Staying Passionate About Your Business

Whether you have a brick and mortar business, are in direct sales or a mult-level or network marketing business, a key ingredient to your success is always going to be passion.  You need to be passionate about your product or service in order to get others to be interested in what you are offering.  Creating passion in the beginning is always easy.  We can all get excited when something is new and full of potential, but when the shine wears off the product, and your business is up and running, keeping the momentum going can be challenging.

Many people will tell you that one of the first things you need to do, no matter what you are doing, is to sit down and ask yourself why you are doing what you are about to do.  This is one of the most important steps no matter what journey you are embarking upon.  If you don’t have a clear vision of what you want to see for your efforts, your passion for the product, service or venture will wane very quickly.

If you are embarking on something new or if you have been in your business for some time and you feel your passion slipping away, take some time alone and think about your reason for being in your business.  Maybe your business helps other people and that excites you, maybe there is the potential for a lot of money and that excites you, maybe there are incentive trips, maybe the thought of having more money to give to your favorite charity really excites you, whatever it is, get a clear picture of it.  Once you have identified your why, use it to create passion and momentum for your business.  Why is always the first step to success.  What is your why?

What Are You Willing to Do?

Many people work with me because they are trying to change the way their lives are going or to create greater success in their career or business.  Their success with me or any coach really, depends on how much they are willing to do to create success.

During the Olympic games I heard an interview with Shawn Johnson the gymnast who captured a gold medal on the beam.  Her coach is a native to Beijing and came to American and opened gym where Shawn lives.  When she came into his gym and started working with him he asked her “how successful do you want to be”?  What a profound question, the answer to which determined her successful outcome.

What I find when I work with people is that they start coaching with great expectations, just like they start their businesses.  Then along the way they are asked to make changes and do things that are not within their comfort zone and they lose heart and need to be pushed to finish well.  In business, they find they have to market their business more than actually do their work and they become disillusioned with their decision to go into business.

Life is like that, we get out of it exactly the same amount that we put into it.  If you want to do great things, earn more money, change your life or your business there will be times when you must do the hard things, the things you hate to do, to achieve the desired outcome.

Before embarking on the journey of a new business or career, ask yourself, ‘what do I want from this?’ and then ask yourself ‘what am I willing to do to achieve my goals’?  For some it is getting up in front of a crowd and speaking maybe for the first time ever, for others it is changing they way they interact with others, for still others it is long hours of studying to get a degree that will help achieve their goals.  Are you teachable and coachable?  Are you someone who can see the goal and do what it takes to get there?

How successful do you want to be?

What is Your Vision and Mission?

This week I had an opportunity to discover the true value of my Vision and Mission statements in my business.  These often overlooked documents allowed me to make a decision about my business that without them would have caused me a lot of angst.

Your vision and mission statements for your business should lay out where you want your business to go in the future (vision) and the reason you exist (mission).  Most of us think that knowing this in our heads is quite enough.  After all most of us don’t have to articulate what we believe, or do we?

When decisions about who you will work with or sell your product to come up, if you have these thoughts down on paper, you will have a reference point to turn to that will help you make that decision.  If you draw a line in the sand before you need it drawn, when the problem comes up, you have our answer without having to think twice.  Making decisions before you need to, allows your decisions to be unencumbered by emotions and questions.  Referring to a predetermined path makes hard decisions easier to make.

The same can be said of your vision statement.  If you lay out your path in your vision statement, when someone comes along with a bright idea you know immediately if it will move in the direction you laid out or is you must change course to accommodate new information.  Creating a vision for the future does not mean that it will never change or that the vision is inflexible, it just gives you a place from which to jump off.

So if you haven’t given much thought to these two valuable documents, take some time in the near future and do so, you never know when you need a line in the sand that helps you make decisions.

What Makes You Money?

Have you ever noticed how people love to give you things to do.  If you are standing around idle someone wants to put you to work.  If you seem the slightest bit knowledgeable, someone wants you to sit on their committee, run their program, lead their organization or manage their charity.  Some of this is excellent, especially if you are trying to build a name for yourself and your business.  But here is the problem, we can sometimes get so busy doing good things that the focus of our business gets lost.  We get exhausted and then we find that it is difficult to get through each day because we have way too much going on.

So how do we stop that from happening to us?  Here is a little trick I use when I am creating my schedule each week.  I look at everything I am involved in and ask myself “what makes you money?”.  If you are doing more things that make you money than those that don’t, you are on target.  But if the world has you leading two or three groups, heading up the committee to beautify the neighborhood, coaching teams your children aren’t even on, and writing the new bylaws for the home owners association from two houses ago, then maybe you should re-evaluate the value of these involvements.

Many small business owners look at any involvement as “good for business”, but it is only good for your business if you are also able to “do” your business.  If your involvement to get noticed has you so busy that you just get nothing else done, or makes you feel stressed all the time because your “to-do” list is now 4 pages long, it is just time to ask “what makes me money?”.

So if you are feeling a little unbalanced ask yourself “What makes me money?” and get back to doing those things for a while.

Targeting Your Market

One of the most difficult things for all business owners to do is to determine their target audience.  Sometimes we feel we just need to market to everyone to get the most results.  However, it has been proven that the more specific you are about who you want to work with the more you attract those people.  Unfortunately, targeting those folks is not always that easy.

I start by thinking about what kinds of clients I have really enjoyed working with.  For some this is a long list for others it is shorter, but think about those clients that it was just a pleasure to serve.  Now figure out what made them so special.  For me, I love to work with open-minded, teachable people.  In fact, I will often charge a little less if I have to just to get those folks.  Whatever your favorite client is, put them on your list.

Next think about where you found those clients.  Where can you get more of them.  Maybe you got them off the internet, or in a networking group or in a social group.  Take note of where you find your clients and then begin targeting those places to find more of them.

Since getting new clients is such and integral part of doing business, we must all make sure that we are aware of where we find each of them.  It is very difficult to keep going over the long haul is we have not figured out who we will market to and how we will find them.

It’s Not Always About ROI

With the advent of $4 and $5 gas prices, the people who really suffer are those folks who must travel to do their job.  There are those who travel to the client and those who travel to make connections to clients.  As someone who does the latter through networking, I have certainly had to think twice about how far I will drive for an event that may or may not net me a client.  So how does one make the tough decisions about what to cut from your business-building efforts?

My rule of thumb is to follow the connections.  There are a couple of groups that I still travel quite a distance for because I have developed some good connections.  Now connections do not always equal business immediately, but if you have developed some good relationships and people see you as an expert in your field, don’t lose that momentum by being afraid to spend the money on gas to get to the group.  Instead, take a look at all your networking groups and determine how well you are connected in each group.  In those groups that you feel you have not yet developed some good connections, stop attending them for awhile and concentrate on the groups in which you have made those valuable connections.

In these tough times, it is more about making good connections than ever.  When we are all judiciously watching our pennies, when we do buy, we will buy from friends so keep on nurturing the great connections you have established.   Budget you time and your mine to add places to find new connections as you have time and money.  Now more than ever it is important to have a networking plan that works the best for your budget.

Do People Trust You?

Respect and trust are two things without which it is difficult to be successful in any career.  Since most of us must sell either ourselves or a product, so if we can be trusted we are just going to have more customers.  So do people trust what you say?  Do they respect your opinions and advice?  If the answer to either of these questions is no, then you may have a problem.

In sales trust is a big deal.  We are all bombarded by advertising that is barely believable, marketers who “spin” the truth about their product and sales folks who will say and do anything to make a deal.  So trust in those who are selling us a product may be very difficult for most of us to muster.  Given that environment, how do we create believability in our personal brand and service or our product?

1.  Don’t make false claims.  If we don’t represent ourselves or our product as more than it is, we are more likely to develop a loyal following.  People are conditioned to be skeptical, so keeping that in mind we must ensure that we don’t step over a line that causes them to not believe what we say.

2.  Treat people with respect.

3.  Don’t over promise, if you can’t do something, then just say so.

4.  Admit mistakes.  If you or your product messes up, admit it and fix the problem, don’t try and make excuses or cover up your own faults.

5.  Be consistent, treat everyone fairly and with integrity.

6.  Be open to criticism and respond graciously.

7.  Be helpful, if your product or service is not right for someone, try to help them find what is right for them.

8.  Tell the truth every time.  People talk, so don’t tell one person something and another person something completely different.  If you tell the truth all the time, you never have to get your stories straight.

Trust is always earned.  Whether you are a new salesperson or you have been selling for years, whether you are selling a service or a product, your trust quotient will make your sales easier or more difficult.  Spend time with people to gain their trust and they will buy from you over and over, but if you go for the quick sale, just to make a buck, that is about all you will make in the end.