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Hope Is Not A Strategy Neither A Metric.
4 Effortless Ways To Improve Your Elevator Pitch
When Fear Is Good: Risk Management Techniques
“How Online Networking Rocked My Business” Contest: a Unique Sponsorship Opportunity

Hope Is Not A Strategy Neither A Metric.

Posted: 25 May 2012 02:17 AM PDT

Get up at 6.20am, go for a 2 mile jog, complete in 1 hour 14 minutes, burning 247 calories, I drink 1.5 litre's of water and have in total 346 calories for breakfast. Our lives now consist of tracking metrics and setting personal targets. So why is it when it comes to tracking business metrics we become inadequately equipped to monitor the important aspects that keep a company riding high?

I mention the tracking of our daily lifestyle because it's become such a norm that we do it in our sub-conscience, anything you're curious about it can probably be tracked and a monthly graph with a rundown for improvement supplied. Question is why do so many people enter a boardroom or meeting and present everyone with a pie chart of something they are not entirely sure of? Then try to pass it by with meaningless numbers, explaining that Q2 targets were missed due to a 'slow market'. Metrics can peel back those layers and explain fully what we all want to know, where the company is going well and how improvements need to can be made.

Applications

We use Salesforce religiously to monitor how the company is doing with the quarterly targets; it's incredibly complex but offers full monitoring of all the metrics you set. The growing number of applications that can be added to the main package itself makes it all the more worthwhile, there's a new metric to be monitored all the time or a certain aspect of your business which can generally be tracked fully with Salesforce. It does however come at a cost but the rise of other metric monitoring packages has really opened the doors to everyone and any type of business, which in the end means you can and need to know your numbers.

Determining the application/package you want is down to the level of monitoring you wish to have and also the size of your company, you do however need to consider the growth prospects of your team or business and consider viable products in the future. Not understanding the results or not even knowing how to use the package would mean you may as well turn up to the board meeting with a unicorn and explain how that came about, it would be far easier. So it's important to research, try trial editions and analyze your options before you commit to any package. It then comes down to the metrics you want tracked or more specifically the inputs and outputs to determine the actual productivity of your business.

WTF is this?!

This could potentially be your reaction when you receive the results from the latest quarter of metric monitoring. It can be a daunting time seeing these results and you then realize that the company is in fact doing nowhere near as well as you thought and the next meeting will actually be your trial. It could also be the other way around but chances are it's bad, simply because the needed actions were not taken in time for damage limitation.

Related: How Healthy Is Your Business?

Choose Metrics to Track

So we now need to choose metrics to track, this I can't help with due to the large scale of metrics to choose from but there is a general start with picking metrics. We need to start at the end goal and work backwards, with most of us the end goals consist of:

Growth
Profit (/Loss)
Cash flow (Positive)

There are various ways we can go which lead to all of the above e.g. ROI (Return on Investment), CAC (total cost to acquire a customer) and so on but from a sales perspective we will look at a telesales view and determine some metrics we can in fact monitor. These could be:

Number of calls per team member.
Number of outbound calls VS cold calls per team member.
% of conversions on all calls combined per team member.
Overall group performance i.e. deals size, total calls.
Number of deals closed * average deal size.

These are all ideas but you would have to adjust accordingly to suit your company, your needs and what you want to monitor overall. As I said the scale of metrics to monitor are huge but it's always imperative you avoid certain areas of tracking i.e. factors which cannot be changed or affected by yourself or the team. Just focus on the biggest metrics that can have the biggest effect on the business.

I'm going to monitor this drying paint

Metrics do sound tedious and boring, but the ability to fully understand the mechanics of your business will in the long run be incredibly beneficial and keep those headaches away. It's as always down to setting targets and having them in place to drive profits, growth or anything else you wish to achieve when you know your metrics. Results drive the company but also drive employees, productivity needs to be pushed and realistic with time scaled targets which can be set in stone instead of promises and then forgotten about.

So I'll ask you this, do you know your metrics?

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Image: "A wooden ruler with the words To Measure is to Know/Shutterstock"

4 Effortless Ways To Improve Your Elevator Pitch

Posted: 21 May 2012 04:36 AM PDT

A strong elevator pitch is one of the most valuable weapons in a salesperson's arsenal. Too often, though, the intricacies of this sales tactic are misunderstood. A lack of simple anticipation often leads to a sub-par elevator pitch, but following these 4 simple guidelines will help you harvest more interest and close more sales.

# 1. Recognize Your Window of Opportunity

Because an elevator pitch is designed to maximize the sales opportunities in a very short period of time, each second needs to be planned, developed, and refined to produce the most efficient pitch possible.

Economy is the key word here. You need a pitch that:

Connects with the target and inspires a desire to learn more
Gets the most out of each word and (3) delivers the right information

Remember that you aren't trying to close a sale while giving an elevator pitch. You're only trying to spur on more interaction. Design your pitch with this in mind, and have faith that a well-developed pitch will open the door for further conversation.

# 2. Focus On Benefits - Not Attributes

Although an elevator pitch is your chance to put your products or services on display, you need to kind in mind that there's a right way and a wrong way of accomplishing this. While your business's attributes may be attractive, the features that most affect your target are the benefits you are able to provide.

Focus on how your company's products and services can benefit your target. At the most basic level, the only thing your prospect cares about is finding out what you can do for them.

# 3. Tell A Relevant Story

A good elevator pitch involves a sharp, specific, well-developed opening and a strong closing that prompts the consumer to take further action. But the best way to connect with your consumer is by packaging all of these attributes into a small narrative that fits into the time frame you've been allotted.

This can be as simple as telling a story of a past client, and how your company was able to make a significant impact that yielded a variety of benefits.
The most important thing to remember is that customers, like all people, enjoy stories, and following a story that's relevant is easier than following a sporadic list of stats, benefits and transitions.

A developed narrative will also make your pitch smoother and easier to deliver, taking the pressure off you and positioning your elevator pitch for success.

# 4. Practice And Perfect Your Pitch

Whether it's just you or an entire sales team, you'll want to practice your pitch until you get it fine-tuned and dialed-in. Go over your pitch on paper first. Then, rehearse it dozens of times. There are several sales pitch auditing tools on the web that could help you and your team review, visualize and optimize your pitch over time.

How about you? What have you done in the past to help improve your sales / elevator pitch?

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Image: "A bullhorn megaphone covered with words describing forms of communication such as talk, listen, hear, see, educate, update and more/Shutterstock"

When Fear Is Good: Risk Management Techniques

Posted: 20 May 2012 01:32 PM PDT

Fear is an emotional reaction to a recognized danger, be it known or unknown. It always causes stress, sometimes panic and even paralysis afterwards. In a nutshell, it is considered as a negative effect. So why would anybody say that fear is good?

There are actual instances wherein the feeling of fear invokes a more powerful and more positive mental response. For instance, the fear of the unknown may push a person to do exhaustive research on the subject to obtain the ins and outs of it.

Better results

Business-minded people, specifically investors, usually do this technique. Their end goal is to ensure that they will get much better results compared to a person who just blindly invests without even knowing anything.

Not everybody can be successful through investing, though. It requires months of study, enough skills and knowledge, and even a considerable amount of funding to be successful in the field. There are several traits a good investor should have that help him/her in achieving success in the industry. But one important factor that should not be ignored is risk management.

Risk management process

Generally speaking, risk management is the process of identifying risks and taking proper action to minimize or prevent damage. Its goal is to protect the business from being vulnerable. While it is not as simple as writing or cashing checks, risk management has become part of the never-ending process of entrepreneurship while also having its own system.

There are five main stages of risk management. They are:

Identifying the threats – Prevention is always better than cure. Knowing the threats before they happen is always better than acting on them as they happen. This is the main objective of risk management: preparation.
Assessing the impact – After the threats are identified, certain calculations are done to gauge how heavy the effect will be should the threats materialize. It is crucial to determine how much damage a potential danger can do to the business so the right measures should be taken to prevent it.
Predicting the effects – Next, business owners must determine what would happen next if the damage is done. This phase focuses more on the "worst-case scenario" so as to prepare for everything and not just the immediate obstacles.
Reducing/eliminating the risks – This stage of risk management deals on figuring out a way to reduce (if not eliminate) the risks and, consequently, the threat itself. This is one of the most important stages of risk management: risk managers must be able to create a solution to the problem itself.
Prioritizing the risks according to importance – This part dwells on the different threats and risks identified throughout the whole processes and arrange them according to how grave the effects can be and then deal with them one by one. Most of the time the heaviest threats are dealt with first, given the fact that they are the most important and may cause the biggest damage.

There are three distinct factors an investor can get from risk management. These three are:

Secure investing –Doing some homework on the prospected investments would not hurt. Learn everything from what the investment would be to the people and companies that will be involved in it. Making sure the investment is safe and secure is, of course, always a good plan.
Minimizing losses – If the investment is not profitable, or there are absolute facts that point to damages (or even losses), risk management will be very handy. Applying the five-step process mentioned above would ensure that, even before there is a risk of losing the investment, certain actions are already set into motion to prevent these types of disasters from happening.
Bridging the gap between investing and gambling – Investing and gambling are two different things but, if seen in another perspective, has a lot of similarities. Generally, the main sense of both is that investing is good while gambling is bad. Investing is a risk-averse, continuous type of business that deals with saving for specific goals like an ownership of something tangible. On the other hand, gambling is a risky type of entertainment where the odds are almost always against the gambler. It can also be addictive and destructive and is usually based on luck and emotions. However, both deal with analytical thinking and crucial split-second decision making that, in the end, might reap a good enough reward. Both are not absolute, the element of chance is always present. And both deal with (in a certain extent) risk management. A professional gambler would always take into account the odds depending how much he can win against the risks he will be taking. At the same time an investor would consider the odds depending on how much the investment would grow against the possible risks he might be taking as well. Of course, knowing where the line is between the good (to invest) and the bad (to gamble) is important.

"It is generally agreed that casinos should, in the public interest, be inaccessible and expensive. And perhaps the same is true of stock exchanges" – John Maynard Keyes

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Image: "A man jumps over the word fear on an arrow/Shutterstock"

“How Online Networking Rocked My Business” Contest: a Unique Sponsorship Opportunity

Posted: 19 May 2012 06:43 AM PDT

This post was originally posted over at the BizSugar Blog. BizSugar is our sister site and as community manager over there too, I'm delighted to let you know that we just recently passed over half a million registered business users and to celebrate we are running a unique competition.

Calling all sponsors!

We are delighted to announce a call for sponsorships in the forthcoming contest: "How Online Networking Rocked My Business." This will be a multi-faceted blogging and social media contest for small businesses and entrepreneurs, presented by BizSugar.

The contest is designed to drive engagement and wide community involvement. It kicks off in mid-June – right now we are lining up sponsors. Here's how it will work:

1. The contest will be open to small businesses and entrepreneurs.

2. Entrants simply need to write a blog post about how online networking has benefited their business.

3. Submit the post to BizSugar

4. The grand-prize winner will be the one whose article gets the most votes on BizSugar.

There will also be special prizes for:

Most interesting comment, as chosen by our judges
The post with the most tweets and retweets
2nd, 3rd and 4th highest vote totals

How to be part of this opportunity

We are offering a stellar opportunity to companies to sponsor and be a part of this engaging contest. This is no "enter and forget it" contest. Rather, it will involve ongoing engagement and activity across multiple websites and social media properties, by small business owners and entrepreneurs and their communities.

As a sponsor, your company will get in front of a significant and active community of small businesses and entrepreneurs. Sponsors get high visibility. Be seen and recognized publicly as follows:

Spotlight your product or service by donating as prizes
Your company logo will be seen on the contest page
Your company logo will be seen in a contest graphic that is available for entrants to display on their blogs and websites
Inclusion in press releases and blog posts announcing the contest and winners
Increased visibility for your brand, and lots of social media amplification
Visibility in a Twitter chat or Facebook Q&A to raise awareness of the contest

To participate we are looking for sponsors who will provide a combination of cash and in-kind prizes. This is a very affordable contest for those who wish to heighten and reinforce their brand recognition and visibility among the small business community.

Like to become a sponsor? Please email us at: advertise@bizsugar.com

Who's Behind the Contest

BizSugar is an award winning social media site with over half a million(500,000+) registered users. It is a platform for small businesses and entrepreneurs to submit, share and vote for the best business information articles on the Internet. It reaches hundreds of thousands of small business and medium-sized business owners and managers annually. The site's mission is simple: we want small businesses and entrepreneurs to shine! BizSugar is part of the Small Business Trends LLC family of small business sites, run by CEO Anita Campbell.

Our media partner for this contest is JustRetweet. JustRetweet is site used by social media savvy, influential bloggers to enable them to connect with like-minded Twitter users interested in similar content.

Become a sponsor! Email us at: advertise@bizsugar.com

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vineri, 25 mai 2012