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Archive for August, 2009

As business around the world has become increasingly competitive the demand for innovation, quicker service turnaround and compressed pricing models, has created an environment where business owners must be creative, develop new solutions and manage stressful transitions. They must remain focused on moving their business forward without eroding into their profits, keeping their customers happy and their employees motivated. This great demand for immediate results is a classic precursor to seeking a small business coach.

A small business coach is an independent and objective partner who provides one-on-one interaction, guidance and motivation to a business owner or executive who is looking for feedback and guidance on how to reach a desired goal. A coach is similar to having a partner who holds you accountable, keep you on track, and keep you progressing forward. Coaching is effective for business owners who know what they want to get done, are open to feedback and change but aren’t sure the path to take to get there. A small business coach will work with their clients to help them find the answers and offer them the support and motivation to take the necessary steps. Some additional benefits of working with a strong business coach are as follows:

· Objective Point of View: One of the biggest benefits of working with a business coach is that they are independent and not linked to the organization; they are linked to only you and where you want to go. Sometimes those that are closest to you cannot provide a truly objective assessment of your situation and won’t be able to guide the business owner effectively. According to an ICF survey, 28% of those surveyed commented that an independent point of view was the most valuable result.

· Idea Sharing, Creativity and Brainstorming: Information is one of the most powerful assets a person can posses and having the ability to leverage a coach’s knowledge and experience is exponentially better. Having the ability to brainstorm and be creative with a coach who is focused on helping you solve a problem is one of the biggest benefits you will experience from a business coaching. 28% of those surveyed commented that brainstorming was the most valuable result.

Sustained Improvement: Working with a business coach focuses around a goal or a series of goals that will provide a foundation for continuous improvement. A coach helps you leverage your strengths and to become more effective at process and communication improvements and holds you accountable for the results. According to an ICF survey, 15% of those surveyed commented that being accountable to the coach was the most valuable result.

· Motivation: A successful coach will be able to ignite the passion inside and to help you create the positive change necessary to move forward towards your goals. It is a motivational process that brings you through a series of discussions to help find that passion and focus. According to an ICF survey, 15% of those surveyed commented that an encouragement and motivation was the most valuable result.

Business coaching is one of the most effective ways of achieving growth, change and development in both people and organizations. It involves a process and a sounding board for decision making and helps give you more clarity and focus in your day to day operations. Lastly, it will improve your interpersonal skills and your ability to handle tension between business, family and personal needs. When a business owner feels like they are on an island by themselves, a business coach will motivate them to build the raft to get them to safety.

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Goal setting is a powerful practice used by many businesses and individuals year after year as they begin their planning process for the upcoming period. It usually involves an evaluation of strengths and weaknesses and the development of a plan for improvement and a kick off filled with motivation and high spirits. So why is it that most goals fail? Why do most people and companies aim for their target after it is too late and never achieve them?

Many times you will hear that most goals fail is because of a failure to plan or to write down the goals, the truth is that there are many reasons goals fail and writing them down isn’t going to guarantee success but if you can learn from the reasons for failure below and apply action, goal setting can be a powerful tool to achieve success.

I.    Not Specific Enough – The number one reason most goals fail is because they lack to specific. For a goal to truly have meaning and create a desire to act so you can achieve them, they have to have enough detail and be specific so you know what specifically you are trying to achieve. Too many people choose goals that are too generic, lack definition and have no timeframe attached to it. For a goal to be specific, it needs to be created in the present tense and include a time frame. For example, rather than say my goal is to lose weight, you would state, I am going to lose 10 lbs in 4 weeks. Companies often take a general approach to setting their targets and often fail to be specific enough to reach all of their goals. When you begin your planning process, be as specific as you can and give yourself deadlines to hold yourself accountable.

II.    Too Many Goals, No Focus – Another mistake make companies and individuals make is that they set too many goals and then are unable to focus resulting in failure in all goals. Companies will allow each department to participate in their own goal setting process but will fail to align each departments goals to an over reaching goal that benefits the entire organization. Too many goals will create a competition for resources and demoralize staff because the will not be able to apply focus and priority. Create goals that are attainable for everyone in the organization and watch your company flourish. People like to win and be defining a specific focus and not overwhelming the team with multiple goals, you will have a team that is motivated, focused and goal – oriented who will achieve their goals each and every time.

III.    Executive Only Planning – All too often, executives at companies develop targets and strategic plans that fail to connect or address organizational and operational challenges. These goals often fail because the people at the top of the organization are disconnected from the front lines and do not consider staff challenges, resources deficiencies and limited capabilities that exist in the current environment to effectively be able to build a roadmap to successful goal attainment. Although these plans often include a reward system for the staff once goal attainment is achieved, most staff members will not be motivated by the reward since the task at hand seems daunting, unattainable and unrealistic. Companies that include variou s levels of staff in the goal development and planning process will achieve more staff buy in and will significantly goal attainment.

IV.    Too much focus on the plan, not the execution (action) - A good plan will provide the staff with what success looks like at the end of the journey. It will connect the entire organization and provide the steps that each person within the organization needs to take to reach the ultimate goal. But too often, the focus turns to the creation of the plan and not the actions necessary to achieve the plan. Many organizations go thru months and months of budgeting and planning and end up creating spectacular plans with high focused goals and meaningful targets but they fail to build the action plan or the roadmap to get them there. A plan without action is simply a wish. With every plan, there must be a step by step action plan with deliverable dates, resource assignment and milestones for measurement.

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Nothing is more important than knowing your target market.  By knowing your target market you are able to drill down and offer solutions specific for their demands.  The more you can drill down and create a niche, the more successful your marketing messages.  For example, if you say your target market is women, you are not drilling down specifically enough, but if you say my target market is women who operate a small business out of their home, you are more targeted.  You can even go down one layer further – women who operate a small coaching business out of their home.  The more specific you can get, the better.

Knowing your target market allows you to have a laser focus on your customer and provides you an opportunity to sell directly to them rather than to large groups.  Imagine searching for one exact fish in a very large pond and all you have is one “hook” to reel that fish in.  Now next to your hook are thousands of other hooks that your competition has casted into the same pond.   If you don’t know what will make that one fish bite on your hook, you will be landing your fish by luck rather than by skill.  Most certainly over a longer period of time.  Being able to develop your marketing “hook”, specific to your fish will require you to know exactly who you customer  or fish is and entice them to buy from you.

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To err is human and to forgive divine. Those famous words from the Alexander Pope poem “An Essay on Criticism” are ringing in my head. Do you think there is any truth to forgiveness in business? Recently I had an error in one of my sales messages that resulted in two very different and distinct responses. After a long couple of weeks tending to my daughter after her accident, being away with the family on vacation and rushing around to promote a scheduled Webinar training, I made a mistake and included a typo in one of my sales messages. This one message when out to hundreds of thousands of people via my ezine, blog, Twitter and Linked In. Out of the thousands of people who may have viewed this message, two individuals had an emotional response and handled it very differently.

The message “Worse Presentation Mistakes Made by Millions” vs. “Worst Presentation Mistakes Made by Millions”

Response #1: John Doe decided to post a horrible public comment to my message that included a personal attack and his opinion about how unprofessional I was because it was apparent I couldn’t spell and so on and so on. When I received his message, I was shocked by the horrible nature of it. I literally had the message posted for about 4 hours before I caught and corrected the error, but John Doe felt it necessary to use harshness and personal attacks to respond to my message.

Response #2: Mark Doe decided to send me a personal email alerting me of the error. An act of kindness with one private message.

So how can one message cause two very different responses? Why do you think John Doe needed to “put me in my place” when he doesn’t even know me?

My belief is that some people need to put others down to feel good about themselves. Even in business, you will find those people who cannot forgive a minor mistake in hopes that they can use your misfortune to advance their own agenda. Even though my first reaction was to respond back with bitterness, I decided to treat both men the same, I sent them both a personal email thanking them for bringing the error to my attention with a slight attempt to make light of the situation.

So the morale of the story is….. when somebody tries to knock you down for a mistake, kill them with kindness and move forward!

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