[ Venture Launch ] If You Can't See Any Problems, You Have A Big Problem

Its all about little decisions.

1. Specific training will never create the results you are seeking. You need to dig way down and gather the nuts and bolts for your journey to success. The secret does not lie within one talk or one speach or training session, it lies deep within you. You have the gifts and talents, now you need to recognize the potential and release it.

2. The Buck Stops here. Take ownership of you. Accept the responsibility of your past. Understand that the beginning of responsibility is accepting it. It’s not about blame, its about hope and control of your situations.

3. Always seek wisdom. Plug into a system and you plug into your future. Rely on systems to take you to your destiny. If your the system, you will always be working it. Make your system go to work for you.

4. I am a person of action. You and you alone are going to change your future with the cooperation of others who buy into your dream. Grasp it with both hands and tell your feet to run with it. Do that and you will start to attract others to your dream and they will let you lead them to the promised land.

5. I have a decided heart. You have already decided that your going to win. A wise man once said-”A journey of a thousand miles requires a first step.” Decide that no matter what the circumstances, you are going to GO FOR IT! Your thoughts and action are always towards the future.

6. Today I will choose to be happy and have a grateful spirit. If you are not happy, sit down and write down all the things you are grateful for. Doing this will ensure that you recognize just how blessed you are. To many of you concentrate on what you dont have. You have everything you need to succeed.

7. I am going to greet this day with a forgiving spirit. Forgive yourself folks. Decide that your going to let yourself off the hook for all the screw ups for the past. That includes other people that you have a grudge against. The past never predicts your future…You do!

Persist without exception. Failure is not an option. You decide whether your going to meander in the passing parade of humanity or whether your going to win at the game of LIFE!!

Last year I was skiing in Aspen with some friends who live there and have been skiing when they were 2 years old. One of them said “let’s go do some double-backflips”. I thought he was kidding… He was not.

So we all went and I saw them performing these amazing double-backflips. They were all waiting for me. It was my turn and I was completely terrified. My heart was beating so hard it almost broke my ribs. But my friends starting calling me “chicken” (yes, they knew how to push my buttons) so I decided to go for it. I love challenges and this was a big one.

As you can imagine, I didn’t land it and I hit my back so hard I could barely breath. Luckily, I didn’t break anything, but a month later my back was still in pain.

I started looking for doctors and found one ad in the newspaper that caught my eye:

Ski-Related Back Injury?
I’ll make your pain go away in 3 weeks or you pay nothing.

“Wow!” I thought. This person read my mind. The guarantee was great, but the fact that she was treating back pain caused by ski wrecks was even more impressive. IT WAS LIKE SHE WROTE THE AD FOR ME!

There were other ads in the newspaper from doctors that promised to make pain disappear, but nobody talked about back injuries, let alone ski-related back injuries. Who do you think I called?

6 Reasons Why You Want to Position Yourself as a Specialist:

Higher Perceived Value
When you’re the guy “who does the taxes for small business owners in the health industry”, your services have a much higher perceived value than those from “the tax guy who does the taxes”.

You Can Charge More
I was more than happy to pay a premium for my back pain specialist. I paid about 30% more than the average doctor visit and it seemed like a bargain!

There’s Less Competition (or No Competition at All)
Do you know of another doctor specialized in back pain caused by ski injuries? If I ever hurt my back again, there’s no other doctor I’d consider going.

It’s Easier to Find Your Target Market
My doctor was born in Chicago, but there’s no much skiing there. She found a market that is all about skiing (Aspen) and gave them a solution to a problem they had. Smart, huh? When you find a niche market, finding your audience is a piece of cake.

It’s Easier to Push Your Customers’ Hot Buttons
When you find a niche market, you can tailor your marketing message to say exactly what your market wants to hear.

It’s Cheaper to Do Marketing
My doctor does just two things for marketing: the newspaper ad and a sign on the Aspen’s hospital billboard. That’s it. When people get hurt, they go to the hospital. While they wait, they’re exposed to the billboard. They’re bored and they read the sign. Genius!

A Great Idea
If you’re thinking “this is a great idea, but I don’t want to risk leaving out 90% of the market”, I have a solution for you. Split your business and target different niches separately. This is something we did for one of the companies I’m involved in:

* The company offers golf tours for seniors, field hockey tours for women and rugby tours for men
* They had everything under one website
* When I started helping them with their marketing, we created three websites (one for each niche)
* The three markets are very different and they all need different marketing approaches, so we wrote new copy for each of the three niches
* Would you rather go on a golf tour to New Zealand with a company that specializes in golf tours to New Zealand or with a company that does all different kinds of tours and happens to do golf tours too?
* Since we started going after each of the three niches separately, the inquiries increased by about 250%

Zeke Camusio
http://www.TheOutsourcingCompany.com/blog

Yesterday, I “attended” an online conference call given by Kellie D’Andrea for a free series she calls Marketing Mondays Minute.  It’s actually about 30 minutes but I was surprised to find out that it wasn’t just one big infomercial.  In fact the only pitching she did was in the first five minutes and I considered that the price of admission.

Anyway, the session was about creating a perfect elevator pitch and the framework for the session was imagining you are at a business function and someone asks you: “So what is it you do?”

The statistic given is that 98% of people give their job title (plumber, marketing consultant, banker, etc).  Which means that only 2% give a unique or different answer that stands out.  So the goal is to create an answer that captures their attention and makes the other person want to ask for more information.

To this Kellie offered a tried and true formula:  A – Audience B- Benefit C- Creative Offering

Audience – Your audience is your target market or niche you serve.  From your business planning you should have a solid idea of your target market and what they value.

Benefits- The benefits you provide have to be overt (obvious) and relate to a pain or pleasure of your target audience.  Maybe you solve one of their biggest problem areas or you could provide a product or serivce that will make them more profitable. 

Creative Offering – In other words what makes you unique or different.  Why should the customer buy from you vs. any of your competitors.

Essentially, an elevator pitch is like wrapping a USP into a benefit statement regarding your target market. 

Some important things to remember though:

• After giving your elevator pitch don’t immediately dive into a 10 minute sales session.  You have to let them lead the discussion by asking for more information.  If you have a good pitch and they fit the target market it should naturally lead into further discussion.  If they don’t ask, let it go, ask them about their own business…people love talking about themselves and love people who will listen.
   
• You probably only have about 10 seconds to give the pitch.  The elevators are much faster these days and people will not sit and listen to a 30 second or 60 second pitch anymore.
   
• Wear your name tag on the right side of your coat.  Most people are naturally right handed so the name tag usually winds up on the left lapel, which is furthest away from people when you shake hands.  Placing it on your right puts it front and center so they can easily see your name.
   
•  Don’t transact business at these events, make sure you hand out a business card and if the discussion goes from a cold lead to a warm one ask for permission to follow up at a later date. 

I was pleasantly surprised to find this free conference call.  If you have time next Monday there is another topic and you can register at Kellie D’Andreas blog.

Donovan Wadholm