Why is this possible? It’s simple to understand this success: Improve the business model to eliminate the weaknesses that harmed business results under the old ownership.

Let’s look at an example to see what’s possible.

American Woodmark had been a high volume manufacturer of kitchen cabinets when it realized that its profitability would be much higher if volume could be further increased. More effective plant utilization would make this profitability benefit possible.

With the rapid geographical expansions of Home Depot and Builder’s Square stores, American Woodmark realized that it could become the first cabinetmaker to offer one week delivery for builders, remodelers, and do-it-yourselfers. When time was of the essence to the building supply store customer, American Woodmark would have a cutting edge advantage.

In 1980, the company set up a new production schedule and set of distribution centers to make this one-week performance possible. Selling through Home Depot and Builder’s Square meant that distributor mark-ups could be much lower than through existing channels. When price was of the essence to the building supply store, American Woodmark would have an important advantage.

As a result, anyone could get quality kitchen cabinets faster at lower prices for the first time. When both advantages were issues, American Woodmark could expect a double-edged advantage.

The new distribution channel provided a further edge. Homeowners, builders, and architects could also conveniently see the cabinets by visiting a local store in order to pick out the ones they liked best. Seeing the actual cabinets and being able to hold up samples of countertops and flooring to the cabinet finishes allowed savvy homeowners to get a more pleasing installed result.

Volume soared as these cutting edge advantages removed competition from expensive cabinetmakers who took a long time to deliver. By 1985, the company (which had been an LBO of a Boise-Cascade operation) went public to raise the capital to finance its rapid expansion.

What are the lessons?

1. Look for what isn’t working very well.

2. Consider how trends could be used to improve that performance.

3. Identify and implement new business models that present outstanding ways to capture the benefit of the trends.

Copyright 2008 Donald W. Mitchell, All Rights Reserved

————————

Donald Mitchell is chairman of Mitchell and Company, a strategy and financial consulting firm in Weston, MA. He is coauthor of seven books including Adventures of an Optimist, The 2,000 Percent Solution, and The Ultimate Competitive Advantage. You can find free tips for accomplishing 20 times more by registering at:
====> http://www.2000percentsolution.com .

One of Brett’s issues however, was how to value his service
- for although he felt he was every bit as good as his
competitors, he mistakenly believed that clients bought
primarily on price.

This had led to Brett undercutting the competition – and
while initially this policy had won him a significant
number of new clients, it wasn’t long before he realised
that his modus operandi was costing him far more than he
realised.

Not only was it hard to increase prices once they have been
set, but Brett also found – much more worryingly – that the
kind of clients who bought on price alone were the kind of
clients who didn’t like paying at all.

Several times Brett had been forced to sue clients for the
money they owed him – and it hadn’t taken him long to
realise that he couldn’t afford “cheap” clients.

While he recognised the problem, Brett could not however,
see the solution.   As he poured out his story to me, I
felt for him – and remembered the countless other clients I
had seen over the years who had shared similar experiences.

One of the problems facing Brett was that he had built his
reputation on being the cheapest sales & marketing
consultancy rather than the most cost effective – and one
of our first tasks would be to change his current and
prospective clients’ perspective from the former to the
latter.

From our discussions it was clear that Brett believed in
the quality of his service, so I suggested that he put his
money where his mouth was – and not only raise his fees but
also offer a full money-back guarantee if a client was
unhappy with his work.

Brett spluttered at the suggestion, saying, “Surely that
will give people even more of an excuse not to pay their
bills!  I really can’t see how offering a guarantee is
going to help me – in fact I think it will make the while
situation worse.”

“I know where you’re coming from,” I replied, “but hear me
out.  You want to be working with the kind of people who
understand that good business is based on long term
relationships forged on the win:win principle.  First
though, you need to gain their trust – and by offering
something first – like a guarantee – you are showing that
you have faith not only in your product but also in the
relationship with your prospective client.”

Brett began to smile as he realised that perhaps there was
a way out of the whole mess after all. “You’re right,” he
said, “I do need to be looking for clients who have the
right attitude.  I guess that by being afraid of charging a
fair price, I have not only been earning less than I should
- but I have also cornered myself into working for the
wrong kind of people.

“Well, all that’s about to change,” he said, with a
confident grin, “As now I am going to be more choosy about
who I take on as my clients.  I am also not going to rush
into making the sale – but when I’m confident that we can
forge a long term relationship, I’ll then be happy to offer
my prospective client a full guarantee.”

As our session came to its conclusion, Brett knew that the
next task on his “to do” list was to revamp his own
promotional literature – taking into account all that he
had learned during the afternoon.

—————————————————-
Olivia Stefanino is a leadership consultant, speaker and
author of the internationally acclaimed management book,
“Be Your Own Guru”. Interviewed on more than 25 radio
stations and featured in “The Guardian”, “Natural Health”
& “Red”, Olivia is a guest columnist for a number of
national and international publications. Download your
fr*ee e-booklet, “128 ways to harness your personal power!”
by visiting http://www.beyourownguru.com

First Step:  Decide whether you need a consultancy or not

To decide whether it’s appropriate to engage with a
consultancy or not, consider the following:

What is the need or problem you want to address and why do
you think this need or problem exists? Will it be solved by
this intervention or will the underlying issue still exist?
What skills are you looking for?  What value might a
consultancy bring to your business? What risks are there to
your business in using an outsourced resource?

Second Step:  Draw up the initial brief

Once you’ve convinced yourself and the business that it is
appropriate to engage a consultancy, draw up a brief. Your
brief should be jargon free and contain:

1. A summary description of your organization:  its purpose
and values, what it does, its size and structure

2. The need or problem and why you think this problem exists

3. What you want the consultancy to deliver in terms of
outputs and deliverables

4. What role you want the consultant to play

5. Who will be managing the role of the consultants and
what reporting you expect to take place – weekly, monthly
etc

6. A provisional budget.  To decide on a budget think about
the impact of the problem and potential value of the
solution.  Basing buying decisions purely on cost is not
always effective.  An hourly or daily rate will not tell
you the whole story – a consultant with a high hourly rate
may produce value faster than one with a lower price.  In
addition, experience suggests that if you force consultants
to quote daily rates they will charge you for every single
project meeting, conversation or journey.  An overall
project fee may provide the basis for a more productive and
flexible working relationship.

7. A description of the kind of person(s) you want to
engage:  their skills, experience and skill set.  Industry
experience can be a massive plus factor but you have to
trade this off against the actual project demands that may
not be industry specific.  A specialist software consultant
may be more suitable for a software project in the oil and
gas industry than an oil and gas specialist.

8. Timetable for the work

Third Step:  The Pitch

After shortlisting your potential suppliers you will want
to meet them face to face.

During the pitch don’t be impressed by techno babble. 
Attempts to impress you with an extensive list of acronyms
and niche industry speak often hides a superficial
understanding of the real issues to be addressed.  Instead,
look for a company that listens to you and makes a
presentation or pitch that is both specific and sympathetic
with your company’s objectives, not just one where they
have performed a “find and replace company name” from a
previous document.

Assess the individual and the consultancy.  Remember big
consulting companies are not always the best in every
situation.  Larger companies can lack flexibility in both
internal processes and the way they handle clients.  Larger
companies also have costly head office functions to support
- these costs will be passed on to you through higher fee
rates.

Boutique or niche consultancies can provide specialist
advice in a particular expertise area.  They can be more
cost effective than larger consultancies.  The disadvantage
is that they may not have the breadth of experience in
house to service a large scale change project.  The same
applies for one man bands.

Fourth Step:  Reference Checking

Your original brief gives the basis for assessing which
consultancy you should hire.  When deciding who to work
with review your personal contact through phone calls,
meetings; written information such as research reports,
websites, CVs and the written proposal; and references or
recommendations from other people.

Fifth Step:  Contracting

Your fifth and final engagement step involves drafting a
formal contract which should include:
- The work to be done

- The person(s) who will be delivering the work

- The person who is the lead contact in the organization

- The timescale and deadlines for the stages, if relevant

- The fees to be paid and the schedule of payments

- What expenses will be charged for, and at what rate

- Whether VAT is charged and on what

- Any required insurances (such as professional indemnity
insurance)

- The work to be done by your organization eg arranging
meetings, room hire

- Copyright of written and other creative materials (unless
agreed otherwise, copyright belongs to the creator, ie to
the consultant/trainer)

- How and when the work will be reviewed and what will
happen if either party is dissatisfied

—————————————————-
Pam Kennett is Founder and Director of Chiswick Consulting
Limited a management consultancy which provides advice and
direction to clients in marketing and human resources. Pam
has been a management consultant for more than 15 years.
Contact her at pam@chiswickconsulting.com or visit
http://www.chiswickconsulting.com .

Since then, Warren Buffett, Berkshire’s founder, has
successfully navigated the changing tides of business and
financial markets over the years to built one of the most
successful companies ever.  Unlike Microsoft, and Intel
which had relatively few important shifts in irresistible
forces, Berkshire Hathaway has weathered many by
redirecting its resources and energies into new, more
promising directions.

After having been primarily a portfolio manager of a
handful of common stocks for many years, the company has
recently shifted again to emphasize purchasing and
operating companies.  You too can learn to catch the full
benefit of today’s volatile and rapidly changing forces and
spur your enterprise on to greater and more rapid growth
than ever before.

Be Prepared:  Being in the Right Position to Optimize
Opportunity

Many business people are fond of saying, “I’d rather be
lucky than smart.”  Everyone has experienced the
exhilaration of an unexpected boost from favorable
circumstances and wishes it would happen more often.
Choosing a strategy that puts you in the right position is
a way for you to create your own good fortune.

You will achieve more favorable results by thinking
differently so you work smart, not hard.  When asked why he
scored so many goals in hockey, NHL scoring champion Wayne
Gretzky replied that he always skated to where he thought
the puck would be going. That gave him an important edge
because most other skaters go toward where the puck is
already.

But it isn’t enough to just be in the right place at the
right time.  The tightrope walker working outdoors in the
wind prefers that the wind be at her back, because a side
wind could more easily knock her off balance.  Setting up
the tight rope to make the breeze’s direction favorable can
provide the necessary advantage for her.  She can further
improve her security by using a balance pole.

To move your enterprise from its current position to a
better one takes careful thinking  It’s like the tightrope
walker finding the wind coming from the wrong direction,
and demanding a move in the tight rope’s location before
she performs.  The equipment handlers have a lot of hard
work to undo and redo.  That’s the bad news about getting
into the right position.

The good news is that once your company has reached its
ideal position, your subsequent need to change will be
less.  In the long run, this means less change, less work,
as well as better results.  Like the Olympic wrestler who
fights his way to a position securely on top of his
opponent, you will be able to seize superior positions that
will allow you the advantage no matter how your competitors
react and your business environment changes.

Most organizations today are unfortunately like the
wrestler’s opponent, operating subject to the whims of
powerful competitors and vagaries of circumstances as their
noses grind into the smelly, dirty mat.  Is yours one of
them?

If your enterprise is like most, it operates according to a
plan.  Your business now pays attention to executing that
plan.  When things go wrong, most people in your
organization will try to protect their self-interest and
their chances for achieving the plan’s goals.  If things
get really bad, they’ll be stunned into inaction.

These behaviors reflect some of the many faulty thinking
patterns you should abolish and replace in order to achieve
a winning position in an increasingly volatile and
unpredictable organizational environment.  You need to
focus on getting the most benefit from your enterprise’s
irresistible forces rather than trying to fend off the
forces.

Every change in irresistible forces provides new
opportunities to those who think that way.  For very
cyclical businesses, when demand is strong, you can sell
high-cost facilities and obtain long-term relationships
with attractive customers.  When demand is weak, you can
buy low-cost facilities, repurchase your own stock,
negotiate lower prices from suppliers and get complementary
competitors interested in merging with you.  There is
always some optimal opportunity being presented, if you
learn how to look at the circumstances with an eye prepared
to gaining important advantages from your business’s
environment.

Once an opportunity is recognized, you need to be properly
prepared to take the right actions at the right time.  You
have to have the flexibility to take advantage of rapid and
extreme changes in irresistible forces.  Such flexibility
can be developed through the use of planning extreme
scenarios that greatly exaggerate the future impact of
these forces to clarify opportunities.

This thinking requires using an improved kind of scenario
planning for possible future circumstances, most of which
will never occur.  By studying these scenarios uour
enterprise will then locate and be ready to implement its
“Always-Win, No-Lose” opportunities, that minimize the down
side, while leaving the up side open-ended, regardless of
the irresistible forces.

This new form of strategy replaces the costs and delays for
your organization learning primarily through broad scale
trial and error.  Irresistible force management is the
missing element that makes this possible.

Copyright 2008 Donald W. Mitchell, All Rights Reserved

—————————————————-
Donald Mitchell is chairman of Mitchell and Company, a
strategy and financial consulting firm in Weston, MA. He is
coauthor of seven books including Adventures of an
Optimist, The Irresistible Growth Enterprise, and The
Ultimate Competitive Advantage. You can find free tips for
accomplishing 20 times more by registering at:
====> http://www.2000percentsolution.com .

The advantage with unified messaging is that with this
technique, you have more control over the communication
methods you may be using, since now you can make use of a
single source for message delivery, repository,
notification, and access, thus cutting down the time factor
involved in the whole process.

UM is especially useful for companies that want to be in
touch all the time, and do not want to waste any time with
sending/receiving/accessing info.

Now, let’s see the different UM capabilities in detail. The
UM capabilities are single delivery, single repository,
single access, and single notification.

1.  Single delivery means one could send messages to a
person, an end user, by addressing to a single alias.
2.  Single repository refers to one storage location for
access/retrieval and integration like text-to-speech,
speech-to-text etc.
3.  Single access stands for making use of a single
addressing scheme that permits customers to access stored
messages through simple mailbox commands.
4.  Single notification means utilizing SMS or similar
techniques to notify the user about incoming
messages/missed messages and/or communication attempts made.

However, there is still a bigger advantage that unified
messaging delivers. This is the technology’s ability to
integrate flawlessly with other applications. For example,
using appropriate technologies, a UM system could sense an
incoming mail, decipher the receiver, find out his/her
position (location based services), and send a SMS
notification to him/her about a waiting mail in the inbox.
The receiver, on the other hand, will have the facility to
decide if the email is an urgent one and needs to be read
immediately or if it is something to which you can reply
later. With UM, end users can also choose to promptly read
the mail via text-to-speech conversion or SMS if needed.

Unified messaging, along with location systems and call
management, could enhance the existing communication
capabilities of individuals/enterprises in a way that has
not been witnessed before. For example, the UM system could
prompt a caller to speak the message he/she might want to
convey to a particular end-user, and the system then sends
the message in the form of an SMS to the customer after
assessing his/her current position and status. The receiver
can now choose to attend the call directly or leave the job
to the system itself.

The entire process is not only robust and prompt, but also
saves time, the one important factor on which every 21st
century management models are based.

—————————————————-
Lee Smith writes about Unified Messaging Systems
http://www.networklondon.co.uk/communications/index.html

Achieving 2,000 percent solutions is a good example of this
tendency.  While hundreds of organizations routinely
develop and implement such solutions every day, the
majority of businesses, nonprofit organizations, and
governments continue to focus on how to make 4, 5, or 6
percent improvements.  With the same time, effort, and
resources, these people could be accomplishing hundreds of
times more!

What is a 2,000 percent solution?  It’s any way of
accomplishing 20 times more with the same time, effort, and
resources.  Why would you shoot for less?

Here’s an example:  A best selling business book will
usually be read in part by fewer than 10,000 people.  Chop
the book up instead into essays and provide those essays
for free over the Internet, and you will soon have over
500,000 readers.  The time, effort, and expense of putting
up those essays will be less than finding an agent for a
book.  Lead those essay readers to your Web site and you’ll
sell more books than a best selling business book, and
you’ll earn more profit because you won’t have to split the
revenues with a publisher.

Disbelief: Limited Imagination and Blind Spots

The disbelief stall (a bad habit that delays improvements)
is based on a valid experience, lack of relevant
experience, or a previously established circumstance that
no longer pertains. The bigger the new idea, the more
likely it will boggle the minds of those involved.

Consider this: Over a hundred years ago, Alexander Graham
Bell supposedly offered his fledgling telephone business to
Western Union for $100,000. Western Union reportedly turned
him down cold, perceiving the telephone as an electrical
toy with a limited future. Bell himself initially saw the
telephone as limited to use as a substitute for town
criers. Householders wondered, “Why get a telephone when I
can step outside and talk to my neighbor over the back
fence?” The airplane, radio, computers, and the photocopier
were greatly underestimated in similar ways before becoming
the foundations for major industries. Major breakthroughs
change the possibilities of how we can lead our lives, and
we are slow to see that undeveloped potential.

STALL ERASERS

Creative People with Different Viewpoints

In checking out new information, technology, and
techniques, seek the help of people who enjoy creating new
solutions. You may find these open-minded people among
suppliers, new employees, customers, and outside experts,
including academics. If you don’t have enough such people
to draw on, expand your circle of acquaintances.

In the same way that no two people have identical kinds of
curiosity and imagination, organizations likewise differ in
how they look at potential new solutions. You can easily
imagine that Intel, Microsoft, IBM, General Electric, and
Disney would take quite different approaches to addressing
the same opportunity. You should examine your
organization’s personality and orientation to consider how
your perspective can be expanded in useful ways, perhaps by
adding new partners and new competencies.

Positive Thinking Starts the Exponential Progress Engine

To overcome the disbelief stall, you need a positive
outlook. You have to believe that wonderful results are
just around the corner, if only you keep looking for
improvements.

Ask yourself a positive question about any possibility you
consider. For instance, imagine that you are being asked to
use a computer in a totally different and more difficult
way for the first time. Instead of fighting this new
assignment, ask yourself how the task could help you get
home sooner every night. A manager recently had a good
experience from opening himself up to this opportunity. An
IT expert noticed that the manager didn’t know how to do a
mail merge, a way to produce custom documents for many
people on a list. At first, the manager resented the few
minutes of unexpected training. But that attitude soon
changed after many monotonous tasks were accomplished 20
times faster.

At the same time, it’s even more helpful to adopt new
beliefs that open the doors to possibility. A good example
is that many people will never read this article because
they think it’s far-fetched to find even one 2,000 percent
solution. A better belief to hold is that untapped 2,000
percent solutions abound in your most important opportunity
areas.

Other helpful attitudes include:

• Seeing roadblocks as opportunities in disguise

• Feeling that all events occur to help you improve

• Believing that large changes can be made quickly to
create positive results

• Being convinced that new technology can easily remove old
limitations

• Believing that high goals are more fun to pursue

STALLBUSTERS

Locate Blind Spots

The more often you hear about something, the more likely
the new thing is to be relevant to your organization. It
helps to seek out the new to speed up the process of
appreciating what’s going on. To help identify your
organization’s blind spots, ask yourself the following
questions:

• What complaints are customers making that you’ve chosen
to downplay?

• What things are your competitors doing that you have
decided to ignore?

• What things are the communities you do business in
talking about that you have ignored so far?

• What negative feedback have you been receiving from
employees for at least two years?

• What perceptions about your organization and industry are
you not addressing?

Evaluate the Implications of the Blind Spots

Ask yourself these questions about your blind spots:

• Which blind spots are in areas where your organization’s
actions can improve or worsen your situation?

• What actions are needed to gain the most benefit or avoid
the most harm?

• When are actions needed to be most effective?

• What is the minimum evidence you need to know that
immediate action is      needed?

Copyright 2007 Donald W. Mitchell, All Rights Reserved

—————————————————-
Donald Mitchell is chairman of Mitchell and Company, a
strategy and financial consulting firm in Weston, MA. He is
coauthor of six books including The 2,000 Percent Squared
Solution, The 2,000 Percent Solution, and The 2,000 Percent
Solution Workbook. Free advice on accomplishing 20 times
more is available to you by registering at
=====>  http://www.2000percentsolution.com .

Since I’ve been coaching other entrepreneurs on building
their own successful, sustainable businesses, I’ve seen
this same syndrome dozens if not hundreds of times.
Sometimes it’s a question of, “Will I really be able to
handle the success?” or “If I am so abundant and
successful, then I’m taking away from others.” Of course,
neither of these is true. First,  you are always set up to
put systems in place that will embrace your growth rather
than stunt it and second, the more successful you are, then
the more success there is for others.  There is nothing
spiritual, kind, or gracious about holding yourself back
because when you do, you are actually holding others back
as well. When you hold back your gifts, you rob the world.
Your gifts are not for you alone. When you truly use your
talents to serve others, then you are truly living your
purpose and when you profit from this-even better; you have
more to give and the success cycle fuels itself. See?

Now that we have that straight, let’s go to the deeper form
of sabotage I’ve seen in others and myself: waiting for
someone else to do it for you. That same question of, “Who
do I think I am?” can be pretty sly and sneaky by fooling
us into believing we aren’t capable, which shows itself as,
“I don’t know enough,” or “If I do this and succeed, then
people will see that I’m actually capable and no one will
take care of me. I’ll always have to do everything by
myself.” Yikes. This is also cutting off your purpose and,
I can pretty much bet on it, stunting your profit.

This is what I call the Lana Turner myth. Lana Turner was
an incredible, academy award-winning actress who passed
away in 1995. The story is she skipped one of her high
school classes at Hollywood High and was then discovered by
a talent agent at the local drugstore as she sat there
sipping her soda and the rest is history. Now parts of this
story are true, but what’s also true is  no one is going to
come along and produce you (just hand you all of your
business success)! Now really ask yourself, would you
actually want that to happen? Where’s your opportunity to
become authentically powerful? The part of the Lana Turner
story that isn’t talked about is the energy she put into
her career to sustain and take care of it. It’s time for
you to produce yourself.

So what do you do?

If you really want to set your business up to shine;
however, find yourself looking to others to do it for you,
the first step I highly recommend is stop doing what you’ve
always done. That’s right. This is the golden rule. Invest
your resources in getting some major accountability around
moving out of your comfort zone (or as someone just
recently said to me, “the soup that has you stuck”) and you
will begin to connect with your own code of greatness.
Whatever belief you’ve had up until now will begin to shift
to what your true code is: magnificence. I have met many
entrepreneurs who have what they want for themselves in
their businesses; however, I’ve met hundreds who believe
they can’t and will spend a lot of time telling me why.
(Hint: it usually has to do with blaming something or
someone external instead of looking at what they could do
differently.) Instead, they believe they must settle, pay a
price, or try to figure out what the market wants. Start
focusing on producing the magnificence in you and the rest
(marketing, getting clients, etc.) will start to take care
of itself.

Call-to-Action:

Get honest with yourself. Are you waiting for someone else
to take care of your success?

Ask yourself, “What is my current business code?”

Now, what needs to happen for you to embrace that your true
code is one of magnificence? What would that look like? How
can you invest in yourself to support this?

Begin to be in your business what you are truly meant to
be. (Remember, when you shine, others are given permission
to do the same.)

—————————————————-
Heather Dominick, Solo-Entrepreneur Expert, has over 10
years of teaching and coaching experience. Heather’s
primary focus is in coaching entrepreneurs to identify
sources for increasing business profit and making
successful business changes. To sign up to receive your
free business building e-course go here now
http://www.energyrichcoach.com

Sluuurrrrrpppp… there goes your business, down the drain.
What makes a guarantee safe for you?

It helps to understand that very few people ever call in a
guarantee. Why don’t they?

The first and best reason is that you are putting your
heart and soul into doing the best you can possibly do for
your customers.

And your client is actually rooting for you– they want
your offer to work. They want to believe in you.

This means that your customers are cheerleading your
efforts. They paid money, they’ve committed themselves, so
they’re actually on your team.

They also don’t want to have to face having made a wrong
decision. Something has to go pretty badly before they’ll
call in a guarantee.

Put those reasons together, the whole-hearted efforts on
your part coupled with how much your customers are rooting
for you, and you can see why guarantees hardly ever get
called in.

You’re still a little nervous, aren’t you?

Well, I’m going to let you in on two secrets that will help
you relax.

One secret to the guarantee

A guarantee only works if someone has already said “Yes” in
their heart, but has voices of doubt sawing at their
confidence. Then the guarantee comes leaping in to shrug
off those doubts with, “Well, if it’s a complete gash, at
least I can get my money back.”

This secret is strongly in operation with the first type of
guarantee, which is…

The First Type: The unconditional guarantee

No conditions on the guarantee means that once they’ve
received your offer, they can, for any reason, ask for a
refund.

Use unconditional guarantees for offers that don’t require
your presence or input, meaning products, and not classes
or one-on-one time.

We offer unconditional guarantees on our books and products
for two reasons: one is that there is little risk for us,
we merely shipped the product out. The second and more
important reason is that I’m not present with them to help
guide them. Because they have to be self-guiding in using
the product, it seems only fair to let them be self-guiding
in determining whether it worked.

The second type: The conditional guarantee (which contains
the second secret)

When someone buys from you, they aren’t stupid. They know
that your offer only works if they follow through with
their end of things.

If it’s a nutritional supplement, they have to actually
swallow the supplement. If it’s a class, attending and
doing the assignments is what brings results.

But how much is enough? What if you miss three days of
taking the supplement? What if you can’t make three of the
classes?

Here’s the second secret

When someone wants to buy a big something, they’re
wondering, “What do I have to do to get this to work for
me?” The conditional guarantee answers this question.

With this question answered, your reader can relax and more
easily trust the “Yes, I want to buy” that’s in their heart.

You never knew the guarantee was working so hard for you,
didja?

If you are ready to learn how to make the conditional
guarantee work, and when not to offer a guarantee at all,
read on:

Guaranteed Keys to Making a Conditional Guarantee* (*Must
read all three keys for guarantee to apply.)

* The conditional guarantee.

Ask your heart this question: what’s the absolute minimum
someone needs to do in order to have a happy experience
with your offer?

How many classes can they miss, how much do they have to
take, what do they have to do in order to see enough
progress that they are going to be satisfied? Whatever that
answer is, it will be the core of your conditional
guarantee.

* Now you have to get them to read it.

What do you do when you see a “100% money-back guarantee?”
You say to yourself, “Oh, another guarantee.” And you just
rush right past it, don’t even stop to scan through it.

When you do that, the guarantee doesn’t really register in
your heart.

The answer? Give your guarantee some personality. Not
gimmicky, but authentic. For instance, here is a guarantee
we offer for our classes:

“Best Yet- A 78% Total Guarantee (78%?)

“It’s very important to me that this class helps you get
where you want to go. You can decide, for any reason, up to
six months after the end of the class in June, 2007 that
the class didn’t work for you and you want a refund. But,
there are some conditions.

“And the 78%? The class works, but only if you attend and
follow-through. If you complete 78% of the class: attend 11
out of the 14 classes, show up for 11 out of the 14 partner
exercises, and complete 78% of the assignments, and you are
still unhappy with the results, then I’ll be happy to
refund anything you paid towards this course.”

* When not to give a guarantee.

The only time you shouldn’t offer a guarantee is when, if
push came to shove and your customer was really unhappy
with what you offered, you still wouldn’t give them their
money back.

Who would do that? Would you? No, you wouldn’t. And neither
would I.

Since you’d give someone their money back, don’t hide it.
Get the most out of it, and offer a guarantee.

—————————————————-
Mark Silver is the author of Unveiling the Heart of Your
Business: How Money, Marketing and Sales can Deepen Your
Heart, Heal the World, and Still Add to Your Bottom Line.
He has helped hundreds of small business owners around the
globe succeed in business without lousing their hearts. Get
three free chapters of the book online:
http://www.heartofbusiness.com .

This article covers four critical ingredients that produce
stellar products, services, and customer relationships. You
can boost your product and service value to a level that
truly “wows” customers by doing the following things:

1. Researching your audience’s needs.

Creating impeccable results begins with the approach you
take toward researching what your customers or prospects
want and need. Developing successful offerings then
involves incorporating what you learn into solutions they
want to buy. Where and how you derive your product and
service design requirements can hugely influence the
success of your offerings, and extends beyond product
design into the entire customer experience.

Ways to research what matters to your audience’s success
include the use of interviews and needs assessments, mining
the information in your customer database, and probing
customer headaches via support calls and surveys.

2. Making your offerings safe, reliable, and easy to use.

Many elements contribute to making a product or service
friendly and intuitive. Two factors that strongly influence
the success of your offerings are 1) how simple the
features and interface are, and 2) how much support your
offerings give customers for achieving real-life goals.
Many companies mistakenly believe that perpetually adding
fancy features will increase customer satisfaction. In
reality, complexity can backfire and actually keep
customers from achieving success.

If you already have a product or service, before you
release the next version, perform a difficulty analysis by
asking:

– Does the system guide people in achieving their
real-world goals?
– Have you prevented all unnecessary options and features
from creeping in?
– Have you automated or kept to a bare minimum all tedious
setup?
– Have you performed a “hassle hunt” to remove known
customer annoyances?

Depending on the answers, you might need to add more
guidance, simplify the design, or hide complexity more
elegantly.

3. Testing and evaluating your offerings.

Do you have a way to tell whether your offerings achieve
exactly what both you and your customers expect? Are your
products and services confusion-free, even if they carry
out complicated tasks? How well do they perform their
intended actions? By using powerful testing and evaluation
techniques, you can reveal the answers in a systematic way.

To begin with, you would want to use a specification to
describe what your product or service is intended to do,
and have a way to continually compare your product or
service against that specification to determine whether it
actually 1) does what it’s supposed to do, 2) does it
correctly, and 3) as advertised.

Then, a combination of requirements evaluation, usability
testing, alpha testing, and beta testing can become your
“secret sauce.” The earlier in the life cycle this process
can begin – specifically, in the requirements and design
stages, when the initial concepts are still on the drawing
board – the more successful your offerings will be at
satisfying customer needs and desires. An early starting
point will let you build quality incrementally into your
offerings, instead of trying to add it as an afterthought,
the way your competitors might.

4. Focusing on consistency to cement your brand promise.

When consumers are pleased with what you offer, how do they
show it? Usually, by becoming loyal, repeat customers. But
what if they’re unhappy? The majority will quietly take
their money elsewhere, and you’ll probably never hear the
reason.

What’s the solution? Creating consistently compelling
customer experiences that galvanize consumers, who then
can’t stop telling their family and friends. The recipe for
cooking up highly profitable customer interactions
includes, but is not limited to, recognizing the importance
of focusing on customer retention; over-delivering on
promises, both explicit and implied; striving to prevent
variation in product and service quality; and doing
everything possible to ensure your customers’ downstream
success.

In conclusion, using this four-part formula for increasing
product and service value can transform your offerings from
being lackluster, difficult, or even hazardous to use to
“wowing” your audiences with superb experiences. By 1)
researching audience needs; 2) making your offerings safe,
reliable, and easy to use; 3) testing and evaluating your
offerings; and 4) focusing on consistency to cement your
brand promise, you will create countless ways to attract
buyers who become raving fans!

—————————————————-
Adele Sommers, Ph.D. is the author of the award-winning
“Straight Talk on Boosting Business Performance” program.
She helps people “discover and recover” the profits their
businesses may be losing every day through overlooked
performance potential. To sign up for more free tips, visit
her site at http://LearnShareProsper.com

Yet, when the machine finally started working again, I made
a fantastic discovery.

That little icon at the bottom of my screen that flashed as
each new email arrived was no longer there. And, not only
did I survive the day quite happily, I realized I was much
more productive.

It helped me recognize the importance of taking control of
my time. As business owners, time is arguably our most
precious resource. We can choose to sell it, invest it or
waste it. So the more effectively we use it, the greater
our chances of success.

Here are my 7 tips for mastering time.

1. Know how much your time is worth – The first step in
getting control over your time is knowing its real value.
The most obvious way to value your time is just to divide
your annual earnings figure by the number of hours you work
in a year.

But our number of productive hours is much lower than the
actual hours we work. So to get a better picture of the
real value of your time, estimate your number of productive
hours – for most people it’s less than three a day.

Once you know your hourly value, you should ask yourself if
what you are doing is worth your hourly rate. Outsourcing
activities is now so easy that you can often pay someone
else significantly less to carry out tasks.

2. Clone yourself (or your work) – While it’s not yet
possible to clone yourself, you can easily clone your own
work without any ethical issues. When you’ve written
something, leverage it for maximum benefit. With a little
additional work, a presentation script easily becomes a
magazine article or a sales letter, for example.

3. Spend more time on output than input – Are you spending
too much of your time reading emails and learning new
things? When you’re inputting information, you’re not
outputting. And it’s only output (like working for clients
and developing products) that makes money. New knowledge
and different ideas are valuable but sometimes us info
junkies need to go on an info diet!

4. Decide what work you are willing to leave undone – No
matter how efficient you are, you can’t do everything you’d
like to. If you’re busy, one of the most useful things you
can do is to transfer some unnecessary tasks from your
“to-do” list onto a “not-to-do” list – then quickly forget
about them.

5. Manage your day with time limits – When I stopped
reacting to that flashing notice of every new email
arriving, I set aside specific times each day for reading
emails. I now limit the time for doing that and scan them
quickly using a “one-touch” approach where I immediately
act on the email or delete it.

Another technique that works well is to use a timer to help
you focus on work for fixed periods. Some people work well
in short bursts completing specific 15-minute tasks before
moving on to the next one. For other people – and other
tasks – longer time limits of 45 or 60 minutes work better.
But you need to be disciplined and stick to the limits.

6. Focus on your priorities – Decide which one, two or
three big tasks you need to complete today or this week.
Then concentrate on them before doing anything else.

7. Develop systems and processes – If you have your work
organized into clear processes, you can more easily manage
your time. While it makes tasks much easier to delegate,
it’s also a better way of using your own time more
efficiently.

The more you control your time, the more profitable your
business will be.

—————————————————-
Robert Greenshields is a marketing success coach who helps
entrepreneurs and independent professionals develop the
success mindset and marketing strategies for a better
lifestyle. Sign up for his 7 secrets of earning more and
working less at http://www.MindPowerMarketing.com