Networking is one of the most effective forms of marketing, especially when you run your own business.  Even with the explosion of sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, nothing quite beats being able to get in front of “real” people, shaking them by the hand and having a face-to-face conversation.

But, let’s be honest here.  The big downside of networking is time.  There are only so many hours in a working week and, although it is very easy to attend networking events from breakfast right through to evening drinks, it doesn’t allow you, the business owner, much time to manage your day-to-day business.

One of the best definitions of successful networking I have come across is “being talked about when you’re not in the room.”

So if this creates an opportunity to use the power of networking without physically networking,, how can you come up in these conversations?

The secret to this is in what you offer.

Getting yourself talked about is not about defining yourself with a job title but helping others clearly understand how you may benefit specific people.  And the clearer and more specific you are in what problems you there to solve, the easier it is for people to bring you up in conversation.

That’s right – I’m talking niches here!

Let me give you an example:  Coaching.

You can’t go to a networking event without bumping in to at least 2 or 3 coaches in the room, can you?  And what do they all tell you what it is they do?  Yup, that’s right – coaching.

But what makes them stand out from each other?  Not an awful lot, to be honest.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I am sure that a lot of coaches are lovely people!  And yes, some of them say they are career coaches, business coaches or help people with their work/life balance.

But come one – how many coaches have you met in the last few weeks who stand out enough for you to have specifically talked about them to someone else?

Let me ask you another question.  Of the people you have met over the last few weeks, who have you talked about to other people?  And let’s go one stage further.  Who have you talked about to someone else, only to find that 2 other people also know their name?

How powerful is that?  Instant social proof that this person must be someone to be contacted if not just one person mentions them, but 2 others do as well.

More often than not, the real reason behind you remembering this person is because they were “niche” enough for you trigger a “oh, really – that’s interesting”.

They were “niche” enough for you to check them out on LinkedIn or have a read of their blog when you were back in your office.  Perhaps they were even “niche” enough for you to sign up for their newsletter or follow them on Twitter.

Telling people what you do is not enough to get you remembered.  And being “niche” enough is not just about targeting a particular client type.

Being “niche” enough is about being able to clearly define yourself in terms of what problems you solve and the results that your clients achieve.  The more specific and niche you are in the results you create, the easier it is for someone to “get you”.  And thus talk about you.

And remember, it’s not just about the conversations that happen in networking events.  The share-ability of social media makes you being talked about online even more powerful.  Someone’s comments about you become evergreen, staying right there for others to read and share too.

So stop telling people about what it is you “do”.  And start getting clearer on your “niche” so that others remember the problems you solve and the results you create.

Got a comment to make? I’d love to read your thoughts and ideas

How many times have you checked someone out on the internet before meeting them?

Perhaps you are off to a conference or networking event and you’ve checked out the speaker’s credentials before attending.

Some may call it stalking! But for most of you, being able to read someone’s LinkedIn profile or look at their website before picking up the phone to them, is a useful gauge on what this person is all about.  You get to check out what they may stand for, their tone of voice and even a find a picture to see what they look like.

But when was the last time you Googled yourself?

And what did you find when you did?

(Quick Note: When I refer to Google, I am referring to all search engines)

Hopefully Googling your name produced some great results.  Possibly professional looking online profiles, a comprehensive About Us page from your website, half a dozen articles authored by you and perhaps even a link to a photo of you accepting an award the other month.

But what if you find something that you would rather not have others see?

Here are some of the common pitfalls to being found on the web and what you can do to overcome them.

1. Your social life is there for all to see. Social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace are packed full of photos and videos.  And what happens when one of your friends decides to upload photos from last weekend’s party and you get tagged?

Tagging is a process of adding someone’s profile link to the photo, thus allowing this photo to appear in a search of your name – easy to do but perhaps not something you want to be associated with.  If you find anything you don’t want to be associated with, go and un-tag yourself.

2.Business v Social. You use Facebook for friends & family but what happens when a business contact wants to become your friend?  Rather than ignore them or reject them, make use of the privacy settings.   You get to set the privacy settings specific to your needs.

For example, did you know you can update your status and set it so only certain friend lists are able to view it?

3.Your abandoned online profile is ranked higher than your website. Sites such as LinkedIn and Ecademy are ranked very highly by Google because of the size of these sites and the continuous updates and activity.  So it is very likely that your online profiles can appear above a link to your website’s contact page.

And if you are not active on those profiles or, even worse, they are out of date and don’t reflect what your business is all about today, it could sway the judgement of the person who is Googling your name.  If you have an online profile that shows up on the search, make sure it is up to date.

4.You don’t appear anywhere. Ooops! No record of you anywhere on the internet? Perhaps not critical for some businesses, but for the majority of you who read this blog I would expect a link to your website to come up when your name is Googled, at the very least.

Perhaps your name is not mentioned anywhere on your website – a common preference for some businesses who like to promote their “corporate” brand over their “personal” brand.  Unfortunately when using this approach, your name is nowhere to be found so add your name on your website somewhere, even if it is just in the “About Us” page.

5.Too many other John Smiths! A common problem for name Googleability is having a common name.  This is where sites like LinkedIn and Ecademy can really help get your profile ahead of others who share the same name.  Also submitting articles on sites such EzineArticles.com can get you found more easily.

One other consideration is to use a middle name or even a pseudo name – authors and bloggers often do this to help their name be found more easily.

Getting found on the web is not always easy.  But whether you want to be found on the web or not, is immaterial.  Hide yourself away and protect your identity by all means.  But think of your potential clients out there.

How many of them are able to find you?  And if they can’t find you, what do they do?  Do they try a bit harder and find another way of tracking you down – or take the easier option and move on to the next supplier or contact that has been recommended to them?

Let me know what you find when you Google your name!

Quick Note: This is a huge topic and it seemed to get huger, huger (!) as I wrote it – so if there is anything you are not sure of, or I have glossed over a point too much – do get in touch.  Delighted to answer any questions you have.

The past few years have created very exciting marketing opportunities for small business owners.  The ability to get yourself known, both locally and internationally, has been made easier and cheaper than ever before.

The explosion of social media has allowed you to upload videos, publish articles and reach out to potentially thousands of new clients – every day.  And without having to shell out thousands of pounds to do it.

But does that mean traditional marketing, such as printed brochures, face-to-face networking and advertising are things of the past?

Can’t we just ditch all that expensive stuff and put all our energies in to these new, web-tech tools?

It’s tempting isn’t it?

But be tempted and you’ll probably find yourself left with a very quiet business pipeline.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  Social media and online marketing techniques can be incredibly effective.  I use tools such as facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn because of they do generate great results for me and my business.

But use them in isolation? Absolutely not!

Behind my very visible online presence lies speaking schedules, regular face-to-face networking, newsletters as well as postcard campaigns and word of mouth referrals to name but a few other marketing activities I embrace.

Let me give you a great example of a recent campaign that has taken place over the past couple of months.  Google released its own internet browser, Chrome.  And if there is one company that is synonymous with the internet, it is Google.

Google is dominant in the world of online advertising and it has become a verb, just the way the brand Hoover did all those decades ago.

And yet, when Google launched its new internet browser, did it rely only on the internet?

Absolutely not!

They took out full page spreads in national papers.  They were on billboards up and down the country.  They had posters in and around the underground in London.

They had a full scale, offline advertising campaign going.  And all to spread the word of an internet based product, that could only be used on the internet.

So, it’s not a case of choosing between using social media and traditional methods.  It’s about integrating the two worlds together and making sure your offline world is backing up what you are doing online, and vice versa.

How do you do this?  Here are a few simple suggestions to get started with (and none of which involved a national advertising campaign, you’d be relieved to know!)

• Have your online profiles on your business card, along with your phone number and business address – give people the option of how they want to get in touch with you.
• Arrange to have a coffee meeting with a new contact you “meet” on LinkedIn – get to really know your online network.
• Have your phone number listed on your website, blog and social networking profiles – make it easy for people to speak to you, rather than be forced to message you electronically all the time.
• Pick up the phone to someone rather than send them a message online – it’s amazing how these conversations can go!
• Follow up the people you’ve met at a networking event and search for them on LinkedIn – get connected online with the people you meet offline.
• Use postcards to promote your facebook page or LinkedIn group to encourage more people to visit and sign up – don’t just rely on those automatic email invitations that seemed to get ignored most of the time.

These are just a few ideas to get you going and very few of them need any cash to follow them through.  So, don’t get caught up with the sparkles and glitz of social media and ignore your offline strategies.

The more you can integrate your social media marketing with your traditional marketing, the more effective it will be.

Biggest website mistake?  It’s when business owners spend all their time and energy on making sure the look and feel is right and then try to bash out some copy quickly so that they can make their website go live.

Absolutely, first impressions do count.  A picture is worth a thousand words and finding a website designer who understands how some colours have better impact online than others will undoubtedly help the success of your website.

But if you spend no more than a few hours writing up 5 pages of website copy, then all your lovely images, beautiful branding and snazzy colours will be wasted.

If the words don’t back up your branding and speak your clients’ language, your potential clients will be clicking the back button as quickly as they can blink.

Last year I published an article on my blog asking the question “Do Long Sales Letters Work?”  And it certainly evoked many comments and thoughts from readers.  But putting the long sales letter formula aside for the moment, there are some essential copy writing points to follow if you want your potential clients to take the next step with you via your website.

1.    It’s never about you but always about your clients. Avoid the trap of writing about yourself and your business because ultimately your potential clients will only care about what’s in it for them.

So what if you are the market leaders in your region – what does that mean to your client?  So what if you have worked with all the big names – how does that benefit your client?  Don’t list the reasons why you are so great.  Focus on the benefits to your clients.

2.    Stop writing “we” and start writing “you”. Print out your home page copy and highlight every “we”, “our” and reference to your business name.  Then highlight every “you” in a different colour.  There should be 5 times as many “you”s as there are “we”s – but you’ll probably find the opposite!

For every sentence that has a “we” or a “our” in it, re-write it and change the reference to a “you” and you’ll be on the right track to having copy that engages with your potential client, rather than turns them off.

3.    Speak your client’s language – not your own. It’s easy to use industry standard pre-fixes and jargon in website copy.  After all, you probably use these words every day when you talk to colleagues or suppliers.  But your clients probably don’t!  Use words they wouldn’t understand and you’ll end up alienating them at worst or coming across too corporate at best.

4.    Correct grammar of course, but don’t be afraid of writing colloquially. If your potential clients use informal language, then embrace it.  If they use slang, embrace it too.

Over the years, I have had the odd email from a subscriber pointing out my occasional spelling mistakes and bad grammar.  But for most of you, the feedback has been that you’ve enjoyed my natural “speaking” style – I write how I talk.  If it works for your potential clients, then use it!

5.    Use short paragraphs, bullet points and selective bolding. Reading from a screen is different from reading the printed page.  People tend to scan and often don’t read word for word.

Make it easier for your online visitor to digest your words by using one to three sentence paragraphs.  Break it up with bullet points where appropriate.  And use the bold selectively (too much & it defeats the object!).

6.    To create action you need to demonstrate pain. Your potential client will only contact you if they find themselves in enough pain.  Whether that’s confusion and lose of direction or losing profitability and sales – if there’s no pain, why would they spend money with you to solve a problem they don’t have?

To identify a reason to contact you, they need to identify with the problems you highlight in your website copy.  So don’t just write warm, fuzzy words all of the time.  You need to hit them between the eyes to create enough reason for them to send you an email or pick up the phone to you.

Writing website copy that sells is not easy.  But it is skill that can be developed over time with lots of practice and lots of learning.

Keep going back to your website copy once a month and review what you have written.  Read up about copy writing and get in to the habit of writing on a regular basis.  It is really worth the time and energy because to have a website that sells your business to potential clients is a business resource worth having – guaranteed!

Got a comment to add?

What tips and suggestions have you got? Or perhaps you have a question you want answering?  Leave your comments below

When people decide to give up on their business and go back to corporate life it’s not because they prefer PAYE world. It’s usually because they have just run out money.  They aren’t able to make enough income to cover their day-to-day costs, let along make a profit.

But these businesses don’t go out of business because of bad service or poor quality products.  These businesses are usually run by people who are passionate about what they do and genuinely care about their customers.

So why is it that so many small businesses come and go?

Is it because they had a bad business idea?

Sometimes, yes but more often the real reason is that they have no idea on how marketing works and what are the easiest and simplest ways of attracting customers.

Let me give you an example.

Jane is an ex-accountant who got fed up with the commute in to work every day and because of her passion for colours and interiors, she decided to re-train and start up an interiors business.  She now offers a range of services from one-off consultations and personal home styling to project managing big decorating jobs.

Jane is based in a fairly affluent area.  The current housing market has meant that more people are extending and modifying their property to get more space rather than move.  There is a potential market place for Jane’s service, especially when Jane has worked out that she only needs to be working with a maximum of 10 clients at any given time.

She has sensibly got a 6 month financial buffer, but four months in and Jane is finding it difficult attracting enough clients to her business.  She rarely has more than the odd appointment in her diary each week.

She advertises once a month in her local newspaper because she felt she ought to have a presence and get her name out there.  And she has also just signed up for one year advertising in her parish magazine as well with a local online business directory.  She has even gone round and put a leaflet in every door in her local neighbourhood offering a free consultation, but not one person has called her about the offer.

Selling her business is becoming hard work.  It is demoralising and the passion is starting to dwindle.  If it carries on like this, Jane will be forced to give up on her dreams and return to her accountancy career to pay the bills.

It’s not fair is it?  Especially when Jane is offering a quality and professional service which is backed up by study and training.  There is a local market for what she offers and she knows that her knowledge can help increase the value of people’s homes and save them endless of hours of research.

But what she doesn’t know is how to market herself.  All her money is going in to advertising that obviously is not working for her and on leaflets that are obviously aren’t compelling enough to make people call.

Jane needs to stop and take the time out to really get to know her target customers.

Targeting the right customers with the right messages is really the secret to great marketing.  The better you know the people you want to attract, the more likely it is that you will know where to find them, how to communicate with them and how to make yourself attractive enough for these people to call you.

Jane needs to stop her advertising and go back to basics.

Who are her target customers?  What are their worries and concerns?  When it comes to home decorating and creating more space, what are their real problems and challenges?  How much are they willing to spend for to solved these problems?

By focusing on some simple questions such as these, Jane’s answers will help her work out what her special uniqueness could be to make her marketing activities and offers compelling and attractive.

So, for those of you out there who feeling like Jane, take a long hard look at how you are telling people about your business.  If your advertising isn’t working, cancel it.  If those leaflets cluttering up your office aren’t working, get rid of them.

Cleanse your business of stuff that you are doing because you think it is the right thing to do.  Stop second guessing and start understanding your customers.

What are your thoughts? Add your comments below

Adding workshops and training events to your business mix can be an excellent way of increasing your revenue as well as raising your profile in your local market place.

Workshops can be run at plush hotels, coffee bars, online, through conference calls – in fact when you let your imagination run wild, events can be as big or small as you want them to be.

But there is nothing worse than spending your precious time designing an event, booking a venue and marketing it only to have more trainers than delegates!  And I am sure this is why so many people are put off by running events.

It’s the thought “but what happens if no one comes?”

There are several common mistakes that many people make running live events.  Read on to find out how you can avoid them and make sure your events are filled successfully.

Mistake No 1: Offer events that people need – not what they want.  It is too easy to spot a gap in the market and decide to share your expertise on a subject that you just know is needed.  But if there is no desire for what you are offering, it makes selling your event incredibly hard work. After all, it is not just money someone is investing in a live event – it is their time as well.

Find out what your market place really wants before deciding on your agenda.  If you don’t believe me, try offering a time management workshop and just see how many people pay you money to attend

Mistake No 2: Think advertising not marketing.  “How do I advertise my events?” is often one of the first questions people ask.  Advertising costs can eat in to your profit incredibly quickly and to be frank, will not work if you are offering an event “cold”.  Unless you have a strong brand presence in your market, you need to build people’s trust in you.  You need to design a marketing plan that builds a conversation with potential delegates.

Mistake No 3: Start marketing with no database.  The larger the database of interested customers you have, the more likely you are to fill your event.  If you have a database of 100 people and you are trying to market an event that you need 7 to break even and 20 to make your target profit, the maths just don’t add up.  Your conversion rate needs to be 20% which will only work if you have a very desirable topic and those people all happen to be free on the same day.

Mistake No 4: Offer the whole cake rather than a taster.  The reason that stall holders at Farmers’ Markets offer a morsel to taste is that they want to tempt you to buy the whole cake.  If you want to offer taster sessions to test the market place, consider breaking down your offerings to morsels. It makes it much easier to charge the true value of the event once you start marketing it commercially.

Mistake No 5: Discount heavily as desperation sets in.  Your workshop is in 5 days and you need another 4 or 5 people to really make it work.  You start discounting and offering BOGOFFs (buy one, get one free!).  But how do you think this makes the people, who have already committed to you, feel?  It’s like going on holiday, only to find that the person in the room next door got the exact same holiday for half the price because they booked on teletext the week before.

Offer early bird discounts and reward the people who book in advance. If you really need to increase the numbers at short notice, it is far better PR by offering a few free places to your favourite customers as a thank you for their loyalty to you.

Mistake No 6:  Have no follow on events.  One event does not make a business.  Always have something else to offer to people who genuinely can’t attend the day of the workshop, but are interested in what you are offering.  (at the very least offer an email newsletter to keep in touch with them!)

You may find that it takes 4 or 5 months to build up awareness for your events.  It seems a long time, but believe me it will then make filling workshop 3 and 4 far easier (and a lot more fun for you!)

What’s my biggest mistake?  Not to double check the day that I had booked a training room.  I found out the day before 15 ladies where expecting to drive to Guildford from across the South East that I wasn’t due until the day after!  We had a fun workshop in the staff training room, complete with mops and buckets, which actually added to the day

Got any great marketing mistakes to share? Add your comment below

There is no doubt that the growth in social media tools over the past couple of years has been enormous.  Everywhere you go on the internet there seem to be references to business’ Twitter accounts and facebook pages.

Follow us here, subscribe there, join online now.  It’s easy to feel that everyone is tweeting, poking or blogging for business.

But what results are they getting?

And is it actually bringing in clients to their business?

If you are dipping your toes in the social media waters and working out whether you should dive in completely, here are some pointers for you to consider.

1.    Get a plan:  It doesn’t matter whether you want to do a leaflet drop, an email campaign or set up a Twitter account, the better you plan, the better results you’ll have.  And the first step of every plan is deciding on what results you do want.

Do you want to increase your number of newsletter subscribers?  Do you want to promote a new workshop or book?  Do you want to increase the number of international clients?  Whatever it is, make a decision and build your plan around it.

2.    Get focused: The more focused you are on what it is your offering, the easier it will be for people to “get you”.  Online audiences are far more impatient and quick to react than offline ones, such as magazine readers and exhibition visitors. And this is especially so with Twitter users whose attention is focused on just 140 characters at a time!

People click in and out of web pages fast and furiously and if you don’t explain what you do and the results you can create quickly and clearly, you’ll end up with lots of hits – but very little clients.  Be niche, be clear, be focused.

3.    Delegate the set-up: Don’t let the excuse of hating technology stop you from setting up social media tools.  Find someone who you can delegate your account set-ups to and let them worry about the “how-tos”.  There are plenty of virtual assistants and online business managers out there who offer their services, usually by the hour, as a cost-effective and quick way of getting set up on Twitter, facebook or LinkedIn.

4.    Systemise your weekly actions: If you ask most successful social media users about systems and automation, they usually shudder and frown.  But most of these people have been early adopters.  They have been dabbling in these tools for years so it’s easy to add another feature or platform to their tool-box.

If you are coming in now, the amount of stuff you can do can feel overwhelming.  So, to get you kick-started I recommend a systematic daily and weekly action plan that gets you going, until it begins to feel more natural to you.  It will also stop you from been distracted from working on other parts of your business!

5.    Measure your results: Taking the time out at the end of each week or month to work out how close you are to achieving the results you were expecting is critical to your long term success.  It will stop you wasting time on things that are just not working and it will help you do more of the stuff that is.

6.    Join the party: and finally, get stuck in.  Social media tools, like most other marketing tools, have absolutely nothing to do with selling.  They are there to start and build conversations, grow relationships and help position you as someone who knows their stuff.

People will “talk” about you as you “talk” about others.  Share links, recommend other businesses, show your human side.   The more you join in with the party, the more likely the party will come to you!

So should you be on Twitter?  Can you really get more clients using facebook? Who would actually watch your YouTube video?  All those answers will never be found until you decide to give it a go.

Every business is different.  Every target client is different.

And to help you find out whether social media will be successful for you, get a plan, get focused and get stuck in!

(P.S. If you are want someone to hold your hand and show you the way, check out my Social Media Training Programmes – click here for more information)

If you had a crystal ball, it would make many of your business decisions easier to make, wouldn’t it?

If only you knew that the big contract you took on last year would turn out to be the biggest admin headache you’ve ever had.

If only you had asked for references and examples of work from that website designer, you probably would have had a website up and running quicker.

If only you hadn’t decided to offer your workshops are such a reduced price, you probably would have attracted more of the right clients.

Coulda, shoulda, woulda!

It’s all very well looking back and wishing you had made better decisions, but the reality is that you can’t go back in time and change things.

But what if you could do it all over again?

What if you could wipe the slate clean and start your business all over?

How would your business look today?

This is one question that came up with one of my clients recently.
 
6 years of hard graft and fighting through the fog of “let’s make this up as we go along” has created a successful brand and a trust-worthy reputation, but she feels exhausted.  The business systems are labour intensive and the business model is not as profitable as it could be.

And this is why I thought I would ask you this question today:  If you could do it all over, what would you do differently in your business today?

You see, I think that everyone as the choice of shouting “stop” at any point of their business.

The amount of knowledge you absorb in those first few months of starting out is huge.  And as you progress, you learn new things each and every day.

And yet, you are so often caught up in the day-to-day running of your business, it is too easily to grin and bear things when they don’t quite go to plan.

Let me give you some examples:

Are you still running the same administration system that you first set up?  Or is time to review your processes and paperwork you send out to your clients?  It could be time to start out-sourcing your administration and find a virtual assistant to send out your contracts and invoicing.

What about your pricing structure?  Have you stuck with the same pricing for the past few years or is it time to review your most profitable products and services?  Perhaps it time to put some of your prices up!

And what about your advertising costs?  Are you stuck in the rut of running the same adverts in the same publications for the past year?  Isn’t it time to review the results you are getting?  It may be time to negotiate prices or do something different to attract new leads.

At certain points in your business, you need to shout out “stop”.  Put the breaks on and review where you are.

Think about the lessons you have learnt from working with different clients and creating different products.  Think about what changes you can make in your business to make it for the better.

Because if you could start all over again, I bet you would have done things differently :O)

What are your thoughts about taking the time out to make changes to your business? Leave a comment below ~ I would love to read your ideas, too.

What did your friends and family say to you when you told them you were off to start your own business?

And how did it affect the way you went about creating your business?

When I first started telling colleagues and friends of my plans to start my own life coaching business back in 2004 [this is where I started 5 years ago], I remember all too well the sucking of the teeth and the “you’re very brave” comments.

Everyone around me told that going freelance and becoming self-employed was all very well but beware the feast and famine.  Working for yourself may give you control and freedom to do what you want, but clients come and go like a roller-coaster ride.

The first few months, I would have to spend all my time marketing. I would then get some clients and then the work would dry up. And I have to do a few more months of hard marketing all over again.

But the reason I decided to start my own coaching business was because I wanted to work part-time.  I wanted to create a new career around my children’s school terms so that I worked when they were at school and took my foot off the peddle when the holidays came around.

And if I was to be faced with a feast and famine roller-coaster ride, this just wouldn’t work.  I wanted to be in control of when and where I worked in the business and didn’t want to fall in to this trap that was being described to me.

So, although I listened to their advice and kind thoughts, I secretly challenged these opinions and decided that it didn’t have to be that way.

Five months later and I was contemplating going back to corporate life.  They were right!  It was tough out there and my marketing was getting me nowhere.  I hadn’t even experienced the feast – it was just famine all the way!

I had hit rock bottom and fortunately the only way was up.  Which is exactly what I decided to do!

I am sharing this story because I firmly believe that it doesn’t matter how great your business idea is, how brilliant your business plan is or how unique your product is – if you haven’t got the right business attitude, there is every chance you’ll fail.

Sounds dramatic, doesn’t it?

But let’s flip this over the other way.

It doesn’t matter how competitive the marketplace is, how average your business idea is or how inadequate your business plan is – if you have got the right business attitude, there is every chance you’ll succeed.

And probably succeed beyond your expectations, too.

Give me a great business idea or a person with a great business attitude and I’ll put my money on the attitude any day.

So my tips for you today is to surround yourself with people who support you and believe in you, be clear on your “big picture” and go for gold.

Because with the right business attitude, you’ll win every time!

Got a comment to make?

How would you describe the “right” business attitude to have to make your business a success? Leave a comment here with your ideas.

Earlier this week I found myself driving round a roundabout 5 times.

My sat nav was telling me to take one exit and yet my gut instinct was telling me to take the exit before.  I was running late for a networking event that I was speaking at and rather than risk being even later, I decided to follow my sat nav’s advice and ignore my gut instinct.

I should have followed my gut!

My sat nav, like all good sat nav systems, took me the long route round, sticking to the bigger roads.

The good news I wasn’t too late but I did make me question why I decided to base a decision on an electronic device rather than my own instinct.

Our gut instinct is an incredibly powerful force. And especially so in our own businesses.

Our gut instinct can kick in when we meet someone for the first time at a networking event.  You can’t quite put your finger on it, but there was something about the way they said your name, you didn’t like.

Our gut instinct can kick in when you speak to a prospective client for the first time.  It may have been the way they answered the phone or the off-the-cuff comment about their business partner that just made you squirm in your seat slightly.

When you get these gut instincts it’s important to sit up and take notice.

You don’t need to act on it there and then.  I certainly wouldn’t recommend you make your excuses and hide in the toilets for the remainder of that networking event. Or complain of static on the line and put the phone down on your prospective client.

But listen carefully to what your gut is telling you.

If the person you met at that networking event approaches you the next week with a business opportunity – think carefully and remember that initial reaction you had.  Is this someone you can trust and do business with?

If the prospective client becomes a client – perhaps ensure you have a clear objective and agenda for working together so that there is no room for any misunderstanding to happen.

Just because you may be hungry for business and desperate to generate some cashflow, don’t just take what is offered to you there and then.

Trust your intuition.

You could just end up going round and round a roundabout, confused on which exit to take.

Got a comment to make?

What are your thoughts about acting on your gut instinct in business? Leave a comment here with your ideas.