimate closer.

Always Have These 6 Contractors At The Ready

You land a big new project and need expertise and staff that you don’t currently have. No small business can afford an army of employees just sitting around waiting for the next big project, so you need to scale. Fast. Your client won’t want to hear that you need to spend a month to advertise, interview, and hire employees to do the job that you’ve assured them you were perfect for. You need good people; you need them right away; and you need them to go away when the job is done.

The single best solution to these competing needs is an arsenal of contractors – specialists on call who permit your small business to expand and contract at a moment’s notice. Regardless of whether you operate a food truck, plan weddings, or provide accounting services, there are six contractors that every small business should have on call.

Web Administrator.

Your company’s website is the world’s portal to your services. When your website goes down unexpectedly, it’s like having the front door to your shop locked. You need a locksmith, and you don’t need them next week. You need a web administrator available immediately – and it must be a contractor that you know you can trust with the keys to your online kingdom.

Web Designer.

The benefit and the curse of the rapidity with which we can alter the face or our business by updating our website is that you have no excuse for an out-of-date site. If the prospective client you’re meeting at 2pm tomorrow needs to see current data with integrated text, graphics, and video, you must offer results rather than excuses. Having a designer on call lets you wow your client with the substance of your presentation rather than having to apologize for the style that’s missing.

Writer.

Whether or not you want to admit it, most of us aren’t spectacular writers. You can’t expect to be the expert at everything, and a skilled writer can deliver sharp, specific content consistently and quickly. Would you rather labor over a mediocre press release for an entire morning, or would you rather make a call to your writer, share the details, and get back to work while your polished, compelling press release is being written by a pro?

Core Competency.

Whether you’re a landscaper, a caterer, or a graphic designer, you need to have skilled local talent lined up in your business’ field. The rule of thumb is to keep a pool of an additional twenty percent of your core staff ready to go. Being able to expand from ten to twelve can be the deciding factor in you delivering on your promises.

Administrative Assistant.

This catch-all category ensures that you have coffee for a twenty-four hour shift. It means that the slew of follow up calls after a marketing campaign are made in a timely fashion. Even if you have a full-time admin on staff, you still need to have a backup (imagine being without him for a few weeks), so consider using a contract to be an admin to your admin. If you key administrator is out, for any reason, you have a backup who is already familiar with your operation.

Translators.

If you don’t have a need for a translator right now, you will in five years. Identifying the languages spoken by your competitors (or allies) lets you be prepared for opportunities to either compete or collaborate without delays. Even if your business operates domestically, you could discover that your office cleaning business in Bethesda has a business model that could be duplicated in Eastern Europe. Being prepared with a translator lets you capitalize on opportunities you might otherwise miss.

The keys to ensuring that these contractors will work for your business model is finding quality people you can trust and depend on. Websites like Elance and ODesk are pools of qualified freelance workers with ratings systems so that you can find experienced and qualified providers when the services you require don’t have to be local. For local talent, Craigslist and community sites like Patch can be useful for rounding up your crew.

It’s important to start small, and it’s ideal if you can try out your contractors with an initial assignment to ensure that they’ll integrate smoothly and are competent. When you find a contractor who’s competent, responsive, and reliable, your goal is to keep them happy. Pay them promptly and treat ‘em like gold. They’re the keys to your small business’ success.

The Best Way To Save A Bad Business Partnership

A confluence of events put me in front of two business partners who hated each other. To make matters worse, they were sisters. 50/50 owners who planned to do everything they could to make a go of their business, now loathed each other.

My job was to fix the business, by fixing them. This is what I did:

I sat them down together and asked them a hypothetical question. I asked them if their father was dying of cancer would their focus change. Of course it would. They would focus on their father, on helping him, on being with him. They would be bonded on something greater than the day to day.

When you can get business partners looking at the greater purpose of their business and their lives, all the day to day nonsense fades to background noise.

I am not suggesting that you and your partner seek dying people to motivate you. But I do know this. If your partnership is struggling, you aren’t in sync on the greater purpose of your business. And I bet you haven’t even discussed it.

To save your business partnership the two (or thee or four) of you need to have a sit down about your personal life’s purposes. Then talk about how all of this plays into your business purpose.

If the purpose is “just to make boat loads of money” your partnership will continue to divide. Money is the reward for purpose, not purpose itself. But if your purpose is as motivating as your love for a family member, your partnership will recover.

 

Episode 46: Cash Flow and Profitability with Rich Manders and Emma Bradshaw

Also Available On

 

Show Summary

Rich Manders and Emma Bradshaw join us for Episode 46 of the Profit First Podcast! Rich gives us great tips on how to scale your business. Emma shares her story of how her business came full circle.

 

Our Guests

Rich Manders (left)

Rich is a coach with real life serial entrepreneur business that has “been there-done that”. He grew his last business  www.i-automation.com through $80M in sales. Rich was the CEO and used coaches to get himself to the next level.  He sold the majority interest in iAutomation in 2007 to the #1 private equity firm in their space after a successful  auction process that left them picking from 6 bidders. Rich stayed on with the PE firm for another 6.5 years, initially as  Co-CEO of the company and then later as an advisor and board member until he “retired” in January 2013. During this  time they completed multiple acquisitions and built an amazing team. They built a business that was 3~5x the net profit  in their industry while maintaining great work/life/family balance and becoming a multiple ironman triathlete.

 

Emma Bradshaw (right)

Andrew Yeo and Em Bradshaw founded  a video and photography company in Australia that specializes in equine and rural promotions. Started off when we met 5 years ago and soon after started taking photos at major equine events in Outback Australia. Did that successfully for a few years and then we started Wild Colt Productions where we are paid to take video of equine events, webcasting major equine shows and then moved into more specialized video promotions and marketing for Rural businesses in Australia.

Had our ups and downs but we have done the age old mistake of investing all our monies into capital expenditure and living and leaving not enough for anything else including most importantly our taxes and have got into trouble with this in particular.

Then we had great clients but were still getting behind so we had another misstep in taking on more work outside our ‘lane’ into other ventures, took on someone else businesses and then nearly burnt out ourselves as well as got into more tax debt and now we were in danger of losing our good clients as well as this new venture.

We took a major step back, decided that we had to change not just one thing but many and so disentangled ourselves from the new businesses in time and then Andrew came across Profit First. I really didn’t want to listen at first as we (as a couple) had played the blame game for far too long and I was just defensive. Profit First broke all that down and we listened to Mike as we traveled around Australia, only stopping the tape to exclaim OMG that is SO US.

As soon as we got home, we had a ‘meeting’ with each other and worked out our percentages. Our first 6 months of the year are full of events and within two weeks we had paid ourselves a wage, got the profit account sorted and made our first tax payment.

Now in our second half of the year (a lot quieter) we are shuffling a little but we are in such a good place to fix our tax problem, we have just moved to a beautiful new town on the coast of Australia and living our dream, well the start of it. Paid out our employee that we owed $6500 for nearly 12 months about 2 weeks ago and that was the best feeling.

 

Show Quotes 

Many CEO’s do not understand how cash flow works – which creates a need for a business coach.

Free-scale: many times when you try to grow your business, you actually reduce your freedom at a rate that’s faster than actually growing your business. You need to find that happy place of scaling your business and get that freedom [for you and your team] at the same time.

Get the right people in the right seats! Get clarity on what your employees want and what they’re good at.

The reason why you’re stuck: someone inside the business is the bottleneck; If they are not good at their job, they can’t teach their skills to others.

Once your business is profitable, it’s easy to spend money on the wrong things; don’t get stuck in this pattern.

If you’re business is struggling – do NOT give up on it! Profitability is around the corner.

 

Here’s Emma’s view during the interview

 

Have a question you’d like us to answer on the air? Email Kristina or Mike!

Kristina@MikeMichalowicz.com 

Mike@MikeMichalowicz.com 

Show Links

Rich’s Website

www.iiiicoach.com

Emma’s Websites

www.wildcoltproductions.com.au

www.wildfilliesphotography.com.au

 

Corporate Partners

Nextiva – VOIP phone providers for small businesses.

Fundera – Single source online funding for entrepreneurs. Also offers an adviser program for CPAs, bookkeepers and business coaches.

TSheets – The #1 customer rated time tracking solution!

Advantages Of The Outsider

I was at a conference for technology service providers – the folks who setup computers, network them together, and fix them when things go awry. The event was filled with tips, tricks and strategies on how to market and grow technology businesses. The only problem with the event was that there was too much head nodding.

As different technology experts and gurus took the stage to share their “secret formulas,” the audience acknowledged idea after idea with nodding heads and occasional applause. They weren’t showing appreciation for truly new ideas, they were showing appreciation for each idea that affirmed what they already knew.

At the end of the event, I tallied all the ideas that were presented and conclude that fifteen were truly unique. I then took an informal survey of the participants. I asked them what they were going to do with these fifteen ideas. To my surprise, not a single participant saw a single idea as something new, but as something they could do better at. These ideas weren’t unique, they simply affirmed the same ol’ same ol’.

Are you seeking new ideas from the competitors and gurus in your industry? You won’t find new ideas there. The same people, in the same industry, have the same ideas. The insider gets trapped in trying to improve the same ol’ ideas, and by default never discovers new ones.

Ironically of all the people who were at the tech conference, I was the one who gained the most. I am an author. I own a business growth accelerator. I am far removed from technology services (at least nowadays). Being the outsider at this event, I heard idea after idea that was new to me. My business doesn’t operate like the technology service sector, and therefore their ideas broke the rules of the author industry and growth acceleration industry. I left ripe with new, unique ideas that I implemented in my business immediately.

The next time you catch yourself nodding in agreement at your industry conference, realize you aren’t learning, you’re affirming. It’s time you become the outsider.

 

You Must Nail It To Scale It

The word “scaling” gets thrown around a lot. It seems every entrepreneur I meet is “currently scaling their business.” Yet it reality, they are far from it.

Selling more is not how you scale. It is the result of a scalable business. Let me explain…

To scale, you must have a streamlined, repeatable solution that consistently applies to the customers you are serving. You must pin down a system that delivers the exact result your customers need every single time.

If you want to scale your business you must need to nail down the solution you provide. It’s this simple: you must nail it to scale it.

Make People Buy More From You Using The Sampling Effect!

Ever walk past the perfume stands in the mall? If you have, you’ve been attacked by an army of perfume spraying sales clerks. It clearly frustrates most passerby’s. So why are they so insistent on getting that “spray bouquet” on your arm? Because of The Sampling Effect.

Here’s how it works. A passerby is going to be a passerby anyway, so it is (to some degree) OK if you frustrate them. But in the mix are a few potential customers. The only way you are going to get their business is if you speak to their behavioral side.

Behaviorally speaking, consumers (that means all of us) automatically have a greater affinity to something that we experienced than something we haven’t. It is kinda obvious. If you never knew that something existed you would never buy it. I mean, duh! But once we experience something directly, we have a great awareness of it, and the probability of us buying increases exponentially.

Over and over, samples have proven to be the best way to market products. Let people use it and they become aware of it. If they have a positive experience, they will likely buy it.

It sounds expensive to do this, but due to its high conversion (prospects to customers) it is in fact not. It is typically more expensive to advertise and market to people who rarely buy, than to offer samples (just like the perfume army) to the interested folks.

So, the next time you see the spray girl running at you don’t take offense. She isn’t trying to upset you, she simply is trying to speak to your behavioral side.

What Are You Passionate About?

When you have passion for something it will get you over every brick wall, help you weather every storm, and even when you’ve been knocked down for the hundredth time, compel you to get back up and try again. You can’t build a successful business without it.

No one can be a little bit passionate. You either have passion for something, or you don’t. The American Heritage Dictionary defines passion as “boundless enthusiasm”—nothing half-ass about that!

Me, I’m clear about my passion: empowering people to express their authentic self via entrepreneurship. But if you’re not sure what you’re passionate about, here’s a quick list of clues to help you zero in on it:

1. You can’t shut up about it – When your friends roll their eyes because they can’t stand to hear one more word about roller derby, or fabric mills, or your latest improvement on the Chinese takeout container, it’s a sure sign you’ve got passion for it.

2. You’re freakishly obsessed with it – Take a look at what you watch on TV, the magazines and books you read, and the events you frequent. If you’ve got to watch, read, and learn everything about cruise ships, or architecture, or organic gardening, you’ve got passion for it.

3. You’d do it for free. . . and give up your free time – When you love something so much you’d happily do it for no pay, that’s passion, baby. (Duh.) And if you’d happily give up all of your free time to take photographs, coach volleyball, or make pimped-out birdhouses, that’s a sure sign you’ve got passion for it.

If you’re still not sure what you’re passion about, make two lists; one with all of the low points in your life, and one highlighting the highs. When you give up or ignore your passion, you’ll end up feel pretty crappy, and when you are following your passion, you’re going to feel pretty effin happy. See how that works? (What? I never said it was rocket science.)

Passion is usually a blend of things, like a good Margarita. You like to watch Bones, you love kids, and a high point of your life was when you helped your neighbor find his dog. Maybe you should be a Pet Detective, helping children find Muffy, Fido, and Tweety.

Some people hit on what their passion is right out of the gate and carry the torch for it their entire lives. Just because you haven’t hit on it yet, doesn’t mean you don’t have any passion. Your passion may be new, or just hiding, but it’s there.

So, have you figured it out yet? What’s your passion? I mean, besides reading my blog.

Episode 45: Investing and Profitability with Sofia Macias

Also Available On

 

Show Summary

Sofía Macías joins us for Episode 45 of the Profit First Podcast! Sofía shares her story and talks about the importance of investing your money!

 

Our Guest

Sofía Macías is a Personal Finance and Financial Literacy consultant. She is the author of  “Pequeño Cerdo Capitalista: Finanzas Personales para Hippies, Yuppies y Bohemios”, a  best-seller  published in Mexico in 2011 by Penguin Random House, adapted for Spain in 2014, whose italian version will come out in November 2015. She also wrote “Pequeño Cerdo Capitalista Inversiones”, a book on investment strategy and the different Asset classes, published in october 2013.

Sofía Macías started to write about personal Finance in 2006, in financial magazines and newspapers such as El Economista, Expansión And Entrepreneur and general media as Rolling Stone Magazine. In 2008, white she was El Economista’s front page editor she started   www.pequenocerdocapitalista.com, her personal finance blog and the origin of the book where she answers financial doubts of the readers every week.

Sofía has a bachelors degree in journalism from Escuela de Periodismo Carlos Septién García and an MBA from the ESC Rennes Business School in France. At the end of 2011 she was a consultant for Mexico’s National Financial Education Strategy by request of Mexico’s Finance Ministry and in october she will be one of the main speakers in the Financial Education and Financial Inclusion Forum organized by the Latin American Federation of Banks.

 

Show Quotes 

Knowing even a little bit about money makes things easier.

You are responsible for your financial situation.

Take the money out of your hands before you spend it. You cannot act as if it’s burning a hole in your pocket.

Do your research and start investing as soon as possible! Time is money; if you are not investing, you’re losing.

Have a question you’d like us to answer on the air? Email Kristina or Mike!

Kristina@MikeMichalowicz.com 

Mike@MikeMichalowicz.com 

Show Links

www.pequenocerdocapitalista.com   

Facebook.com/PequenoCerdoCapitalista       

Twitter: @PeqCerdoCap And @sofimaciasl   

App: Mis metas PCC (my goals Pequeño Cerdo Capitalista)    

Books:  http://bit.ly/1aJFANS

 

Corporate Partners

Nextiva – VOIP phone providers for small businesses.

Fundera – Single source online funding for entrepreneurs. Also offers an adviser program for CPAs, bookkeepers and business coaches.

TSheets – The #1 customer rated time tracking solution!