shelly

The Small Business Results Digital Marketing Package

Small Business Results will conduct a thorough investigation to understand where your company stands in its current digital marketing presence.

We understand that the most critical marketing tool you have is taking a good look at your own industry, assessing the effectiveness of your database, website, email marketing and social platforms and from there, creating a strategic approach.

The result of this investigation is a 3-page report outlining the significant areas such as website accessibility, SEO, links, and social media profiles. This report can then be used to develop a step-by-step, strategic plan for a comprehensive digital marketing program.

Once you assess what you have in place , then you can go to the next step. Then, tool by tool you can create an effective, strategic messaging and marketing approach!

Learn about the Small Business Results Signature Offering.

Schedule your digital marketing assessment today.

by shelly shelly No Comments

It Is Never One Marketing Tool!

Case Study:

Marketing a business in today’s competitive landscape and ever-changing tools is daunting. I hear business owners’ desperate cries for the answers to these challenges:

My web-site brings me nothing
My email marketing is ineffective
I have no idea which social platforms to post on
And my database is a mess
And how do I standout???

Incredibly, too often, when asked the questions, “how do you stay in front of your past clients or current prospects?”, business owners are too busy “working” and have not paid attention to obtaining a strategic approach to their messaging or means of communication that connects to, engages and keeps their audience engaged.

The questions remain the same, whether you have fifty or 5000 people in your database, how will you reach them?

How do you deliver your message and create and maintain visibility, value and be top of mind with your current or prospective clients?

The Outcome:

The most critical marketing tool you have is taking a good look at your own industry, assessing the effectiveness of your database, website, email marketing and social platforms and from there, creating a strategic approach.

Once you assess what you have in place, then you can go to the next step. Then, tool by tool, you can create an effective, strategic messaging and marketing approach!

By signing up for the SBR Digital Marketing Package you can create a strategic approach to building your brand online and obtaining the answers to those challenges!

by shelly shelly No Comments

In Order To Be Interesting, You Must Be Interested

Case Study:

Too often in the effort to build relationships or close sales, the eagerness to sell the product or service comes before a true understanding of the potential client’s needs or wants. A few common frustrations and issues many small business owners and entrepreneurs face are 1. They have trouble getting in the door. 2. It looks like a deal and then something happens. 3. They often hear the prospect say “sounds good, but we have no money now.” In order to develop trust and success, we must invest time in the process of asking the right questions.

The Outcome:
With a little practice, you can approach a prospect or client in a conversation that will enable you to get them to give you information to allow you to create a specific solution that goes beyond their expectations. How? You can do this by going beyond the typical question that asks, “What are your greatest challenges?” or “What are your goals?” and by sincerely being interested in their process and their experience. Time and time again we see success when we can engage a prospect or current client in order to share their greatest successes. By engaging clients at that level you will enable yourself to determine how your product or service can be of value to them.
Let them talk and feel heard!

Do you have a series of questions you use to engage your clients or prospects?

by shelly shelly No Comments

How is Sales in Business Like Strength Training?

Repetition, repetition, repetition, discipline, discipline, discipline

Case Study:

A photographer, an organizer, and a realtor are all known in the business world as independent professionals. They’re all passionate about what they do, but the one thing they hate to do is to sell. In each case they are complaining about a lack of revenue, but when asked what they are doing for sales, there are one of three responses:

“Sales, I hate that part.”

“I’ll sell when my website or marketing collateral is updated.”

“If and when I sell, I have a hard time collecting.”

We incorporated the SBR system called SDDC. The SDDC system is a 30-day system of accountability. This includes selling, developing, delivering, and collecting for the next 30 days and every 30 days thereafter. Each of these independent professionals were held accountable for making at least two sales calls per day “no matter what.” They had to evaluate how much time they were spending on:

Development (e.g. developing a website, developing content)

Delivering their product or service

Incorporating a system for pricing and payment.

The Outcome:
At the end of the 30-day period, each of these business owners went from 0 sales calls to 40 sales calls in the 30-day time frame. They started to control the amount of time spent on development and made more time for selling, and as a result, spent more time on delivery of their product or service. In the end, they were booking clients, getting deposits, invoicing and increasing sales and revenue.

If you are looking to create a system of discipline to build your sales power and business, I can help you!

by shelly shelly No Comments

Creating and Running a Business is Hard Work, Obstacles Occur All the Time

The Tip:

“Staying stuck in the problem is negative, but working on the solution is being in the positive.”

The Case Study:

In the current business climate and in the everyday churn of business I see that most small business owners and entrepreneurs are running on empty, facing more work with less resources and managing one’s emotions, performances and reactions are an ongoing battle. Studies show that there is a very strong link between feelings and performance. Day after day I hear complaints about how a company’s leader is impeding the growth of the business and derailing productivity.

The Outcome:

When we create an organization where the workplace is positive and engaging it is more likely that when problems or obstacles occur the cost to productivity and morale can be minimized. To successfully manage obstacles we must become experts at managing our emotions on 3 levels: Individually (ourselves), relationally (those we work and deal with), and organizationally (the whole company). By having knowledge and systems in place on all three levels, we greatly improve the climate around us as well as the company’s communication and path to becoming a solutions based organization as opposed to problem based.

I am interested in hearing how you handle demands, emotion and maintain productivity.

As a Certified Business Coach and Emotional Intelligence Leader, I have created many systems and structures for handling the day to day demands and maintaining productivity. If I can help, please let me know!

by shelly shelly No Comments

Build Your Wave of Momentum to Sales

The Case Study:

An interior designer was just starting out in business. Her “to do” list was three pages long and everything on that list was crucial to get done. The most important, however, was bringing revenue! She exclaimed. “How can I possibly make this happen?”

The Outcome:

I went to work to create a strategy for addressing the high-level issue of revenue. This interior designer had landed her first client and it was, in fact, a friend. The project was a redesign of a room. I taught her how to employ what I call the “five friend rule,” which is a direct sales tool that I love. The rule is that when you make a sale to a friend or relative, their neighbors or friends can potentially be your next sale.

She asked her friend if she would invite 5 or 6 friends to actually watch her do the redesign. They made it a redesign party!

At the close of the event, three attendees said, ” I want you to do this to my house and two said, “I know someone who might need you, I will give them your name.”

This strategy can be applied to just about any industry. There are three key components to gaining success from this strategy:

Show them what you can do with people that know, like and trust you
Do a smashing job
Ask for the referral at the close of the event

This designer now had the momentum she needed to move to the next high-level task on her list!

Do you need a strategy to gain momentum in your business?

Make your appointment now and get going!!!

by shelly shelly No Comments

Do, Defer, Delegate, Dump

Do what is most important, Defer anything that does not need to be completed right now, Delegate what you don’t need to do yourself, Dump all activities that take you away from SDDC (selling, developing, delivering, and collecting).

Case Study:

In the day to day running of a small business, it is easy for owners to get caught up in the daily operations and wear the sales, marketing and finance hats. Therefore, it is challenging for them to remain focused and to grow and expand the business in the direction they desire.

I ask clients to track their work day by using the DDDD system. When this system is employed, we consistently get a grasp on what is essential for the owner to do and what we could get someone else to do.

The Outcome:

By really tracking the day’s activity and measuring the business day by time, energy and money, we are able to create job descriptions, post them on a number of college job boards and hire the right fit interns or find a great assistant; someone who will free you up to do what you do best!

I love to put these questions in the small business owner’s head when looking at their day to day behaviors.

“Is this the best use of my time and energy?”
and
“Is it feeding my revenue?”

Interested in tracking your behavior? Here is my gift to you. I created this system and you can get started by printing out this DDDD Form.

Please let me know if this works for you or if you have any thoughts or ideas!

by shelly shelly No Comments

When Business Owners Are Cut Off From Emotion, They Make Bad Decisions

Recognize that emotions exist! It is not having the feelings that are the problem, it is how we learn to manage and understand them.

The Case Study:

I walked into a client’s office for our appointment. No sooner had I knocked on the door to announce my arrival with “Hi, how are you today?” than she quickly turned and emphatically retorted “How am I? How am I? I am overwhelmed and exhausted. The children need to be picked up, and I have one of the biggest deals unfolding today. I am having a terrible time with this negotiation.”

Her logical thinking was being completely derailed by her feelings. I asked her to take three deep breaths and just to take a pause from all thoughts and feelings about the situation. I acknowledged and empathized with how difficult the situation was. After being able to calm down and have an intelligent conversation, we were able to get clarity about what was real in her knowledge of the issues involved and to separate that from her feelings.

The Outcome:

We know that making a decision based purely on knowledge, or based purely on emotion, is always the wrong decision, but by employing three strategies we were able to come up with a new equation that got to the heart of the matter.

The very first thing we needed to do was to take a pause. The second thing we needed to do was to acknowledge and empathize with her feelings. The third and final step in the process is that she needed to do a body and mind scan and in so doing ask three questions: “What am I thinking?”, “What am I feeling?” and “How can we come up with a new response that incorporates both intellect and emotion?”

As a result of this process, our client was able to navigate her emotions, navigate her client’s emotions and close the deal with great success!

How do you manage emotion? Need some new coping and management skills?

As a Certified Business Coach and Emotional Intelligence leader, I can help!

by shelly shelly No Comments

Measure Your Success by Your Calls, Meetings and Sales

It’s been an interesting few weeks working as a business coach. It doesn’t seem to matter the industry, clients are having a very difficult time opening doors and getting accounts. I realize there are three things that are most important to attract business:

1. You must have accurate messaging and positioning; how you talk about your business is too often very overwhelming and too verbose. Is your marketing message reflected on your website? Most websites talk about the services provided, whereas the correct marketing message addresses the visitor’s challenges and makes them say “wow, that’s me!” They then see you as holding the solutions to their challenges.

2. Getting the conversation and making sure you are talking to the right person that actually needs what you offer.

3. Getting the meeting and starting to build the know, like and trust relationship that leads to sales.

The absolute three most important goals in building a business are getting the conversation, getting the meeting and obviously the third thing is to close some business!

The Case Study:

Networking and websites are essential marketing strategies for every business owner. Clients tell me all the time “I handed out 50 business cards and no one called me,” or “I went to that event and there was no one there to meet for my business.” I have a website and it brings me nothing.” It is very important to have a clear strategy for selling and connecting to “right fit” contacts. In order to do this it is equally important to understand the difference between networking, sales and building relationships. Too often we find that small business owners are more anxious to just make the sale before developing effective messaging, building rapport and trust and ensuring they are talking to a true potential lead who actually needs them.

The Outcome:

There are 3 major factors to keep in mind when seeking connections to potential clients/ customers.

1. Psychographics: The client’s needs and wants match the solution, product or service you are selling.

2. Demographics: This includes age, gender, location, and likes and dislikes.

3. Economics: Can they pay for your services and/or products?

The real key to finding out if you are talking to the right person or are at the right event is to consider the factors above and to make sure you are not jumping in and talking about yourself and your services before you have these factors sorted out.

The more clarity you have about you own business and who you are looking to meet, the greater likelihood that you will either meet a “right fit” client or contact, or that your conversation will result in an introduction to a “right fit” client or contact.

Does your messaging attract buyers? Do you have a sales process for calling and obtaining “right fit meetings?”

Please let me know if I can help you with effective messaging and strategies to open doors and close sales!

by shelly shelly No Comments

Yes, I Have An Addiction

I asked a friend, “What is wrong with me?” I work about 60 hours a week and then I read business books and I can’t seem to stop buying and reading them.

Her response, was well if you are going to be addicted, at least it a good addiction to have!”

Do you know, there is a new statistic that shows that only seven-in-ten American adults (72%) have read a book within the past year, whether in whole or in part and in any format? So sad!

I love to read; the learning, the distraction from other thoughts and feelings and I love the silence and stimulation that comes from reading.

Maybe over the holidays you will have some down time and you can enjoy one of my latest favorites.

Roar! Get Hears in the Sales and Marketing Jungle by Kevin Daum
80/20 Sales and Marketing by Perry Marshall
Scaling Up by Verne Harnish
Disciplined Entrepreneurship
The Digital Marketer by Larry Weber and Lisa Leslie Henderson

Pick one up…I dare you!

Let me know if you do!

Shelly Berman-Rubera

617-201-7224

Shelly Berman-Rubera, President of SBR-Small Business Results is an authentic, experienced communicator you will learn from. She provides guidance and solutions to run and build business.