How to avoid the Feast-Famine scenario

Most professional service businesses suffer from the feast-famine syndrome where you’re either busy delivering on the contract or rushing around looking for new business. In this video Hannah McNamara talks about ways that you can automate your marketing and scale-up your marketing activities so that you are using techniques like teleseminars and webinars to maximise the effectiveness of your business development and sales conversations.

www.GetMoreClientsMakeMoreMoney.co.uk

Could tele-seminars boost your business?

Small business coach Hannah McNamara from SME Academy (http://www.smeacademy.co.uk) in London talks about an innovative way to reach more customers than you ever could through one-to-one sales meetings or telephone meetings.

…Read More

Up-selling: The key to increased profits

Small business coach Hannah McNamara from SME Academy (http://www.smeacademy.co.uk) in London talks about ways that you can increase sales amongst your existing customers and clients.

…Read More

[Video Tip] Networking Corporate Style

Hannah McNamara from SME Academy (http://www.smeacademy.co.uk) talks about ways that you can network your way into corporate contracts.

…Read More

[Video Tip] Automating your Marketing activities

Hannah McNamara from SME Academy (http://www.smeacademy.co.uk) explains how to take the time and effort out of small business marketing by automating and systemising marketing activities. This includes the use of autoresponders, YouTube and other techniques.

…Read More

[Video Tip] 7 ways to improve sales without really trying

Hannah McNamara from SME Academy explains 7 ways to improve sales in your business. Includes various sales techniques and marketing methods suitable for small, medium and large businesses.
…Read More

Why Productize?

“You have to productize”

That’s the phrase used by most internet marketing gurus when it comes to creating add*itional income for your coaching practice. I’ve yet to meet a coach who doesn’t agree that having additional products to sell would be beneficial to their practice – even if they haven’t got a plan for doing it.

After all, it is common practice for service businesses to offer an up-sell in addition to the services provided. For example:

In the consumer market:

• Hairdressing salons encourage us to buy their preferred brand of hair products
• Dentists recommend the toothbrushes and mouthwashes in stock at reception
• Gyms promote their own-branded backpacks, water bottles and towels

In the business market:

• IT consultancies offer support contacts so that they are on-call to help you with any queries or issues
• Website designers will often include a hosting package with your site so they have had a residual income after the initial work is done
• Sales trainers supply books, manuals and CDs to help their delegates continue to learn by referring back to their materials again and again after the course

Given that almost every other type of service business knows about the need to ‘productize’ why do so few coaches do it? I think it’s because coaching is, to a certain extent, reactive. In most of the service businesses listed above, the service provider is doing something for the customer that they can’t do themselves – cutting their hair, filling their teeth, designing a website or training their staff. With coaching we believe that the coachee is the one doing the work, coming up with the ideas and ultimately generating the results. All true.

What does this mean for creating products for your coaching practice?

While we usually do react to the topics our clients bring to sessions and go with the flow of conversation rather than guiding them down a particular path, there are certain things that you go through with more than one client. You might have developed your own coaching tools, exercises and homework for them to complete. You might find yourself using particular stories and metaphors repeatedly. You might have written articles offering tips or suggestions on how to set goals, uncover values and limiting beliefs or how to come up with positive affirmations.

Rather than only using these in one-to-one sessions, how about putting them together into a product for your clients? Your clients pay for this information already, so there is a pretty good chance that people will be willing to pay for the same information delivered in a different form – as a product.

What could You turn into a product right now?

About the Author:
Hannah McNamara is Chartered Marketer, popular speaker, book author and qualified Coach with over 15 years experience in Sales & Marketing. She now runs workshops, seminars and programmes showing owners and directors of established businesses exactly how to find hidden opportunities and grow their organisation. Hannah is a director of SME Academy.

If you liked this article, you’ll love the free e-book ‘10 Ways to Sabotage Your Own Business: Are you making these mistakes?’ You can download it now from ebook.smeacademy.co.uk

FREE Sales training course with Patrick White

Self-made multi-millionaire entrepreneur Patrick White will be presenting his popular course Sales Success: The art of consultative selling at Business Link London’s event on Wednesday 28th January 2009. …Read More

Free Sales Training, London

Patrick White will be holding a workshop ‘Sales Success: The art of consultative selling’ on 4th November 2008.

This event is being hosted and funded by Business Link London. Places on this course would normally be £250+VAT but because Business Link is LDA funded, places are being fully funded and there is no charge to attend.

Find out more and book your place.