Questions to Ask Before Launching Your Business

Questions to Ask Before Launching Your Business
If you have decided to launch a business, you have made a very courageous choice. There are many things you need to know before launching a new business. There is inventory to take into consideration, initial start-up cost and upkeep, hiring employees, sales, marketing…the list goes on extensively.

But first-things-first; answer these three critical questions before jumping in.

Are you doing this for the right reasons?

Sometimes an individual or a group of individuals will launch a business because they think it is expected of them or because it is a family tradition to do so. Other reasons are merely for monetary benefits. With high hopes and goals of only making tons of money, sometimes a new entrepreneur may lose sight of his or her customer.

Once you examine your motives behind starting up, go on to the next important question. Once you know what type of business you want to begin, ask yourself who your target audience is. Knowing that you want to create a business and knowing what that business is will simply not be enough. You need to know who your target audience is and who your ideal customer is.

Honing in on a target audience is something that you can delve into even deeper by creating a specific niche and then going on to create a sub-niche. In this manner, you will be certain that you have focused on a specific need for an even more specific customer.

Have you thoroughly researched your action plan?

Setting goals and measuring them is essential when launching a new business. Put a plan into motion, but allow yourself the flexibility to expand on that original plan. Ask yourself if your business plan is too narrow-minded or if it will achieve the desired outcome you seek and go beyond even that.

Make sure you research if there is enough demand for the product or service you are offering or if you will be just another company offering the same old thing. Ask yourself if you can put a new innovative twist onto something tried and true.

Do you have the time? If not, will you make time?

Ask yourself how much time you are willing to dedicate to this business. What if this business is something that you will find success with right away? Are you willing and able to put the time and trouble in if it does become successful right away?

Also, think about whether or not this is a part-time business or a full-time endeavour. Do you have enough funds to last for six months to a year until your business becomes steady enough to stand on its own two feet?

Once you can answer these critical questions, you can be well on your way to having a successful business endeavour.

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Be sure to join us inside the TVS Workshop and share your expertise!

Questions to Ask Before Launching Your Business

Sales Tips for Reluctant Salespeople

If you are an entrepreneur, you are a salesperson. Every time you have a prospective client or a discovery call, you’re making a sales pitch. When you send an email or write a blog post with an offer – that’s a sales pitch. Creating an opt-in page? You’re making a sales pitch.

And you’re probably pretty good at it, too, or you wouldn’t be where you are today, would you?

So why do we continue to think we’re so bad at sales?

Because “Selling Feels “Icky”.

I hear this one a lot. You feel pushy or uncomfortable when talk turns to money. You don’t want to force anyone into a decision. You secretly think your rates are too high.

I’m going to be honest with you. This is one of those things that gets better only with practice. But the good news is, you don’t have to be on the phone with a prospective client to get that practice time in.

Instead, use the technique self-help gurus have been advocating for years:

Look in the mirror and talk to yourself.

When you were a little girl, did you ever dream of becoming a professional ballerina? I don’t know many women who didn’t, I know I did. I would put on my dance outfit and spin in circles in front of the mirror for hours! Why would any other business be any different?

Becoming a ballerina just wasn’t in the cards for me, however; I did learn a valuable lesson. A mirror is a fantastic tool. I suggest you take advantage of the ones you have.

Practice saying your rates out loud. Practice your transition from discovery to the sales pitch. The more you do it, the more natural it will sound, and the less uncomfortable you will feel when talking to a new customer.

Fix your mindset.

What if you weren’t selling anything, but instead were merely chatting with a friend about the incredible new product that was going to change her life? You’re helping your friend to improve herself by sharing your experience with this new product.

That’s exactly how you should think about selling your product or services. You’re not trying to get your prospective client to spend money. Instead, you’re offering a solution to her problems. You’re genuinely helping her to overcome some obstacle in her life or business.

When you can turn your thinking around from “sales” to “helping” you’ll find it’s much easier to have the sales talk.

Don’t be afraid of the follow-up.

Most clients won’t say yes with the first call, and maybe not even with the second. But good entrepreneurs know that many sales can be closed if you simply take the time to follow up. Send a quick email and invite your prospect to:

Schedule a follow-up call to answer her questions
Read some of your testimonials
Review your program outline or sales page
Or even join a different program of yours that might be a better fit

Don’t let that old “I’m not good at sales” thinking get in the way of making a real difference in people’s lives, and in growing your business and your profits. With these easy tips, you can quickly turn your sales blocks into a system for landing new customers consistently.

What do you think? Do you have any further tips or suggestions that have helped you? Why not join us inside the TVS Entrepreneur Workshop and share them, we’d love to hear from you!

Sales Tips for Reluctant Salespeople

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Sales Tips for Reluctant Salespeople

Advantages of Face-to-Face Networking

With the internet making the world a smaller place, it’s easy to think that networking can be done through social media and social media alone.

However, even with those you meet on social media, you still need to find a way to have face-to-face meetings, when possible. Here are 5 reasons why there are advantages to face to face networking.

Gives that personal touch.

Having face-to-face meetings is more personal and will give you a better way to show who your true self. It’s hard to see what someone’s personality is when you can’t see or hear them. If you want your personality to shine, then you need to have those face-to-face meetings.

Builds stronger relationships

We all crave human connection and when we get it, it builds stronger relationships. You can think a person is great when you meet them online, but to see them in action and be a part of their energy creates a better and more inviting experience.

It is hard to build a strong relationship with someone if you’ve never shared physical space. In person, you get to see how they connect with other people and truly know how strong your connection is with them.

Provides Immediate feedback

If all of your meetings are done through email or on social media, then you don’t get that immediate and direct feedback that you do when you’re face to face. You also can’t tell someone’s tone or demeanour if everything is done through typing. This makes it very easy to misconstrue someone’s intent or what they were saying.

When you are discussing something in person, then the exchange you have will go differently. There’s more give and take, so to speak. It’s just faster this way.

Ability to Read Body Language

There’s a way that we communicate in person that just cannot be expressed on the internet. You can read someone’s body language; you can pick up on sarcasm better when you can hear the tone of someone’s voice or see their face. You just learn so much about a person by seeing their mannerisms.

Avoid misunderstandings

You might think you are being very clear when you communicate on the internet, but how someone else interprets can be entirely different. This is why emotions fly and things get so heated on the internet. A simple misunderstanding escalates into something out of your control.

Using social media to network is great but it is still important to get out there and make personal connections. Whether it be at local business events or you find ways to meet up with your online connections, it’s crucial to create face-to-face meetings to strengthen those connections and build your business.

Now, I want to hear from you! How often do you get out to a local networking event or see your customers face-to-face? Share below in the comment section or join the conversation in the Facebook group.

Website vs Blog – Or Do You Need Both?

Creating a website for a new business? If so, you may be wondering which is the best choice – website or blog. The answer isn’t as complicated as you may think. Here are a few things to consider when choosing for you and your business goals.

Business model and purpose

Both websites and blogs, particularly a WordPress blog, can support just about any type of business model. WordPress developers have created plug-ins that can turn any WordPress blog into an e-commerce site, a membership site and more.

However, these plug-ins and add-ons can be more of a hassle than it’s worth. And finding the right plug-in may be a trial and error process. Believe me – I have gone through a lot of trials and made a lot of errors!

If your business model relies on the publishing of timely information, then a blog is likely better. However, if your business is meant to sell a product or service, then a website may be a better choice.

Maintenance and time

How much time do you have to devote to the upkeep and maintenance of your business? A blog still relies on consistently publishing content. Despite contrary “rules” about blogging, you don’t have to blog every day or several times a day.

Just keep in mind, people who subscribe to blogs do expect regular installments of new content. You can schedule your posts. However, it does require a bit more maintenance on your end. Whereas, a website can be left alone for a month or two without any issues.

Blog versus Website

Personality and ease of use

Some of your decision will be based on your personality. What format do you prefer to use? A blog is straightforward and easy to update and utilize. You may need help to find, install and set up the right plug-ins. You may also need help customizing a theme or adding a custom header. By and large, blogs are very easy to use.

Websites can be trickier for some. That being said, many website developers and design software make the user interface quite simple. You can modify pages and add content without needing to learn or understand a design language.

Goals

Quite often a blog and a website work well together. A website sells. A blog drives traffic and brands the business. A blog can speak to a niche within your niche.

For example, General Motors has a central website. They also have a blog that is car talk. It’s for car enthusiasts and its run by a head honcho at GM. He loves cars. The blog helps brand General Motors and it connects prospects and customers to the business, it also builds a community.

Before you decide whether a blog or a website is right for you, consider the above. What’s the purpose of your site? What will offer the best customer experience? What will be most comfortable for you to use and maintain? Finally, what will best help you achieve your goals?

If you decide that blogging is in your future, check out these 52 Blog Ideas for your business to help get you started!

If it is a website you are after, check out these 30 Tips for Building Your First Business Website off of smallbiztrends.com to get you started.

To your success!

3 Proven Ways to Market Your New Business

The world is filled with great ideas and broke business owners with fabulous products but no sales. Trust me. So here are 3 Ways to Market Your New Business.

The fact is, ideas are not what drives most business success. Marketing does. So before you quit your day job to branch out on your own, it pays to have a solid marketing plan in place. Start with these 3 ideas to get your creative juices flowing.

Free Webinars

For information product sellers, coaches, and service providers, one of the best sources of new clients is in free training webinars. No matter what your niche, the promise of in-depth training at no cost is enough to entice potential clients to part with an email address (which you’ll be able to market to later) and an hour of their time.

Not only that, but webinars are a fantastic way for those potential customers to get to know you better. And the better they know you, the more likely they are to buy.

Content Marketing

Not comfortable hosting a webinar? Hit the keyboard and start sharing your thoughts and ideas via your blog, ebooks, guest articles and other written content. For internet marketers, this gives readers a taste of what they can expect from your product. If you sell physical products, it provides the perfect opportunity to share useful tips and other important information with your buyers.

Of course, there’s another important benefit to content marketing, too: search engine optimization. Google and other search engines index the words on your website and use the information to present search results to their users. Content marketing is a tool you can use to make the most of these results and to bring more potential buyers to your website.

Paid Advertising

Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google and plenty of other sites all offer paid placement, and with today’s powerful analytics tools, it’s easy to create ads and drive traffic inexpensively. Consider starting with Facebook, since the cost is low and it’s easy to target your ads to your ideal client. Once you’ve perfected your funnel, you can branch out into more costly ads with a larger reach, such as Google AdWords or another ad network.

Don’t limit yourself to these three marketing methods though. There are dozens of others you can try, including affiliate programs, JV partnerships, automated funnels, direct mail campaigns, and even television advertising. The key is to keep testing and tweaking to make the most of every marketing effort so that your business continues to grow.

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3 Ways to Market Your New Business

No List? No Problem! How to Build an Audience with Paid Ads

We’ve been told (and told and told) for years that “the money is in the list” and that “your mailing list is your biggest business asset.” But if your list numbers are hovering in the low four-figures—or fewer—with no sign of growth on the horizon, such advice can seem a bit unhelpful.

The fact is, building a list is a catch 22: You can’t get signups without traffic and it’s difficult to find traffic when you have no list. What’s a busy entrepreneur to do?

Paid Ads Make List-Building Easy

By strategically placing ads in front of your target audience, you can drive tons of traffic to your opt-in offers and enjoy conversion rates of two or three percent or more. Even better, with some tweaking and split testing of your offers, you can carefully refine your ads and copy so that you’re attracting your exact ideal client and filling your list with buyers who are ready to take action, rather than freebie seekers.

All you need to run paid ads to your opt-in pages is:

A compelling offer, such as a video training series or live webinar
Copy to grab the attention of your target audience

Best Ad Placements

Once you have your components in place, the only question remaining is where to run your ads. You have dozens of choices, from Twitter to Google to YouTube to solo email spots.

The key is to first determine where your market is most likely to be hanging out. If they’re on LinkedIn, then running ads on Twitter will be a waste of time. Keep in mind the cost as well. Ads on Facebook are generally less expensive and less competitive than a Google Adwords placement.

Start Small, Then Refine

Once you’ve decided where to place your ads, it’s time to set your budget and begin running a small set of ads. Consider setting a small daily budget, such as $10 or $20 at the beginning, so you can get a feel for how your ads will perform. Watch the traffic, track your conversions, and create split tests of your landing page and ad sets to determine which performs the best. You can also refine the audience you’re targeting based on the stats you receive. For example, if you find that men between the ages of 20 and 30 are clicking but not opting in, you might want to remove them from your audience.

At least at first, it’s best to avoid running ads for paid products. Conversions for a free offer will far outshine those to a paid product—especially if your program is expensive. After all, those who are clicking on an ad most likely do not know you at all, so it takes a much bigger leap of faith to offer up a credit card number than it will to provide an email address.

Ad Copy Blunders to Avoid

Have you ever clicked on an ad because you saw an adorable pair of sandals that you just had to have, only to land on a page full of sneakers, with not a sandal in sight? It’s frustrating, to say the least, and that kind of ad to landing page mismatch will kill your conversions.

Your ad copy is making a promise to the reader. If your landing page doesn’t fulfill that promise, your readers will click away, and you’ll have wasted the money you spent to get them there. Before running any ads, be sure your ad headline, image, and copy all match the message on the landing page.

Paid advertising was once a tool used only by big companies or marketers with a lot of money to spare, but today they’re more cost-effective than ever, and the technology makes them easy to create and monitor. If you haven’t yet tried your hand at this useful traffic generation method, it’s time to do some experimenting. You might just find your list numbers—and sales—growing.

Hello, May!

52 Blog Ideas for your business!

“A Sunday well-spent brings a week of content.”

Download FREE: 52 Blog Ideas

This is one of my favourite quotes, I don’t know who initially said it but I still love it.

How do you decide on what you are going to blog every week? Me, every Sunday I would spend the entire afternoon and late evening planning out a week’s worth of content. Sundays were always dedicated to blogging, because of this, I had that week of contentment. It was my Sunday ritual.

Well, not anymore!

I now spend my Sundays with my family doing what families should do on Sundays, just being together. I have to admit, it is kind of great!

Use the checklist to fill your content calendar with 52 awesome blog posts ideas for small business and take back your Sundays. This will give you one blog per week, pre-planned and ready to be written.

All about you.

Your start-up story.
Share how you give back.
Celebrate your biggest successes.
Share your “why”.
Share lessons you have learned.
List people who inspire you.
Share how you “take care of you”.
Explain what sets you apart.
Make a personal announcement.
Tell an inspirational story.
Share your opinion.
Analyze your favourite quote.
Celebrate your team.

All about your industry.

Debunk and industry myth.
Share your favourite tips.
Share up-coming industry events.
Compare products or services.
Share your favourite products.
Write a buyers guide.
List industry leaders to follow.
Answer some FAQs.
Tell your industry start-up story.
Explain an industry trend.
Create a check-list.
Share your expertise in the industry.
Write a “Did you know?”.

All about your business.

List benefits of your products.
Thank your customers.
Declare business goals.
Ask a question for readers to answer.
Cultivate community support.
Share your favourite trends.
Share a testimonial.
Create a “How-to”.
Review a product you offer.
“Must see links” list for your website.
Create an infographic.
Share your mission statement.
Interview a loyal customer.

All about your expertise.

Write a “step-by-step”.
Recap an industry event.
Share a webinar you are hosting.
Showcase a single product.
Post a Vlog.
Answer FAQs about your business.
List your most popular blog posts.
Share a tutorial.
Compare 2 or more products.
List top uses for a product.
Share why you’re an expert.
Discuss your product guide.
Show a “best value” product.

Unsure what you need exactly? Let’s chat to figure it out.

If you’re serious about your business and curious about the idea of working with a mentor, try a free 30-minute call with Joelene to get an idea of what working with her is all about.

Joelene will answer any and as many questions, you have about your business, and share every idea and resource she’s curated and created as a coach to help solve your problem.

It really is a free personal support session, so there’s no pitch or pressure to commit.

Book a FREE 30-minute Personal Support Session

52 Blog Ideas For Your Business

Hello, March!

Success is no accident! Free 2018 goal setting workbook!

It is time to actually live the life you have always dreamed of. Make 2018 the year you are going to achieve incredible things. Over the next year, you are going on an epic journey. You will be growing your business and will accomplish something incredible by creating a life you love.

All of this will not happen overnight, it won’t be by accident, and it will not be handed to you on a silver platter. It will happen because you will make it happen, with intention.

All you need to do is show up, work hard, and never give up.

About a that “hard work” part I mentioned, I am here to help, we will do this together! So, let’s get started!

First, be clear about what you want to achieve in 2018 – and stand by it! Everything you want to accomplish is going to need a plan, which is why you are going to make a plan to make it happen. It isn’t easy achieving your goals but with focus, you can set yourself up and get on the path to success.

Download the 2018 Goal-Setting & Planning workbook at start your year off with intention. No sign up required, it is totally free to download! As I said above, the only thing that will get you to where you want to be you. So it is time to make a plan for how you are going to be the best version of yourself for 2018.

Be sure to leave a comment and share your business goals for 2018!

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2018 Goal Planner