Home
>
Wealth Building
>
Financial Intelligence - Natural Marketing For Lone Rangers

executive chauffeured services Westchester Cadillac Deville rentals Deerfield Cadillac Deville rentals Oakbrook limousine airport Highland Park Addison shuttle .. Drug testing

Financial Intelligence - Natural Marketing For Lone Rangers

"Ooooooh," you may say, "I could NEVER be good at marketing, I'm just not that sort of person. I'm just not pushy enough".

Well, if that is your reaction to the title of this article, I would like to kick off by giving you permission to hate marketing (and its cousin, "sales"). I am not going to try to turn you into a marketeer or a salesperson - but will you open your mind (just a chink!) to the possibility that you CAN stay just as you are and STILL be more successful at what you do?

Marketing and sales are inextricably linked in most people's mind and everyone knows sales people are scuzz-bags - right? The very words "marketing" and "sales" conjures up images of people being brainwashed by ads and parted from their money, in exchange for something they don't want. By people in dodgy suits!

Well, the first concept to get your head around, is that people are generally very sophisticated and astute. You cannot generally sell people something they don't want, no matter how heavy handed your tactics. And generally, even by very clever marketing, you cannot persuade or brainwash people into wanting something, that they hadn't wanted before. You couldn't massage someone who didn't want it, could you?

How would it be if we started thinking of marketing as the art of letting people know about an idea, solution, product or service that they already want, but didn't know where to go or which one to choose. How would it be if we made our service so good, so excellent, that if WE were introduced to it, we would be DELIGHTED to be told about that service. How about thinking of marketing as simply making sure that our excellent service is not being kept a secret?

What about the sales part of the process? The dreaded "closing" that everyone seems to find so hard. What is a "close", anyway? It's actually just asking someone if - having been recommended, having voiced their needs, knowing your fees, reassured that you can help - you ask them if they would like to book an appointment. Offering an appointment on a Tuesday or a Thursday is an "alternative close". Technical stuff, eh?

So marketing is about not being a secret, and selling is about making an appointment. Easy - we can do that! But what if we could make it even easier? Have I got your interest?

How do we go about not being a secret? The traditional ways to market anything are by creating a brochure, business cards and letterhead, advertising, mailing out to prospective purchasers (or clients) and selling your services to them. An expensive and time consuming business. Does your heart sink when you read this? Well, I have some good news. None of that works - or only 2% of the time anyway! So what does work?

What you need to do is simply create a reservoir of people who know about you, who like what you do, and who ONE DAY might use your services. Oh boy! When my coach Chris Barrow, told me this, I breathed a big wonderful sigh of relief.

How big should your reservoir be? Chris Barrow's theory is that it should be in excess of 1000 to generate an almost effortless work flow, but that you start to attract clients at about 400-500 people.

How do you fill your reservoir and with whom? This is where you start to think about your ideal client - because who wants a reservoir of less than ideal clients? The first people on your list should be your existing clients - or at least those you want to keep. You see, this is one of the big secrets about marketing, it's as much about weeding out the clients you don't want, as attracting the clients you do want! Think about the qualities of your ideal client, what are they like (TIP: think about your existing clients and pick out the A-List). I'll share the qualities of my ideal client to give you an idea.

My ideal coaching client is bright, articulate, educated (by life, if not uni) fast on the uptake, action orientated, entrepreneurial (or would like to be), definitely has email, is successful by anyone else's standards but perhaps not achieving their potential yet. They may feel overwhelmed and take on too much. They probably talk too fast and walk as if they are in a hurry. They are serious about wanting to improve their business or their life and they are prepared to set aside some time to come to calls and to take some action. They don't cancel or re-arrange calls, they pay on time and they appreciate my coaching. They are not ashamed to say they have a coach and they recommend me to everyone they meet!

Grade your existing clients into A clients (love you, come regularly, pay happily, turn up, recommend you all the time), B clients (love you, come fairly regularly, pay happily, turn up, sometimes recommend you), C Clients (think you are ok, come occasionally, pay happily, turn up, never recommend you) and the D Clients (aka the BMW's - bitchers, moaners and whiners). What do we do right now with the D Clients? D is for Dump. Dumping the D's makes more time to give the A's and the B's more time, more service, more attention.

So how do we meet more A Clients and get them in our reservoir? Work out who the A's are and where they hang out. Are they business people? Mums At Home or Ladies Who Lunch? Sports players?

When you have established who they are, then think about the problems they have and the things they are interested in. Think about ways you could add value to those A List Clients. It might be sending out clippings from newspapers on articles of interest, it might be creating a simple A4 two sided newsletter, it might be a website with useful links and an email newsletter, it might be writing for specialist publications (the last two being my preferred methods, hence this article!). Just put yourself in their shoes for a moment.

But whichever method you choose, make sure you enjoy it. Say what? Yes, you have my permission to only choose marketing methods that you actually enjoy. Why? Because if you don't enjoy them, you won't do them - even if your business is falling down around your ears.

Do you remember Fiona, my Reiki Master and therapist client? She found that she was massaging a client or two in the morning, then nothing at all till the evening, when her working clients turned up. She wanted to build up her lunchtime and afternoon clientele and then limit her evenings to two per week. Who would be able to come at those times? The ladies who lunch and the self-employed. Where do the ladies hang out? At charity events and hairdressers and in nice restaurants. What are their challenges? To look after themselves to the n'th degree, be well groomed, relaxed and charming at all times. She joined her local ladies groups, talked to her hairdresser and beauty therapist about a joint marketing initiative, volunteered for the local large charity committee and attended a few lunches herself, and then, to reach the self-employed business person, joined the BNI (Business Networking International - for details see www.bni.com).

The self employed do not have enough time to look after themselves and often suffer from stress and bad backs. Fiona initially started talking about bad backs and sports injuries, and now her business has taken off in an amazing way. People went for their practical problems but now go for the Reiki and the other types of emotional healing. She was so nervous talking about her service for 60 seconds at first, but now is completely at home in that environment. She even demonstrated crystal therapy the other morning and it was a real treat to watch hard bitten businessmen handling rose quartz and feeling the warmth coming off the crystals.

This route is not for everyone, but one thing is for sure, there is a marketing method that will suit you. I like meeting people and writing, so I have a website (www.nicolacairncross.com), a monthly financial coaching newsletter, I write articles for magazines and I attend every networking lunch, breakfast and dinner that I can. (Plays havoc with the weight though!)

Remember, whatever you do, you are not selling, just collecting people for your reservoir. They may not use your service for ages, but if you keep in touch with them in a way that adds value without being too promotional, they will either buy spontaneously or recommend someone who will.

The sales part is this. While not being overly promotional, don't on the other hand make it difficult or even impossible for people to buy your services when they are ready to.

Make sure you have contact details and they work (unlike me, who, in the last article for this magazine put an incorrect newsletter link with no other contact details!). Make sure that people know your prices and don't have to ask (it's embarrassing for them). Educate them so that they know how to be your ideal client and feel privileged to be so. Let them know - and thank them - how wonderful it feels when they recommend you or refer someone into your reservoir (unlike my other hairdresser client who used to tell all her existing clients how busy she was, so they felt unable to recommend new clients to her).

Finally, write down your plan and evaluate it monthly. Keep doing what works and drop what doesn't - unless you enjoy it! Not everything works in obvious ways. Decide on your preferred marketing methods and become the best at those methods. Educate yourself on how to be most effective, or hire a coach who can help.

And remember, 50% of all money spend on advertising is wasted, it's just that no-one knows which half! Till the next time....

Nicola Cairncross works with bright, professional people who are always seeking to enhance their financial intelligence. Learn how to make your money last longer than your month, profit from your passion, or develop passive income flows via The Financial Intelligence Programme. She has been featured in the Times on Saturday, the Financial Mail on Sunday, Observer Money, Cosmopolitan, Sunday Telegraph and Red Magazine. Find out more by visiting www.nicolacairncross.com

limousine chicago service

In The News:

The creator of the Bredolab malware received a four-year prison sentence in Armenia on Monday for using his botnet to launch DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks that damaged multiple computer systems owned by private individuals and organizations.

An Ohio startup company has raised US$200 million to fund gigabit-per-second broadband projects in six university communities across the U.S., the company announced Wednesday.

Taking a step into the social media marketing industry, Oracle is purchasing Vitrue, the two companies announced Wednesday.

Seagate today announced plans to acquire LaCie, a French maker of external consumer hard drive products, in an all-cash deal worth about $186 million.

This probably seems obvious, but it's worth stating: These days, it's crucial to have a website for your business. From brochure-based sites that provide your contact details and store hours to full-fledged ecommerce carts and customer self-service, your website is important--it tells customers what to expect from you. This article offers several tips for building a better business website that will engage existing customers and help you find new ones.

Google yesterday revealed that the two researchers who cracked Chrome in March at the company's inaugural "Pwnium" hacking contest used a total of 16 zero-day vulnerabilities to win $60,000 each.

Energy/utilities sector ranks last on four of the best practices for cybersecurity, report exposes

Listed on AppExchange, Cloud SSO has been tightly integrated with Salesforce.com applications

FujiFilm said Wednesday it will begin sales of a digital camera in June that is waterproof, shockproof, sealed against dust and sand, and works at temperatures below freezing.

VMware has acquired Wanova, a developer of software used to centralize and simplify image management on physical and virtual desktops, the company said Tuesday.

Google on Tuesday hauled out a tool it last used nearly a year ago to warn users infected with the "DNSChanger" malware.

Microsoft has taken its Google Street View-like service Bing Streetside offline in Germany after German citizens expressed their worries about how Microsoft handles requests for blurring of images, the company said on Tuesday.

Physicians who use social networks to share clinical experiences risk violating patient privacy. A niche industry of private social network providers has cropped up to address the desire to communicate.

The U.S. Department of Justice said Tuesday it was looking into the unauthorized access of a website server in its statistics wing, after hacker group Anonymous claimed to have collected and released 1.7GB of data from it.

Lenovo's net profit for its fiscal fourth quarter grew by 59 percent, as the world's second largest PC maker saw continued growth in sales across both mature and emerging markets.

An often-repeated concern that the U.S. Patriot Act gives the U.S. government unequaled access to personal data stored on cloud services is incorrect, with several other nations enjoying similar access to cloud data, according to a study released Wednesday.

Facebook is to settle a class-action lawsuit in California that accused it of appropriating its users' likenesses for its Sponsored Stories advertising feature, according to a court document filed Tuesday.

Touchscreen laptops and tablets with the upcoming Windows 8 OS will be priced higher than their non-touchscreen counterparts, Dell's CEO said on Tuesday.

Businesses can now remotely control enterprise mobile applications developed for Apple's mobile platform with the latest version of Soti's MobiControl Software Developer Kit for iOS, announced Tuesday.

SAP is buying cloud-based e-commerce vendor Ariba for US$4.3 billion, the companies announced Tuesday.

Verizon Communications on Tuesday became the first service provider to say it will use Alcatel-Lucent's upcoming 7950 XRS core routing system, which will bring the French-American equipment vendor into the carrier core routing business for the first time in about a decade.

Having managed and rescued dozens of projects, and helped others do so, I've noted that there is always one critical success factor (CSF) that has either been effectively addressed or missed/messed up.

Dell on Wednesday reported a drop in profits for the first quarter, weighed down by a revenue decrease and slower sales of consumer products.

In its third day of trading, Facebook's stock is still in a slump, taking the shine off the frenzy that led up to the company's initial public offering (IPO) last week.

CIOs face a common set of thorny challenges these days, namely the pressure to deliver innovations even as they seek to cut or hold down spending, according to an array of senior IT executives who spoke on Tuesday at the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Besting a record set by Yahoo in 2009, the research arm of Microsoft have deployed a new technique for quickly sorting large amounts of data, called Flat Datacenter Storage (FDS).

A Florida VoIP carrier has filed a net neutrality complaint against a Georgia utility and broadband provider, after the utility accused the VoIP firm of theft of service for using its network to deliver voice service without paying for it.

Brocade this week said it added hardware-based support for the OpenFlow software-defined networking (SDN) API and protocol to its NetIron and MLX series 100Gbps routers as part of a broader SDN strategy.

Hackers claim to be just days away from jailbreaking Apple devices running iOS 5.1.1, the latest firmware release for iPhones and iPads, letting users load applications from outside of Apple's iTunes App Store.

Microsoft said that a skew toward more exploits on Windows Vista can be attributed to the demise of support for the operating system's first service pack.

The nation's space efforts entered a new chapter today with the launch of the first commercial vehicle to the International Space Station.

The price bar for PCs keeps dropping, with chip maker Via on Tuesday announcing a US$49 APC computer with a customized version of Google's Android operating system.

Preparing for the eventual widespread conversion to IPv6, the Nmap Project has updated its namesake security scanning tool so it can scan IPv6 networks using a variety of novel techniques.

Alcatel-Lucent is set to give Cisco and Juniper another run for the money in core routing 10 years after its initial attempt failed.

A new variant of SpyEye malware allows cybercriminals to monitor potential bank fraud victims by hijacking their webcams and microphones, according to security researchers from antivirus vendor Kaspersky Lab.

Sony on Tuesday showed a digital media hub that uses Wi-Fi to connect its PCs, tablets, smartphones and PlayStation game consoles, a product that it hopes will be part of its comeback.

Advanced technologies such as HAMR could mean disk drive capacities from 30TB to 60TB by 2016, according to a new report by IHS iSuppli.

Google said Tuesday morning that it has closed the deal to acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion

YouTube and German music royalty collecting society GEMA have appealed the outcome of a lawsuit filed by GEMA against YouTube, in which a German court ordered YouTube to inspect the titles of uploaded videos to filter out potentially copyright-infringing content.

Google has finally closed its acquisition of Motorola Mobility, and will now start working on new devices while keeping Android open, it said on Tuesday.

With the world's largest social networking website, Facebook, going public it is quite obvious that comparisons with Google will crop up. We have collated some figures and here is a list of numbers comparing the two giants.

Trusteer expects malware used to attack several German bank sites to be reconfigured for banks in other countries

Former OMB intelligence chief Michael Daniel will take over as the debate over CISPA, for example, heats up

Sidecar, a born-again startup whose founders hail from Internet media services company RealNetworks, Tuesday is launching an eponymous app for iPhones and Android smartphones that's designed to make it easier for people to share videos, photos and more while talking on those devices.

A pair of Microsoft-backed industry groups applauded the ultimatum European Union antitrust regulators issued to rival Google over alleged anti-competitive practices.

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) said Monday that its application system for new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) has reopened, more than a month after it was brought down because of a software glitch.

EMC has acquired Syncplicity, an enterprise file-management service provider, for an undisclosed sum.

A judge at the U.S. International Trade Commission has determined that a Kodak patent asserted in a complaint against Apple and Research In Motion is invalid, Kodak said on Monday.

The security vendor Trusteer is warning banks to look out for a sophisticated Trojan capable of emptying the account of an online customer.

Named late last week to replace Howard Schmidt as the top White House cybersecurity adviser, Michael Daniel is a 17-year veteran of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and has been its intelligence branch chief for the past 11 years. But he has stayed largely under the radar, even in the cybersecurity community.

Traditional mobile phone plans are now on the wane in the U.S., but the country's biggest carriers are still bringing in more money and leading the world in revenue, according to a report based on first-quarter results.

Schools in the U.S. will need broadband speeds of 100 Mbps per 1,000 students and staff members by the 2014-15 school year in order to meet a growing demand for Web-based instruction and a skyrocketing number of student-owned Web devices, according to a new report by a trade group representing state education agencies.

Voyager Mobile, the startup that had planned to launch last Tuesday but said it was delayed by an attack on its website, went live on Sunday with an unlimited voice, text and data plan for US$39 per month.

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to consider the petition of Joel Tenenbaum, a former doctoral student at Boston University who faces a fine of US$675,000 for illegally downloading 30 songs.

As Avaya continues its transition from a hardware company into a communications and collaboration software provider, it is going through some growing pains, including a shakeup of executives and uncertainty around a potential initial public offering that's been rumored for months.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has hired Paul Ohm, a privacy advocate and critic of current online privacy practices, as a senior privacy adviser for consumer protection and competition issues affecting the Internet and mobile services.

Salesforce.com, which has placed ample emphasis on its Chatter social networking application, will actually begin providing real-time chat functionality as part of an imminent upgrade to its family of cloud-based software, according to a company document.

The Nasdaq computer system that delayed trade notices of the Facebook IPO on Friday was plagued by race conditions, the stock exchange announced Monday. As a result of this technical glitch in its Nasdaq OMX system, the market expects to pay out US$13 million or even more to traders.

There are many ways you can use Twitter to help build your business. For example, you can track trending topics, leverage Web analytics, and tap some 50 million daily users.

International medical vendor Mediq was expanding in a big way by acquisition and needed a standard email platform across its business, but the project's cost and the complexity of doing it alone was so daunting that the company called on outside help that costs it less in the long run.

Samsung is blocking a hack of its S Voice digital assistant software that allowed any Android phone running Ice Cream Sandwich to use the app.

Advanced Micro Devices aims to improve the quality of high-definition video and 3D graphics on equipment in casinos and hospitals with its new R-series processors, which the company announced on Monday.

Mobile operators that want help keeping their subscribers happy can get it through a new managed service from Alcatel-Lucent, the company said on Monday.

Malware writers have used Crossrider, a cross-browser extension development framework, to build a click-fraud worm that spreads on Facebook, security researchers from antivirus firm Kaspersky Lab said on Monday.

Now that Google has gotten permission from China's Anti-Monopoly Bureau to acquire Motorola Mobility, the companies are expected to complete their merger by the middle of this week.

IT management executives from large corporations worry most about how to manage employee-owned devices safely and securely, according to clients of the Directions on Microsoft analyst firm.

Silver Peak today upgraded the software for its WAN appliance to handle automated optimization for TCP and non-TCP traffic, 512,000 simultaneous connections for 10 gigabit-per-second (Gbps) infrastructures and support for a bunch of common hypervisors.

IT managers grappling with bring-your-own-device policies can expect to see an explosion in the number of smartphones and tablets used by employees.

The big cable companies know that if they want to stay relevant in the wireless market, they can't do it on their own.

Version 3.4 of the Linux kernel was officially rolled out Sunday, in what maintainer Linus Torvalds called a "calm" release cycle.

Google has "a matter of weeks" to address four antitrust issues identified by European Union antitrust regulators. If Google addresses these issues the case can be solved by a so-called "commitment decision" instead of formal antitrust proceedings resulting in a fine, said JoaquAn Almunia, Vice President of the European Commission responsible for Competition Policy.

Yahoo has agreed to sell off about half of its stake in Alibaba Group back to the Chinese e-commerce giant as part of a US$7.1 billion deal, the two companies jointly announced on Monday.

If the numbers at StatCounter are accurate then the world has a new Web browser champion: Google Chrome.

The chief of AT&T Mobility can't wait for Windows 8 tablets to hit the market because they'll fuel demand for Windows phones.

IBM is offering employees who are nearing retirement a one-time opportunity to take advantage of a program that would guarantee their employment through Dec. 31, 2013.

Europe's top court has ruled that the functionality of a computer program and the programming language it is written in cannot be protected by copyright.

Your boss wants it yesterday, but it better be good when judged by the standards of tomorrow. Your customers want every feature they can imagine, but don't you dare confuse them by giving them all the buttons they want. Your fellow programmers want your code documented, but they just respond "tl;dr" to anything you write.

After all the attention, clamor, and expectations Facebook is now a publicly traded company worth $104 billion. With shares trading at a hundred times earnings, Facebook is under a lot of pressure to increase the profit that it brings in. In other words, now the fun begins.

Microsoft is abandoning the 'Aero' user interface with Windows 8, calling the UI that debuted in Vista and continued in Windows 7, 'cheesy' and 'dated.'

Company claims system requirements will be the same as those of Visual Studio 2010 despite performance increases

The NFL has big stadiums, big players and big games, but when it comes to computer systems, the league's vice president of IT doesn't use the word big.

Despite interoperability trials and demonstrations involving alternative data center fabric standards, a non-standard fabric technology is said by proponents to be at the front of the pack.

Taiwanese smartphone vendor High Tech Computer said on Sunday certain models of its newest smartphones have passed U.S. Customs and are being released to its carrier customers, after the company previously warned of a delay in product shipments because of an International Trade Commission (ITC) order.

So.cl, an experimental research project from Microsoft, that combines social networking and search to promote learning, is now accepting all users interested in joining the site.

Email managers have a lot at stake. After all, the volume of global electronic messages sent via email dwarfs all other forms of electronic communication, including social networking. Since the inception of electronic mail, which, according to some Internet historians, can be traced to a small mainframe app called 'MAILBOX' from the mid-1960s, human-to-human messages have been created, transmitted and stored in electronic format. But early email administrators could hardly have envisioned the complexity of current email infrastructure and the concomitant maze of technical, security, business and regulatory challenges.

Pakistan late Sunday reversed a block on Twitter in the country over material it considered anti-Islam, the country's interior minister said.

Technical problems at the Nasdaq exchange affected the trading of Facebook shares on Friday, the much-anticipated day of its IPO (initial public offering), Robert Greifeld, chief executive of Nasdaq OMX Group Inc., told reporters on Sunday, according to published reports.

Chinese regulatory authorities have approved Google's acquisition of Motorola Mobility, paving the way for the deal to close within the week, company officials confirmed Saturday.

In the latest move in a complex series of patent-related cases, Apple filed a motion in a U.S. district court late Friday to ban Samsung Electronics' Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the U.S.

Apple's plans for a Bluetooth 4.0-based iWallet could be the beginning of the end for the venerable cash register.

Financial Intelligence - Natural Marketing For Lone Rangers

Wealth Building Wealth Building