Marketing and Procrastination:  3 Ways to Avoid this Potentially Deadly Combo

Many entrepreneurs procrastinate on one thing or another in the course of running their business, so if you find yourself doing this, you’re far from alone. However, when it comes to small business marketing, procrastination can lead to a lull between clients, which is bad for the health of your bottom line. Here are some ways to prevent this situation from occurring.

Create Marketing Goals & Use a Marketing System

You may have heard of the S.M.A.R.T. formula for setting goals.  Your goals should be:

S=Specific: General goals are harder to meet.
M=Measurable: How will you know when you’ve reached your goal?
A=Achievable: If your goal is too lofty, you’ll sap your will to achieve it.
R=Realistic: Make sure it’s something you can reasonably expect to attain while still pushing your boundaries.
T=Timed: It must have a firm target date.

The S.M.A.R.T. formula sets out the basics for creating effective goals.  A successful small business marketing system will include a goal setting process and provide you with both structure and the tools you need to turn your marketing goals and ideas in to productive action. In particular, a system for following up with potential clients is crucial to your overall marketing success. If you don’t have such a system, and you don’t know where to start, a business coach may be able to help.

Hold Yourself Accountable

As an entrepreneur, it can be difficult to keep your eye on the ball. There’s no one there to nudge you back on track should you start to stray. You may need someone who’s there to do exactly that – to help you to remain focused on your goals and on the “big picture”.

One way to do this is to hire a business coach. He or she can help you avoid the costly pitfalls associated with procrastination. The fact that you’re paying them for their time is an additional incentive for you to make the most of it, so when they ask you how you’re doing on your goals, you don’t want to be making excuses as to why they haven’t been reached yet. Business coaches can help you in any number of ways, but for entrepreneurs who have a tendency to procrastinate, holding you accountable might be the most valuable. Eventually, they can help you to find the root cause of this procrastination and work with you to eliminate it.

Outsource Your Small Business Marketing Tasks

Nowadays, marketing your business online can be a full-time job. If you don’t already have someone helping you with things such as blog posts, social media marketing, shopping cart maintenance, press releases and things of that sort, you owe it to yourself and your business to get some help now. This will leave you free to do what you went into business to do in the first place, and, if done correctly, can put your small business marketing system on autopilot.

Of course, every business is different, so your marketing requirements may be more or less involved than these common types of online marketing, but once you can leave the implementation to your support team, you’ll be amazed at the difference in your productivity and profits.

Clear, effective goals, a proven small business marketing system, a coach looking out for your best interests, and a dedicated marketing support team can take your business to new heights in a relatively short amount of time. Instead of procrastinating, you’ll find yourself constantly striving to achieve your goals and move your business forward.

Copyright, Michele Hanson-O’Reggio. All rights reserved.

The Top 10 Ways to Grow Your Business with a

Virtual Business Manager

Every now and then you stumble upon a set of small business resources so simple – yet so revolutionary – that rapid expansion of your business is ushered in. For many of today’s small business owners and online entrepreneurs, hiring a Virtual Business Manager (Online Business Manager) is one such “big idea” whose time has come.

Imagine having a Virtual Business Manager who is responsible for the smooth functioning of your business to help you achieve your goals. Someone who while keeping an eye on the big picture, can manage all the pieces that bog you down, that you don’t do well or like doing. You’ll recapture the time and freedom you need to produce the results you want and have more work-life balance in the bargain.

Think Big

It’s critical to understand and adopt the mindset that your business is not your life. They are two separate things, according to Michael Gerber, the world’s #1 Small Business Guru, who says: “Once you recognize that the primary purpose of your business is to serve your life, you can then go to work on your business rather than in it.” You do this by spending your time ONLY on marketing developing new products and services and leadership (providing the vision and heart of your business).

Everything else should be outsourced to your Virtual Business Manager and support team or eliminated to achieve maximum profitability. Think of team building as a Profit Center instead of an expense. You will save a lot of money when you outsource tasks you pay someone less to do, plus have peace of mind knowing you will get the results you need , on time, as the tasks are being done by experts.

Virtual Assistants versus Virtual Business Managers

You may have heard of Virtual Assistants, professional independent contractors who provide cost-effective administrative and marketing services to help entrepreneurs achieve their goals. Well, a Virtual Business Manager (also known as an Online Business Manager) is similar in nature but there are two (2) key differences between the two roles:

Focus:

A Virtual Assistant focuses on completing specific tasks.

A Virtual Business Manager is a professional who brings a high-value skill set to handling important managerial duties you’d be smart to stop doing yourself. A Virtual Business Manager manages the administration, logistics, infrastructure and details of your growing online business, working in a long-term collaborative relationship with you.

Success Metrics & Level of Responsibility:

A Virtual Assistant’s success is measured by completing and delivering projects in a timely manner.

A Virtual Business Manager has a much higher level of responsibility. His/her success is measured by the successful management of your teams’ projects, their happiness, motivation and the overall smooth functioning of your business systems.

10 Ways a Virtual Business Manager Can Help You Grow Your Business

1. Implement key components of your business plan/strategies: If you’ve got a business plan your Virtual Business Manager will ensure that your plans come to fruition. With a grasp of the “big picture,” a VOM an work around obstacles before they slow you down.




2. Build and manage your virtual team(s): As you grow your business, you’ll need more than just one person – you’ll need a dedicated team of pros working for you. But you didn’t go into business to manage contractors. A Virtual Business Manager takes the minutiae of management off your plate, freeing you to do what you do best.




3. Source and manage vendors: If your business is one that relies on rock solid relationships with your vendors, you know that even the smallest snafu can set you back days and even cause you to lose customers. A Virtual Business Manager will have the time and expertise to create and maintain vendor relationships and ensure that needed items arrive on time, every time.




4. Build and manage key business relationships to increase your profits (i.e. affiliates, joint ventures): Are you convinced you can do more with your business, but you don’t have the time or expertise to check into every available avenue? Virtual Business Managers have the business acumen to cultivate joint venture and affiliate relationships that could bring in substantial residual income.




5. Implement new ideas and projects you haven’t had time to: Are you bursting with cool ideas that never see the light of day because you’re too busy making sure that your everyday operations go smoothly? With a Virtual Business Manager, you will finally have the time to pursue these ideas wherever they lead. Imagine having the freedom to take risks and try new strategies, knowing that your core business will continue to generate profits.




6. Manage projects through to successful completion: A Virtual Business Manager’s job is to see to it that your projects are completed to your specs – on time and under budget. No more juggling a bunch of projects and just waiting for someone to inevitably drop the ball. A VOM always has your goals in mind and will do everything they can to insure that they are met.




7. Create and streamline systems: Do you have standard operating procedures that you try to always follow? A VBM will streamline and enhance your procedures, and delegate them appropriately. If you don’t have any such procedures in place, you’ll realize a huge benefit, as your VBM identifies and implements time and cost-saving procedures throughout your business. A critical system a Virtual Business Manager should create, streamline and/or manage for you is your marketing system. The magic formula for marketing is doing effective activities consistently with systems. Your Virtual Business Manager can also be a sounding board, someone for you to brainstorm with, share ideas and consider options.




8. Assess and manage your customer service process to ensure you’re providing consistent and added value to your customers: It’s been proven time and again that businesses rise or fall depending on customer service, so it’s obviously in your best interest to provide the best service possible. But many times, that’s easier said than done. Imagine if you had procedures in place to ensure that no customer issues would slip through the cracks, and that customers requiring increased attention were sure to get it! Reputation is everything in the business world, and a Virtual Business Manager will help ensure that your business is seen in a positive light.




9. Money Management: It is vital for any business to keep track of their numbers on a regular basis to know if they’re making a profit. A VBM can collect the information you need to see what is going on in your business – your email lists, sales/revenue, promotion results and also expenses. A common area for improvement in a client’s business is expenses. A Virtual Business Manager can suggest ways for you to cut back on expenses.




10. Offer support and advice to automate your business with technology: Keeping abreast of the latest and most effective technologies is a full-time job in itself. A VOM will be able to filter through the maddening array of options to find the ones that will have the greatest potential to help your business, by either saving time, money or both. Automating certain tasks could allow you to reshuffle your personnel to put greater resources toward marketing and attracting more clients.

Virtual Business Managers are committed to the success of their clients. As a business owner, your VBM’s success is your success, and vice versa. It’s a collaborative relationship who’s bounds are limited only by your combined imagination!

Focus is what successful entrepreneurs use to maximize their business growth while maintaining their work-life balance. Most solopreneurs are able to focus to a certain degree but start to lose focus as their business grows around them. Overcoming three distinct blocks can help solopreneurs who may be spinning their wheels increase their focus and take their business to the next level.

There are three major blocks that prevent solopreneurs from taking their business from where it stands now to a level that will give you them the success and peace of mind they went into business to achieve.

When Doing Too Much is Not Enough

If you’re a solopreneur, then by definition, you’ve gotten to where you are by doing things yourself. It’s your talent at your particular business that has allowed you to succeed to this point. But as your business grew, you no doubt found yourself spending most of your time on activities unrelated to the core of your business.

Imagine if you could spend the bulk of your time on your Power Skills ™  -  the things you love doing that utilize your greatest strengths. The 80/20 rule states that 20% of your business activities bring you 80% of your results. Ideally, you’d like to spend 80% of your time directly achieving results for your business.

Look at your to-do list and categorize each task as either something that is your Power Skills™ , something that is a side effect of your success -administration or something that helps grow your business – marketing. As you go through your list, you’ll probably find that more than half of the items fall into the last two categories.  These tasks that  take up valuable time and aren’t related to your  Power Skills ™ should be eliminated or outsourced.

Stay in Rhythm

Everyone has their own unique rhythms – times of day when they work best, times when they like to exercise, times when they need to relax. If your business forces you to work counter to your natural rhythms, it can be a drain on your productivity, not to mention your mood.

The first step toward working within your natural rhythms is to make a list. Are you a morning person? Do you need time after lunch to mellow out before you get back to work? Writing everything down will give you a thorough understanding of how your internal clock works and how it effects your work habits.

Now it’s time to rework your daily schedule to coincide with your rhythms. Don’t be afraid to change your routine, even to the point of asking clients if they mind a change in meeting time, for the sake of your rhythms. You’ll be rewarded by increased productivity and a brighter outlook.

Personalize your Workweek

Your workweek doesn’t have to be all work. In fact, for most people, it’s impossible to prevent some personal and family activities from encroaching on their workweek. So why not schedule these activities so they don’t constantly compete with your business?

If you have family obligations that are continuously pushed aside in favor of those of your business, add these activities to your calendar so that your business activities don’t step on them again.  You’ll eventually realize that creating a time for family obligations actually helps focus the rest of your day and week.

If you exercise on a regular basis, plug those times into your calendar, keeping in mind your natural rhythms.

The combination of delegating your non-core tasks, scheduling your business around your rhythms and integrating personal and family time into your workweek will enable your to focus more firmly upon your Power Skills™. At the same time, you’ll be able to approach each day in a more organized manner and with more energy to produce the results you want.

Copyright 2010, Michele Hanson-O’Reggio. All Rights Reserved.

Yesterday I was having so much fun  creating systems and managing my client’s virtual team, that  I skipped my lunch, didn’t take my cat out for her walk and do some  personal things I planned to do.  Now, please don’t get me wrong, I’m a serious advocate for work-life balance.  I usually stick to my master calendar which gives me the balance I want,  while increasing productivity. What I am sharing with you though, is that when you do  ONLY what you love and are passionate about, you will have more energy, produce extraordinary results and have fun working.  Everything else should be eliminated or outsourced. 

Imagine the success you can achieve when you have a team where everyone does only what they’re brilliant at! Leverage your brilliance to double your income, have more freedom and create a wealthy lifestyle.  Find out how at http://www.bizsuccesspartner.com/teambuilding

Online Faxing is an essential resource for small business owners. It’s another tool in the arsenal of a successful entrepreneur. It will allow you to work smarter, not harder, and save the time and expense associated with plain-paper faxing.

Here are some of the benefits of using an online fax service:

* Simple: Send faxes to any fax machine (or virtual fax number) worldwide using the web or email. All you need is Internet access and an email address – no hardware or software required. Receive faxes directly in your existing email inbox.

* Reliable & Mobile: Never miss another fax again. Online faxing is available 24/7 and it goes where you go. Fax by email from work or home. Send wireless faxes from the road using your handheld device. You can access real-time reports online anytime, and receive email notifications of the status of your faxes.

* Saves you money: Online faxing has become one of the cheapest resources for small businesses available today. It eliminates the need for a fax machine, fax supplies, a separate phone line for faxing, and costly maintenance. You can sign up for an online fax service and pay as little as 8 cents per fax. If you go over the monthly contract limit, you’ll still pay only pennies on the dollar.

* Saves you time: Once you send your fax you can forget about it. No more redialing if the fax number is busy. Your online fax service will do that for you. You can send to multiple recipients at one time. Fax confirmations are emailed to you so you don’t have to walk back to the fax machine to wait for confirmations. Also, you can pre-schedule faxes. Schedule them to be sent at a time that is most convenient for the person receiving the fax.

Some other great features include:

* Store your faxes online.
* Fax from multiple email addresses.
* Get a real local or toll free fax number in cities throughout Canada and the United States, sometimes at no additional cost.
* Send a fax to many of your business contacts simultaneously.
* Voice Broadcasting: once you experience the ability to contact all of your customers or business contacts with a single voice call, you will never want to go back to a traditional fax service.

Several online fax companies offer similar services, but at the very minimum, you want to ensure the program you choose:

* Offers 24/7 customer support
* Offers toll free and local fax numbers
* Offers competitive pricing plans
* Offers a NO RISK trial period

So, now you know. Online faxing is one of the most useful resources for small businesses today. Time is money, and online faxing saves both. It’s one of those small business resources that is vital to your entrepreneurial success.

Online faxing is an essential small business resource if you want to save money and work smarter. MyFax is an award-winning Internet fax service that lets you send and receive faxes through your email. MyFax provides exceptional value, a great low monthly price of $10 per month, and 24/7 customer support. Plus, you get 300 fax pages free every month!
Save time and money with faxing: http://www.bizsuccesspartner.com/recommends/my-fax

A Virtual Business Manager (VBM)  manages the administration, logistics, infrastructure and details of your growing online business, working in a long-term collaborative relationship with you.  A VBM gives you the  freedom and time you need to focus on  strategic activities to  sustain a profitable business, to do what you love best and to create the lifestyle of your dreams!

“Michele has been a tremendous resource to my business, Wellness With Rose Inc.

• She is a master at creating systems and streamlining everything from creating and building virtual teams, managing projects, and so much more!
• Michele got us setup on a project management system called Base Camp, that has revolutionized how we get things done.
• It’s nice to know as an internet marketer and entrepreneur that has ton of stuff going on that everything is being taken care of, and nothing is falling through the cracks.
• With Michele’s help I’ve been able to focus only on the things I need to do: bringing in new business, developing new products and services, and providing leadership for my company. Thank you Michele for your professionalism and your expertise!”

Rose Cole
Founder, Wellness With Rose Inc.
www.WellnessWithRose.com

Here’s what a Virtual Business Manager can do for you:

• Implement ideas and projects you haven’t had time to do
• Recruit and build your virtual support team – Virtual Assistants and talented professionals
• Manage your virtual team to ensure things get done, on time, the way you want it
• Source and manage vendors
• Offer recommendations and/or automate your business with technology
• Create and streamline business systems
• Implement business plans
• Create and maintain an Operations Manual
• Manage projects to successful completion
• Develop and implement solutions to things “falling through the cracks”
• Assess and manage your customer service process to ensure you provide consistent value to your customers
• Build and manage key business relationships to increase your profits (affiliates, joint ventures)
• Assist in the development of business strategies
• Help you to work smarter and be more productive
• Any other management tasks to free up your time and make you more productive!

Contact us for more info.

So many entrepreneurs struggle to create a successful home-based business – going through times of plenty, and times of drought. Only about 18% of entrepreneurs are extremely successful. Want to know a small business success secret?  Successful entrepreneurs make the best use of resources to accomplish more with less effort – they use the principle of leverage.

Small business resources that entrepreneurs can leverage include knowledge, expertise, time, human resources, systems and technology. The result of leverage is a turn-key business that can “run itself”, generate more profits with less stress, and allow for the freedom to enjoy prosperity.

A great way to leverage technology is to automate and simplify your sales and marketing with an online professional shopping cart. This small business success secret allows you to put your small home-based business on autopilot, exposing hidden profit sources. Using an online shopping cart is the fastest and most flexible way to do business online, without expensive and complicated software.

The shopping cart small business success secret will grow your online business by leaps and bounds when you:

* Use custom forms and opt-in boxes to collect names and email addresses of website visitors
* Keep in touch with your customers 24/7
* Maintain accurate contact information of your clients and prospects
* Automate product sales and purchases
* Send personal automatic email responses (auto responders) to inquiries, registrations, purchases, and to follow up with prospects
* Deliver scheduled, informative emails, newsletters and promotional messages to your mailing list
* Set up multiple affiliate programs for others to market your business
* Track the success of your ads and emails
* Test and track your website links
* Use questionnaires to discover customer needs

Statistics show that you need to contact a prospective customer 7-9 times, before they remember your business. Many entrepreneurs stop at only 2-3 follow-ups and are losing 70-80% of their sales! The online shopping cart will help you follow-up easily and effortlessly with autoresponders.

It is easy to believe that doing already contracted work is more important than marketing, but you must have marketing systems in place to generate sales consistently. You want a successful home-based business, not the feast-or-famine rollercoaster that many home-based business entrepreneurs experience. Even if you are doing well now, keep looking toward the future and how to further take advantage of this small business success secret.

Several online shopping cart companies offer similar services, but at the very minimum, you want to ensure the program you choose:

* Offers support services
* Offers free tools
* Is easy and accessible
* Is simple to setup, even for a novice
* Offers multiple packages
* Offers a NO RISK trial period

Here’s how to get started with an online shopping cart:

1) Identify your marketing and sales goals.

2) Determine what products and services to sell on the internet.

3) Sign up for an online shopping cart and discover how you can easily use its internet marketing tools to achieve your goals.

4) Get the help of an e-Commerce Virtual Assistant or Shopping Cart Strategist who has the technical cart skills and strategic expertise to effectively market your business online.

The online shopping cart technology and its small business resources are essential to any successful home-based business. Implement this small business success secret to develop a consistently thriving business that is easy to manage, achieve your marketing goals with ease and skyrocket your sales.

Copyright, Michele Hanson-O’Reggio. All rights reserved.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCE

Online Shopping Cart FREE 30-Day Trial at:
 http://www.bizsuccesspartner.com/recommends/practicepaysolutions-shoppingcart