Here are some of the benefits of using public speaking to generate leads:

• You can influence more people more quickly
• Establish your credibility
• Demonstrate your expertise and knowledge
• Promote a special offer
• Generate quality leads in bulk

As a business owner or manager you have valuable expertise and knowledge relating to your products and services. By speaking in public about your expert subject you immediately build credibility which is a key influencing factor when people are making buying decisions. People prefer to buy from experts in their chosen field rather than generalists.

By sharing your knowledge you are able to demonstrate expertise and communicate important and powerful messages linked to your chosen topic. This positions you ‘above the crowd’ and produces enquiries from the audience which leads to business if handled correctly.

Where to Speak

It is good to choose a location where groups of your target buyers are meeting already. For example, you could speak at local business networking groups. The Business Link website provides details of events taking place in your area. Just view the event directory at http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/

Some groups require you to be a member before you can have a speaking slot. This includes Chamber of Commerce so you need to decide whether you would receive a return on your investment for membership.

It is a good idea to visit the venue prior to making your speech so you can become familiar with the room layout and typical attendees.

What to Speak About

It is important to choose your subject carefully. You want a subject which is interesting to your audience and topical. Choose to inform and educate your audience rather than trying to sell to them. You will quickly turn off an audience if you communicate a blatant sales pitch. (There are other business networking forums designed for you to specifically promote your business).

You want to speak about a topic which has relevance to your business. Here are some ideas of educational topics:

• Accountant: Top tips for saving tax
• Carpet cleaner: How to keep your carpets looking fresh and lasting longer
• Website developer: Improving the search engine rankings of your website
• Personal trainer: Simple exercises to help keep you fit and trim
• Letting agent: Guidance on managing a personal property portfolio

Towards the end of your speech you could make a special offer available or ask the audience to request something free of charge such as a special report or initial consultation. The length of your talk will depend upon the type and purpose of the event. For example with a breakfast meeting lasting for 2 hours may have a guest speaker slot lasting 20 minutes.

How to Develop Your Speaking Skills

Public speaking is an excellent communication skill to be developed and refined over time. Very few individuals are born orators and it takes practice over time to build your confidence and skills.

I would recommend joining a local speaking group where you can learn and practice in an encouraging and supportive environment.  For example, Toastmasters International has groups throughout the UK. Visit their website at www.toastmasters.org/

The Follow up Process

It is essential to follow up your talk appropriately. If people have requested more information make sure this is dealt with promptly. If you have an attendee list with contact details that people have opted-in to you could follow up by email or phone offering more information or a special deal.

If people have given their business card to you this provides a good opportunity to follow up. This builds your enquiry list and over time leads to profitable sales and quality referrals.

Brian

I provide suggested strategies to help you through difficult cash flow situations, as follows:

Break down your spending and cut costs

It is important to separate sales costs from your operational costs. Your sales costs vary depending on sales volumes and include activities such as direct mail, advertising, telemarketing and field sales. Operational costs, on the other hand are fixed regular amounts you are committed to pay irrespective of your sales volumes. These might include, rent, rates, utilities and staff costs. Once you understand your costs in detail you can then consider whether spending cuts are possible.

Here is a list of some of the items where you may be able to cut costs although it’s important to recognise that cost cutting has limitations:

• Cut out wasteful marketing activities
• Negotiate better terms and prices with your suppliers or even switch suppliers
• Negotiate lower rent
• Move to smaller and cheaper premises
• Renegotiate any loans/overdraft facilities
• Negotiate with staff for less hours, pay cuts or performance related pay
• Staff redundancies

If you have loans on a capital and interest basis you may be able to switch them temporarily to interest only to save on your regular payments. If you also have personal debt and are struggling to meet the repayments, you can consider a debt management programme. The interest is suspended and you agree an affordable regular payment. These schemes can be set up free through charitable organisations such as Consumer Credit Counselling Service (CCCS) or Payplan. It may be worth visiting your local Citizens Advice Bureau for free help and guidance.

Increase sales and revenues

Review your sales conversion rates from leads generated. There could be scope to increase your conversion rates by reviewing your sales process. Are you following up leads in an effective and systemised manor?

You may be able to generate new leads with little or no cost. Are you maximising repeat sales from your existing customers? You may be able to obtain quality referrals from your existing customers and other contacts within your business network.

It’s good practise to review your pricing on a regular basis. You might be able to increase your prices selectively. Calculate your average transaction value and gross margin. You may be able to increase your average transaction value by combining a range of related products and services in a package.

Review your credit control. You may have outstanding invoices that can be chased for payment. You can use specialist debt recovery specialists for more serious situations. Some operate on a no collection, no fee basis which limits your financial risk.

If you typically operate a long payment cycle you might want to consider invoice discounting or factoring. This is where you receive payment upfront less a fee for the service.

Borrowing and available grants

If you operate on high gross margins you might be able to justify short-term borrowing or overdraft facilities. If you can generate gross profit greater than the cost of borrowing then it makes sense to borrow.  This enables you to retain cash reserves within the business for risk management purposes.

You may qualify for certain grants. These are available for specific industries such as agricultural and for specific purposes such as innovation and environmental purposes. Check the Business Link website at http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/

Overall, you want to forecast and track the requirements for cash in your business to ensure funds are available as they are needed.

Brian.

Positive motivation will have a lasting effect whereas motivation based on fear and punishment only works short-term. To create ongoing incentives you can provide opportunities for reward, recognition, responsibility, advancement and growth. Many employers focus almost exclusively on the reward system (i.e. pay and benefits) which is a mistake as this is only one of the five major ways of stimulating positive motivation.

An appropriate reward package is important as it is a very tangible way of providing benefits to employees. The best reward packages include a substantial element of performance related pay by way of cash bonuses, share options and other financial incentives. Other rewards can include pension contributions, company cars, health care and other staff privileges.

Other forms of positive motivation are required, however to encourage your people to be the best they can be in their chosen role and for you to demand high and consistent performance from everyone. Recognition for example, can be an incredible motivator. Some people will drive themselves to excel when they are being fully recognised for the contribution they are making to your organisation - As the old saying goes - Recognition: “Babies cry for it and soldiers die for it!”

Some individuals thrive on responsibility and the more you can load them with responsible projects, duties and tasks the more they will drive themselves to peak performance. Others seek advancement by way of a clear and progressive career path and will enjoy the journey of ongoing development. Personal growth, becoming more skilled, knowledgeable and equipped to excel can also produce exceptional performance.

Each person has their own unique blend of motivation factors they respond to and I have shared with you the key stimulators. The best way to establish which ones apply to members of your team is simply to have meaningful communication with them allowing you to gather the right information.

Your initial and ongoing training programmes are part of the process of getting the best from your people. This starts with a comprehensive induction course when they join and continues with a progressive personal development programme. This applies to all your team members including part-time staff. As the business owner, you want to lead and inspire your people by sharing your vision and gaining their buy-in to the organisations development plans.

It is wise to be flexible with how you define individual roles. This enables you to allow your people to work to their strengths, enjoy their work and excel in their role.

 Overall make sure your culture is one of building mutual respect, trust and integrity. This can be achieved with openness and transparency, whilst maintaining essential confidentialities and is enhanced through a “learning” rather than a “blaming” culture where individuals are encouraged and supported. People may not always recall what you say but they will remember how you make them feel.

A skill analysis and assessment tool is available FREE on request without obligation. Just send an email requesting the skills analysis tool to mail@brianjamesgroup.com

Brian.

The key factors for achieving sustainable growth are:

• Continuing to connect a market demand with your compelling proposition
• Maintaining financial capability and stability
• Actively pursuing what is good for your business, for others and for the planet

Here is a 5 stage process to help keep you on track.

1. Review where you are

Consider how your business is performing. You could take account of trends in customer development and the volume of sales transactions as well as total sales and profitability.

You could identify seasonal trends and main sources of business. How is your business performing against objectives and budget?

It’s a good idea to undergo a SWOT analysis periodically. This involves considering your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Strengths and Weaknesses focus on your internal environment you mostly control such as products, services, pricing, location, systems and procedures, staff, customers and suppliers.

Opportunities and Threats on the other hand, focus on your external environment such as competitor forces, political factors, economic changes, social implications, technological developments, legal issues and environmental considerations.

2. Plan desired outcomes

What is your overall business vision? Based on your review you can set key objectives and identify your top priorities. What kind of resources and skills will you need to meet your objectives?

Set goals for sales turnover and managing costs to maximise profitability. Update your key performance indicators such as sales conversion rates, average customer spend and frequency of purchases.

Decide on your main marketing activities and how you will track ongoing performance. A 90 day plan with monthly reviews is a formula adopted by many successful businesses.

3. Maintain focused activity

Create a compelling market proposition by combining you own unique blend of differentiation points. This might comprise your pricing, quality of product and service, range offered, turnaround times, added convenience, bespoke tailoring and customer satisfaction guarantees.

Identify the customers who would be ideally suited to your market proposition. Connect with them using a range of focused marketing activities. Experiment with methods you haven’t tried before. Be prepared to be open-minded and flexible. Make sure you monitor and track the results.

Expand your activities both online and offline. For example, consider direct mail, telemarketing, email marketing, joint ventures, pay per click advertising, developing public relations, exhibiting at trade shows, public speaking opportunities, referral and loyalty schemes and business networking.

4. Refine the process

Measure the return on investment (ROI) of all your marketing activities. Increase those that are working best and cut out those that are wasteful or non-productive.

Develop a ‘funnel’ of products and services. This involves developing a complete range of products and services operating at different levels of customer commitment. For example, low-cost entry point items to maximise volume sales, right through to the most intensive and enriching items that maximise profitability.

Maintain a balance across the different elements of your business. This involves having a clear development strategy, managing cash flow and costs, winning customer satisfaction, building skills and capabilities, developing winning attitudes, effective sales & marketing, efficient systems and procedures, and maximising profitability.

5. Develop the success mindset

Overall maintaining a success mindset will help to keep you on track. This involves staying positive, keeping active and remaining committed to your goals and all contribute towards achieving sustainable growth.

Brian.

By being more systems reliant rather than people reliant you are able to manage standards of performance and complete projects on time and within budget. Your people of course need to be valued and recognised however if they are trained to use your systems you are able to manage tasks more consistently. Your staff will be more productive and you are able to manage staff turnover more effectively with robust systems in place.

The majority of regular tasks and activities can be systemised by viewing them as inter-related projects. For example invoicing, credit control, marketing campaigns, staff recruitment and development are just some of the multitude of elements you can form into an efficient system. Here are some of the key elements you want to consider for all your major projects:

• Ascertain a business case
• Have clear objectives
• Plan timings, cost control and quality factors
• Determine and manage resource requirements
• Ensure a customer focus
• Measure and evaluate outcomes objectively
• Refine and review the process

There are a myriad of different directions you can take and numerous markets you can pursue as part of your business development. Have clear guiding principles. Consider the reasons you are undertaking particular tasks and projects. How well do they link to your strategic goals and do they represent a high enough priority to warrant your energies and resources? What will be the key deliverables and how will you receive a return on your investment of time and money? Remember you can always undertake a trial to test the feasibility of your plans.

Your objectives should be as specific as possible with defined deadline dates and clear timings. The usual SMART criteria apply. That is how they will be measured and how achievable and realistic they are.

In order to manage your projects on a minute-by-minute basis you will need a clear understanding of the critical path tasks to be carried out. Think about when the earliest task starts. When does the latest task end and when does each of the intermediate tasks start and end. The use of tools such as Gantt charts can be very helpful. A Gantt chart is simply a bar chart listing each task with start and end times shown graphically. How do the tasks relate to each other and in what sequence must they take place?

Consider all the resource requirements. This includes timescales, accurate costing and people resources. What skills will be needed to achieve quality standards and are those skills available in-house? Will you need to retrain staff our outsource some of the project elements? Adopt learning rather than a blaming culture. If something is not operating well there are only two reasons for it not working. They are: Either the system is flawed or the system is being operated incorrectly. The first is a function of refinement and the second is a training need.

Think carefully about how any project will enhance your customer base, customer satisfaction levels, likely referrals, your company image or brand. Where possible involve your customers and other stakeholders in the process. Gather feedback and manage expectations with care.

Agree a regular review process for longer term projects. How are you going to keep the project and those involved on track and maintain momentum? Make sure you monitor everything so it can be measured at each stage with milestones and so tasks can be evaluated and refined.

Brian.

Face to face business networking has really expanded in the UK over recent years. I’m referring to local regular support groups for business people to attend. It has become a major industry with multiple networking groups opening up in most towns. Some are independent groups and many are part of national or international networking organisations.

It’s been said that part of success is about ‘turning up’ - well I think this presupposes you are ‘turning up’ to the right environment for your business. Some businesses are naturally well suited to local business networking and others aren’t.

Let’s examine the key elements of this activity so you can decide how appropriate attending a local networking group is for your business.

Expectation requirements

Networking succeeds on the basis of mutual benefit and the premise that if you give business to others they’ll be keen to give business to you. For quality business introductions a clear understanding of your business proposition by fellow members is essential.

The Types of businesses that tend to get the best return from networking have simple transactions and clearly defined products and services. For example, plumber, website developer, carpet cleaner, accountant, printer and such like all offering products and services easily understood in the marketplace.

Your fellow networking members need to understand enough about your business to recommend you to others with confidence. If your market proposition is complex it’s likely you’ll find local business networking much more challenging. This issue is compounded further if your business combines a lengthy buying cycle with large average order values. Small ongoing purchases work best for business networking because they represent lower risk.

It is one thing recommending your local plumber to service a boiler for a relatively small sum and it’s a completely different situation recommending a software developer for a complex project involving a major purchase.

Networking tips

If you decide business networking is right for you then here are a few key tips to maximise your success. You need to:

• Be prepared to attend regularly, build trust and guide fellow members regarding your ideal referral requirements
• Be prepared to give before you receive - business networking is not designed for a predatory or hunter approach
• Take a long-term view. Business networking is unlikely to be your fastest route to market

Complex businesses

For more complex business situations a different approach is required. For example, if you promote large infrequent purchases you want to be able to maximise your powers of positive influence and persuasion.

This can be achieved by creating an impact and demonstrating your expertise and specialist skills. Specialist consultancies and advisory based businesses are better suited to this approach. You can still use business networking although it needs to be more focused and selective such as arranging speaking slots. This is where you present topics within your specialist areas to a business audience in a group.

Make sure you give practical take-away value in your speech which adds credibility and demonstrates your expertise. During your talk you can offer a free report/top tips guide in exchange for business cards. This enables you to generate an enquiry list for follow up by email, phone and personal meeting.

Brian.

Let’s just examine some of the obvious daily cash requirements for your business. You will have overheads to pay, suppliers to satisfy, taxes and bank interest/charges to meet plus possibly rent and wages to pay. It is a good idea to set some smart objectives regarding your current and future cash needs to meet all these requirements when they arise.

It takes careful planning to consider all the cash needs for your business and in doing so meet your fixed costs, your personal lifestyle needs (the income levels you need from the business) a contingency fund (financial reserve) and the cash implications of your ultimate goal for the business. (For example, your goal might be to exit your business with a specified sum of cash and/or retirement income level). This requires short, medium and long-term planning and forecasting.

Here is a recommended list of the different financial aspects you might want to monitor on a regular basis and in many cases daily:

• Accurate invoicing (To ensure you include all chargeable aspects of your work)
• Payments received from customers and other debtors
• Money paid out to suppliers and for other expenses
• Money invested in equipment, plant and machinery
• Money held in items of stock
• Money you owe to your creditors (Where possible always pay on time)

Managing cash is most important but is certainly not the only business risk having major financial and sustainability implications for your business. There are several aspects where you don’t have direct control. You do however have total control over how you plan effectively and how you respond to adversity.

External factors such as political, economical, social, technological, environmental and legal issues all play their part in shaping your operating environment. By being aware of current conditions and trends you can factor these in to your planning and anticipate the likely effects on your business. I refer to this as ‘business savvy’.

Some of the other major risks include fierce competitor activity, loss of staff or suppliers. These can be affected by sickness and injury. Apart from these ‘personnel’ risks there are operational risks such as fire, flood, theft, criminal damage and terrorism. One increasingly fundamental risk relates to IT and data loss/corruption. Regular back-ups help to minimise this risk. As for the others, these can be minimised or protected with the highest levels of quality, due diligence and appropriate insurances in place.

With the correct systems in place you can keep your ‘finger on the pulse’ of your business daily. This can be achieved by monitoring key performance indicators. For example, sales volumes, payments in/out, new customer acquisitions, customer complaints, supplies in stock and production levels.

By maintaining effective controls and upholding the highest levels of ethics in all your business dealings you are able to keep the risks to a minimum. This will give you peace-of-mind and allow you to focus on the important task of growing and developing your business rather than just sustaining it.

Brian.

This helps to develop enduring loyalty and produce raving fans happy and willing to do business with you. This enables you to improve the quality of information you have on your customers offering opportunities to present the right message at the right time and achieve maximum results. As long as you ensure your margins are maintained this leads to greater success and sustainable growth.

Delivering more of what your customers want gives you:

• Higher conversion rates
• Cross-selling opportunities
• More quality referrals
• Improved customer loyalty
• Greater business success

What information do you want?

You want to fully understand your customers buying criteria and expectations so you can serve them better. This can be broken down into several categories of understanding which differentiates your proposition from other businesses. These include:

Price

Quality of your products and services

Service quality

Turnaround times

Convenience

Tailoring

Guarantees

Added value

The combination of how you deliver on these items determines your uniqueness. It’s not feasible to deliver the ultimate with all of them at the same time as there is a trade-off between them. For example, your customers can’t have the best possible quality and the lowest price. The most important element is to deliver with consistency and reliability enabling you to build brand personality and recognition.

Make sure customers understand how your prices are structured. A flexible approach to pricing is helpful. For example, you could alter your prices according to variations in demand and how you package and position them. Your prices could increase for those requiring greater convenience or faster turnaround times and reduce for those who are happy to fit in with your delivery schedule and availability. You could also alter your prices according to variations in product quality with higher prices for higher quality items and lower prices where quality is less important.

Exact tailoring of your product and service gives you the opportunity to customise a unique solution for each customer and in turn charge premium prices. Offering guarantees removes the risk to the customer providing peace of mind for them and more sales for you. Added value such as volume discounts and time saving features can increase your average order values and profitability.

How to get into their minds

There are two main opportunities for gathering important customer insights. Firstly, as part of a dedicated survey or alternatively as part of your regular contact with them when they buy or request information from you.

Dedicated surveys can be quickly produced and put to use. These can be sent in the post, carried out over the phone or online. One of the best online tools is available at http://www.surveymonkey.com/

This is free for up to 10 questions in a survey completed by up to 100 customers.

Routine information can be obtained by asking specific questions when you are in regular contact with your customers and interacting with them. This could be over the phone or face to face.

Here is some of the information you could establish:

• Improved consistency in how your product or service is delivered
• Improvements to customer service levels and reliability
• Preferred method of customer contact
• Relevant competitor activity
• Ideas for repositioning your proposition and adding brand value
• Insights into customer buying cycles and ideal timing
• New and innovative product or service ideas

By getting into your customers’ mind you establish their motives and buying behaviours. This helps you to define your uniqueness, obliterate any competition and maximise your business opportunities.

Brian.

All businesses have natural customer attrition. People change their minds, move away or die! You want effective marketing in place to constantly grow your customer base, retain and grow your best customers.

It costs typically 4 to 9 times more to find new customers than to keep existing customers. Develop a compelling customer service proposition to ensure you retain ‘the right’ customers and build mutually beneficial customer relationships. By practicing smart marketing in all your communications you truly become the only natural choice supplier for your best customers.

You want to be in a position of creating astonishing service. You want to be able to delight your customers. Just like any mutually beneficial relationship this takes ongoing meaningful contact, discernment and creativity.

Meaningful contact can be achieved by educating and informing your customers on an ongoing basis. Regular newsletters can be a great way to achieve this. By encouraging your customers to opt-in to your postal or email newsletter you are ensuring they are happy to receive information from you. You can keep them up to date with changes and trends in the market place.

Information might include political, economical, social, technological, environmental or legal issues. You can help your customers make ongoing intelligent buying decisions by informing them of all the critical factors required from a quality supplier. This might include for example, standards of service, after sales care, health and safety issues and guarantees.

It is not feasible to try to serve all your customers with awesome service. You can achieve it however, for a select group of customers. So how do you choose which customers to serve best? You start by segmenting your existing customer base and rank them in to categories. Your criteria might include for example, their ongoing needs, profitability levels, accessibility, affordability, willingness to pay and servicing demands. This exercise will probably leave you with approximately 20% of your customer base in the top categories.

The next step is to seek to serve the demands of your best customers as a priority. For the lower categories of customer you can deal with them more on a reactive basis and possibly even refer them to another business. By developing strategic alliance partnerships with other good businesses you are able to maintain an income stream from work you are not necessarily fulfilling directly.

You can continue to offer creative solutions by making the appropriate offers available to the right customers. Customer knowledge is vital. You can combine solutions as part of a packaged bundle of products and services. You can offer add-on buying opportunities. An example for a cleaning business might be a half-price cleaning of the hallway and landing carpet while you are there cleaning the living room carpet.

You can also build customer loyalty with membership programmes and loyalty schemes. For example they may pay an ongoing nominal fee which entitles them to special member privileges and discounts.

The best way to obtain information about your customers’ needs, wants and preferences is to ask them. Get them to tell you what they want and within reason give it to them. Customer feedback surveys are very helpful.  A sample customer survey is available online in our FREE resource area. Just visit www.brianjamesgroup.com/DownloadAssistant/default.asp

Finally, be credible, be remarkable and be fun to deal with. Please add a comment below and share how you are managing your customer relationships to secure ongoing mutual value.

Brian.

It’s important to realise optimisation is a long-term and ongoing web strategy not a short-term fix. Optimisation combines well with other short-term web strategies (see below). Ultimately, improving your natural listings can provide a flow of quality traffic to your website and save on advertising costs.

There are several practical methods you can use to improve your rankings and things to avoid. The most important aspect is to continue to build good quality and relevant content on your website. You want to keep adding new content and update existing content on a regular and consistent basis.

Here are top tips for gathering and using the right content:

• Use keyword search tools (such as free Google tool)
• Clearly identify each page with a relevant heading
• Add page titles to each page
• Repeat key phases in the text (referred to as keyword density)
• Add a Google Site Map (and keep it updated)
• Submit your site to search engines
• Track competitors websites

You want to establish a series of key phrases to encapsulate your product and service proposition. One word phrases are usually too vague. Three or four word phrases are likely to cut out most of the less relevant traffic and improve the quality of visitors to your website.

For example, a cleaning business might use “carpet cleaning in Colchester” as a search phrase. An accountant might use “bookkeeping services in Bournemouth”. For small localised businesses, it’s usually good to include a town or location in the search phrase as most people like to buy from local suppliers and often include this in their search.

Avoid overdoing keyword density. An acceptable level is a few times every 200 words or so. Other key things to avoid are:

• Heavy use of ‘Flash’ content
• Vague or irrelevant content
• Out of date information
• Duplicate/Hidden page content
• Lack of images

Another key strategy to improve your rankings is building appropriate links to your website. The best type of links are inbound links from other websites - the more popular they are and relevant to your site, the better. Other types of links also help, for example:

• Reciprocal links (inbound and outbound links to other websites)
• Internal links (to other pages on your site)
• Outbound only links (to other relevant websites)

Tips for gaining free links to your website

Here are a number of helpful tips for gaining inbound links to your website where you can register free:

• Free online business directories (just search for free directories and choose relevant ones)
• Article sites (such as http://www.ezinearticles.com/)
• BT Tradespace free listing (http://www.bttradespace.com/)
• Business Link Supplier Matching Service (http://www.suppliermatching.co.uk/)
• Online forums
• Online communities (e.g. http://www.linkedin.com/ , http://www.twitter.com/)
• Adding comments and a link to relevant blogs
• Running your own blog

Combining optimisation with other methods

It’s important to combine optimisation strategies with other co-ordinated online and offline activities. Optimisation works particularly well combined with online pay-per-click advertising, such as Google AdWords. The pay-per-click advertising can get you much quicker results. It’s an ideal testing ground for selecting the most relevant and popular key phrases. Just like all advertising, make sure you limit your spending to a small proportion of your total marketing budget.

Have fun improving your website listings and rankings.

Brian.