Business Growth Insights

Happy customers are the lifeblood of every company. Employees who can create those happy customers are worth their weight in gold. Companies often refer to these special employees as “Top Performers.” Top performers consistently demonstrate the ability to turn opportunity into success. Here’s a peek at the five common characteristics of top performers.

Top Performers are Customer Centered

Top performers develop the ability to look at things from the customer’s point of view. They try to walk in the customer’s shoes to get a feel for their needs, wants, preferences, buying cycles and agendas. They have a genuine desire to understand each customer as an individual as well as an integral part of the company they represent. Another important focus for the top performer is identifying both the present objectives and long term goals of the customer. To do this they also keep up-to-date with industry trends.

Top Performers Don’t Assume

People who excel at sales never assume that they have been given rights to a sale. They believe that every transaction must be earned and that with every encounter they must earn the customer’s respect, trust and loyalty. They work hard with every negotiation to pace the progress of the deal to suit their client and avoid the temptation to push ahead before the customer is ready. Most important of all, the top performer understands that the quality of the service given, combined with appropriate follow up, is what earns him or her the right for subsequent business.

Top Performers are Involved

Top performers have evolved a long way from the “give them a pitch” mentality, and view their customers as valuable contributors to the sales transaction. Rather than a one-sided presentation, they view their interaction with the customer as a conversation. Customers are encouraged to offer opinions and suggestions and top performers listen and learn. The end result of this two-way communication is a customer who feels he has purchased what he needs, not what he has been told to buy.

Top Performers Use Resources

Top performers understand and accept that they cannot be a one-man show and still be successful. They make good use of all resources both technical and personal that are at their disposal. Though outsourcing some tasks may be necessary, top performers still remain as the key contact to the customer and often served as team leaders within their organization.

Top Performers Think Long Term

Top performers see every customer as a long term asset and work to cultivate the relationship accordingly. Gone are the days of simply delivering a sales pitch and then disappearing from sight. A top performer wants to be in it for the long haul, even if sometimes it means investing more time in the client and possibly losing out on some short term opportunities. The top performer always puts the needs and best interests of the customer first.

Is your business a “top performer” for your clients? Share your comments below and feel free to send this article to your friends and colleagues.

It’s very easy to see why OneCoach recommends that every small business owner must have a business coach. After all, it’s what we do. However, we’re not the only ones that recognize the importance of having a dedicated advisor to help you grow your business.

Watch the video below of Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, and hear him explain why everyone needs a coach.

Business coaching is a powerful support system that will optimize your performance and guide you to where you ultimately want to be. A fresh perspective from the right business coach is a valuable resource that you can’t get from your family, friends or even the people you work with.

The small business owners that work with our certified business coaches have discovered breakthroughs in running their business. Is this the type of change that you have been looking for?

Twitter is a micro-blogging platform. It lets you post up to 140 characters at a time. Some people post their status  every 5 minutes (“Waiting for the bus”, “On the bus”, “Walking home”) and  companies use Twitter to get the word out about new products, blog posts, and other random stuff.

Companies from all over the world have Twitter accounts and thousands of people following them. Some of these companies are Apple, Intel, H&R Block, and Zappos. Barrack Obama has over 8,000 followers!

To leverage the Twitter potential you need to have people following you. That is, people that want to be updated on what you are up to.

Step 1: Importing Contacts
When you sign up for Twitter you will have a chance to import contacts from Gmail, Hotmail, and your own address book. Do it.

Step 2: Complete Your Profile
Make sure all your profile is complete and include a link to your website. Add “http” at the beginning of it to make it clickable. Personalize the colors and the sidebar on your profile page. Use keywords in your profile so others can find you.

Step 3: Understand the Dynamics of Twitter
Twitter is not a marketing tool; it’s a social tool. That means:

• Don’t spam
• Follow other users
• Be active in the community (comment and post frequently)
• Post useful information
• Don’t post every 10 minutes
• Engage in conversations. Retweet (reply to other tweets) often
• Don’t promote yourself. Share cool stuff. To give your company exposure, do it the smart way. Direct your followers to a blog post with useful information and have that post invite users to take action. Don’t try to take people from Twitter to your checkout page directly.

Step 4: Build Your Audience
There are several things that you can do to build your audience:

• Put a link to “Follow Me on Twitter” in your email signature, forums signature, website, and maybe even your business cards
• Invite people to follow you on Twitter at the end of each blog post you create
• Find Twitter users that you really look up to and see who is following them. Follow these people. Once they see you are following them, they will follow you.
• See who is following your friends and follow them. They will follow you too.
• Use Twitter directories to find members who are likely to follow you. My favorites are Just Tweet It and Twellow.
• Use the search feature to find profiles that you want to follow. You can use Twitter’s RSS feed to be notified every time a tweet is made containing a certain keyword.

Step 5: Watch Your Following/Followers Ratio
Try to have a balance between people you follow and people that follow you. If 1,000 people follow you and you only follow 10 folks, you will be seen as selfish and snob. If 10 people follow you and you follow 1,000, you will be seen as a spammer.

Some tips that will help you keep both numbers balanced:

• Grow slow. Instead of adding 500 new friends in one day, add maybe 50 and wait for them to follow you. Then do another 50.
• Use a tool like Friend or Follow to see who is following you that you are not following and who you are following that is not following you. This tool is very useful to balance the number of following/followers.
• Avoid the “follow/no follow” tactic. Some people follow others so they follow them and then they stop following those folks. Avoid this practice if you don’t want to look like a spammer.

Step 6: Post Useful Tweets
Make it worthwhile to follow you. If you’ve found something that your audience might find useful, tweet it. You can use Twitter tools to automatically tweet your blog posts.

Share what you do but avoid “selling”. For example, if you are a web developer you can tweet “we just finished designing the website for ABC Widgets” but avoid something like “Custom Web Design from $899”.

Step 7: Learn from the Experts
Find 10-20 users with over 300 followers and see what they are doing right. Get ideas and implement them.

Do you have any more ideas on how to use Twitter for your small business? Please share them with us by commenting below!

Don’t ever let fear stop you from doing what you love. It may be somewhat cliché, but I tend to believe that things typically become clichés because they are true, and therefore repeated often.

One of the most notable differences between successful people and those that are less successful, is that the successful ones were not afraid to take a risk. At some point they chose to make a tough decision, or take a road less traveled, and ultimately excelled due to the choices they made.

Quite often, becoming a small-business owner means taking a leap of faith. It means listening to the little voice inside your head telling you that you have a great idea, one that will be successful in the marketplace. In order to have a thriving business, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel – you just have to do what you do better than your competition does.

Did you know that the Popsicle was invented by an 11-year old boy? Frank Epperson had left his fruit-flavored soda outside on the porch with a stir stick in it.  In the cold weather, the drink froze to the stick and resulted in quite a delicious treat. At that time, he knew he was on to something, yet it took him another 18 years to apply for a patent for “frozen ice on a stick” called the Epsicle ice pop (later re-named the Popsicle).

What can we learn from Popsicles? Business success starts with having an idea, and following through with it. If you have a great business idea that you’ve been putting on hold for one reason or another, it likely boils down to fear. Take a deep breath and take that leap of faith!

There are countless things an entrepreneur has to deal with and take care of during a typical business day…however, there is one thing that is crucial for business success and should never be overlooked on a daily basis. That’s getting — and keeping — clients.

Your product or service may be the best in the marketplace, but if you don’t reach the people who use it, it is completely worthless.  As a small business owner, you either devote an important part of your time to getting and nurturing clients, or you better find someone to do it for you.

This is a daily task that cannot be neglected.  You exist because you have clients who buy your products or services; thus, they deserve your regular attention and care.

Follow these 4 tips to get and keep clients every single day and ensure the success of your business:

1. Make it your #1 daily task
   As soon as you arrive in the office, devote the first two hours of your day to getting and keeping clients.  You might send emails, write thank you notes, send out relevant information, or make some phone calls — the idea is to make customer service and sales follow-up your #1 daily priority.  If you make this a routine, soon you will see your business develop exponentially, and you will make sure your customers are not neglected amid tons of other things to take care of.
2. Practice, practice, practice
   Practice makes the master.  You must be the best at what you do, and no one gets there without practice.  Any skill can be mastered through practice, thus, practice your presentation, practice answering objections, practice your closing argument, learn from the best in the field, read blogs and books, study, and improve yourself every day.
3. Repeat what works
   Every business depends on trial and error to find what works best for it and its clients.  If you try something and it doesn’t work, take it apart and analyze what went wrong.  For example, your demographics were correct, but maybe the offer was not appealing enough, or the message was not well communicated, or the timing was not right; you find out what didn’t work, change it, and go for it again.  If it works, keep doing it. Remember — this requires tracking so you know what is working and what isn’t!
4. Know your client
   Nothing will ever happen if you don’t know whom you are selling to.  You can only reach the right people, the ones truly interested in your product or service, if you know them well enough to know where to find them.  Learn everything you can about them, where they live, what they do, their hobbies, their gender, their ages, their purchasing habits, what interests them, what worries them, etc.  Only when you know all this, will you be able to talk directly and accurately to them, in a way that will make them seriously consider your product or service.  Once you know your clients, pay attention to them — to what they say, what they like, what they don’t like, what they wish they could get in the future — this way, you are prepared to tackle their needs and desires as these manifest, and you will attract more people like them.

Any good executive business coaching firm will confirm it. No business can excel without caring for its clients; for sales to grow, you must focus on your clients and their needs.

Your typical day list may have 30 things to take care of; however, your focus should be on the things that produce sales. The rest can wait or can be delegated.

How do you balance your day-to-day activities and still maintain great sales and customer service practices? Share your tips in the comment section below!