Ushering in a NEW era: The Transformation Age

on December 14, 2011 in Success Institute, Women in Business

Are you an entrepreneur who is facing challenges in your business? You’ve probably noticed that in today’s economy, what use to work isn’t working anymore. That’s not just because of the recession.

People have changed the way they make buying decisions.

 

I recently sent a survey to my clients. I asked them to share their biggest struggle in business right now. You may be able to relate:

• “I’m not making enough money”
• “I need more customers”
• “I feel completely overwhelmed and I’ve lost focus”
• “There’s not enough time”

If you can relate to any or all of these I have some good news. I will be sharing some ways that you can overcome these problems.

The Industrial Age started in the early 1900′s with the invention of machines that created manual labor jobs for the car industry and many other industries. This mass production seemed to make life easier.

The Information Age

In 1984, The Information Age began and the power of computers was placed in most homes in America by 1995. We had instant access to millions of products and information. Remember when it was cool to surf the net and hear “you’ve got mail”.

Today, your inbox is sucking the life out of you. We’ve reached a time when there is too much clutter and too many choices. The average person see’s 5,000 ads per day. You simply can’t make a living advertising to the masses anymore. The problem is people have gotten really good at ignoring ads, but their desperate to find good stuff to solve their problems.

Ushering in a NEW era: The Transformation Age

Your job as a business owner or sales person is to be the trusted advisor, and deliver the transformation (the results) they’re looking for.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about:

Dog owners who hire dog trainers don’t want to read reports on the different breeds of dogs (that’s information). They want their dog to stop attacking other dogs and stop destroying their furniture. It’s not the information they want … it’s the result. If you can create a system and show proof that it really works your more likely to have an endless stream of new customers and referrals.

The game-changer is that you must not only show results but you must provide an innovative solution to their problem. If not, you risk being just like everyone else. Adding no cost, high value innovations to your product or service is a must for any entrepreneur to thrive in The New Transformation Age.

As seen on ABC’s Shark Tank, April Morris is the pioneer of innovation! Join April on the eWomenNetwork Success Institute Tuesday, 12.20.11 at 1:30 pm CST as she shows you the “The Product Innovation Method” – a step-by-step strategy for turning your product or service into The Next Big Thing.

 

Join the conversation! How have you added innovations to your product or service?

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SMART WOMEN BUY… They hold the Purse Strings

on December 1, 2011 in Chairman's Circle, Uncategorized

There is no question that women buy, purchases by women total trillions of dollars annually.

But, what you may not know is that, quietly and steadily, the number of women making six figures or more is rapidly increasing. Currently, over fifteen million women make $100,000 or more, and the number continues to rise at a rate faster than for men. These women come from every industry.

Just how powerful is the female market?

  • In the U.S., women decide $4.3 trillion in consumer spending each year.
  • Women comprise 51.4% of the U.S. population, but make or influence 85% of all purchasing decisions.
  • Women make 80% of healthcare decisions and 70% of travel decisions.
  • Women purchase 65% of new cars and 53% of used cars.
  • Women make or influence 57% of all electronics purchases.
  • In 31% of  marriages where women work, they out-earn their husbands.
  • Single women buy homes at 2.5 times the rate of single men – one out of every five homes purchased (20%) is by a single woman.

Working with women the last seven years I have learned some very valuable information.  They must TRUST and RESPECT you first and foremost. Trust begins with the eight seconds you have to make a good first impression. They don’t want to be pushed to close the sale or overwhelmed with too much information.

To earn their TRUST talk with them, not at or to them. Have a real conversation and show them the authentic you and that you are not just interested in the transaction. Start building that trust by actively listening to them. Treat them as equals and acknowledge that they matter. Learn where they’re coming from and where they want to go.  Continue to ask questions until you have a clear picture of what they need. When women think and feel they’ve been heard and understood, they will be ready to trust. They must trust you before they will move toward a purchase.

Empower them, build their confidence, and support them. Focus on helping them determine the solution.  Give them limited options and use examples and stories to reinforce your recommendations.

Always create a long-term relationship that allows for follow-up. The road to TRUST with women is not a one-and-done path.  It takes time and sustained effort to build and keep the relationship,  but the referrals will be worth it.

Join the conversation! What are some ways you build TRUST in your relationships?

Post by Jeanie Douthitt

www.smartwomenbuyhomes.com

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3 Ways to Be Found

on November 29, 2011 in Chairman's Circle, Uncategorized

All things have changed about connecting.  Whether you need a job, a tree trimmer the way we find anyone or thing has changed.

Here are 3 Ways that you can improve the odds of being found or finding those who need what you have to offer!

 

  1. Turn Your Light ON –  from a business perspective, job seeker or service provider putting your business information on Linked in is a great investment . Your professional profile makes you socially credible.
  2. Use KEYWORDS – If your title does not explain what you do – then use the words that would describe your experience or service. If people do not know your name then use the words they would use to find you.
  3. Rinse and REPEAT OFTEN – now that you have your keywords do a search on linked in looing for yourself using only key words.  Here is a trick to get you to the first page of any search…. look for the words that are highlighted in yellow on the peoples profiles on the first page, these are your key words.  Count how many times they used the same word and use that word ONE MORE TIME.  Now…you come up on TOP!

You are now FOUND!

All the BEST!

Vikki Loving

InterSource Recruiting

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Influence–How to Create it, How to Keep it to Catapult Your Business

on November 29, 2011 in Success Institute, Uncategorized

Do you have influence in your industry? Do people come to you for advice or follow you on your social networks? Do people read your blog and respond with questions and/or positive feedback? Are you an influencer on LinkedIn where people want to connect with consistently and engage in discussions you start?

If not, why not?

I have learned through the years that the more influence you have, the more what you want will come to you easily. When people trust, respect and remember you, they want to help, and go out of their way to tell others about you—now you have  influence. I remember just starting out many years ago listening to conversations during networking events and wishing I was the one they were talking about! Someone would mention an author or speaker and the person listening would light up and want to know more. The listener knew that person, or knew of that person and what they had to say would change how they did things. It created action.

Influence makes doing business and attracting clients easy. I love doing interactive sessions where I can teach people how to embrace the influence equation. Being authentic is one of the keys to influence, and it is more than being kind and giving.

The five languages of appreciation create authenticity and lead to qualities of influence and how to cultivate them. Understanding how influence can affect your life personally and professionally is something every woman should embrace to be a leader and create change all around her. It is what makes people give you a standing ovation when you walk onto a stage and off!

The highly sought after speaker, business coach and national best-selling author, Caterina Rando will be on the eWomenNetwork Success Institute Tuesday, 12.06.11 at 1:30 pm CDT to share her insights on Making 2012 Your Best Year Yet– Innovative Strategies to Embrace Today.

Are you a person of influence? What are some ways you have found to create influence?

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From Stage Fright to Spotlight

on November 16, 2011 in Success Institute, Uncategorized

A few nights ago I watched a speaker break a rule.

Our speaker was reading directly from her notes as she spoke, but that was OK because she was a good reader and she was still able to make it sound personal. That’s not where she broke a rule. Although I don’t really like it when speakers read from their notes, I wouldn’t say it was breaking the rules.

Where she broke a rule is when she made a mistake while speaking and drew direct attention to it making it seem bigger than it really was.

As our speaker finished on one page of her notes, she turned to the next page and lost her place. She had to pause for a second to find her place again.  Now, the “rules” say that when you have one of those “pregnant pauses” you’re not supposed to draw attention to it, you should just let the silence be until you find your place as if it was planned all along. But our speaker didn’t do that. She made a comment about how she saw me staring at her, got nervous and went blank. She broke the rule and drew direct attention to her error.

Afterwards, she told me she knew she shouldn’t have done that. She knows that drawing attention to a pregnant pause is the wrong thing to do. But what she seemed to miss was the fact that the audience roared when she did it. She did it with such personality that she broke away from her well read, but read nonetheless speech and just started speaking with us for a few short seconds, and we loved her for it.

Yes, rules can help you deliver a more effective presentation or talk. But by breaking them a little along the way you can ingratiate yourself with your audience.

Don’t be so distracted by those “rules” that you can’t see the most important thing; your audience.

Join master speaker and executive trainer, Steve Lowell, 0n the eWomenNetwork Success Institute as he shares his insights on “How to Change Lives from the Stage Even if You’re Mortified to Speak in Public”.

We would love to hear your thoughts! What are some of your tips on delivering an authentic message?

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Achieving Breakthrough Success – Overcoming the Obstacles that Sabotage You

on November 10, 2011 in Success Institute, Uncategorized

Is your strategic planning innovative? Is it cutting edge?

If your strategy is not disruptive in your market space, then it isn’t going to cut it!

Could the way you think be holding you back?  You’ve probably heard that what you do is a direct result of what you believe.  Your beliefs manifest your thoughts, which then produce your actions.

If you believe you can be outrageously successful, why aren’t you achieving the levels of success you seek?

Understanding how your beliefs are formed and how they drive your behavior will help you overcome stutters and stalls and help you create the breakthroughs you seek.  Imagine if you will, that from birth your every experience is filtered through your personal perception.  Based upon your perception, maturity and reasoning abilities at the time of any experience you automatically define your experience and it becomes your perspective.  Your perspective about each experience is recorded in your subconscious database. Your perspective defines each individual experience and all of the perceived elements of each experience, including your definitions of them, are contained in little bubbles.  For visual purposes, let’s call these little bubbles, Belief Bubbles.

Inside each belief bubble many elements about the experience are recorded; things like:

  • Perception
  • Emotional feelings
    elicited by the experience
  • Kinesthetic feelings
    associated with the experience
  • Environmental elements
  • Intuitive senses
  • Your five senses and
  • Even the most minute environmental
    elements

Are your belief bubbles limiting your ability to chart the course for outrageous business success?

What if you could interrupt the automatic association of current events to past belief bubbles?  What if you could completely change the way you think, what you do and what you can achieve?  With conscious awareness and intention, you can change the way think and create the results you want.  You can begin to achieve dramatic breakthrough outcomes immediately.

What if, applying a few proven simple principles could catalyze out of the box thinking and breakthrough results personally and professionally?

The truth is, it can. Armed with a few simple, yet powerful exercises, you will be able to achieve breakthrough outcomes in business and in your personal life.

Join the breakthrough success expert, Sheri Taber, on the eWomenNetwork Success Institute 11.15.11 at 1:30 pm CST as she shares proven techniques to overcome your obstacles.

Join the conversation! What are some ways you have broke through a belief bubble?

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The Seven Phases to the Perfect Customer Lifecycle

on November 3, 2011 in Marketing, Uncategorized

While some entrepreneurs are confident students of marketing, most report a feeling of overwhelm and uncertainty about what they should include in their marketing plan. The “menu” of available marketing tactics that I could do is ever growing.

  • E-mail marketing—How can I be using it better?
  • Social media—How do I interact with my fans?
  • Website—How do I make it more effective?

At first, it’s exciting to think of all of the possibilities and tactics, but it soon feels more like chaos than strategy. When all of these mini-strategies don’t roll up to a comprehensive marketing plan, the end result is too often overwhelm and helplessness (i.e. We shut down and don’t actually do much of anything).

How this year can be different?

There are seven distinct phases to the Perfect Customer Lifecycle:

  1. Attract Traffic
    This includes all of the work you do to generate interest in your business, like website traffic, foot traffic, etc. that comes from online/offline advertising, partners, etc.
  2. Capture Leads
    Smart businesses are very intentional about capturing contact information for interested leads as well as permission to follow up. You can’t follow up if they leave your site or store without giving you their info.
  3. Nurture Prospects
    Let’s face it, some leads are hot, and some are not.  Smart businesses have appropriate follow-up in place to educate & build trust with their new leads. Some take 5 minutes to warm up, some take five weeks, some take five years, but when you nurture well, you are the one they think about when they are ready to buy.
  4. Convert Sales
     Once prospects are hot, it’s time to turn them into customers. Whether you have a sales team, or you use automatic follow-up to get the job done, you’ve got to close the business.
  5. Deliver & Satisfy
    What are you doing to make sure that every new customer is completely wowed by you? In addition to delivering your core service, there are many small but powerful strategies for creating happy customers
  6. Upsell Customers
    We all know that it is significantly cheaper to resell a new product to an existing customer, but too often we aren’t systematic enough about offering additional products to customers who’ve already bought.
  7. Get Referrals
    Finally, there are never any better leads than those who come from referrals. What are you doing to ensure that your customers are referring you when they get asked the questions.

Want to hear more on creating the perfect customer lifestyle for your business? Tyler Garns is a highly sought after marketing automation expert at the#1 all-in-one marketing automation software company, InfusionSoft. Join Tyler on the eWomenNetwork Success Institute Tuesday 11.08.11 at 1:30 pm CST.

We would love to hear your thoughts! What are your plans to take your marketing to a new level this year, and next?

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Facebook Privacy, Be Responsible

on October 26, 2011 in Social Media, Success Institute, Uncategorized

Tuesday is my Facebook privacy webinar and I have started to go through all the content that I want to teach.

In reviewing all of this, I’ve found that one of the most important things to consider when using Facebook is you are the user of the Facebook product and YOU control 100% what you share. That’s right – you may not understand your privacy settings, which I am going to cover during the webinar, but at the end of the day no one forces you to upload those party pics, the status update that says you are not home, or the rant about your boss being crazy.

The bigger challenge as I see it, when it comes to using Facebook, is judgment.

Are you taking into consideration the potential for the entire world to read your status update, see your photo, view your comment or watch that video you shared? Yes – I really mean the entire world.

Anyone can take a screen shot of what you posted and send it to the local news station, your boss, your mother and/or your spouse. It can be shared from one person to the next, and so on. And if there’s one thing you should know about Social Networks it is that once something goes viral…you can’t take it back. Words can’t be unread and pictures can’t be unseen. As soon as something is placed online it is as if you have created the perfect beginning for an avalanche. All it will take is one person with a loud voice (or many friends/followers on Facebook or Twitter) to share it and start the downhill slide.

So, my question for you when it comes to your Facebook privacy is this: Who is Responsible?

The only person who is responsible for what is on the Internet about you is you. Understanding your settings is key for sharing your content. I agree fully with that. But – there are no set of buttons that are going to filter poor judgment calls on Facebook.

Stop and think:

  • WWMT (What Would Mom Think?)
  • WWGT (What Would Google Think?)
  • WWIT (What Will I Think – ten years from now looking back?)

Use these filters to govern what you post publicly. I believe in freedom of speech, and I also believe we are all (myself included) 100% responsible for everything that happens in our lives.

The only person who can apply sound judgment to what is posted is you. Start by asking the question, WWMT before you press the share button.

If you want to learn more about how to navigate your Facebook Privacy settings, hear Lisa Larter live on the eWomenNetwork Success Institute on Tuesday 11.01.11 at 1:30 pm CST.

We would love to hear your thoughts and advice! How do you protect yourself on Facebook?

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The Top 5 Tips for Making the Most of Social Media

on October 20, 2011 in Marketing, Social Media, Success Institute, Uncategorized

By Cindy Earl, Founder of GetKnownGetClients.com

Marketing with social media is no longer an option for businesses. It is an essential part of any marketing campaign, and can lead to incredible growth very quickly. Your online presence can have a huge impact on how your business interacts with prospects, and ultimately attracts more clients.

Here are five tips for making the most of social media to produce more profit, boost credibility and build your business:

1. Have a strategy. First, determine how social media fits into your overall marketing strategy. What is your goal? Do you want to build a list, drive traffic to a website, or both? Keep in mind that your overall results with social media will depend on your ability to convert that list of traffic into paying clients. To get best results, you’ll want to think through your entire process, rather than just rely on social media as the new thing.

2. Write killer content. There is only one thing that will get you popularity in social media…your content (or written information). You need to create content that people want to read; the kind that grabs attention, solve pressing problems, and has a strong ‘pass-along’ factor. Great content will get you a loyal audience on social media networks. If you are not a writer, or don’t like to write, hire a copywriter.

High value content is in demand both in social media networks and on the web as a whole. Garnering valuable information is the reason people look to the internet. To drive traffic to your site using social media, you must have something that people want.

3. Give more than you think you should and then give some more. Social media can be a highly effective relationship building tool. To build good relationships, it is good to give before you get. Recommend resources, contacts, and give information freely.

 

4. Strike a balance between giving and self-promotion. When you have new content on your site or that you have submitted to a directory, send out an email or message via the social network to let your readers know about it. But, be careful not to overdo it. You’ll alienate people if you are always selling something. It’s important to find the balance between sharing valuable content and resources with shameless self-promotion.

5. Be time conscious. Social media is an attractive marketing tactic because there is no huge financial investment to get started. However, it can suck up an awful lot of your time if you’re not careful. And time IS money if you want a successful business. You need to get really clear on what you want to achieve and allocate your time accordingly.

Most of all have fun! Social media is a great way to promote yourself and your business online and build trust and credibility with your potential clients over time.

Have any questions about these tips? Contact Cindy Earl, founder of GetKnownGetClients.com or email info@getknowngetclients.com. Hear Cindy live on eWomenNetwork Success Institute 10.27.11 at 1:30 pm CDT. We absolutely love Cindy, and we know you will love her too!

Join the conversation! We would love to hear what some of your tips and strategies are. How do you make the most of social media?

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A Success Mindset

on October 14, 2011 in Uncategorized

Your success will begin and end with your mindset. Your mindset creates the opening for success to flow to you… or not. It’s the mechanism that turns on or shuts off the flow of ideas that can and will be the keys to your success.

A mindset will make you as mechanical and as predictable as a calculator… hit number and it appears on the screen. If you have a “Success Mindset” you will gain support in your endeavor to achieve success.

Your mindset takes in, digest, uses or rejects what is valuable and what is not.

A mindset is like a command post. I’ll try or I won’t try. I’ll learn or I won’t learn. I’ll make the call or I’ll put it off. I’ll get the job done or I’ll procrastinate.

Your mindset influences your behaviors, and your behaviors bring forth your successes or failures.

The good part is that your mindset is created and controlled by you. Your voluntary, controllable thoughts, beliefs and feelings, backed by a firm decision, can, and do, form your action patterns that lead to the results you produce.

Expand your mindset and you will expand your range of possibilities. When your thoughts, beliefs, feelings and actions are in perfect alignment, the conditions in your life will change like magic! Simply put, if you develop a millionaire mindset you will then become a millionaire! Everything you have in your life, good or not so good, is a result of your mindset. If you want to accomplish

ANYTHING you must first develop the mindset necessary to accomplish it.

What is a mindset? A mindset is a decision that creates that feeling inside that you’ve already accomplished your chosen objective. It’s not a goal of “someday” I will get there, or “next month” I will accomplish it. It’s a mental and emotional state of being that says you are already there!

So if you want success in any endeavor, start to own success, feel it, see it, taste it, become it, and it will be yours.

Assignment for this week:

This week take a look at the firm decisions you make and how easily you accomplish them. On the other hand take a look at those things you struggle with and discover what decisions you need to make in order to end your struggles.

Join Jim Britt on Success Institute 10.18.11 at 1:30 pm CST as he shares his positive insight on “Cracking The Rich Code, The Six Traits That Wealthy People Have In Common”.

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