I am not a business Coach.

I found out pretty fast that I wasn’t a great business coach. Yes, I had run a 80 million dollar division of a top 3 telecom company, and yes we had grown a small company from 8 to 800 employees before we sold it, and yes, I knew enough about finance, and H.R. and I.T, and of course sales and marketing, but, I really didn’t have any passion for any of those except sales and marketing.

Looking for a business coach in Denver.

So I went on a search for a good business coach for my clients, and found two in Denver.  I spent 3 months talking to and researching Business coaching programs and individual business coached.  I found Susan Roberts an Action Coach an excellent choice for Business Coaching in Denver,  and Jerry Chesser, a great choice in Broomfield and North.

What makes these two good?

What makes these two good choices (in my opinion) is what there former and current clients say.  I base my opinions when selecting a vendor for anything on their references, and these two have plenty of good testimonials.

They do free seminars that can change your business forever, even if you don’t sign up.  I am not compensated by either (Although we did do Business development years ago for Jerry).

Give them a call.  Or call me, Mike Bayes to discuss more. 303 500 3053  ext 1

Mike Bayes is President of My One Call LLC a sales acceleration firm based in Lafayette CO.  http:www.salesjumpstart.net

I don't know who this is, but he looks like a sales guy. Do you? Image via Wikipedia

For small business owners the number one reason for sales being slow is something very simple. Lack of, or no activity.

It’s rarely a poor conversion percentage, or that the price is to high, or (add reason here). In my experience, it’s almost always a simple lack of sales activity.  Waiting for the phone to ring does not qualify as sales activity  by the way.

So, if you need to jump start your sales, write a letter and send it to 1000 target prospects (or 100, or 10,000). Pick up the phone and call everyone you have done business with, or have a business relationship with and ask them how you might help them.

Put together a real special offer on something to get you and your sales group excited about selling again.

Go to that business networking function.  What else are you going to be doing at 6:30  at night that will help your sales?

In the words we all know and love,  JUST DO IT. And do it for an hour every day.

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Mayapolis

http://www.web-popularity.org

Image via Wikipedia

Solar in Denver is doing pretty well. Our client, Stellar Roofing and Solar, had a bit of a scare earlier this year, as did most of the solar energy contractors in Denver when Excel Energy stopped the rebates program for home owners.

They are back, so solar installation companies in Denver are back on track as well.  Most will provide a free estimate, but few have the resources that Stellar provides. In house Solar installation, Electricians (you need one when you install Solar)  a roofing crew, and a good standing with the Better Business Bureau!

Solar makes sense in Denver, and across the country. Your pay back after rebates, tax credits and energy savings is ofter better than a 10% Return on Investment.

Lead Generation Tactics

Based on the last blog, you now know how much per lead you can spend, and you know that by increasing your conversion rate (closing percentage) you will be able to generate more leads.

So what tactics (methods) should you use.  Lets start with a small company with a limited budget, as this is the most difficult situation.

If you are limited by a small budget for advertising, the first strategy is do every thing you can to reduce some expenses and move that money over to lead generation.  Lead generation is an investment, not an expense, and should produce more revenue and profit. A really good cycle!

Tactics to use to generate leads and expense:

Relationship marketing.  Expense is your time

1.) Make a list of everyone you know in business. Next to their name add one thing you can do for them professionally.  It can be an idea, an introduction, a menetion of their service in your mewsletters or emails, a joint venture, a lead.

2.)  Take the top 5 that seem to feel the best, and make those 5 calls this week.

3.) Watch good things happen.  We call it the radar system. You get on their radar,  and are in there thoughts.  Nothing but good will come from this. You will start getting referrals, and opportunities you never would have imagined.  This is my personal favorite and always pays back big dividends.

Next up, free Internet marketing on a DIY basis.

See more on our main sites SEO Blog www.salesjumpstart.net/blog

or our main sute http://www.salesjumpstart.net

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Coaches and consultants who start their clients business planning with “how much do you want to do in revenue ” this quarter, year, 3 years, seem to completely miss the point.

You start with what your margins allow you to “pay” for anew customer, and then divide that by your conversion rate.  SO if you can afford to pay $1000.00  for a new client and you close 25% you can pay $250.00  per LEAD.

Once you have that you can decide what tactics fit that budget,a nd how many leads at that rate you can buy each month.

The best way to get more leads, is to increase your conversion rate. The better your conversion rate, the more leads you can afford. That  is why we start with improving your conversion rate.

You can see more about our lead generation on our main site about SEO and Sales http://www.salesjumpstart.net

Business owners and managers spend a lot of time “putting out fires”.  Here is a system to reduce your firefighting time significantly.

Fires are surprises.  So we try to employ a no surprise management environment.  Surprises tend to come from two sources, your employees or your clients/customers. To reduce and eliminate surprises you need a system to communicate constantly with both, in a confidential and trusting way.

Customers:
Makes sure you have a policy and system to email a survey and call every customer on a regular basis.  This should include every level of your company’s management in a rotating time line.  Designate A, B and C clients, and set up a schedule of calls and surveys, with reports back to the the President of the company.

Example.  You have a three layer management org chart.

A Companies get a survey monthly from the Presidents office and a  call every three months in place of the normal lower management level calls.
A companies get a call every month from your director level.  Just a :how are we doing type call.  This can be replaced with a personal visit.

B companies get surveys every month, and a call every 4 months from the President  ( or VP )

B companies get a call or visit from the next level down every  6 weeks.

C  companies.  Survey every quarter.

Reports on every contact are sent to the Presidents and VP’s office

You will be amazed at what you will hear, and how your fire fighting team becomes less active as you identify challenges before
it becomes a fire.

If you are a small firm, you become the most active level. Call and survey every month or more!

For employees:

Send a post card to every employee with a return address to you ( The President or V.P)
Ask them how it’s going and do they have any suggestions.  Put all the returned postcards into a hat and draw
one or two out for monthly prizes.  This will encourage participation. Have some one call the employee if they didn’t respond and
remind them to get that post card back for the drawing.

Once again,  you will be amazed at the information you will get about your offices, managers and how your customers perceive your service.

Do the same type program of communication for your employees. Have a system that insures the senior level management talks directly to the A  and B
employees on a regular bases.

What comes with this is a very important policy of how the senior level communicates bad news or potential problems with the management.  It’s
essential that any “surprises”  are worked on as a team, and that you never beat up a manager for information received in this system.

Try this and you will be putting away the fire fighting gear far sooner than you would think. You will also be a better customer service organization and most likely find lot’s of lost revenue when speaking with customers.

Image via CrunchBase

Google should charge for Local Places Rankings.  It’s the only decent thing to do.

Today, the process of becoming highly ranked in Google places is like the coca cola secret formula.  Locked in a vault in an undisclosed Google location ( I am thinking their Boulder Colorado office) and heavily guarded by  a google of  armed bots. And just for the fun of it, they change it every week or two.

Google has become far to powerful to the completely defensesly small business owner.  Is it in any way fair, that your completion has a huge advantage on gaining new prospects simply based on either pure luck, or paying a company to bring their sites ranking to the first page?
And look over the Google help pages for Places and you will see many urgent requests for information on why a site has just disappeared or dropped 4 pages in places.

To Google this is just another change in the process of ranking. To a business it can mean life or death, or a substantial reduction in revenues.  It can cause layoffs, and enormous undeserved grief.  Yes, one can say they enjoyed a bit of luck, and now must compete in different ways, but businesses aren’t based on that. You can not lose 50%  of your prospects and make your budget, pay the people you have, and survive with out knowing it’s coming.

I would be very interested in how many of the first page rankings (on Google places) paid a company to optimize the listing.  In the areas I work on I would suggest that at least 50%  of the top places listings had paid a pretty penny,  and may continue to monthly, to gain the position.

There is no question this percentage (what ever it may be) will continue to increase,  as will the price a company pays to have a search engine marketing company  work on their Google places (and other local directories) rankings.  Lets face it, there isn’t a lot of space on the
first page… and its getting more and more valuable.

So why not just open Google places to either a pay for placement, or a bid type system.  At least the small business community will know
what they need to do to have their sites placed highly , and can plan a budget and sales forecast based on that. Google isn’t doing consumer’s any favors with the current system.  A highly ranked Places site (or company) doesn’t guarantee a better consumer experience.

They could use an Ad Words type model. Basing the ranking on several weighted factors.  Bid amount, or fee paid. Click through rate,  relevance to the keyword and number of reviews (verified or from quality sources). They could even rotate the top 7 (or what ever the box number) guaranteeing some web visibility for most the participants.

In my view the small business community would applaud the change.  More small businesses would have access to this important
advertising, and the consumers would be better served by knowing how a company found it’s way onto the first page. Today a consumer may assume a non intended endorsement of a highly ranked places site, just based on the fact Google put it there.

It’s not Google’s fault that they control so much of many small businesses new sales. It is, in my view, their responsibility to do so in the fairest
way possible.

Your thoughts?

Heat treat Inc, reports the most web site traffic in their history ( a 54% increase, and that translated into the best sales week in the company history.  That happened after six weeks of Local SEO by My One Call,  and organic SEo Work.

Heat Treat removes beg bugs. Here is there contact info:
Heat Treat Inc, Bed Bug Removal in Denver
300 Center Drive, G-317
Superior, CO 80027
(303) 547-5100

They provide businesses with a full service system to have an A Credit rating and $1o0,000 to $150K in  Business Credit with in a year. The under writer has zero complaints with the BBB .

One of our Carpet Cleaning clients is seeing great traffic to their web site since starting our web SEO (LOCAL) program six months ago.  We are focused on Carpet Cleaning in Denver .  They do great work according to their reviews on Google and Yelp.

More to follow.

If you want to see your site on the first page of major search engines please ssee us at www.salesjumpstart.net or call me at 303-500-3053 ext 1

Great month for Local SEO success in July 2010!

We have two new clients who have been ranked in the Google places box for many keywords.

The first client is a divorce attorney in Littleton Colorado After two weeks Ron saw his site appear in the second position of Google places map! He also tells me he has already seen potential new business.

Our other large project is Heat Treat Inc, a bed bug removal company in Denver Colorado. After a month Gary W. the owner reports great traffic to his web site, and the biggest sales week in the history of his company!

So we are still 100% for first page rankings with every client for the last 18 months. We love to help companies get visible on line. Feel free to ask me any questions at our SEO Denver web site www.salesjumpstart.net

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You see examples of irresistible offers all the time.  Some are in plain site, some are not. Here are a some common actual offers, that can be highly effective.

A waiting list for your service or product.

Buy one get one free.

Buy now pay later

Try if free for a limited time

Here are some that are over used, and not as effective.

Free assessments

Free analysis

Let’s face it, how do you react when you see these.  In many cases we know they are just trying to sell us something.

Spend some time thinking through your offer. Make it as irresistible as possible.  And then…

Add an iron clad guarantee
Make sure you have ton’s of customer testimonials.

Have fun and let me know what you come up with.

Contact me here www.salesjumpstart.net

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