My lovely guest on my Pay It Forward podcast this week is Kerry Swift who is a specialist accountancy recruiter.
A great story about taking the plunge and starting your own business and tons of great advice too.
Thanks for being my guest Kerry Swift!
Listen to the whole episode on
https://2summitup-pay-it-forward.simplecast.com/episodes/pay-it-forward-with-kerry-swift
The final session is all about action – the reality is of course if we don’t change anything, nothing changes which is great if we are happy with where we are.
We’ve covered a lot in these sessions – as I mentioned at the start lots of thought provokers some light bulbs moment and of course actions.
As you will now see that all the sessions piece together to complete the bigger picture, they all interlock and are of equal importance. I’m guessing you will have had some lightbulb moments along the way and in some cases, it will be a relief that you have many of the points in hand, others maybe not so much. The reality is none of us are great at everything, we just need to know who to ask.
You may now have your own list of actions to take, some will be higher on your important list than others, and most importantly it’s your list to action.
Planning in time to analyse your business on a regular basis is key. Without measuring your results how do you know you are doing the right things?
Afterall I’m sure you’ve invested a huge amount of time and energy, and if you don’t know what is working and what isn’t it can be soul destroying and very demotivating and can have a price tag attached.
So, what should you be looking at?
Are you achieving your weekly/monthly objectives if not why not? Are they realistic based on what you are doing, or are you setting yourself up for a fall? What should you be doing more of, less of, or stopping altogether?
This sounds so easy but in reality, what and where are the right places for you to focus on? It won’t look the same for us all.
There are after all so many ways we can divide our time and to be fair we can all look at this differently. I have found a way that works for me and many of my clients which I share in this session.
For me it’s about dividing your time across three client groups and by that I mean – existing clients/potential clients (those who have approached us but not yet decided) and future opportunities.
In my opinion they all need some of your time – depending where you are on your journey, will be the deciding factor how much time you spend on each. It will change and evolve as your business moves forward. This session explains why it’s important to spend time with each group.
This step is really key, the questions you ask now are going to help you to help them, it’s not about selling anything it’s about understanding where they are now and where they want to be, and what end result they are looking for.
As the expression goes – fail to plan, plan to fail. If we don’t put some thought behind this before we jump in without a doubt we can miss or lose some potential clients.
I’m sure many sales have been lost at this part of the process because we just haven’t asked the right questions or listened to the answers in our eagerness to help. The right questions give the best answers – it’s what we do with those answers that is really important.
Time is money when you are running your own business. Lost time can lead to lost sales, whether that’s time lost procrastinating or spending time on the wrong things or being disorganised or all of the above!
Procrastination isn’t the problem it’s the outcome of another problem – we take a look at why we do it, and how we can overcome it with a useful exercise that works for me.
Being organised saves a ton of time, there are some excellent business tools out there – are you making us of the many free versions and their features? Equally creating regular actions, saving things in the right place can free up a lot of wasted time.
Once you know who your ideal clients are, and where they are hanging out – you need to decide how you are going to reach out to these people, how often, what you are going to say and what results you are expecting.
This session is about thinking about the outcomes and expectations you have from your actions and create a strategy to support your actions.
Whether you are placing an ad, boosting a post, or going out networking – you need to be mindful of the results you are aiming for. Equally if something isn’t working you should dig into why that is, and what could be done differently.
Now we know what solutions and outcomes our potential buyers are looking for and we are clear on the problems we can provide, we need to know who they are where they are – again plenty to get underneath in here.
To make this session easier – this is where you will need to have one particular service in mind (or niche) and you should be armed with the problems you solve and the solutions you provide for those people who would benefit from that service.
So to recap You’ve got your service you’ve got the problems you solve and now you are going to find the people who you can help who have those problems.
We’ve covered how important it is for us to identify the problems we solve for other people, the difference we can make and the outcomes we can provide. If we don’t get this right it can be a real show stopper because we can be channelling all our energy and time in speaking to the ‘wrong’ people which can be very disheartening and may be costly.
Often this can be the step that we have to really think about, but it’s really worth the investing time in it, because once we are really clear on it, it makes the next steps so much easier and clear.
We have to wear our potential buyers hat here and see it from their view.
A big part of what we do as the seller is to understand what is important to our potential buyer and what the purchase means to them. To do that successfully we need to be asking the right questions and more importantly listening to the answers. Sometimes in our enthusiasm to share our knowledge we talk more than listen.
All our potential buyers have choices, we need to make our customer journey as seamless as possible, if not people can move on very quickly to someone else. Therefore, we need to revisit our customer journey on a regular basis to see how good it is.
Our unique identity makes us who we are, it’s how people will recognise and remember us. It’s the lasting impression we want to make for the right reasons.
It includes visibility including logos, the font we use, the colour palette we choose, our visuals, and the messages we are giving, and more importantly what is behind those messages. It’s also about the outcomes we can provide, the problems we solve and how we make people feel when they engage with us, it’s about building a rapport and making a connection.
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