Your invitation – Save Money, Reduce your Carbon Footprint and Improve your Market Positioning - Complimentary ‘Green Advantage’ Workshop for Tourism businesses

Business Link is pleased to be working in conjunction with Tourism South East, the region’s tourist board, in delivering a series of ‘Green Advantage’ workshops.  In a period of financial uncertainty and a surge of interest in green issues and more sustainable good practice, the leading edge course enables you to take advantage of this growing market by revealing how you can make significant savings, improve your green credentials and market yourself accordingly.  Attendance on the course also qualifies you for credits towards the Green Tourism Business Scheme, Europe’s leading sustainable certification scheme for the tourism industry.

The workshop is FREE and runs from 10.30 for coffee with the workshop commencing at 10.45 concluding at 3.15pm.

Complimentary lunch will also be served from 12.45 – 1.15pm.

Throughout the workshop it will cover how to:

Ø      Save money - reduce, reuse, recycle and rethink

Ø      Buy local – sourcing and promote other local produce and attractions

Ø      Create customer advantage and adding value to your customers’ experience and develop new ‘green’ products and services

Ø      Develop an environmental policy – get the best out of your whole team, make environmental choices and win from them

Ø      Communicate your green credentials and gain a marketing advantage by retain current and targeting new customers.

Ø      Stay ahead of the pack and capitalise on new business opportunities and boost your business’ performance

‘Green Advantage opened my eyes to the massive business advantage to be gained through tapping into the growing public interest in green issues’.

Be sure to reserve your space by calling 0845 600 9 006 or visit www.ruralbookings.co.uk

About the author: Paul Stanford http://www.paulstanford.co.uk/blog  has provided practical advice to hundreds of entrepreneurs for the past 5 years helping them to successfully start-up, transform and sell their businesses. Get in touch to see how his business http://www.4momentum.co.uk can help do the same for you. You have full permission to reprint this article provided this box is kept unchanged.

Copyright 2008 Paul Stanford

Part of the appeal of customer-centricity is that it takes very little business acumen to grasp its core concept. Focus intensely on customers, align your products or services with their interests, and voila: a customer-centric culture is born. Simple, right? Not quite. Becoming a truly customer-centric organization is perhaps one of the most difficult transitions an organization can make, fraught with hidden obstacles and unanticipated challenges. Here are three potential roadblocks on the path to a customer-centric strategy, and how to get around them.

Failing to understand your most valuable customer A customer-centric strategy is only as good as its customers. You cant let the average customer dictate what you do, says Robert Duboff, CEO of Hawk Partners LLC and coauthor of the book Market Research Matters. Generally speaking, Duboff says, 20 percent of a company’s customer base generates 80 percent of its profits. Given that split, its imperative to put your most valuable customers at the heart of your approach.

Identifying those customers need not take exhaustive research and complicated measures. It can be a fairly straightforward process, as it is with the Net Promoter Score, or NPS, a metric developed by Bain & Co.s Fred Reichheld. As set forth in The Ultimate Question written by Reichheld and published by Harvard Business Press the NPS approach consists of one simple question: On a scale of one to 10, would you recommend us to your friends?

Based on the answer to that question, customers are segmented into three categories: promoters, who actively champion a particular product to their friends and colleagues; passives, who are lukewarm about the product; and detractors, the opposite of promoters. A given company’s score is simply the difference between its number of promoters and its number of detractors.

NPS has proven to be a powerful tool for such companies as General Electric Capital Solutions, which has used it not only to identify customers that are already valuable promoters but to gain insights into how it can convert detractors. For a business like GE Capital Solutions, which serves more than 1 million very diverse customers in many different industries, NPS helps us better understand what our customers are feeling and how we can improve their experience with us, says Stephen White, a spokesperson for GE Capital.

Failing to support your external customer-centric strategy with an internal customer-centric strategy Speaking of valuable customers, what about that most priceless customer of all your employee?

While most companies aren’t in the habit of regarding their employees as customers, those seeking to instill a customer-centric culture should rethink their stance, argues Elaine Berke, president of Westport, MAbased EBI Consulting, which specializes in helping organizations develop customer-centric strategies. Customer-centricity needs to come from the inside out, says Berke. Leadership must avoid a double standard that makes it OK for managers to argue with or demean staff while still being courteous and considerate to external customers.

Consider the case of the world-renowned Johns Hopkins University Hospital. In developing a comprehensive Service Excellence initiative aimed at boosting its level of patient care, the hospital included employee satisfaction as a core component of the program. The hospital conducted an extensive survey to gauge employee concerns that turned up such simple, actionable insights as making it a point to compliment co-workers and instituting criticism-free no negativity days.

Customer-centric organizations value and respect internal customers as much as external customers, says Berke. Like the old saying goes, If you’re not serving a customer, you’re serving someone who is.

Failure to identify the moment of truth Companies spend considerable time and resources developing metrics for processes, execution and other day-to-day functions but often overlook defining their moments of truth those points at which a customer interacts with a company’s product or service and forms an impression. Companies are usually very good at creating metrics around [such procedures as] production deliverables but have a much harder time knowing how to create and measure standards relating to the quality of customer service being delivered, Keith Bailey of Sterling Consulting Group says.

In defining a company’s moments of truth, Bailey suggests looking at three different angles quality of product, quality of procedures and quality of relationships. Taking a hotel as an example, the quality of the product would be the cleanliness and comfort of the rooms. The quality of procedures would be such factors as how it long it takes to check in or how long customers wait for room service. The quality of relationship would be the friendliness and helpfulness of the staff.

Considering each angle separately allows a company to isolate the negative moments of truth within each and develop a game plan for turning them into positive experiences. Procter & Gamble, for example, identified its moment of truth as that instant when a shopper picks up one of its products and decides whether or not to purchase its decision the customer makes in an average of six seconds. The company has overhauled its marketing with that insight in mind, creating a global First Moment of Truth business team designed to win over the customer in that moment.

There are as many different customer-centric approaches as there are customers, and each has its own unique challenges, but the road to a truly customer-centric strategy always begins with the same steps.

What is a personal development plan? It is basically a map of your self improvement journey. It is very much like goal setting, except that it is for the area of personal development and involves a complete road-map rather than just listing aspirations or goals.

Due to the nature of self improvement, using a different approach to the traditional goal setting practice would make it much more effective and suitable. This is why for all personal development goals we should have a separate personal development plan for it.

For many people who are serious about success, goal setting is a must. However, many do not set goals for the area of their personal development. People normally have financial goals, health goals, career/professional goals, spiritual goals and relationship goals. However, they do not have goals for their personal development.

The danger in not having personal development goals is as you get more and more caught up in the process of achieving goals, you will unconsciously neglect learning and improving further. Moreover, when people start seeing success, many tend to become complacent and stop their development. It is this complacency that usually causes many successful individuals to consequently fall back and fail.

So one of the main reasons for having a personal development plan is to make sure that we always consistently improve ourselves and prevent complacency from happening. The basic idea behind a personal development plan involves 3 steps;

1. Identify where you are now - Firstly do an analysis of your your major strengths, weaknesses, skills, natural talents etc. This helps you identify which part of yourself you need to focus on.

2. Identify where you want or need to be - What needs to be worked on for you to get to the next level. What are your weaknesses need to be addressed. What area is to be given priority for improvement?

3. Bridging the gap - The last step is to develop a plan to bridge the gap between your current state and your desired state as identified in steps 1 and 2. This includes planning what action to take, which resources to obtain, how to get the resource, setting schedules and finally the overall timeline as well as key milestones of your personal development plan.

The idea behind the personal development plan is pretty simple. However, it is vital that you make sure that you do a proper, detailed personal development plan and have thought through each section comprehensively. This ensures that you will be headed the right way with it.

A personal development plan helps you ensure you are constantly improving your skills, abilities and knowledge. Because at the end of the day, it is your knowledge that ultimately affects the quality of your lives and your level of success you achieve. All us should have a personal development plan.

1) Know Your Call’s Goal

Before you even pick up the phone, you need to have a clear idea of your intention and goal for the call. Do you have a direction that you want your prospect to head in after speaking to you? If you do not have a vision for your call, you are unlikely to achieve the end result that you want.

2) Don’t Give It All Away Too Fast

This goal is simple. Do not give away all of your goods without knowing if the person will even take the time to look at them. If they want you to just send them the information so that they can get you off of the phone, don’t do it. Do some digging to see what their level of interest is, or if they’re just trying to get rid of you.

3) Bad Telephone Etiquette

Good phone etiquette seems simple enough to achieve. However, when you are in a stressful situation, you might not even realize what you are doing. Do not chew gum, snack, or attempt to multi-task while you are making a call. Your prospect will be distracted by your poor manners and they may get the wrong impression of you.

4) Listen To Your Prospect

If you are struggling to get a read on your prospect, just listen to them. It is easy to monopolize a conversation without even knowing that you are doing it. To get the best insight into your prospect, listen to them. If you don’t, you are unlikely to be successful.

5) Don’t Make Your Fears Theirs

Although you might think that someone is pushing you off because they are busy at the moment does not mean that they don’t want to speak to you. Request a better time to reach them and then call them back at that time.

6) Not Asking Questions

There are certain things that you want to find out about a person to know whether or not you would even want to do business with them. So ask some questions. People love to discuss themselves, their families, and other areas of interest to them. People will respond more favorably to you if you show an interest in them.

7) Be Prepared

You would never dream of speaking to a room full of people without having prepared ahead of time. The phone is no different. You really need to take some time and go over what you have to say. Ask a friend or family member to do some role playing with you. There’s nothing worse than fumbling over your words when you are talking to a prospect.

Request What You Want

You need to give your prospect a call to action. You want them to follow up with what you’re telling them by having them do their own due diligence. By asking them to do something for you, you can then follow up with them and see what their own research turned up.

Have you set life goals for yourself in an attempt to make life meaningful? If you’re someone with a keen ambition to succeed in life you’d probably have read up on achieving your life goals the SMART way, or rather, making them Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-Bound.

If you ask anyone who has had experience with succeeding in achieving their goals, they would tell you that the above five are the most important elements in goal-setting. They can provide a very comprehensive understanding of your own life goals, and help you understand if they’re realistic enough for you to achieve given the capabilities and resources you have on hand.

Not all goals are one-size-fits-all. Our life goals should be tailor-made to our own capabilities and personalities. In order for you to fully understand your life goals, you need to ask yourself these three important questions:

1. Do the goals challenge you?

The goals need to be challenging to you in order for you to develop as an individual. If the goals do not challenge you at all then it would have been a pointless goal to go after. The goals should make you step out of your comfort zone, they should make you take actions that you may not be comfortable with in the first place. If you are not challenged by the goal, should you not be attaining it already? For any goal worth setting it has to challenge you, it has to instill change in you, in some form or other. By the end of your journey you should eventually be a better person because of it.

2. Are the goals inspiring somehow?

As well as challenging you, the goals should inspire you in some way. If you’ve done your research well you would have come across several success stories that may inspire you. The one thing that successful people have in common is that they were once inspired by their life goals, be it inspired to sacrifice their worldly possessions or time, or even simply inspired to work their hardest until they’ve achieved what they’ve always aspired for. Your life goals should make you excited; they should pump you up and make life worth living as you pursue them. What a life goal should never do is to depress you because you haven’t been able to attain it, even though you’ve tried numerous times. If your life goals tend to depress you rather than inspire you, then perhaps it may be time to re-evaluate your life goals and choose something that is inspirational and challenging, yet realistically attainable.

3. Is there anyone who can help?

There’s no sugarcoating it. People are going to critique you on your goals. They will tell you that you can’t do it, that you’re not cut out for it, that you’ll never attain your goals. Sure, some may do it with the best intentions because they don’t want to see you get hurt when you stumble in your journey, but here’s the thing you should do: Don’t listen to them! Remember, your stamina for your journey is going to be composed of mostly self-motivation, so if you’re going to allow outside influence to affect your motivation, you’ll lack that extra drive to push onward for that final lap. Sometimes people fail to achieve their goals because they allow others to plant the seeds of doubt in them. Remove yourself from the doubters, and find people who have attained a similar goal as the one you’re pursuing. Get the advice you need from them, let their success inspire your own. They’ve been there, done that, so they understand the trials and tribulations that you may be going through.

There you have it, three important questions that you need to ask yourself before you can understand and set your goals in life. Once you fully understand these questions, you will be well on your way to attaining your life goals.

I have discovered, after much research in self-development and Life Coaching, 8 similar behaviours between the successful entrepreneurs and those making all the money. If these 8 action steps are followed daily and consecutively - there is no doubt in my mind that success will come your way!

REPLICATE YOUR ENTREPRENEURIAL HERO- Either find a local entrepreneur that you look up to, or even an international highly successful one like Richard Branson or Oprah Winfrey. Start to study them, not just their actions but their mindset as well. Read their Biographies, ask yourself - what do I believe their values and beliefs would be? What would their daily activities involve? If you can, organise with your local successful entrepreneur and ask them if you could have a coffee with them to learn from them. You will be surprised, most successful ones will be happy to share their success.

PICTURE - Olympic athletes visualise winning their race 100’s of times before actually doing it. What this does it creates a neural pathway in the mind of what it believes has happened, so when faced with the actual event, the mind can tell the rest of the body what it is supposed to do. Science has proven this increases chances of success, wealthy entrepreneurs do the same. Give it a try - visualise yourself as a successful entrepreneur - focus on what is happening around you, how you feel, what you say, how you hold yourself and what you hear. Do this daily, and it won’t be long until you find it a reality.

GOALS - Although these seem easy and not relevant - they actually are imperative to success. I mean you can’t get to a desired destination in a car, without first thinking of where you want to go. Success as an entrepreneur is the same, and the more specific you are with your goals, the higher chance you have of success. It is also a good idea to have short, medium and long term goals. When writing them down, don’t focus on HOW you are going to get there, that will come, just on where you want to go.

DAILY ACTIVITIES THAT PRODUCE PROFITS - Obvious, I know - but even I am guilty for being distracted by non-income producing activities! The best thing you can do is to sit down and write up the actual tasks that bring in money - whether it be marketing calls, placing an ad or even having a meeting with clients. Once you have your list of direct income making activities, do at least 1 -2 of them EVERYDAY.

EXPECTATION - Expect that you will be successful. This again helps the unconscious mind to replicate what it is hearing / seeing. If it has an expectation of being a success, then it will do everything it needs to to for fill this truth.

ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE - Focusing on what you have, will only attract more to what you have. Focusing on what you don’t have, will attract more of the feeling of lack. Whenever you start feeling that you are focusing on being broke, or on not having enough - stop, and write down ten things you are grateful for. This will shift the energy that you are sending out and help you to re-focus. The more positive you are, you start to notice more positive things and attract more of what you want.

CONTINUAL GROWTH / PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT - This is very important - remember to never stop growing. All the successful entrepreneurs have open minds and are always learning. Watch Oprah - she is always learning something new on her show. And with those new Learnings she continues to grow her empire. “You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.” Charles “Tremendous” Jones

COMMITMENT - Sometimes you may feel like you are going up a stream without a paddle - I have felt that often. I have even felt that sometimes I am actually going backwards. What I have realised though - is to never give up. Stay focused on your goals and stay committed. If you are determined, no matter what obstacle comes your way, you will ALWAYS find a way to continue towards your goal!

A thorough understanding of the above 8 behaviours, and making them regular habits will only increase your chance of success ten-fold. Enjoy the experience and journey you take in achieving your goals. Don’t forget to reward your successes and learn from the setbacks, success is on the cards - good luck!

Are you prone to procrastinate? Are you able to get yourself to take action on a consistent basis? Ever wondered how you can be like the people who just seem so to be darn motivated no matter what they do? Are they just naturally self motivated?

Unfortunately, many people who lack motivation act as if they can’t do anything about it. As if it is something that is either there or not. That is not true. Fear not, because just like all other skills and abilities, motivation can be developed. Here are five tips to help you get motivated.

1. Motivate yourself through your physical actions The physical movements we make has a direct impact on the mental state that we are in. So if you look, move and act like you’re tired and bored, that’s exactly how you will feel. To have feel motivated, make sure that you talk, walk, move and breathe the way a motivated person does. Have big energetic movements and make fists to pump yourself up.

2. Have Variety In Your Environment The environment you are in can have a big influence on your motivation levels. First of all, make it as conducive as possible. The less distractions around, the better it is. Let’s face it, it’s harder to be motivated to take action while you are lying on your bed.

The second thing is to have variety in the environment. Change the place you work or do stuff once in a while. Head to the library, go outdoors, change rooms etc. This keeps things fresh, facilitates creativity and keeps your motivation level up.

3. Use motivating music Using the right kinds of music can give us great motivation. Music has the ability to bring out various states and moods within us. A great tip to gain motivation is to listen to music that is uplifting and motivational. Create a CD or playlist filled with motivational music, and keep it close by at all times. Whenever you don’t feel motivated, just play those music and let it transform you. While listening to the motivational qualities of the music, visualize yourself being motivated too.

4. Gain momentum first - Start with a small action The first step is always the hardest. But after you got that out of the way, you’ll have momentum and things start to become easier and easier. So try to start off by doing the easier or more interesting task first. Or just plan to do work on something for a few minutes. After those few minutes are up you would have gotten some momentum and won’t feel like stopping. The most important thing is to just start doing it!

5. Get Curious It’s only natural that we feel more motivated to do things that we are interested in. If you dislike flowers and plants, it would be tough to get you motivated about gardening. To counter this, try adopting a curious attitude towards the very thing that you are not interested in. Human beings are naturally curious. If you get curious enough, you can turn anything interesting.

When you practice these self motivation techniques and make it a habit to use it everyday, you are developing yourself to be a naturally motivated person. Like everything else, motivation is a product out your habits. Before you know it, you will find yourself having motivation in whatever you do.

Creating a goal timeline is a great way to plan for your future. A goal timeline is a chronological display of your goals. Start at the end, and decide which major thing you want to accomplish and then work backwards, creating mini-goals for yourself along the way.

Try to be as specific as possible when defining your goals. This will make it much easier to accomplish them. Instead of saying you want to be financially secure or that you want to make more money, be specific. Start by determining how much money you need to make every month.

After tallying your living expenses, if you have determined you need $3,000 per month, you may wish you create a goal a bit higher. Plan to cover yourself for unexpected things that come up. So, specifically, you will want to say something like “I want to earn $4,000 a month”.

The other great thing about giving your goals deadlines is that it will help measure your progress and success. You should give your goals timeline dates. Instead, try saying “I want to earn $4,000 a month by January 1st”. When that date comes close, look at whether you have to start working harder, or if you are on track. When your magical date happens, you should know whether or not you’ve reached your goal.

Try to create goals that will help you grow as a person as well as goals that will help you grow your business. Growing as a person is very important. It will be hard to move your business forward if you, as a person, are staying in the same place.

As you achieve your goals, you will feel stronger and ready to take on more challenges. Keep creating new goals. Whenever you feel like you are not accomplishing something, take out your goal timelines and see where you were 6 months ago or a year ago.

Reviewing your goals timeline can help you realize how far you’ve come in achieving success. It will help you focus on the positive, rather than the negative. Try to focus on the positive by giving yourself credit for the good that you’ve accomplished.

By complimenting yourself and telling yourself daily that you’re doing a great job, you will start to believe it and live up to it.

The following strategy has probably helped more companies double their sales faster than any other single concept. The Ultimate Sales Machine will always look to be as efficient as possible. In a sentence: There’s always a smaller number of “best buyers” than there are all buyers. That means that marketing to them is cheaper than marketing to all buyers. But it’s how you market and sell to them that determines whether or not you will ever get them.

When Charlie Munger put me in charge of ad sales for one of his magazines, they had a database of 2200 potential advertisers. I did a market analysis and found that 167 of them bought 95% of the advertising in the top four magazines. This was especially important because these four magazines were getting all of the really valuable advertising in this market. None of these advertisers were in our magazine and we were all the way down at number 15 in terms of market share in our field.

By focusing intently on those dream 167 buyers, I was able to get 30 of them into the magazine in the first year. Suddenly executives who had never heard from us before were now hearing from us so intensely from every direction that within six months we had 28 of them in the magazine. That alone doubled the sales of the magazine. These were the big advertisers. When they came in, it was for premium positions-full color spreads, the inside front cover, back cover, etc. Up until that point, we had been scraping by on revenue from quarter-page, third-page, and a few half-page ads. We doubled the sales the next year by keeping those best buyers in the magazine and bringing in another 30. We doubled it again, a third year in a row, by bringing in the rest of the 167 the best buyers. When I doubled sales three years in a row, Charlie Munger said, “Are you sure we’re not lying, cheating and stealing because, in all my years, I’ve never seen anybody double sales three years in a row.”

Naturally, we weren’t doing any such thing. We were just marketing and selling better than any of our competitors. That, and we truly had built the ultimate sales machine with procedures and policies for selling that all the salespeople had to follow. This book will cover every aspect of this in the ensuing chapters.

Best buyers buy more, buy faster and buy more often than other buyers. These are your ideal clients. No matter what else you are doing, you should be making an additional effort to capture them. I call this strategy the Dream 100 effort. It is your program for targeting your 100 (or whatever number is appropriate) dream clients constantly and relentlessly until they buy your product or service. The goal of the Dream 100 is to take your ideal buyers from “I’ve never heard of this company” to “Who is this company I keep hearing about” to “I think I’ve heard of that company” to “Yes, I’ve heard of that company” to “Yes, I do business with that company.