I was listening to a recording of motivational speaker Zig Ziglar and he mentioned the term ‘Automobile University’. This he said is using the time you spend sitting in traffic to acheive something useful such as learning a new skill. In Dublin it is not uncommon for people to spend 10-20 hours each week in their cars commuting too and from work. This is comparative to the number of hours that a 3rd level student will spend in lectures.

So why not reclaim some of this wasted travelling time and rather than listening to some DJ babble on use the time to improve yourself or learn a new skill? These days you can quickly and easily download seminars or other training materials from the web in MP3 format and listen to it on an MP3 player.

If you were to do this for just 5 hours per week then in a years time you could have covered around 250 hours of material, which is sure to help you improve and grow in whatever area you wish.

 Here are some great resources to get you started:

http://www.mp3motivators.com/ 

www.hardtofindseminars.com

I recently left my car in for a service at Liffey Valley Renault  and thankfully not much needed doing to it.

Two things from the service stood out to me as being good service. First of all as soon as the car was ready for collection I received a text message to let me know. I think this is a good use of technology in keeping customers informed.

The second thing that impressed me was that they washed the car for me for no additional charge and without me requesting it. This is a very good examplae of giving the customer that little bit more. Even though this costs very little I thought it was a nice touch and it made me wonder why no other garage I’ve been to does the same. The little things can make a big difference.

Another thing that impressed me about Liffey Valley Renault was that about a week after the service I received a telephone call asking me if I would mind answering a few questions about my experience with their service department. This only took a couple of minutes of my time and was done very professionally and gave them good feedback to help them improve their service and find out what their customers think about them

If you are running a business then taking the time to look for feedback from your customers is a very useful project. Without asking your customers and clients for feedback how else can you be sure you are doing things the right way?

I watched Badger or Bust last night for the first time on Sky 1 last night at 10pm.

If you missed it the program is about Ruth Badger, the runner up in the BBC’s 2006 TV show the Apprentice. Ruth visits a different business each week and offers advice and coaching to the sales staff to help them improve.

In last nights episode she visited http://www.greentrees-adventurestore.co.uk whose sales team seem to have lost their way with petty squabbles and lack of confidence. In true reality TV style they initally looked hopeless and then with Ruths amazing coaching they completely turned around.

It was enjoyable to watch and there were 3 good business lessons that I was reminded of:

1. Attitude is hugely important - guess what if you think you are going to fail then chances are you probably will. Sure not everything will always go your way but chances are if you are positive in your approach you will have a head start on those that aren’t.

2. Set a target - One of the changes that Ruth suggested to the sales manager was to put up a board that recorded the sales targets for each day and allowed him to keep a track of them. It is not good enough to say this month we need to sell 100 widgets, or whatever it is your business sells. You need to put in place a plan to achieve it and then back that up by monitoring and setting goals and targets. Then if things slip you can keep on top of them or if you excel then you can give yourself a well deserved pat on the back.

3. Motivation - getting sales staff fired up and incentivised can work wonders. How often have you been to a shop or business with the intention of buying and been ignored by sales staff? Multiply this by every hour of every working day and the cost to a business of lazy and unmotivated sales staff is massive. If staff aren’t pulling their weight and meeting targets then you need to seriously consider letting them go, or reviewing how you motivate them.

It is important to note that motivation does not always have to take the form of financial reward. In this show you could see that Ruth was able to motivate the sales staff by offering praise and making them see the bigger picture of what could be acheived with a positive mental attitude.

I sometimes like to read some of the posts on www.Askaboutmoney.com in the business section. Quite often I have seen posts from people contemplating starting a particular business and trying to find out how much it might cost to set up a retail store or similar business. They talk about getting loans or using their life savings to start the business.

I believe this is a fundamentally flawed approach to starting a business. I think it is much more cost effective to try and first identify a market and determine what kind of product or service they need and then provide it. Picking a business to start based on what you think you might enjoy doing can open you up to failure. This is because you get so wrapped up in the romance of what it would be like to run such a business that often the most important issue is ignored. Are there enough potential customers to sustain the business and is there a cost effective and realtively easy way for you to get your message to them.

I know someone who wanted to start a property website. They spent over €5000 getting a web site developed and a further €10,000 on an advert in one of the weekend property supplements. Guess how many customers they got? I’m sorry to say they got none - having spent €15,000 they generated no business and eventually had to abandon the project. Until you have people that are interested in your product and services and you have a systematic way to attract them to you then you do not have a solid business.

So next time you think you have identified the killer business idea that will make you your fortune take a step back and ask yourself ‘How can I quickly and cheaply test if there is demand for this product or service’.

A good example of this are the guys who started Innocent smoothies. Rather than go out and find premises and purchase expensive machinery instead the story goes they simply went out and tested their concept. They took a pitch at a music festival in 1998 and sold their smoothies direct to the public, guaging their interest and getting feedback at the vital early stage. The story goes that the had two big bins one marked ‘Yes’ and the other marked ‘No’ and they asked the public to vote on whether they should give up their day jobs to start a smoothie business.

Even to this day Innocent smoothies know that the success of their brand is built on sales and marketing, and a little known fact is that they in fact do not actually make the smoothies themselves. This is actually contracted out to a specialist food producer.

Follow this advice and you will save yourself no end of heartache. Start small, test and measure, and don’t give up the day job until you either have matched your earnings from the business or feel 90% confident that you will by following a proven and tested plan you have created.

For those thinking of starting a business, going the Franchise route can often seem like an appealing option. However people sometimes forget that those people behind the franchise are in the business of selling franchises.

Whilst this might sound obvious it is easily to get sucked in by a glitzy presentation and promises of riches.

To help you when considering a franchise we have put together a package which includes details of the pitfalls to avoid, questions to ask both the franchisor and existing franchisees and a calculator tool which will help you determine yourself whether a franchise is a viable option. For more information please have a look at the Franchises Exposed website.

Most businesses in Ireland these days have a website, but all to often it seems business owners have put up a site based on advice from a web designer rather than from a marketing perspective.

Sure a good web designer will give you a site that looks good but unless you are trying to win a design awared often this isn’t going to be good news for your bottom line.

Instead you need to design your website from a marketing point of view. In order to do this you need to first determine what the primary objective of your website is. Your primary objective could be to capture leads from interested parties so you can follow up with them, or perhaps it might be to sell a product or service directly from the page.

Your website should not simply be a brochure with a contact us page, whilst you need to include this information you should make it more engaging and give people more of a reason to interact with you. For example if your main objective is to build a mailing list of prospects interested in your services then perhaps you might consider creating some kind of report or low value product that you could give away.

For example on our website you will see we give away a free report called “The 17 Golden Rules Of Every Successful Entrepreneur” which contains some tips and tricks for business owners to get them thinking about growing their business. By offering this to our site visitors for free we are giving them something of value and also starting to build a dialogue with them.

So what is the primary objective of your website? If you would like us to critique your website for you for Free then please get in touch or give us a call on 1850 943122.

I often get approached by business owners saying ‘my business is struggling I’m not sure how to make it grow can you help me?’ One of the first questions I ask them is ‘Do you have a marketing plan?’ and it never ceases to amaze me that nine times out of ten this is met with the meek reply ‘Well not exactly, No’.

How can you be in business and not have a clear understanding of how you are going to get customers in the door? It just doesn’t make sense, people spend a fortune on business premises and stock which on their own are pretty much useless without any customers to buy them. But ask them what kind of budget they have set aside for marketing and I’m often met with a blank stare.

I think most business start ups fall into this trap, they allocate thousands of Euro to kitting out the business and in making sure they have everything just right but then leave no money for sales and marketing. To me that is just like spending your life savings on a ferrari but not leaving any money for petrol! Sure it looks nice and impressive to have the ‘business’ sitting there but it wont go anywhere without customers and a way to attract them.

I see the same with websites. A business owner feels obliged to put up a website and often spends hundreds of Euro on a fancy design, but guess what they don’t allocate any time or resources to marketing the website and it just sits there looking pretty with noone visiting it.

So if this any of this sounds familiar to you then please get in touch with us, we wont bite and we can wotk with just about any business.

If you can’t afford full time marketing staff then perhaps we have the answer with our Virtual Marketing Director service. For less than the price of a daily cup of coffee we will completely review all of your current marketing, put in place an affordable and achieveable marketing plan and work with you to make sure it happens. Better still we guarantee that if you work with us and follow the recommendations we give you then you will make at least 3 times the investment you spend with us. If for any reason this is not the case we will refund the fees you have paid us in full.

It all starts with an informal no obligation Free 15 min phone call and from there we can assess how to best help you. So if you are serious about growing your business call now on 1850 943122 to get the ball rolling.

1 Try and limit the amount of times you check emails to only 3 times per day at set times. Start of day, lunchtime and End of day.

2 Limit Web browsing to just 30 minutes per day includes visiting forums etc. Keep a record of things you want to look up and then treat that as a task. Go to the web and only look for the items on your list.

3 Make a to do list for the following day made at the end of the previous day this will allow you to start the day with a clear head and clear direction of what needs to be done.

4 Spend at least 30 minutes per day away from work taking some exercise. I often find that when I walk away from work and leave my mind clear to wander that is when ideas and solutions to problems pop into my head. If you can perhaps you could bring a digital recorder with you to brain dump ideas too (see point 6 below).

5 Employ a call answering service to take your calls and then forward details to you by email. This will have two benefits it will effectively screen your calls, avoiding you wasting time talking to non important cold callers; also it will reduce interruptions which can kill your train of thought.

6 When you have reports and articles to write try and learn how to use a digital recorder to allow you to quickly brain dump ideas before you forget them. Then you can send the recordings to a transcription service and have them type them up for you. We all think and talk much faster than we can type and with the advent of freelance websites such as www.elance.com it is possible to get 1 audio hour worth of transcription typed up for less than €20.

7 Prioritise the tasks that will make you the most money. If you need to make more sales to bring in more clients for your business then focus your time around that. If needs be spend the whole day out visiting prospects from the start of the day. Leave lower value tasks like tidying your desk way down the list. If you focus your attention on the high value tasks these should yield you increased income that will give you the money to pay someone to do the more menial non key tasks.

8 Get to the office 30 minutes earlier. By starting work just 30 minutes earlier for a 5 day week over the course of year you will have given yourself the equivalent of 15 extra days.

9 Look for ways that you can leverage your time by working once and having it profit you multiple times. For example an author leverages their time by writing a book once and then selling it multiple times when they are off doing something else. Even by writing this article I am leveraging my time. This article will be a post on my blog, an article with links back to my website that I submit to article directories. I will then modify it slightly and turn it into a press release. All of these things will directly benefit my business by increasing the amount of traffic to my website. In addition all content that I create I store away for future use and one day I might end up using it for content in an information product, newsletter or perhaps as content in a seminar I give.

10 Document the tasks within your business. As you develop and grow your business one of the best tips I can give you is to take the time to record key tasks that you perform in your business. In common with most start-ups it is the owner that does everything. However if you plan to grow your business into a proper business rather than just a job disguised as a business you need to plan for other people to one day do the tasks you do. So even if you are not in a position to take on staff quite yet you can still do some of the ground work. Keep a folder with all the different tasks that you do in your business. Everything from how to check your bank balance on the online banking to the sales script you use when calling prospects. Take a few minutes each time you do a task to note down the steps you take in plain English. Over time this folder will grow and become the ‘operations manual’ for your business. Then when the time comes to take on additional help you will have tasks well documented for them to be able to follow. This will save you a huge amount of training time and make new employees far more efficient in a shorter time frame.

Last Thursday I put our house in Lucan up for sale as we are hoping to move to Straffan. Today, the following wednesday, I received a postcard from an Irish Transport and removal firm called Libra Trans giving details of their service and encouraging us to call for a free estimate.

First of all congratulations to Libra Trans for taking the initiative and implementing a targetted marketing campaign to a clearly defined target market, people moving and selling a house and therefore soon to be in need of a removal or transport firm. The card is well designed and does its job of catching attention. In the pile of other correspondance a colour postcard stands out.

I think the call to action on the postcard is a bit weak, it simply says visit our website or call for a free estimate. Personally I’m never particularly impressed when I see a company say the offer free estimates, whopee you are going to tell me your prices for no charge how good of you. I don’t think theyd get too far saying call for an estimate, it will cost you €50.

The website that Libratrans has lets them down - there were errors on the page whaen I viewed it in IE7, and the quotation request form that is pretty crucial to their operation would not load. It is kind of disappointing to think of all the leads that they must so nearly have generated but then lost by having a website that does not do the job for them.

So how else could Libratrans improve this Irish lead generation campaign? I think they could make their offer even stronger by offering something free, for example on their website they have a checklist of things to remember when packing or unpacking. Rather than having this freely displayed on the website they could create a report package and offer it to prospects who fill out a form etc. Perhaps they could make the offer stronger still by offering something of use such as 3 free packing boxes or similar. This would help them qualify the leads from the postcard mailout a bit further and allow them to capture the names of prospects rather than just ‘The Home Owner’. This would help to build a relationship with the prospect, the cost of this would be minimal and I’d be willing to bet it would increase their conversion rate over and above just offering a free quote (yawn…)

So to conclude I think this was a good effort to generate leads in a targetted fashion. I’m not sure how they compile their list, perhaps they monitor the new properties on www.myhome.ie or maybe it is possible to buy lists of all the new properties. Or perhaps they just ask their drivers to note down all of the new for sale properties they pass. Whichever way they do it you can bet it is nicely systemised and produces a good return on the investment. Lets face it the cost of a postcard and postage would probably be less that €1 and the potential business could easily be €1000 per client. It is a shame that the rest of the sales conversion process they are using falls a bit short, however even with what they have I’m sure it puts them well ahead of their competition.

Now I just need to ring them to get my free quote

Over the weekend I went to the UK to my best friend Wil’s wedding. I’m happy to say everything went very well, including my best man speech! We stayed at the Hilton in Warwick, and again just about everything was perfect. The staff were friendly and attentive.

My only gripe was that Hilton in their wisdom make a charge to their hotel guests to use the hotel car park! Yes the same guests who are spending money staying at the hotel and eating and drinking at it are charged the princely sum of £3 per day to park their cars there.

To me this is absolutely bizarre, it is not the amount of money they are charging that worries me it is the principle of the who thing. Why would you risk alienating your customers over something this trivial. Surely if I’m spending a few hundred pounds to stay the weekend it is a bit unnecessary to charge me to park my car. It is not like they were short of space, they have a big car park that was only maximum 10% full.

Often the smallest things in your business can annoy your customers the most. Make sure that you aren’t doing anything silly in your business that might jeopardise the relationship you have worked hard to cultivate with your clients and prospects.