Tag: selling

What is #1 Priority when starting a home business?

The #1 Priority for any business whether home based or brick and mortar is Cash Flow!

The biggest concern with any business is cash flow.
At all times you have to be marketing, selling and
fulfilling the service of your home business.

You need a minimum cash flow every month just to cover your business
expenses and living expenses.
You can start by looking at your own bank account and
see what are your expenses to live every month.
Then do an analysis of the expenses needed in order to do your business
(by doing a business plan).
Add all the expenses together and that will be the income minimum
you need to make just to cover your expenses.

In most businesses you don’t make a profit which is income above
what you need for expenses for a few months or more.
So, you need to have some startup funding (whether savings or family support etc.) in the first year.

At all times, it is cash flow which can make a business profitable or a loss.
At all times as an owner you have to have three hats on:

The Marketer Cat

Cat wearing felt hat with feather

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Marketer Hat where you go out and make people aware of your business. Okay, yes, I am not a cat but doesn’t he look like a marketer cat! 🙂

 

The Seller Cat

Portrait of cat wearing straw hat

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Seller Hat where you close the sale when you have someone asking about your business. This is where you are serious and know what you want to say just like the Seller Cat.

 

The Business Cat

Cat wearing red hat

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Business Hat where you fulfill the promise of the sale that you made
whether to fulfill a service or produce a product. The Business Cat is professional at all times in fullfilling the promise!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My husband and I have had a home based business for 20 years.
Just like any business, we have to have cash flow.
In one day, you can be meeting a potential client to fulfill a service
by a deadline while fulfilling another promised service
in the 8 hour time period
and responding to enquires with quotes over the internet.
At all times, you have to be a marketer, salesperson and service provider.
That is common to any business, homebased or otherwise,
if you don’t have the cashflow needed for your business,
you will get into serious trouble.

#1 Priority for Any Business is Creating the Cash Flow!
For more go to http://boahb.com on how to start run and grow a home business!

What Is Your Solution For Your Customer

 

It is all about selling and your customers. And as I mentioned previously in the other episode we’re going to start at the very basics of looking at who is your customer. Before we even talk about selling because if you haven’t defined who your customer is then you won’t be able to find them in order to sell to them.

Because not everyone is your customer.

Not everyone wants your gadget.

No everyone wants your information

Not everyone wants your newest Plumbing apparatus.

So you have to decide. what are you selling.

That’s the first step.

What is the outcome that your customers will get from buying your solution?

Is it something they desire?

Is it the newest golf club?

Is it something that is a solution to their problem?

What is your solution?

So first of all, you should really actually define what your outcome is as a result of using your product or service.

If someone was to actually use your product or service, what is their outcome and how will it improve their life? 

What is the end results?

Will they have more money at the end of using your solution or are you just solving one little problem in their life?Maybe it’s time to define that little problem as to how small it is and decide if you can help by adding a few more other solutions to get it into a bigger solution and bigger results.

So first off, you’ve got to decide what you’re going to be selling as a solution.

What is that solution and what is the end results of that solution?

Next question.

Who would want that solution?

So you’d be surprised who wants your solution. At one point, I thought the coaches would want my solution for someone who is thinking of starting a home business in general. But actually I’ve found that for one of my products, I could actually have real estate agents who would be more interested in my solution. So that’s from doing the research and finding out that there aren’t that demand and the audience.

For example, I’ve found out on Facebook that the majority of people there in my audience are from 45 to 65. There are a lot of people out there at 45 to 65 who are starting another business in their life because they want to have the freedom and control of their own life in terms of having a business, so that was a big surprise. I thought it was just teenagers and young people who are on Facebook.

But then I’m not usually on Facebook. 

So, what I’m trying to say is first you got to figure out what your solution is and what is the end result for that solution.

What is the outcome for anyone who might happen to use that solution?

And then go and do research on your social media in trade publications in your industry go out and talk to people in your industry about what kind of problems they have and see if they actually NEED YOUR solution. They may not need it because they already have a quicker way to solve what they want so that you’re going to have to find a way to have a solution that is a different, unique way of solving that problem.

So really before you can even start selling or even defining who your customers are, you have to decide what your solution is and what is the end result.

What is the process that you go through to use your solution and get a better outcome?

They always want to buy something for a better outcome, quicker outcome or a more fun outcome of all kinds of outcomes that are positive.

So before you can start even defining your customers, which we will do next time, are you even selling to the right customers. You have to know what your solution is that you have that your product or service solves in terms of what the problems might be or what do they desire.

So, start with the basics and decide what it is that is the outcome for your product or service. And then go and research with a few examples on customers and what they need and who they are and finding out who they are.

Now I’ll tell you bluntly, with our structural engineering firm, we didn’t have to do any of this research because basically people when you want to build and renovate a house and they need an engineer then we are the solution. Obviously, the only thing that is really required in terms of our solution is how we could be quicker; how we can be more responsive; on how we can be on call; for your client and get a good reputation. So we didn’t have to do too much research on what the market was because we have a pretty large market. So the competition was not too fierce in our area.

So just so you know I’m talking right now about online.

But of course we’ll also define offline research but before we can do any of that out, figure out what your solution is whether it’s a product or service that you want to sell.

What is it solving?

What is the end result for your client?

why would they want to buy it?

So have a look at that this week and see what you think about your solution for your business. Maybe look at what you’re going to be doing and see what is the end result of your solution.

That’s a very important task.

And then the next phase, very important, is defining your customer and who they are and where they are. So we’ll do that next week.

 

Selling Sales You and Your Customer

Well today is Wednesday and it’s all going to be about selling sales and your customers.

Today, I wanted to start off by talking about how you don’t have to be salesy in order to sell as a human being.

You sell yourself all the time and you sell ideas that you have all the time.

When you were a baby, you would always try to persuade your mother or father that you wanted a certain food or that you would could see that either doing a tantrum or you would smile and be happy and you could make them understand that you wanted something. As you got older we were always putting our “best face forward” as they call it to people in your school. You wanted to have friends so you always either went with the crowd or you persuaded others you were someone to meet. You’re always persuading other people to do what you were interested in.
So, it comes to reason that “To Sell is Human.”

Of course, there’s a book called “To Sell is Human” by Daniel Pink that I’ll go into it further another time but I just want to say you don’t have to be intimidated by the idea of selling because you’re doing it every day;

  1. you’re giving a first impression to someone new that you meet;
  2. you’re showing people you’re interested in what they have to say or you’re ordering people around
  3. always whatever you’re always selling and always having a certain face that you put forward to other people.

So, what we’re going to be talking about is first how we’re always selling anyway so it shouldn’t be foreign to you and to not be intimidated by the idea of selling but I’m going to be talking sort of backwards in terms of we’ll be talking about because we are talking about the customer first because really “it’s not what you’re selling as much as what your customers want.”

Of course, first you have to define who you think your customers are and what they want before you can approach them.
Give them a solution to what they want to buy and what their pain is or what they desire to have.
So we’re really actually not going to be talking about selling so much as trying to understand who your customer is and what they want what they want to experience with you and what they enjoy and all those kind of things. So, first of all, we’ll probably be talking about the actual process of selling itself and we will be talking about how you can give a good impression to others in terms of selling and how you can be more human in your selling and use your human skills as you are.
Now you don’t have to become that enthusiastic loud salesmen of the old days because with (of course) podcasting as we have now and being on video, you can still be human and connect with others and be engaged by these type of media.

So, in Season 1, I talked about first defining who your customer is and how you can do that as well as researching what they want and where they hang out so that you can find out where they hang out and connect with them there and obviously figuring out what they actually want rather than what you think they want and then selling them the solution to what they want.
Then after that develop the relationship such that you can also then give them what they need in terms of what they want as well.
So as long as you can learn how to define what they want and give them that solution then you will be able to sell very easily to them in terms of having a transaction of money for what the solution is that they want to have from you.
Of course, we’ll be talking about my business and with my husband as well as other businesses and how they work and how they sell and how they market and also offline as well as online. A lot of offline businesses can go online and become more internationally known so that’s awesome. We’ll be talking a lot about how to market yourself and probably growing your business because we’ll be talking more about the internet. But today I just wanted to mention to you that first.

  •  It’s about your potential customers and do you know what they really want.
  •  You don’t have to sell or be salesy.
  • You can just be human and use the way you are.

We’ll be talking about that further in a later episode. Use the way that your personality is and you can then match it or change it to match your customers personalities such that they feel that you’re an old friend and that it’s not a matter of selling.
It’s just a matter of being human to human and realizing that you have the solution to what they want.

So I know that sounds all very confusing but I certainly thought I would start out with an introduction to selling and then we’ll be going on to understanding that selling is not about you, it’s about your customers of course.
First you have to figure out who your customers are.
So we’ll see you next week and will be starting on finding out who your customer is and what do they want.
So ask your questions or ask yourself that question over the next week and maybe you’ll find out that the people that you thought were your customers aren’t actually and other people and others who actually want your solution that you hadn’t thought about selling to ..so see you next week.  Subscribe on Itunes.
[7:12.2]

Is it possible to have a craft business?

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For those who are love audio, I have the audio recording of the post below:  🙂
[s3audio url=”http://jgardner.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Untitled.mp3″ /]
Can I make a living with a craft business?  Is it just a hobby or can I make it into a business I can do from home?  I love to do my crafts but can I make a living with it as the business? According to the Craft and Hobby Association press release in 2011, that 56% of U.S households crafted at least once during 2010 contributing to the 29.2 billion U.S. craft and hobby industry.  There are people out there doing crafts and selling their crafts. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average median pay in 2012 for a craft or fine artist is $44,380 a year or $21.34 an hour. There were 51,400 craft and fine artist in 2012 in the U.S.  who were self employed. It is possible to make a living as a crafter. But how? 

Heather

Heather was a grandmother who loved making wreaths for Christmas and her family wedding celebrations.  However, her grandchildren came first when spending money on them she would not buy supplies for her crafting.  As her living costs went up, she thought she would have to sell off her crafting supplies.  Before she decided to do that, she would splurge on making table wreaths for her granddaughter’s wedding.  Well, ladies came up to her saying how amazing her wreaths were and could you make some for my daughter’s wedding. How much would they cost, her friend said. She took her name and she said would phone with the cost in a week. Well, she went home all in a tizzy wondering what were her costs and could this be a potential craft business to make more money!  More about Heather next time. 

Icraftopia.com has done this wonderful infographic detailing the potential of the craft market either selling crafts below. Can you see the potential?  For more information on the potential of a craft or artist career, check out the Bureau of Labour Statistics facts on artists.

2012 State of the Craft Industry
Courtesy of: iCraftopia.com

 

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