Archive for March, 2011

Sounds like common sense I know – but having real clarity on your products, services and your niche market will provide a solid foundation for an effective marketing plan.

Integral to your business vision, must be clarity about what you have to offer, and to whom you are likely to sell it. Addressing the following questions will help focus you on what action to take before you are ready to invest in marketing.

Be aware if you are product or market driven:

• Do you have a product you want to get to market?
• Do you want to create a product that the market needs?
• Is it a combination of both?

Know your target market:

• What do they look like? Actually visualise and describe your prospects so you get into their head and see your company and services through their eyes.
• Where do they hang out? Where and how can you get access to your prospects?
• How much choice do they have? Which of your competitors can they also buy from?
• What is most important to your customers in the way they do business?

What products and services you have to offer:

• What solution do you offer your client? Focus on benefits not just features.
• What is your pricing structure? Know the profit margin for each product/service
• Is your pricing and profit margin dependant on your client eg residential or business, small business or corporate?

You may need to do more market research and scrutiny of your accounts before you can answer all of the above in detail. But once you have, you will be better positioned to write a marketing plan that ensures you reach a target market for whom you have a solution that they want and need to buy.

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Denise has designed a comprehensive coaching programme based on the work she does with her VIP clients. The programme may be accessed on line and/or through her 1-2-1 programme. Contact Denise for an informal discussion to find out more or visit www.denisemolloy.co.uk. Even better, come and meet her at Kent 2020 7 April at Detling Show Ground

For those of you that are local to Kent, please do come and see me at the Kent Business Show at Detling.

It will be a chance to meet you in person or an opportunity to catch up since we last spoke.

You will find me on stand 004c, where you also will have the opportunity to win a strengths profile and discuss the findings in a 1-2-1 coaching session to help you to maximise your potential and build your business success.

Entrance is FREE so do come along and network. Here’s the link

Hope to see you there!

Denise

I appear to be gaining clients that are family run businesses, be they run by husband and wife, siblings, parent and sibling, or a mixture of family and extended family. One of the key areas that we find needs addressing to step up their business, is establishing the future vision of each business partner so they are moving forward in unison. This means opening up communication.

Owner-managers in general can be so busy with the day-to-day running of the business, that they don’t make time to think about and openly discuss the future, including where the business fits into their life plans.  Family members are understandably mindful not to take work home with them and make a conscious effort to try to switch off and have quality time with each other.

As a consequence this can result in skirting around issues rather than making time to have a focused conversation about the future to establish where each member sees the business going.

Open communication is key

In family run businesses, there can be a closeness that can almost inhibit open communication, either because they think they know what the other wants, or they hold back from verbalising their thoughts in fear of upsetting other family members. Discussing when each member sees themselves leaving the company is of a particular delicate nature and can be a taboo subject. It shouldn’t be – brought out into the open it helps to give the business direction and focus as they work in unison towards common goals.

When I work with any client, one of the first things I do is take them through some personality profiling to help highlight their strengths and potential limitations. The profile reports also provide a great insight into their communication style, values, needs and desires. Once in black and white, I have found that by sharing this information, it gives each family member an objective base from which to open up communication channels.

I have used this process with great success to get things moving with all my clients and it is particularly effective in family run businesses. If you want to find out more about how I help clients to establish their business vision, sign up to receive my download, ‘What’s Stopping You Step Up Your Business’ teleseminar. Just enter your details in the sign up box in the left hand column of this blog post.

KENT 2020 VISION – Come and meet me and win a free profile and feedback

You can also come and meet me at the Kent 2020 Vision Show at Detling on 7 April. At the show you will have the opportunity to win a strengths profile and discuss the findings in a 1-2-1 coaching session to help you to maximise your potential and build your business success.

…that’s my mission. I am a passionate believer that playing to your strengths is the key to personal and business growth.  The core of all my coaching rests on this belief and is backed up my masses of research by The Gallup Organization.

Over the past decade, Gallup has surveyed more than 10 million people worldwide on the topic of employee engagement, (how positive and productive people are at work.) Only one third ‘strongly agreed’ with the statement:

‘At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day’.

At recent networking meetings of owner managers, I put this to a crude test by asking for a show of hands from those who could make this claim.  I am delighted to say that the average number was higher than the Gallup research.  I was hoping for that result because as business owners, we have control over where our business is heading and what we do every day. Or do we?

When I then asked what percentage of their day was spent on doing what they do best, the result was well under 50%.  So although the audience were small business owners who had most likely set up a business to do more of what they do best and get rewarded as such – they were spending less than half of their time doing what they most enjoy and working to their strengths.

Time and again when I am coaching clients, we discover that as their business has grown, they have allowed their strengths to be diluted by not undertaking activities that play to their strengths. After having built a successful business, many owner-managers are reluctant to let go, delegate responsibility to others, and as a result don’t focus on what they do best – the reason they went into business in the first place.

Gallup’s studies indicate that people who do have the opportunity to focus on their strengths every day are ‘6 times as likely to be engaged in their jobs and more than three times as likely to report having an excellent quality of life in general’.

So to get yourself back on track and to inject a booster of motivation and inspiration, rediscover your strengths by undertaking the activities that play to them. Strengths are also needs, the more you use them the happier you will feel.

To get you back on track, I highly recommend one of the Gallup Organization Strengthsfinder books where you can read about the research and take an online profile. Details of the books can be found at www.denisemolloy.co.uk/reading.html

If you want to find out more about how I coach to your strengths, sign up to download my ‘What’s Stopping You Step Up Your Business’ teleseminar, www.denisemolloy.co.uk You can also come and meet me at the Kent 2020 Vision Show at Detling on 7 April. At the show you will have the opportunity win strengths profile and discuss the findings in a 1-2-1 coaching session to help you to maximise your potential and build your business success.

Denise

A friend confided to me the other day that she had a long lunch date with an ex colleague – and wished she hadn’t. “Why did I do it?” she bemoaned. “I know he’s so negative. He just gets me down.”

It got me thinking. We all have choices in life – and sometimes we get it wrong! Some of us spend our lives trying to be all things to all people. But sometimes, especially in business, we have to remain focussed and look after No 1 – however difficult that might be. If we don’t look after ourselves, how can we take care of others? That means remaining positive and surrounding ourselves with people with a positive, can do, mind set.

In business, we can’t afford to be negative nor have negative people on our team. It could spread quickly and it will inevitably impact team synergy and motivation. So if you sense, hear or see negativity – deal with it!

That doesn’t mean taking a hatchet and losing hard-working, long-serving team members. But you do need to address it, and in a positive way. We are all individuals, each with our own strengths and by focusing on individuals’ strengths; you are instilling a positive mindset. Who doesn’t like doing what they do best and most enjoy? You will be encouraging them to take responsibility, setting them up for success, and eliminating negativity.

Coaching to each persons’ strengths gives them fresh confidence and a new direction– great at getting the best out of people. So make sure you have positive people around you; encourage their strengths, develop their skills and you’re on track for success.