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20 Ways to Grow as an Entrepreneur in 2020 by @DrRKayGreen

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by Dr. R. Kay Green | Featured Contributor

The hallmark of an entrepreneur is someone who is always striving and working to be their best. As such, a lot of entrepreneurs benefit from setting goals that can help them grow into the best person they can be. I have put together a list of 20 goals that entrepreneurs can pursue in 2020.

  1. Start a blog. Starting a blog is more than just a way to promote your business or grow your audience. It gets you thinking about what you do and why you do it in new ways. Writing a blog can help you solidify what is really important to you.
  2. Join a new networking group. One of the best ways to grow as an entrepreneur is to meet new people. Networking groups are a great way to make connections and learn from people in your industry.
  3. Join a LI group. What are people in your space talking about? LinkedIn Groups are full of relevant articles, conversations and more. If you want to keep up to date on latest trends and what other people are thinking about them, this is a great step to take.
  4. Revamp your website. If your website is outdated, chances are good that you have not really considered how your business looks or how you would like to appear to your audience. A refresh can change the way that you think about yourself even as it changes the way others see you.
  5. Try a new business venture. The best way to grow is to try new things. Even if you later decide that this is not for you, it does not hurt to at least try. Being open to new experiences moves your career in new and interesting ways.
  6. Take a risk. It can be tempting to stay in our comfort zone. But real growth comes from trying things that might fail. Through risks, we learn — whether that is because we succeeded, or because we discovered a way not to do something.
  7. Do public speaking. Public speaking is something that a lot of people are understandably frightened of. But it is great for improving your confidence, connecting with new people, and making you a better business person who communicates clearly.
  8. Start a vlog. This combines the benefits of blogs and public speaking. It also encourages you to show off what makes your business great — and it means you will likely be keeping your workspace looking its very best.
  9. Go on a retreat. Retreats are different from vacations (which, to be clear, you should also be taking). They are a chance to engage with what you do in a different location, learn more about your industry, and get away from the daily stressors that keep you from being your best.
  10. Ask for help. As you grow, you might begin to feel as though you do not need help from anyone else. But this cannot be further from the truth. Never be afraid to reach out to others who are at different stages than you for help.
  11. Find a niche. Who is your audience? If you cannot answer this question clearly and concisely, you probably do not have a niche. Finding one helps you to be more focused in your efforts, targeting people in more meaningful ways.
  12. Know your limits. As much as it is important to “hussle” and do your best, you are not a robot. You need to know when to take a step back, when to stop for the night, and when to delegate tasks that you cannot do.
  13. Start a podcast. Podcasts are becoming even more popular, and are an inexpensive way to get your voice and thoughts out there. Take the opportunity to listen to podcasts in your industry and see what others are doing.
  14. Set actionable goals. Goal setting is an important part of growth and success, but something that many overlook. Take the time to set actionable goals and make sure you set deadlines to complete them.
  15. Track metrics. How do you know if you are actually growing? You track your progress. This is why metrics are an important part of growing as an entrepreneur. They allow you to make sure that you are on target for completing your goals.
  16. Do something that scares you. We do not grow by staying in our comfort zones. Facing your fears and overcoming obstacles is an important part of growth in any part of life, and entrepreneurship is no different.
  17. Try a new social media strategy. Do you have a social media strategy? If so, when was the last time you updated it? Social media is constantly evolving and changing, so a refresh is always a good idea. Look at the new platforms available and see where your audience is.
  18. Poll your clients. Do you know what your clients actually think about you? Are you in tune with their needs? Reaching out to see why and how you can meet the needs of your existing clients can be enlightening.
  19. Take a class. No matter how long you have been in business, there is always room to grow. Take a class on something new or on something you feel you know well. No matter what it is, you will probably learn something.
  20. Empower people to learn. This might mean running a class or a webinar of your own. But it could also mean hiring someone to create custom learning content for employees around you. This leads to you being surrounded and supported by an intelligent workforce.

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Dr. R. Kay Green – Marketing Expert from RKG Marketing Solutions Inc. from Atlanta, GA.

Dr. KayDr. R. Kay Green is the CEO/President of RKG Marketing Solutions Inc. With over 190,000+ Twitter followers, 35,000+ Facebook Likes, and the Top 1% LinkedIn profile designation, Dr. Kay, a self-motivated trailblazer, is the Quintessential “New-Age” Professional Woman, and PhD Marketing Pro. She earned a Doctorate of Business Administration in Marketing, and has completed PhD coursework in Leadership and Organization Change. She also holds a Master of Business Administration in Marketing and Management, a Bachelor of Business Administration in Marketing, and an Associate of Arts in Marketing Management.

She is affiliated with several prestigious universities and has instructed over 350 courses online. A popular speaker on Marketing and Business topics, Dr. Green is currently featured on Huffington Post, Black Enterprise, Black News, The Network Journal, Business Review USA, Digital Journal, College View, Business New Hampshire Magazine, Bay State Banner, Reader’s Circle, North Dallas Gazette, Harlem News, Top News Today, One News Page, NE Informer, Women in Business PR News, Consumer News Today, Women PR News, San Francisco Chronicle, Houston Chronicle, Chicago Daily Herald, The Miami Herald, and Book News Articles.

Twitter – Facebook – LinkedIn

Transitioning From Entrepreneurial Business To Company: Why You Need Leadership Development Now by @jenlongmore

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by Jennifer Longmore

The difference between running an entrepreneurial business and a company is significant. When you’re in the entrepreneurial stage, you’re working predominantly with contractors, you may or may not have run a team before, and your systems are likely lacking or nonexistent. A company is run differently. The systems, policies, procedures, and protocols are in place (even if they’re consistently being revamped or added to). The teams have clear leadership, and there’s a lot more structure to what you’re building.

This transition takes time, and while there’s a lot to do to make the transition successful, this is the time to put an emphasis on leadership development. Because becoming a great leader and CEO will require you to think differently, and you can either learn by trial under fire (where the burns are real) or you can learn through intentionally developing the skills you need. Here’s what leadership development will help you accomplish when you explore it intentionally.

 

Set The Tone

How your leadership team acts sets the tone for the culture and the company. Even if your leadership team is just you right now, it’s important to know exactly what makes a strong, respected leader and how to lead a conscious company into the future. The problem with putting leadership development off is it is much more difficult to change a company culture than it is to start off strong. So by diving into leadership development now and maintaining it from here on out, you’re heading off problems before they can rear their ugly heads (basically it’s the difference between playing whack-a-mole or hitting the bullseye).

 

Create Loyalty With Your Employees

If you’ve ever been afraid that your employees will run away with your secrets to a competitor or start their own business, then leadership development is something you should dive into. Leadership isn’t about effectively telling people what to do, how to do it, or getting them in line. That’s old school thinking that can make it hard to keep people on your team. When you learn effective leadership skills, you develop an understanding of what behaviors, policies, and practices keep your employees motivated and productive, while earning their loyalty. Much like trust, loyalty is something you earn from an employee—it’s not something freely given. The best leaders are the ones who hold their boundaries, while remembering that their power comes from the faith, trust, and loyalty of their people. Without it, they fall. In business, it’s no different.

 

Create a Space of Fulfillment For Your Employees

Leadership development, at its core, is about understanding and delivering on the needs of your people so that everyone is working together for a common goal or mission. When you immerse yourself in developing your leadership abilities, you learn how to become more in tune with your employees. Your emotional intelligence matures, and you create ways to check in with your team to ensure their needs are being met, pre-empting potential upsets. This allows you to create a culture that fosters inclusion, collaboration, and commitment, so that your people choose to stay and grow with the company.

 

Communicate & Make Decisions as the Leader

Leaders hold the vision, stay on mission, and emotionally enroll employees into their cause. The way you communicate and make decisions as a leader is different than when you’re in the trenches. You’re responsible for taking the information your team is sharing with you, and playing out the potential outcomes so you can make the strongest decisions for the company, with the mission in mind. For example, if there’s a choice to make an immediately profitable decision that could hurt the team or a choice to put the team first and have more of a slow burn, it’s the leader’s job to make the right decision that upholds the vision, values, and legacy of the company. Strong leaders will put their team (and clients) first consistently, showing the team that their loyalty is well placed. As the leader, you’re responsible for the legacy of the company. How you think through each challenge and decision will shape that legacy.

 

 

 

Jennifer is a high performance leadership consultant, working with organizations to create loyal, innovative, creative, and productive cultures that increase profits, using the Forensic Transformation Method™.

Jennifer’s over 15 years of experience in forensic investigation, emotional intelligence development, and team dynamics helps her create innovative solutions that organizations need to become 21st century change agents and increase their profitability.

Her genius has been featured in media outlets such as Fox News, ABC, Global News, Bustle, the LA Times, and more.

Consumer v. Producer : Which are YOU? by @SBSLEducSoltns

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Stretching your Entrepreneurial Thinking

While entrepreneurs will always consume certain resources, no different from our staff, or other citizens,, we shouldn’t think through a consumer lens nor should we spend precious time being one. So, let’s shake things up!

 

While reading, please invest time to ask yourself some questions. As I often advise mentees, be reflective; forego being reflexive or reactive. The difference is profound.

 

The Consumer

Per Dictionary.com , … origin: 14th C [1375–1425] = “squanderer”

 

What a strong connotation! Do we really desire to have our business(es) associated with this definition, even if its meaning has evolved somewhat over the passage of time?!

 

Why are we ‘encouraged’ , compelled, or even shamed into consuming?

The answer is too complex to address in a blog post, yet, we are able to unravel some characteristics of a consumerist.

 

He/She/They …

 

  • Oft carry a considerable amount of consumer debt
  • Will be watching, listening to, or reading lots of content from the mass media*
  • Quite likely is a side-preneur still receiving a regular paycheck as a W-2’er
  • Fairly often feel uncomfortable discussing economics or talking about money/finances

& …

  • Might use words like ‘retail therapy’, be distressed** , and/or focused on material things

( inc. transactions to make more $ versus building business relationships. )

 

Click to Tweet

 

“Every man is a consumer, and ought to be a producer. He is by constitution expensive, and needs to be rich.”

 

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

Sign of a Consumerist

 

Self deception ( vid clip HERE ) is strong; maybe we know in the depths of our soul, by looking at our financial statements, or just in our gut that we are living a consumerist life while building our entrepreneurial venture/s, yet … we outwardly deny it, in our self-talk, our conversations with others, etc.

 

If you do this, you’re not alone. Some signals, both implicit & explicit to home in on & eventually course correct include:

 

  • Not paying off credit cards monthly
  • Driving in a vehicle that you don’t actually own
  • Expensive office space which raises your rates needlessly
  • Not leveraging the countless discount programs/apps/memberships available
  • Buying costly drinks or meals while at events

 

What’ll it Take … a ‘voice of courage’

Laying the groundwork for a major mindset shift will clearly impact all spheres of your business ‘being’ :  heart, mind, spirit/soul, & financial. Yet, it’s still January, and here’s hoping that you invested quality time and treasure creating and then taking action to live out these 2019 mantras, goals, or habit transformations instead.

 

If you’ve not yet carved a line item in your business blueprint for a mentor, a coach, or a niche consultant

( a good friend is ideal for the latter: Cherish Your World/Feng Shui Consultant ),  … now would be a great time!

 

A Producer’s Model

Defined here , with its synonyms including ‘builder’ & ‘creator’; which leads me to ask a few questions:

 

Don’t we all want to be known, in our branding, sales, & marketing, as these things?

Why would we knowingly choose its opposite?

 

Which characteristics might ID this type of business pro?

 

He/She/They …

 

  • Understand Y.D.I.L ***  when it comes to their finances/money ‘mind’.
  • Participate in social capital creating/expanding actions: Connecting others, serving in their communities, & building ‘roots & wings’ in their households.
  • Have eschewed a paycheck from a 3rd party & are sustaining on dollars earned through serving & solving.
  • Understand the value of time > money.  ( read previous post )

& …

  • Oft use words like legacy, leadership, leverage, significance, & value in everyday conversation.

 

Suggested Profiles

 

Brent Wehmeyer

 

Eric Kim

 

Producers Manifesto Poster

 

*** More on Y.D.I.L.

Y = You, Inc. [ ‘investing’ in your mind – trillion $+ ‘real estate’ ]

 

D = {consumer} debt [ pay off, or better yet, bypass proactively ]

 

I = Investments [ mainstream financial vehicles ]

 

L = Lifestyle [ far better to live below or right at par/your means ]

 

By committing to this informal, yet powerful acronym, my entire financial picture & level of consciousness, were shifted, bit by bit.

= I became a producer!

 

You can, too.

Starting, and perhaps expanding,  your business mustn’t originate from the scraps on your monetary table: It should be the main course, growing in parallel with your self-leadership as the “CEO” of You, Inc.

 

Value squared

Many thought leaders have previously opined on similar topic/s; I’m always pleased to cross reference their content & encourage readers in this community to learn more about them.

 

Their specialized knowledge, paired with mine, should generate lots of value for you, the reader.

 

The Producers Manifesto

Consumer v. Producer

Start Every Day as a Producer …

* Infographic – What is the ‘mass media’?

** https://www.mentalhelp.net/articles/types-of-stressors-eustress-vs-distress/

 

In short …

 

  • Know the clear differences b/w a consumer(ist) & a producer
  • Click to Tweet the Emerson quote: there’s a very elevated level of consciousness within it.
  • Invest time to click on the links provided to follow the bread crumb trail of wisdom
  • Connect with the suggested social media accounts & thank them for being producers 🙂
  • Paint yourself with a producer’s Picassian flair!  #BeAnExample
  • Y.D.I.L. is very insightful, yet very contrarian.

 

Thank YOU for reading!

Using The 80-20 Rule to Grow into The CEO of Your Business by @Melcoach

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by Melanie Benson | Featured Contributor

Most people who built their own business from the ground up feel a lot like their business is their baby. They’ve worked so hard to birth it, nurture its growth and help it mature into a sustainable small business that they will protect it with everything they’ve got. Many entrepreneurs want to make sure that everything about the business is carried out perfectly. This constant daily attention to every little detail can quickly become a growth bottleneck.

There is only so much time in the day and if you are spending your whole day making sure that everything is done perfectly, you have no time left to expand your business and move up to the next level of success.

This is where the 80/20 rule can help provide valuable insight into your business activities. For a few days, make a list of everything that you do all day long in running your business. You might write down your follow up activity as you try to close sales with customers, emails you write to your team, or your social media posting. Sometimes it’s getting the invoices out on-time or following up on over-due billings. Be sure to track the time you spend paying business bills, managing projects and developing new strategic partnerships.

After one week of tracking your activities, review the list and try to determine which of these business growth activities ONLY you can do. If the activities you wrote down do not help you in this way, it’s time to delegate those activities to a virtual assistant or team member you can trust.

Now I’m not suggesting you give up control of your business. This is where 20% of your time must be on our “control points” – tracking, measuring and ensuring that what you’ve delegated is on track. But when you spend 80% of your time on your business expanding activities, you’ll move the needle forward faster.

Part of the success of this growth strategy will come from a change in your mindset. Like many of my clients, you may overly identify with the role of doer and feel uncomfortable with what you would really do if you shifted into CEO. Trust me, once you are out from under the daily activities you will quickly find your new, more productive growth activities are deeply fulfilling. It may take a bit to get accustomed to the new role, but start out every morning thinking that today your job is to find new ways to increase the revenues at your business.

It won’t be long before you will be able to spend most of your time in this new role of CEO. Just think of the benefits it will give you, your family and your employees if you can step back and see the forest in spite of the trees, you will be able to have space to be more creative and connect to your bold vision.

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4 Priceless Skills Entrepreneurs Need to Sustain a Thriving Website by @TracyVides

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by Tracy Vides | Featured Contributor

Starting a business these days is tough. Perhaps one of the most difficult but taken-for-granted tasks that entrepreneurs face is crafting and maintaining a website through which their brand can establish a strong online presence.

Creating a website for your business is one of the most important things you will ever do as a business owner. While it can be a challenging – or even daunting – task, it’s not rocket science. (Nothing is rocket science, except rocket science, by the way.) Your platform is only as good as the one who builds it. The process requires a great deal of time and varied capabilities to supplement the interface.

Let’s discuss four skills necessary to create a website that strongly reflects you and your business.

1. Good Sense for Design

Perhaps one of the most important requirements needed to create a website is a good knowledge of aesthetics and graphic design. Keep in mind, you can have the best content and fundamentals on the internet, but if the aesthetics are messy, the entire interface will get derailed.

For both rookie and veteran entrepreneurs, one of the biggest mistakes you can make is designing a website that appeals to YOU, and not the user. Designing a cool looking website and suiting your objective take two extremely different mindsets. There are several key factors that play into a strong, user-focused platform:

  1. Flow – This is how the user navigates your platform. When creating a good flow, the overall experience should not lead to confusion by jumping all over the place. Keep it straightforward and simple so potential customers can find everything they need. The flow should drive traffic to pages that push users to take action.
  2. Color – Color alone can do a lot to either draw customers in, or send them packing. Your choices should wisely reflect the overall energy, aura and personality of your brand while putting the user in the mood to buy.
  3. Visuals and Images – While stock images are a quick solution, any good audience can see what you’re doing from a mile away. If you’re going to add pictures or videos to your web pages, consider using photos and footage of real people taken at your business. Stock images or cookie-cutter “intro” videos can come off as lazy.
  4. Communication – Throughout your pages and content, the tone you speak in needs to be consistent while your message should send signals that guide users down the conversion funnel. This goes back to putting yourself in the shoes of the user. What questions or concerns might they have about your product, your customer support, or the industry as a whole?

Learning the fundamentals of website design aesthetics can be a challenge. However, it is a very valuable skill to have. There are many options available to push you in the right direction. All the major online MOOC sites, including Lynda.com, Coursera, and Udemy, offer excellent free courses to get started learning the basics of good design.

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2. Stoic Project Management Skills

As an entrepreneur putting together a new website, there is a good chance you will need to outsource or delegate some of your tasks. Whether it be content writing, programing, design, or usability, there are many standards and best practices; it can take months to produce the final product – your website.

This is where project management skills come into play for keeping the construction process running smoothly. You, assuming the role project manager, are the heart and soul that brings every component and aspect of the web development process together to ensure everyone involved has what they need.

As this is your website, the truth of the matter is that you will most likely have to do a good deal of micromanaging to ensure tasks get done on time in the way you need them to be completed.

Learning professional project management skills (and tools) early on in a startup will prove to be very useful down the line. For example, when your business starts to experience rapid growth, it would be a wise move to bring in a team to manage your website. In this case, will need to be able to delegate tasks in the best possible manner.

You might consider earning the PMP certificate to supplement your business skills. Here too, there are a lot of courses available to put you on the right path. For instance, Knowledgehut offers a top-to-bottom course to prepare you for the PMI exams with the help of certified professionals.

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3. Keen Eye for Data and Metrics

Website development is never-ending project to improve and optimize. Interfaces today are becoming more and more data-driven. The more information we come across, the more necessary it becomes to structure and categorize organizational knowledge and insights in way that can be easily understood and processed. Every business decision you make should be data-driven to a certain extent.

Most websites are designed for the purpose of guiding visitors to complete a desired action. Whether that be buying, sharing, subscribing, or anything else, there are elements embedded in the website where presentation and sensory effects influence consumer behavior.

The ability to respond to data has seen a lot of improvement in recent years with the growth of analytics platforms. The need to bridge the gap between visitor data and making proper web adjustments is greater than ever.

As you pick up the reins of creating your website, you will need to keep a close eye on actionable data. Some of the quantitative metrics you will need to keep an eye on are:

  1. Traffic
  2. Sources of Traffic
  3. Top Performing Content
  4. User Conversion Rate by Source
  5. Bounce Rate by page
  6. Customer Lifetime Value

A clear sense of this information is crucial in learning what works with visitors and what doesn’t. From here, you can make necessary changes and updates while using split testing to gauge the results.

Properly analyzing these metrics is no easy task. Take a look at some online courses to learn more about how to manage and make better data-driven decisions. Zeolearn, for example, offers a very informative course in Data visualization with Tableau (the big brother of Excel) that will teach you everything you need to analyze the state and progress of your business.

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4. Firm Understanding of Web Security

Tech has done amazing things for the business world. Unfortunately, one of the side effects is that cyberspace has become a dangerous environment. In fact, a PwC report found that 79% of organizations in the United States have experienced a security breach at one time or the other.

One of the most important skills you can have when managing a business website is knowing how to keep it secure. Take a look at the OWASP development guide, for starters.

Learn as much as you can about common hacker practices and the reasoning behind breaches. While we’ve all heard about hackers stealing user passwords or personal details of your customers or gaining access to important financial data of huge companies, the most common break-ins happen when there are “vulnerabilities” in your website code or structure.

For example, a common but overlooked way hackers can gain entry into your site is by manipulating URL query strings in the browser and using the error messages displayed there. An error message that pinpoints the default error in the URL (such as 404) is a strict no-no; a better option is to create personalized pages with messaging that informs and amuses, but gives little away in terms of website data to potential hackers:

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Play it safe and educate yourself on the best practices for keeping digital assets secure. SANS offers a great introductory course that will bring you up to speed on how to make sure your valuable data doesn’t get into the wrong hands. Gaining this knowledge could very well be the best decision you ever make.

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Over to You

This was just the tip of the iceberg, as you may well have realized by now. Hey, who said starting a business was easy? While you may not be a designer or programmer by trade, learning the basics of development is a great way to save money in the early stages of your business and pick up some fundamental skills in the process.

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Tracy VidesTracy Vides is a content marketer and social media consultant who works with small businesses and startups to increase their visibility. Although new to the digital marketing scene compared to her illustrious She Owns It counterparts, Tracy has started off well by building a good online reputation for herself. She’s now a “serial blogger” with posts featured on Sprout Content, Steamfeed, Soshable, and elsewhere.

Connect with her on Twitter @TracyVides for a chat any time!

Take These Three Steps to Grow Your Brand Right Now by @deborahsweeney

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Take These Three Steps to Grow Your Brand Right Now

by Deborah Sweeney | Featured Contributor

Whether you and your business are new to the game, or you’ve been in business for a while and feel as though you’ve hit a lull, every business can stand to learn a new trick or two. If you’ve been wanting to take your business to the next level, but you’re at a loss for what comes next, try implementing these three easy tips for growing your business right now!

Amp up your cross-blogging. 

Whether your company has a blog or not, writing guest posts for other blogs in your industry can be very beneficial to your business. You get to completely double your exposure by showcasing an article you wrote (that ideally links back to your website somewhere) to a new group of potential customers who haven’t previously heard about you, and might not have heard about you were you not being featured on a new outlet.

If you do have a blog, try and create cross-blogging relationships with other blogs in your industry. Most cross-blogging typically occurs once a month for each outlet, but if you find an outlet that really grooves with your company and vice versa, feel free to establish a more frequent cross-blogging rate. Conversely, if writing a lot of blogs isn’t something your team has the time to do, you can also arrange something that occurs once every couple months. Establishing a cross-blogging relationship with a company in your (or in a similar) industry can often times lead to a partnership down the road that goes beyond simply swapping blogs. 

Stay on top of your marketing.  

A large part of marketing these days is simply being a master of all things social media. The only way to know your way around social sites is to actively partake in them on a daily basis. Never leave your audience hanging during the work week- you should at least be posting once a day to let your followers know you are a serious business with a serious online presence. As social sites continue to change in a non-stop way, the best way to adapt is to keep up and be an active user every day. If you take a break from your social sites, not only will your customers be wondering where you went, but something major could change that you may not be accustomed to upon your return, setting your business behind its competitors.

Update your company culture.  

Typically, behind every strong brand is a strong team of employees. The most successful businesses have a group of employees who not only get along, but who work together for the betterment of the company. Achieve this ideal company culture by paying special attention to who you hire. On top of skill sets, really think about how these potential employees will mesh with the rest of your team.

Don’t be afraid to liven things up by keeping the office a fun, warm place to be. Celebrate birthdays, watch major sports games together in the break room, take office field trips to the nearest frozen yogurt establishment on the hotter days this summer- don’t be afraid to get creative!

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Deborah Sweeney – Legal Expert, CEO, MyCorporation.com

Deborah Sweeney HeadshotAs CEO of MyCorporation Business Services, Inc. (MyCorporation.com), Deborah Sweeney is an advocate for protecting personal and business assets for business owners and entrepreneurs. With her experience in the fields of corporate and intellectual property law, Deborah has evolved from lawyer to business owner. She has extensive experience in the start-up and entrepreneurial industry as she has been involved in the formation of hundreds of thousands of businesses for MyCorporation.com’s customers.

Ms. Sweeney received her JD & MBA degrees from Pepperdine University. She is active in the community and loves working with students and aspiring entrepreneurs. She serves on the Board of Regents at California Lutheran University and is a founding member of Partners of Pepperdine. Deborah has served as an adjunct professor at the University of West Los Angeles and San Fernando School of Law in the areas of corporate and intellectual property law. Ms. Sweeney is also well-recognized for her written work online as a contributing writer with top business and entrepreneurial blogging sites.  She is a regular contributor on Forbes, American Express, Social Media Today, and BlogHer among many others.

In her ‘free’ time, Deborah enjoys spending time with her husband and two sons, Benjamin (8) and Christopher (6). Deborah believes in the importance of family and credits the entrepreneurial business model for giving her the flexibility to enjoy both a career and motherhood. Follow her on Twitter @deborahsweeney and @mycorporation.

Relationship Building Isn’t Dead, It’s Evolving – And you Should Be, Too by @KendraLeeKLA

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Relationship Building Isn’t Dead, It’s Evolving – And you Should Be, Too

by Kendra Lee

When I first started in sales for IBM in 1984, the buzz phrase that everyone was talking about was “relationship selling.” That phrase stuck for most of my time at IBM, but trendy new sales approaches and buzzwords seem to have taken over in recent years.

For instance, in 2011, the Harvard Business Review published an article declaring the death of relationship selling and the rise of the “challenger sale.” The key distinction was that challengers push prospects out of their comfort zone and drive them to learn new things about their business, market, or pain points.

While I think that approach has serious merit, its supporters often overlook one thing: In order for a salesperson to impart that knowledge and awareness on a prospect, they must first establish a relationship. This is especially true in an age where content marketing and nurturing play key roles in the actions that prospects take.

In fact, in many ways, I think we’ve come full circle from my days at IBM.

Today, the most successful salespeople aren’t just good at challenging a buyer to explore new ways of solving problems and addressing needs. They’re also experts at creating and nurturing authentic, congruent relationships with prospects across multiple channels (social, phone, email, events, etc.).

Sales Isn’t Just Phone and Email

While most prospecting is done via phone and email, we now have the luxury of numerous other channels to find, engage, and contact prospects — whether it’s LinkedIn, LinkedIn Groups, Twitter, Google+, or (depending on the scenario) Facebook. The very best salespeople are particularly adept at deploying a multi-faceted prospecting approach to establish and build relationships, and they strive to create a congruent relationship across all of those communication channels.

Why is that important?

Think about this scenario: Let’s say that your company executes a nurturing campaign that conveys a blissful, friendly, highly personalized message, and at the same time takes a hardcore telemarketer approach to secure a phone appointment.

How do you think prospects will respond to that? My guess is that they’ll be confused. And, in the end, that will probably cause you to lose them.

Consider the Relationship Prospects Want to Have With You

To avoid losing prospects from incongruence, consider the relationship your contacts want to have with you, and then to be consistent across all communication channels. For instance: When you prospect on LinkedIn, prospects don’t want to be sold to. If you blatantly ignore that protocol, you’ll very likely lose credibility and connections.

When you reach out to prospects over the phone, they don’t want to be unabashedly sold to. They want a quality, professional conversation.

When you prospect via email, people don’t want to be spammed. They want messages that demonstrate the sender has put thought into how they relate to the prospect.

When you nurture prospects on Twitter, people don’t want constant self-promotion. They expect authentic engagement.

The key theme here is that you need to be congruent in how you engage with your prospects to initiate a long-term relationship. Put yourself in your prospects’ shoes and look at relationship building from their perspective. If you do that, your multi-faceted efforts will come across as more genuine and relevant, and you’ll develop the much-needed credibility that more “modern” sales approaches are so reliant upon.

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kendra leeKendra Lee is a top IT Seller, Prospect Attraction Expert, author of the book, “The Sales Magnet” and the award-winning book, “Selling Against the Goal” and president of KLA Group. Specializing in the IT industry, KLA Group works with companies to break in and exceed revenue objectives in the small and midmarket business (SMB) segment.