The Business Growth Blog by Rob Cuesta

Six-Figure Blueprint Brief 17: Strategy & Tactics

! uploaded a new 6-Figure Blueprint Brief video called "Strategy & Tactics" entitled to Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/6FigureBlueprint.

Visit www.PracticeMomentum.com to get a copy of my new book "More Clients, More Money, More Fun"

 

#PRACEXPLOSION Quick Growth Tip #13: Is your business systematic? is it automatic?

Does it run like the proverbial Greased Lighning?

If it doesn't then I predict it's been a while since you had a proper holiday. Even if you manage to get away, I suspect you have to check emails every hour or so just in case you've made a sale or had an enquiry.

And you've probably lost a few clients by not following up properly.

Am I getting close?

I know I am, because I've been there!

So let me tell you how to get out of your world of pain.

Is this the worst business card ever?

I was at a show for startup businesses a couple of weeks ago in London. Taking a break from the stand I joined some fellow exhibitors for lunch. At one point we were interrupted by the arrival of a shadowy figure who walked up to the table and - without a word - dropped a single business card into the centre of the table then walked on to the next table.

Now, I could probably write a whole blog post just discussing his method of approaching us, but let's look at his business card...

Schrodinger's Lunch - does business networking work?

At a recent workshop I ran, one of the attendees asked whether networking works.

I know people in business who swear by the power of networking meetings in growing their business. I also know people who swear just at the thought of going networking. The reality is that for some people it works, and for others it doesn't.

It's a little like Schrodinger's cat. Schrodinger imagined a thought experiment that goes as follows: imagine a cat in a sealed box. In the box there is also a piece of radioactive material that is decaying and will ultimately kill the cat (remember - this is an imaginary cat, not a real one!). How do you know the cat whether the cat is alive or dead? You can't know until you open the box¹.

Networking is much the same: you won't know if it works for you until you try it. And whether networking will work for a particular person is down to two things.

Before you get into social media, what does your audience look like?

I just found a new online tool that could just be ESSENTIAL for any business that is serious about using social media to reach its target audience.

Forrester Research's Groundswell Consumer Profile Tool will give you a "technographic" profile (think demographic for the internet age) of your audience based on country, age and gender. There are 8 categories of user and a link to an explanation of each category. More detail and analysis can be found in Forrester's new book "Groundswell".

Unmissable :)

You owe it to your customers to close

At a networking breakfast this morning I told the group at my table a short story about one of my clients. Like many professionals, he hates to sell. I observed one of his sales meetings, at his invitation, and I was shocked to see him go all the way through flawlessly, explaining his unique value propositions, clearly differentiating himself from his competitors, and using all the NLP skills I'd taught him to get the prospect to the brink of signing, and then he opened his mouth and uttered that awful, awful phrase "well, I expect you want to take this all away and think about it".

Keeping it all together

At the last count, I had 14 profiles on different web sites. I'm not talking about the type that just say "tell us about yourself"; I mean full blown profiles where you describe your experience, what you do, and basically express your personal brand.

I've thought for a long thime that what the world of online personal branding needs is a service that lets you feed all those from a single source. In the days of XML and RSS and all those other TLAs that mean something about passing information between sites you, you'd think it would be easy.

The matter has been brought into even clearer focus this week, because I'm moving offices. So I nowface the prospect of going into every one of those profiles to see which ones have my office address, and updating it. Wouldn't it be great to have a single dashboard where I could log in, make the change, press the button, and *abracadabra* all my profiles changed at once.

When I heard about new startup Nombay.com I thought my prayers might be answered.

Safer Social Networking

When I'm helping a client to build their online reputation, one of the key tools at our disposal is social network sites - you know the ones: Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. Alongside concerns about how to keep the profile 'professional', the next most common concern clients have is about privacy and fraud, so I was pleased to find a post on microsoft.com listing 10 very useful tips on how to use these sites safely.

Networking through Meetup.com

I recently discovered meetup.com, a site that allows you to connect with people with similar interests in your area. As soon as I saw it I was struck by the fact that you could just as easily use it to connect with people who share your passions while you're travelling. And that's exactly what I did.