Ever been in the situation where you’ve called a sales prospect over and over with little or no response? We’ve all been there and we’ve impatiently written off the prospect as dead because we didn’t want to face another non responsive call.

Next time you are prospecting and this happens, think of this: its a well known fact that sales people give up on sales prospecting calls far too early. A few more calls and the sale is likely to be yours. Also consider the fact that being diligent in following up will prove your commitment to the sales process and gain respect from your prospective buyer.

With a little patience and perseverance that opportunity you are about to write off as dead could turn into a sale. Go dial that number, smile and think of the closing the deal. Here are some pointers that will help: 7 tips for turning cold calls into hot leads.

Fiona Walsh, CEO, FM Walsh & Associates Inc., www.fmwalsh.com

We all know that when animals go hunting, they always go after the weakest, sickest ones first. It’s just easier to catch your prey when it’s under the weather and feeling sluggish. But what happens when the hunter gets sick?

The hunter goes hungry, unless they’ve prepared for this day. As it happens, I did get sick for a few days at the beginning of the month and it brought into sharp focus how important it is for entrepreneurs to take care of themselves.

I’m probably better off than most entrepreneurs in that one of the focuses of my businesses is consulting with people about how to develop systems to stay organized so they can achieve more balance in their lives. I don’t work 20-hour days and am aware when I’m pushing my mental and physical limits because I take my own advice. As such I tend not to get as burnt out as my fellow entrepreneurial colleagues. I almost never get sick.

But when I did get sick, it was really bad. I got a sore throat so awful I couldn’t sleep at night, and of course I couldn’t focus on my work the next day. Even after I was diagnosed with a sinus problem and got antibiotics, I was still miserable for a few days as my body recovered.

Of course, I couldn’t do any actual work during that time. For many business owners who try to do everything themselves, this could be a disaster.

Fortunately, I could see by noon on the first day that I would be in for some downtime. This is where all of the systems I’d worked hard at developing kicked in to save the day. Thanks to my up-to-date planner and email systems, I was able to quickly get in touch with my clients I needed to do reschedule. As well, I already out-task a significant amount of administrative work, so that would carry on despite my being stuck sniffling on the couch. I was free to rest up and not worry about my business and just focus on getting healthy.

Now I’m feeling better and back in business. My appointments are on track and even though I missed about a week of work, catching up won’t be so hard.

Could you say the same if you had to take off a week from your business? How about two weeks? What would happen to your clients? If you haven’t got systems in place to cover for downtime, now is the time to get started, while you’re still healthy.

Linda Chu
CEO – Out of Chaos, Professional Organizing Solutions
www.outofchaos.ca

It’s easy to say “make business development a game,” but it’s way more complicated than that, right?

Rule #1 of the new Business Development Game…have fewer rules!

Isn’t life already bogged down with an awful lot of rules? Surely some of them aren’t necessary. How about trying this instead:

1. Make a list of your clients
2. Grade each with 1-3 stars based on how much you enjoyed working with them, the more stars the better
3. Cross off all the clients with only one star
4. Add an extra star to the remaining clients who are profitable to your business
5. List why you like the clients with 3 and 4 stars and look for commonalities like industry, type of work, age, gender, etc.
6. Start marketing to more of the clients who fit the bill for enjoyment and profitability.

That’s it. Yes, really!

Quit making up complicated rules that don’t actually exist and just start where you are right now with what’s already working. Do more of what works, less of what doesn’t.

And have some fun out there.

Liz Gaige
Market Navigators Consulting

Whenever you’re hunting for new business opportunities it’s vitally important to stay curious. When you get attached or desperate, you lose all of your creative and intuitive powers. It’s like putting on a pair of blinders and heading out in to a forrest. You’ll never see anything but what’s right in front of you and therefore will miss over 270 degrees of view. Often times the most exciting opportunities are already in your life, it’s just that you haven’t noticed them in that way. When you turn on your right brain, get creative and innovative, and are curious about what opportunities are all around you – you start to notice things in a new way.

Take notice over the next week of your ability to remain curious and see what opportunities you can spot and furthermore hunt up.

All the best,

Heather White, CEO, 2020 Communications Inc

I came across this great video on FastCompany, one of my daily morning reads. It clearly states why most mission statements fail. Too MBA’ish, too corporate, not enough clarity and integrity. Have a watch.

There are tons of opportunities all around you to build your business. In the local newspaper, on business blogs, at networking events, in the shape of the person in line next to you in Starbucks.

The key is to be curious and talk to people. Every day. Ask them what they do and listen to their answers. And if you see a potential solution you can offer, then do it. Don’t start giving yourself all the reasons why they won’t be interested.

Finding new business opportunities is not some deep, dark secret. Neither is it complicated. Know what you do (the solution you provide), know who you do it for (your target markets) and then go out and start contacting people. That’s how you build successful business. One contact at a time.

Fiona Walsh, CEO, FM Walsh & Associates Inc., www.fmwalsh.com

When I ask new entrepreneurs about their target market, I’m no longer surprised when I hear their answer. Far too often, it’s “everyone! Our product/service is needed by everyone. That’s why this business is such a sure thing!”

I can understand why their enthusiasm gets the better of their business sense. For plenty of businesses, the product or service can seem (at first) like everyone would want it. Restaurants are a classic example of this – everyone needs to eat, so how can a restaurant go wrong?

Of course, restaurants have some of the highest failure rates of any new venture. Everyone does need to eat, but getting the right combination of tasty food, great service, location, price, décor and a hundred other considerations just right is not an easy task. Most importantly, restaurants seem to do well when they target people with specific tastes. When was the last time you heard someone say “let’s go to that Chinese-Italian-Irish pub restaurant down the street! I hear it’s got something for everyone!”

In my own business, I learned early on to target specific markets. Of course, everyone needs systems to organize their lives, boost productivity and get better work-life balance. But who’s going to hire me to teach them how to achieve these things?

After doing my research, I recognized that some of my biggest customers would be people who were moving or downsizing their homes, as well as offices that needed to reduce clutter and improve productivity of their employees. Also, successful professionals who were being held back in some ways by bad habits and procrastination could also use my services.

After catering to these target markets, I also adjusted my services to that target market to offer both organization consulting and speaking engagements for companies and organizations that perhaps wanted a one-day workshop or training session. This has led to success and many happy clients.

Whether you’re hunting in the forest or running a business, you have to know where to direct your limited ammunition. Understand your target market before you start your business and keep re-evaluating to ensure you’re not missing opportunities in other markets.

Linda Chu
CEO – Out of Chaos, Professional Organizing Solutions
www.outofchaos.ca

If I told you that in order to grow your business you’d have to crawl around on the ground on your hands and knees, looking for leads in assorted cracks and crevices, and likely getting your new dress dirty in the process, I’m guessing you’d hesitate. Procrastinate. Avoid.

With that description, who wouldn’t?!

I’ve just described the traditional Easter egg hunt, originally a pagan ritual later adopted by Christendom to celebrate birth and growth. But in this version, kids hunt down coloured eggs or egg-shaped candies that have been hidden throughout the house or yard. It’s a game kids love and adults delight in orchestrating.

How might your attitude toward the dreaded Business Development be changed if you were to change your perspective and view it as a game. A game where you are rewarded each time you find a prize.

Chocolate, anyone?!

Hunting up opportunity, i.e. business development can be fun. You just need to relax and turn it into a pleasurable game.

Liz Gaige
Market Navigators Consulting

When you’re hunting for new business, and especially when you’re a single shingle entrepreneur, it’s important for you to stretch your resources. One of the easiest ways to do that is to find the watering holes where your niche markets hang out together. If you can have an opportunity to speak to your target audience in a group, you’ll get far greater results than if you tried to find them and speak to each of them individually. Start today by profiling who is your niche market? What are their commonalities? What kinds of books/mags/websites etc. do they read? Where do they hang out? What do they watch on TV?

Once you’re clear on who they are and where they can be found (aka the watering hole), hunting becomes a walk in the park.

Happy Hunting!

All the best,

Heather White

CEO, 2020 Communications Inc.

The last couple of years, I’ve been building up a portfolio of companies that:

• Have a distinct offering within three niche markets
• Have the potential of being cash flow positive in a short amount of time
• Have little or no substantial debt
• Target professional women or do something to support women in the economy
• Are run by someone who understands their markets and has the horsepower to get the job done
• Can the overall idea, or any of the components, be licenced?

In exchange for an equity stake and preferred position on dividend payout, I leverage capital. Financial capital, intellectual capital, human capital, systems, networks, and know how. This type of business is often called Venture Capital. This is wrong. The work I do in this type of model is Angel Investment. People use the terms back and forth so I thought I’d lay it out once and for all. After completing 25+ of these deals, I thought that I would take a moment to illustrate the difference.

Venture Capital is someone like me using a pool of money owned by others, and leveraging an equity stake in a company. This is done to grow, flip, transform, or be amalgamated into something else. The money is almost always held in a ‘fund’ that investors put their financial resources into.  Think of it like a capitalist co-op.   There’s a lot more to it, but that is the simple definition.

.Angel investment is an individual like me using my own capital, knowledge, contacts, ideas, systems, etc. to take an equity stake in a company and co-pilot its development into a profitable model. Dragon’s Den makes itself out to be Venture Capital, but it is really Angel Investment. I found a great reference on WIkipedia that lays it out:

Angel investments bear extremely high risk and are usually subject to dilution from future investment rounds. As such, they require a very high return on investment. Because a large percentage of angel investments are lost completely when early stage companies fail, professional angel investors seek investments that have the potential to return at least 10 or more times their original investment within 5 years, through a defined exit strategy, such as plans for an initial public offering or an acquisition. Current ‘best practices’ suggest that angels might do better setting their sights even higher, looking for companies that will have at least the potential to provide a 20x-30x return over a five- to seven-year holding period. After taking into account the need to cover failed investments and the multi-year holding time for even the successful ones, however, the actual effective internal rate of return for a typical successful portfolio of angel investments is, in reality, typically as ‘low’ as 20-30%

When an Angel investor gets into play, not only could they waste their time, money, and systems, but they risk damaging their reputation with too many failed companies. That’s why Angels consider the personality as much as anything else when determining fit within their portfolio. A good person that is bad at business can be fixed; a bad person that is good at business is cancer to an Angel Investor.

Due diligence is a part of business that Angels do to try to weed out the good ideas by bad people/bad ideas by good people.

For existing businesses, I look at:

• financial modeling
• exit opportunity analysis
• research of the industry
• validation of market size
• competitive analysis
• site visits, and etc
• As a rule, I don’t buy debt as an Angel unless the model is making positive cashflow

For new businesses, I look at:

• target market identification and size
• competitive analysis
• competencies of the people involved
• industry trends
• cost of penetration
• the personality of the person with the idea (Can they get it done? Can they survive while the company is growing? Are they committed? Are they an employee (mindset) pretending to be and entrepreneur? Will they listen to the advice you give them or are they going to fight without knowing?)

At the end of the day, it is a gut cheque (using your intuition). Does this company make sense at this time, with this person, in these markets, following this plan? If all lines up, I pull the trigger. If I’m not sure, I start to pump the brakes, and if something feels really off, I hit the kill switch.

There are ways for you to ‘hunt’ up a good partner in your business by finding someone who can bring more than money into your model. The good news is Angels are often hunting for someone just like you!

Best,

C/