Here are some strategies for ensuring that you get everything done—and still have time left over for yourself and your family.

• Have a system for staying organized. Chaos and messiness are major time drains. To ensure that you don’t waste your precious minutes hunting down important documents or searching for a file with critical information, implement a system for dealing with new material as soon as it comes in, whether it’s paper or digital. If you’re not very organized right now, this will require a significant time investment up front, but it will pay off in the long run.
• Set and communicate your goals. It’s easy to waste time deciding what tasks most deserve your attention at any given moment. To avoid such delays, set weekly, monthly, and yearly goals for the various projects you have. Communicate these goals regularly to your team to ensure that everyone’s on the same page, working toward the same outcomes.
• Invest time in training. A well-trained team is one of the biggest time-savers available. When your team is proactive, responsible, and reliable, you can focus on the big-picture things instead of the messy details. Put in the time and energy to prepare each new person you hire at the beginning, and you’ll find yourself with more time on your hands down the road.
• Schedule time for yourself. You wouldn’t dare miss a meeting with a client, and you shouldn’t shortchange yourself on downtime, either. Rest and recovery are essential to your long-term health and productivity. Plus, many of the best creative ideas come when the mind is relaxed and engaged with something that it doesn’t consider “work.”

The first step to managing your time is to decide that you’re in control of it. Once you’ve shifted to that mindset, setting boundaries for your work and life tasks should get increasingly easy with your time management.

While doing good work is certainly an important aspect of customer retention, an effective strategy needs to include plans for retaining and serving customers that go beyond performing the duties for which you get paid.

Strategies for Retaining Customers

So how can you better hang onto the clients that you invested time and money into attracting to your business? Be sure that each of these is part of your customer service plan.

• Know your industry intimately. Having an encyclopedic knowledge of your industry will not only help build trust with your clients when you first begin your relationship, it will also allow you to anticipate their needs and expectations. If, for example, you discover that your competitors are consistently offering bonuses with their services, you can’t very well expect clients to stay with you if you aren’t. Perhaps more importantly, knowing your industry will allow you to distinguish yourself and demonstrate why your services are superior to your competitors’.
• Build strong relationships with your clients. Even if you do crackerjack work for the people you serve, they may not want to work with you again if they don’t feel as if they know, like, and trust you. In order to build such a relationship, go out of your way to find out about your clients’ lives, and demonstrate that you’re aware of what’s going on in their world. When you can establish a connection between yourself and the people you serve, you’re much more likely to win them over for the long term.
• Communicate often. To ensure that everyone’s needs and expectations are being met, schedule regular meetings to check in on the progress of whatever project you’re working on. The Internet offers a wealth of forums where business partners can share ideas and ask questions no matter where in the world they live. Regular communication ensures that there aren’t any big surprises around deadlines and keeps all parties feeling as though they have a say in the process. You may also want to send short surveys to clients at various points in your relationship to better understand their experience of working with you.

Remember: clients are at the center of any business. Building an explicit strategy for keeping yours happy allows you to minimize the time you have to spend attracting new ones! Customer Service and Retention

For small-business owners, referrals are one of the most powerful tools for increasing revenue without expending very much effort or (or very many marketing dollars). Here’s a look at how you can set up your referral system to attract more ideal clients to your business—easily.

Referral Techniques that Work

A referral works well because it yields a win-win situation: you win by getting in touch with a new ideal client, and your new client wins by getting in touch with you, the person who can solve his or her problems, without searching.

The secret to creating such situations is to make them win-win-wins, meaning that your existing client (who does the referring) also gets something out of the transaction. Here are some suggestions.

• Establish discounts or bonuses. When existing clients know that they will receive a tangible reward for connecting you with a new client, they’ll be more likely to make the effort. Consider offering a discount on future services, a free “upgrade,” a bonus service or product, or any other enticement that makes sense for you and shows your appreciation to your clients. Remember, any money you “lose” on such offers is likely more than compensated in the money you saved from not having to advertise to land your referral client.
• Send thank-you notes or gifts. Even if you offer a business-related bonus, it’s a nice gesture to demonstrate that you appreciate that your client went the extra mile for you. Thank-you notes will never go out of style, and warm, personal touches are always a nice way to show your clients how much you value their business.
• Make referrals effortless. If you ask offhand whether a client might be able to refer anyone to you, chances are you won’t get great results. But if you’re prepared with a document that includes specific questions (e.g. “Do you know anyone who could use help training new hires?”) and has a place to enter a referral’s contact information, you raise those chances significantly. Take some time to prepare your referral material so that it takes almost no effort on your clients’ part to complete it.
• Establish an action plan for referral follow-ups. It’s important to know what you’ll do when you get referrals. Contacting them promptly is essential, as is following up with both the referral and your existing client. Sitting too long on such recommendations could lead to confusion and might even cost you a sale.

Even in the age of the Internet—and perhaps more so now than ever—we still rely on word-of-mouth communication to inform many of our purchasing decisions.

Channel this powerful force to build your business by introducing or beefing up a referral system in your business!

First of all, let me reiterate that asking questions is only half of the game. The other half is actually listening to a client’s answer. The purpose of asking questions is to uncover the valuable information that lies in those answers.

As you listen to a prospective client’s answers to your questions, you should be able to discover:

• Pain points and underlying concerns. These will help you understand what your prospective client wants immediately as well as what he or she needs in the long term. It will also help you avoid potential missteps down the road.
• Plans for the future. As you listen to a prospective client’s thoughts and desires, you’ll get an idea of where he or she envisions the business going in the future, which can help you secure ongoing work as you offer solutions that align with long-term goals.
• Priorities and desired outcomes. Establish a pattern of effective communication and ensure a smooth relationship by demonstrating at the beginning of your work together that you understand what matters most to your prospective clients.
• Basic personal information. Nobody exists in a vacuum, and by learning the basics of a prospective client’s personal life, you can deepen your relationship and do your job better. Offering extra help at a time when a client’s personal life is especially hectic, for example, shows that you support the entire client, not just his or her business.

During the sales process, asking questions is your opportunity to mine for gold in the form of invaluable information you can use to enhance your client relationships throughout its duration.

Asking questions not only demonstrates to your clients that you value a client’s thoughts, needs, and ideas, but also provides you with the information you need to ensure mutual satisfaction on everyone’s part.

Naturally, that process—even when it is successful—backfire. Salespeople as a whole get a reputation as being untrustworthy, and individual salespeople who are dishonest or forceful likely can’t rely on repeat customers from among those they bully into buying.

Thank goodness things have changed. Today, most salespeople (whether they’re in retail or they’re small-business owners) understand that the old ways of “selling” won’t cut it for sophisticated prospective clients who can do extensive research before even entering a conversation with a salesperson.

But not everyone whose livelihood depends on selling understands one of the most powerful techniques for closing sales: asking questions

Asking Questions to Sell

Here’s what the sales process looks like when a salesperson asks her prospect open-ended questions rather than launching into a prepared sales pitch:

• The salesperson uncovers valuable information about the prospect, including desires, fears, pain points, immediate needs, and long-term goals.
• As the salesperson processes this information, he or she can determine whether or not the prospect could benefit from what’s being sold. If so, the salesperson can steer the conversation (by asking appropriate questions) so that the prospect begins to see a solution that includes this product or service.
• During the process of answering all the salesperson’s questions, the prospect eventually sells him- or herself on the product or service in question.
• After freely choosing to make a purchase, the client may go on to either become a repeat customer or to sell friends on the product by talking it up.

To ensure that your question-driven sales process is successful, it’s important to remember a couple of key things:

1. Listen. If you aren’t actually listening to what your prospective client has to say, you might as well be giving a sales pitch.
2. Be honest. The point of listening is to determine whether your products and services might actually help your prospect. If they won’t, don’t try to force a square peg into a round hole. You’ll only end up with frustration on all sides. Instead, explain yourself and refer the prospect to someone who might be a better match.
3. Know what kind of questions to ask. Effective questions should be open-ended and should move from the general to the specific (e.g. start with “Why did you decide to look into this solution?” and “What are your expectations for this project?”).
4. Focus on the client’s needs, not yours. Even if you badly “need” to make a sale, it isn’t wise to sell to a client who won’t benefit from your services. The more honestly you attempt to meet a client’s needs, the better you position yourself as someone worthy of future business.

There’s an art to selling—and it begins with listening!

In reality, anyone can sell successfully. Here are some tips I’ve found to be helpful, especially for those who don’t consider themselves naturally sales-oriented.

• Stay positive: Between gloomy assessments of the economy and personal beliefs about your sales ability, it’s easy to build a self-fulfilling prophecy that your sales will be bad. Approaching sales with a positive mindset will go a long way toward helping you succeed. Remember during the sales process that you are offering goods or services to help make people’s lives better. You aren’t burdening them. You aren’t asking for a favor. You’re offering help that will make them happier.
• Shrink your field of prospects: If you’re selling to a big, generalized pool of potential clients, chances are you’re hearing “no” a lot. For better results, shift your focus: invest more time in identifying who your ideal clients are and how you can best reach them. When you do reach out, you’ll hear “yes” more often, enjoy a higher return on your investment, and be able to offer the clients you do land invaluable assistance.
• Set goals and limits: Trying to sell to everyone will end in failure, so don’t even try it! Limit yourself by setting concrete goals for each sales effort you make. With these goals in mind, you’ll be better able to focus your energy and your services on the people who you are best equipped to help.
• Take a multi-pronged approach: Reach out via email, phone calls, letters, live events, and networking. Raise the odds that your ideal clients are hearing your message by putting it out over various channels.
• Focus on current clients. Referrals from current or former clients are invaluable, so be sure to treat each of your current customers in such a way that they’ll want to refer you to others. This means focusing on their problems and goals, offering concrete suggestions, and delivering (or over-delivering) on your promises. Refer them to professionals you trust for matters that aren’t within your scope, and you’ll demonstrate your commitment to their success.
• Increase your visibility. Maintain a blog, write for industry magazines, speak or volunteer at conferences, attend networking events, host webinars, and otherwise ensure that your brand is visible to potential clients. These efforts have the long-term effect of helping you establish relationships with prospects. When they’re ready to buy, they’ll naturally think of you because they’re familiar with you and your work.
• Keep building your skills. If you want to grow your business, it’s essential to develop the skills that will lead to that growth. Read books, attend conferences, work with experts, and otherwise continue developing yourself as a salesperson.

Selling successfully is crucial to any business—and it’s completely within your reach. I’d love to hear about specific challenges you’ve faced (or overcome!) in sales—feel free to email me!

Sales Strategies That Work

Here is a primer on one of the most important elements of successful online marketing: search engine optimization (SEO).

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization is the practice of creating online content that succeeds within the parameters set by search engines (such as Google and Yahoo!). “Success,” in search engine terms, means a high page ranking. Web pages with effective SEO appear among the top results when a person searches a relevant term.

For example: a small-business owner interested in learning how to market to boomer clients might search a phrase such as “marketing to boomers” on Google. The top pages that Google displayed (and thus the pages that the user saw) would be those that had earned the highest rankings according to Google’s algorithms.

Those pages, because they were pleasing to the search engine, are considered “optimized.”

How does SEO affect my business?

If you conduct a significant part of your business online, or if you hope to attract new clients over the Internet, you must pay attention to SEO. Properly optimized online materials rank higher in search engine results, and thus draw more traffic from potential clients interested in those terms.

Internet materials that are not optimized for search engines will appear much farther down the search results displayed, and will therefore not attract the click-throughs that translate to more business.

How can I optimize my online materials?

Incorporating SEO into your online materials should start with keywords and meta tags:

• Keywords: As you know, search engine users research based on key words or phrases that interest them. In order to connect with clients who are potentially interested in your goods or services, it’s essential to know what keywords your potential clients are searching. Once you have determined the keywords relevant to your business (hint: start the process with a free service such as Google’s keywords tool), you can optimize your web materials for those terms.
• Keyword optimization: In order to optimize for keywords, include them in page titles, sub-headers, and sprinkled throughout a page’s text. Avoid cramming your keywords in unnaturally, though, because this reads to search engines as spam.
• Meta tags: After incorporating relevant keywords into your online materials, it’s important to compose meta tags for each page. Think of these tags as the card catalog system for the search engine: you describe the page’s title, its content, and the keywords or phrases most relevant to the page. Search engines use these tags to assist in their process of ranking and evaluation.

Can I do SEO on my own

Any entrepreneur can master the basics of SEO with some research and a little time. If you’ve gotten past the basics and are interested in advanced SEO tactics to improve your rankings and online conversions, it may be time to hire an SEO specialist or work with an Internet marketing firm to update your online materials.

Here’s a primer on how to ensure that your employee recruitment and retention efforts are contributing to the long-term growth of your business.

The “Musts” of Recruiting & Keeping Great Employees

Assuming you’ve already gone through the process of hiring your first employee (the federal government provides an outline of the nuts and bolts for those who haven’t yet), hiring additional employees is more an art than a science.

In order to create a team that you consider a masterpiece, be sure to develop these skills.

• Invest your time upfront. Finding the perfect employee will take some time (unless you’re very lucky!). Accept this at the beginning, and the process will go much more smoothly. Plus, you’ll avoid finding yourself in the situation of having hired the wrong person because you tried to rush the process.
• Write a job description with long-term goals in mind. Experts agree that “winging it” generally doesn’t work when it comes to employee recruitment. Writing a job description helps you clarify what you’re looking for and whittle the field of applicants to those who will fit the position. To really knock this one out of the park, imagine what this person will be doing in a year or more, so you can communicate the position’s likely future.
• Look to your team for recruitment help. This tip has the double effect of helping to recruit and retain employees. When your current team members feel as if they’re contributing to the greater good of the business, they’ll feel valued; plus, if you offer a monetary reward for their efforts, they’ll see the benefits of helping build a stronger team. Current employees know better than anyone what will make a good recruit, so encouraging them to recommend candidates will benefit everyone involved.
• Remember to train and provide reviews! Once you find the perfect employee, it’s important not to let him or her slip away! To ensure that your newest team member feels supported and engaged, make an effort to provide adequate training, communicate your expectations, and provide appropriate feedback. This may involve doing regular reviews or offering informal responses to regular assignments, and is crucial to letting an employee know what’s expected and how he or she can expect to live up to those expectations.

Like most other parts of owning a business, recruiting and retaining employees is an ongoing process that you contribute to every day. The best way to attract and keep the best of the best is to take good care of the people you already have!

Here are some strategies for finding the capital you need to take your business to the next level. Of course, not every strategy will work for every business model, but these should at least help you see the options available.

• Diversify your offerings. If you’re primarily serving single clients, consider working with groups as a paid speaker or columnist. You might even expand into hosting seminars, workshops, or training sessions. (Hint: even if you’ve left the corporate world for good, don’t ignore corporate offices as potential clients that might benefit from the services or skills you can teach!)
• Find hidden goods to sell. Service-based entrepreneurs often overlook the products they could be selling to increase their revenue. If you’ve recorded several webinars or presentations, for example, consider packaging them as a CD and selling it. Or you could license and sell a product you’ve developed for your company. Some businesses might even be able to expand as franchise operations.
• Start teaching or training others. Pull in extra funds by training others in the skills you already have. This may require you to earn additional certification, but if the audience is there, you may be able to pull in enough additional income to expand your business.
• Consider your loan options. If you need an injection of cash quickly, loans might be the way to go, even though you’ll have to repay them with interest. The Small Business Administration, Small Business Development Centers, and Community Development Financial Institutions all offer loans targeted to small-business owners. Alternately, you could consider financing with microloans or with asset-backed loans, which might allow you more flexibility than government-sponsored funding sources.
• Lease equipment. If the only thing keeping you from growth is state-of-the-art equipment, consider leasing the machines you need. You can get the benefits of high-caliber technology without the investment of purchasing it.
• Dip into your retirement funds. While raiding your 401(k) may come with serious tax penalties, it provides you a source of financing you don’t have to repay on anyone else’s schedule. Of course, the risks associated with sapping your retirement account are numerous, so make sure you’ve thought through all potential consequences before taking this route.
• Put it on a credit card. If you’re not already maxed out on credit lines, growing your business might be a worthy cause for taking on more debt. Again, be sure you have a solid plan for increasing future income.
• Hire a mentor. True, this step requires you to spend more money in the short term. But if you’re serious about finding areas for growth and committing to expanding your business in the long term, working with a high-level mentor will save you time, money, and the mistakes that cost you both.

Remember: when you have a goal to grow, your growth will only be as successful or as limited as you let it be!

Of course, in order to get to a point where you can control the amount of work coming in, it’s important to set up your consulting business by following a few general guidelines.

Guidelines for Establishing a Consulting Business

• Choose your field. For some people, choosing a consultancy field will be obvious. Others may have a variety of areas to choose from. I suggest doing some research to determine which of your areas of interest are in high demand and could be easily translated into a consulting business.
• Identify certifications and / or licenses you will need. Laws regarding certification and licensing requirements vary greatly depending on where you live and what profession you want to practice. One of the first steps you take toward launching a consulting business should be researching the legal guidelines for someone wishing to consult in your field where you live. And if you want to consult remotely to people in other parts of the world, be sure to find out how your certification will or will not translate.
• Get organized. Organization is crucial for consultants, especially as they start a new business. Be sure you have an effective system in place that will let you take care of marketing, client communication, billing, and the other essential pieces of a consulting business.
• Start (or keep) networking. Having a strong network can make all the difference as you launch a consulting business. In the early stages, you can get an idea from your network about what kinds of consultants are in demand right now; as you proceed, you can earn referrals and suggestions from people you’ve helped.
• Set short- and long-term goals. Even if you’re pursuing consultancy part-time, it’s important to establish short- and long-term goals to ensure that you get out of your business what you want. If you aren’t careful, a successful consulting practice could end up eating up the time you wanted to devote to the hobbies you looked forward to while you were working the first time around!

By following these simple guidelines to start your own consulting business and you will have a successful encore career designed on your own terms.  You can do it!