Exceptional Thinking Blog

Everything you do is marketing

Helen Dowling — Sat, 12 May 2012 08:11:54 -0500

The other day I received an email from a contact of mine saying that she had entered and won an award in her business. Now, I could have thought good for her and moved on in my business, but rather than doing that, I replied to her email saying congratulations and well done on winning the award.

Now there were several reasons why I sent over this email. Firstly, I was genuinely pleased for her and wanted to tell her so. It’s hard work to win an award and when you do, you deserve some acknowledgement for doing this.

But I also sent her this email for another reason too. You see, when you send out emails, cards, letters or ring someone up genuinely wanting the best for them, you send out a message to people. A message that you really do care and want the best for them and people will remember you for doing this.

And that is marketing.

I’m a firm believer that everything you do is marketing – even when you don’t think it is.

Marketing in your business is how you answer the phone to doing what you say you’re going to do. It’s ringing someone to let them know you’ll be late to buying someone you meet a cup of coffee. As they say in all areas of life, it’s the little things you do that make a difference.

And it’s those little things that people will see and form an impression of you from.

As one of my clients said to me recently “Whenever I sent something over to you, I always know that it’s going to get done.”

It’s those sorts of things that you’ll get remembered for and people will appreciate.

In fact, I think it’s these little things that often get forgotten about too. Because I think it’s easy to get caught up in the day to day things and forget about doing things like this. It helps to think about how you’d like people to describe your business – what’s the personality of it?

The personality of my business is to do things exceptionally – it ought to be really didn’t it and that means going that extra mile. Hard to do and hard to remember sometimes, but well worth it. What would you like people to say about your business? How do you show this in your business? And what could you do to make sure you demonstrate it more in the future?

Exceptional Thinking (http:www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk ) provides marketing help and advice to business owners. For a free video and webinar on “Help! I need new client” go to http:www.exceptionalthinking.co.ukhelp.htm

Make a list

Helen Dowling — Sat, 12 May 2012 08:06:45 -0500

Do you have a list up on your wall that you can see right now of potential clients for your business?

I’m really surprised when I ask this question to discover that very few businesses have a list like this, but for my business it’s absolutely essential.

My list contains all the people who have expressed an interest in working with us either now or at some point in the future and serves as a reminder to me to touch base with them.

Each day I go through this list and commit to contacting at least 2 people on this list by email or phone. I’m either trying to get a meeting with them or a decision on a proposal from them.

If they become a client, they get a big tick and if I’m pretty certain that they won’t become one, I put a “no” through their name.

Every month this list gets revised so that we have a constantly updated list showing us potential new clients. And – more importantly, it’s up on my wall so that I can see it, rather than being hidden away in a folder somewhere.

Do you have a list like this and do you find it useful? Let me know in the comments section below.

Do you let time hold you back in your business?

Helen Dowling — Mon, 07 May 2012 09:50:10 -0500

When I ask business owners the question “Can you achieve anything you want in your business?” the answer I normally get back is something along the lines of “I would be able to…if only I had the time.”

Time – or rather lack of it – it seems is the biggest reason holding most business owners back from achieving everything they want to in their business.

But is this actually the case?

Let’s face it, there are only 24 hours in a day and no matter how much I try I can’t give you anymore. And yet, I can think of many examples of business owners who do manage to achieve everything they want to in their business even despite this major barrier that many other business owners cite as the reason they can’t do things.

So if some people do achieve what they want to, is it time that’s the problem?

I think not!

I think that time is often used as the reason that people can’t do things when actually it’s something else entirely. How often have you found all the time you need to do something when you want to do it or when a deadline is looming? What do you do then – you make time for the activity.

So if it’s not time – what is it?

Well, I think many reasons hold business owners back. These include:

Not knowing what to do

Not knowing where to start

Having to learn something before getting started

Waiting for something to happen before doing the task i.e. I can’t do this until my website is done

One to many marketing

Helen Dowling — Sun, 06 May 2012 09:52:09 -0500

In Exceptional Thinking, we’ve been trying to do one to many marketing for a number of years now, but I find this still isn’t something that’s particularly common among small business owners who seem to opt for one to one methods. Let me explain what I mean.

One to one marketing methods are where you’re only talking to people on a one to one basis so for instance at a networking event, you’re only talking to one person at a time. If you do telemarketing, you’re only talking to one person at a time and so on.

One to many marketing methods are where you’re communicating with lots of people all at once. So for instance speaking at an event would be a one to many marketing activity as you’re speaking to lots of people all at once. Email marketing would be a one to many marketing activity as it’s the same amount of effort to communicate with 2000 people as it is to communicate with one person.

Other one to many activities include direct mail, writing articles and having them where your target customers can see them to name but a few.

One to many activities allow you to leverage your time when you’re doing your marketing activities and let’s face it small business owners don’t have a lot of that so can be very productive for your business.

Are you trying one to many marketing activities? What results have they brought in?

Are you prepared to step up to the next level?

Helen Dowling — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 10:53:40 -0500

When I first decided that I wanted to achieve big income goals in my business, I didn’t realise that that in order to do that, I would need to change everything I’d done so far and step it up the next level.

I often compare this to climbing a mountain in your business. You’ve climbed a small one, but now you’re about to climb Mount Everest and the tools, resources, attitude and so one will be very different.

Instead of just climbing this mountain, you’ll need to get to various stages – like arriving at basecamps in order to reach your goal. It’s a big goal and you’re going to need to change the way you approach it.

Very often though you don’t know exactly what you need to change to climb up this next mountain so what you need to do is go back to basics. What did you do when you first started your business? You learnt – from books, inspirational people who’d done it before, business mentors and advisors and so on.

You need to do the same thing again – find people who have already climbed up the next mountain and get some help and advice on how to do this. That means that the people who inspired you the first time round are probably not the people who are going to help you now. You need to move on and find new people who can help you with this.

Now – this is a jump. It’s hard to let go of things that have served you well in the past and make the changes necessary to get up the next mountain. Some business owners say they want to step up, but when it comes down to it, they don’t do what’s necessary to make the transition. Others embrace the change, however scary it may be and achieve their dreams.

Hence the title of this article – are you prepared to step up to the next level? Because if you are, the results can be fantastic, but it also means you’re going to have to change the way that you do things, let go of some things, delegate others. Perhaps take on your first employee or begin to invest money in your business whereas you might not have done this before.

Thinking big can be exciting – and no, it’s not for everyone, but for some of you reading this article, you might be sat there thinking that yes, this is for you.

And if it is for you, what are you going to do today that’s going to change your thinking and start you on the route to your first basecamp?

The first thing I suggest you do is starting asking yourself questions in a different way. Questions such as:

Have I done everything I can to promote this product or service? What else could I do?

What am I doing today that’s going to bring in income in 90 days time?

How can I achieve a 6 figure income in just 2 months?