Not many small business owners realize there are different methods of motivation. Some get responses quickly but are short lived and others are the foundations of a healthy, strong business.
There are Three Ways to Motivate Yourself and Your Employees. You can be…
1 Motivated by Fear
This is the ability to prompt yourself or your staff to action because you fear what will happen if you don’t.
2 Motivated by Profit
Profits and wealth fuel this desire by you and your staff.
3 Motivated by Purpose
You and your staff are motivated because you believe what you’re doing matters and you want to get better at it.
There are appropriate times to use all three. The key is to know what each method can accomplish and when to use it effectively. Watch for my future blogs to understand each method in detail.
Other related quiz and blogs by Vickie Champion you might be interested in are:
How Ready Are You to Get Your Dreams?
The Many Disadvantages of Being an Entrepreneur
or check out the entire Running a Business section.
You can also contact Vickie Champion for a complimentary coaching and consulting session.
The other day I caught myself being defensive about adding color on my website. What would make me go off like that? Any time I’m that adamant, I know there is some hidden treasure I can learn from it.
Here’s Some of the Advantages of Being Defensive at Work…
We can…
- Avoid changing our mindset or behaviors.
- Pretend it makes us a strong leader.
- Hide our doubts and the fear of losing control.
- Take full advantage of using excuses.
- Camouflage our oversensitivity.
- Keep ourselves busy constantly defending our position.
- Save time by not being open to other options or the actual facts.
- Think we are being unfairly treated and our defense will save us.
- Use it as a way to attack others’ suggestions.
- Stay away from getting to neutral and listening to our intuition or gut instincts.
- Focus our attention on being right instead of being successful.
- Stops wasting time and money with research and development.
- Confuse being defensive with being passionate about our work.
- Avoid being a better worker or having a better company.
So what are you defending at work? Maybe it’s a procedure or system or your expertise in that area. Perhaps it’s a boss, customer or co-worker. Or it might be like me, a marketing strategy.
If you are ready to stop being defensive, contact Vickie Champion or call her at 480-838-9866 PST for a complimentary coaching and consulting session.
Over the last few years I have had the opportunity to coach many solopreneurs. Now, more than ever, the most common topic we discuss is how to attract more clients.
I advise them that now the best way is to increase their website traffic and convert them into clients. They tell me over and over, “I just don’t know where to start, nor do I have the time or desire to learn how to do it!”
So for some of my current coaching clients, I act as their Internet Marketing Manager, helping them attract clients by improving their online marketing campaigns. Now seems like the right time to introduce this new aspect of my business.
What is an Internet Marketing Manager?
As your Internet Marketing Manager I will implement your online marketing plan. That means taking care of all the details to improve your website and social media strategy.
How it works:
- We start with a coaching session to develop or clarify your vision. Then, we will break your goals into simple changes that can get you quick results.
- I implement your improvements, working with my internet marketing team to make changes.
- As you focus on your now growing business, I continue to manage the ongoing website operations that attract clients and increase your exposure.
Wow, this is just what I need!
Some people have asked me why I am adding this focus to my business. The answer is simple: If solopreneurs don’t continue to improve their website and online marketing they will have a harder and harder time finding clients.
In the last four years I have learned so much about the process and have a great team in place to advise and implement my online marketing. I want to share it with my clients to help them in their business too.
As always, I am listening to and trusting my intuition and right now that tells me this is the right thing to do. If your intuition tells you to work on your website, please call me today, 480-838-9866.
In the previous three blogs I explained why building trust is so important for our business and ways to use photos and text on your website to build trust.
Remember, for the last few decades businesses have gotten away with keeping little secrets and telling half truths. Not anymore. To build trust, businesses now have to show they have nothing to hide and are unafraid to be open.
We Will Continue with Other Ways to Market Your Business to Build Trust…
- Get active on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. It builds credibility that you are a legitimate business, especially to people using them and to anyone under the age of 40.
- Put headshots on business cards and social media sites.
- Make your company easily accessible if current and potential customers have questions or problems.
- Give guarantees.
- Send birthday cards with personal messages. I did a survey in one of my How Marketing is Changing, and Why we Need to Pay Attention workshops. The question was “Do you appreciate getting cards with just a handwritten signature on them?” Most of the participants said they considered canned cards junk mail and threw them away. If you are going to take the time to send a card, write something personal to the recipient. If not, don’t waste your marketing budget on something no one will appreciate.
- Start using video conferencing, like Skype. It builds trust quicker, the way a face-to-face meeting would.
- Make and send video e-mails.
- Give genuine compliments.
- Let customers critique your services or products.
Other related articles and blogs by Vickie Champion you might be interested in are:
Why Building Trust is Real Important for our Business Now!
Ways to Use Your Website to Build Trust-Part I
Ways to Use Your Website to Build Trust-Part II
How to Use Your Website to Drive Away Clients
How to Use Your Website to Attract Clients
How to Use Your Website as an Effective Marketing Tool
How to Use LinkedIn Ineffectively
or check out the entire About Jobs, Careers, and Running a Business section.
You can also contact Vickie Champion for a complimentary coaching and consulting session.
In the previous two blogs I explained why building trust is so important for our businesses and ways to use photos to build trust. If the purpose of your website is partially to attract potential clients, then gaining their trust invites them to contact you.
We will continue with another important method to gain trust, text.
Here Are Ways to Use TEXT on Your Website to Build Trust…
- Attach a blog and get serious about adding posts on a consistent basis. Most of my website visitors are now originating from my blog posts.
- Make your company available. I suggest by e-mail on your contact us page and having a phone number on every website page. See my Contact Vickie page for an example. If you have a location and hours of operation, then put your address and map.
- Take out the spin and fluff in your websites written text. To build trust, your visitors should be able to understand exactly what you do. Better yet, write it down as if you were saying it, in your own words.
- Give potential clients a way to contact individuals who gave you testimonials, so they know they are genuine. On my testimonials, I link potential clients to their business websites. It helps the people who gave me the testimonials with their websites search engine rankings and legitimizes my testimonials.
- Write the text in 1st person using words like “I”, “my”, and use “we” only if your company has more than one employee. Remember, people are really getting tired of little deceptions.
- Tell stories, especially on your bio. “How you got into this business” and “why you love it” are good for starters. On my Meet Vickie page I divided it into four mini stories, each one telling my website visitors something they might want to know to start trusting me.
- Offer guarantees.
- Don’t be afraid to write the pros and cons of using you or your business. It doesn’t build trust when your website gives the appearance that you work with just about anyone who needs your product or service. By the time a website visitor contacts me they have a really good idea of what I do and also who I won’t accept as clients.
Building trust using your website is accomplished by being more open, being easy to approach, and not being afraid to give an honest assessment of whether you or what you sell is the right fit for the customer or client.
Other related articles and blogs by Vickie Champion you might be interested in are:
Why Building Trust is Real Important for our Business Now!
Ways to Use Your Website to Build Trust-Part I
How to Use Your Website to Drive Away Clients
How to Use Your Website to Attract Clients
How to Use Your Website as an Effective Marketing Tool
How to Use LinkedIn Ineffectively
or check out the entire About Jobs, Careers, and Running a Business section.
You can also contact Vickie Champion for a complimentary coaching and consulting session.
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