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Are You Making The Time To Sell

time-to-sell Do you have enough business? Are you making the money you want to be making? Is your business growing? If you answered “no” to any of those questions, the issue may be, you’re not making enough sales calls.

And what I hear from lots of entrepreneurs is, “I don’t have time to sell”. If you’re not making the time to sell, and everything else is coming before getting in front of prospects, you are going to have a very difficult time growing your business, or in some cases, making enough to stay in business.

One of the challenges that entrepreneurs have, is not making the time in their schedule for selling. Have you ever had the best of intentions of making sales calls, but get to the end of the week and realize everything else took precedence, and you made very few or even none?

Here are some tips that might help:

1-You must make sales a priority

For most of us, sales is probably not our favorite activity so it ultimately takes a lower priority on our “to do” lists. But in reality, it needs to be your number one priority, and it must be done every week to have the success you want in your business. This is a mindset issue. If sales isn’t the number one priority for you in your business, you need to look at why that might be and work on changing that mindset.

2-You must schedule selling time into your weekly planner

This means writing down specific days or chunks of time that you will devote to making sales-and you must honor the time. You cannot let other things get in the way. I had a client this week who said, “I have the very best intentions of making sales calls, but everything else seems to get in the way”. You have to be extremely disciplined about creating the time on your calendar and keeping it sacred as selling time only.

3-What are the things you can either stop doing, or delegate to someone else to do?

Pick up your calendar or daily planner and take a look at a couple weeks worth. How did you spend your time and more importantly, what did you spend your time on? Are there things you can stop doing, even if it’s temporarily? Is your time spent on things you can hire others to do for you like social media, doing your invoicing or bookkeeping, running errands, etc? Take a hard look at your schedule and figure out at least three things you don’t need to be doing to free up some time for you to focus on the most important thing for your business.

The most successful entrepreneurs are those that schedule time to make sales calls and talk to prospects. If you are unhappy with the results in your business, I strongly urge you to implement the three strategies above and see what happens! I know you’ll be pleasantly surprised!

Mandy works with talented, high energy self employed professionals and very small businesses who struggle to market their business effectively, stretch their capacity and play a bigger game. Mandy’s client’s receive proven, specific information on what they need to do to get more clients and grow their business. As a result, those who coach with Mandy increase their business, get more clients and make more money, faster and easier than they ever would have on their own. Sign up for her free Cd “7 Productivity Secrets of Successful Entrepreneurs” right down below.

Stop Saying “I’m Sorry”

by Mandy Schumaker Leave a Comment

Several years ago, I went to lunch with a colleague of mine whom I really respect, and hadn’t seen in some time. She is bright, articulate and has done very well in her financial career. She asked me what I had been up to the past few years, in my business and my family.

When I got done filling her in, she surprised me by saying, “Can I give you some feedback?” To be honest, I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear it, but I replied, “Sure.”

And she said, “Stop saying you’re sorry for everything. It really takes away from your story and more importantly your power. Since we’ve been sitting here, twice you’ve apologized, once for going on too long with a story, and second for what you considered a “rant”. You don’t need to do that.”

And since then, I’ve tried to be very conscious about not apologizing for things that don’t require an apology and other personal offenses such as, “I’m really sorry for bringing this up”, or “I know this is a really stupid question”, or “I hate to ask you, but..”

Now, there certainly are times when saying “I’m sorry” is warranted. That’s when we’ve hurt someone’s feelings, or missed an appointment, or after an argument and such, but apologizing for taking up too much space, or too much time, or too much airtime, is totally unnecessary.

And this unfortunate, silly little habit is primarily used by women. I noticed it today in my networking group. One of the members (a female) had a lot of great stuff going on with her business and she had shared longer than usual, but not at all an inappropriate amount of time. After she got done, she said, “Oh, I’m really sorry to have gone on so long, so sorry”.

And for me, that little apology totally negated all the really powerful things she had accomplished in the last two weeks of her business. It made her look small and I’m sure made her feel small by saying it.

Start noticing when and where you are saying “I’m sorry” and try to discern where the habit came from. How does it make you feel when you do it? The first step to changing this bad habit is to notice.

And men, I’m asking you to please kindly point out to all the women in your life, when you catch them apologizing for something that does not require an apology.

So women, PLEASE stop apologizing for taking up space, or air time or when you refuse requests you don’t want to do. Because when you do, what you’re really saying to the world is “I’m sorry for being me”.

Who Are You Trying to Impress?

by Mandy Schumaker Leave a Comment

Be you, be true, be strong.

Danielle LaPorte

The best conversations with my kids always happen after school, when they are having their afternoon snack and I’m preparing things for dinner. Yesterday was no different. I was asking my five year old son, Cade, about his day, and I said I had noticed he hadn’t mentioned his best friend (as of last week) Brendan much anymore and he said, “I can’t stand Brendan, he’s always trying to act like he knows everything and be somebody he isn’t.”

Hmmm, I thought. How interesting. So I said, “Can you give me an example of what he does?” So he preceded to tell me that Brendan (according to Cade) acts like he knows the answer to every problem, even when he doesn’t, that he tries to act older than he really is, and he tries to impress (yes, Cade’s word) the teacher and everyone else.

So I said, “Well, if Brendan isn’t your best friend anymore, who is?” And he said, “Andy”.

I asked, “Does Andy try to impress everyone?” and Cade said, “No, he acts like his real life”.

His “real life”. You gotta love it. Inauthentic behavior snagged at age five.

Of course, we’ve all tried to impress people in various situations in our life, but why do we do it? So we can feel bigger or better than others. It’s all ego stuff.

It’s probably not a big deal when we do it on a small scale and it is certainly not a big deal at age five. But, when we aren’t authentic and are trying to impress others in our relationships, work, businesses, etc its noticeable…even at age five. And people trust an authentic person more than someone who’s not.

Consider these questions:
-Where in your life are you trying to impress others?
-Where are you not being your authentic self?
-What do you have to force yourself to do, be or have?
-Where in your life can you help make others feel enough?

The biggest reason we try to impress others all comes down to not feeling like we’re enough. Like we’re not smart enough, rich enough, funny enough, happy enough, pretty enough, and good enough. One of my favorite lines from the movie, The Breakfast Club was, “spend a little more time trying to make something OF YOURSELF and spend a little less time trying to impress people.”

Or as my son, Cade puts it, “Act like your real life”.

3 Tips for Handling Your Email More Effectively

by Mandy Schumaker Leave a Comment

Several clients this week mentioned how overwhelmed they felt in handling the amount of email they received on a daily basis. One of the clients asked what I thought about the notion of running their email on their laptop, while simultaneously working on a writing project on their desktop. They thought that perhaps this might be more efficient to go back and forth, so you didn’t have to toggle different screens on the same computer.

Wow.

I said I thought that was a terrible idea. In fact, I strongly believe that we need less multi-tasking activities, not more. The research is showing that our brains are never getting a rest from technology and activity.

Prior to technology, particularly cell phones and smart phones, we had times during the day when our brains could rest: when we drove in the car, walking down the street to a restaurant for lunch, on our way to a meeting etc. But now, as a culture, we are constantly on our phones either texting, checking email or surfing something on the web. There is no time for our brains to rest and that in itself is taking a toll on our health.

But, back to email overwhelm.

Here are three tips that might help you manage your email-I know they have helped me and many of my clients:

1-Turn off the “ding”

Turn down, or better yet turn OFF the “ding” that happens when you get a new message indicating a new email is awaiting you. That way, you won’t be so inclined to jump every time you know a new email has come in. Research shows that when you get pulled off a particular project or focus, it can take you nearly 20 minutes to get refocused and back into what you were doing. If you are constantly checking your email, every time it dings, it’s no wonder you are feeling overwhelm in getting things done.

2-Check your email only three or four times a day

Set a schedule for yourself to check and work on your email three or four times a day. Yes, I said three or four times a day, not every second of every minute! This is still enough time to get back to people on a regular basis and not worry about losing business. We are a culture that has trained ourselves to expect instant response to everything. I feel I am pretty responsive to my clients, but I have some clients, when I didn’t respond to an email within the hour, will then text me. Remember when all we had was snail mail? Two weeks was an appropriate time to expect to hear a response. So I urge you to figure out what times work best for you to check your email, and stick with it.

3-Unsubscribe to anything you aren’t reading regularly

I recently went through my inbox and literally unsubscribed to over ten newsletters I was receiving, but not reading. And some of them were from some of my very good friends and colleagues. Let’s face it. If you’re not getting value from a newsletter, unsubscribe. If you don’t, it just means you have to deal with it later.

I urge you to try these three tips for the next 21 days and see if it doesn’t make a huge improvement in your feelings of overwhelm, increase your productivity and make more time to do the things that are going to move you towards your bigger goals and vision!

I would love to hear from you in the comment section below, what tips and strategies you use in managing your email?

What Problem Are You Solving?

by Mandy Schumaker Leave a Comment

I recently had the privilege of volunteering as a coach at Portland, Maine’s, first Startup Weekend. It was fun, interesting and eye-opening!

On the first evening of the event, over 40 people took to the stage to pitch their idea for a business. They had sixty seconds to do so and were supposed to answer these four questions:

Who am I (introduction)?
What problem am I solving?
How will I solve it?
Who else do I need on my team?

The most amazing thing happened! Only five out of the nearly 45 entrepreneurs who pitched their business, answered this question: What problem am I solving?

And here in lies the problem.

Most of the people said something like this, “My idea is to start an organic soda pop business.” Or, “I love to drive motorboats, so I thought it would be cool to start a rental boat business,” blah, blah, blah.

So many times when someone thinks they have a good idea for starting a business, they fail to answer the question, “what problem am I solving?”

And when pitching your business, whether it’s to get money, win a contest, attract an investor or resources, you MUST remember to answer this question and clearly define, what problem am I solving? Typically a pitch only allows you a set amount of time to lay out your business idea, so it’s crucial right up front to answer this question.

One of the best ways to address it is to tell a story about the problem. Now, of course you probably couldn’t tell a story in a sixty second pitch, but you certainly could tell one in a 3-10 minute pitch. And storytelling, by far, is the best way to capture people’s attention.

Also, you need to remember the problem you are solving stems from your perspective and experience. However, it’s absolutely critical that you do some market research to figure out is there really a problem? And of course, do enough people, besides you, believe it’s a problem?

Lastly, I’d like to point out, that even if you’re not pitching your business, or perhaps you already have an established business, the question, what problem am I solving, needs to continuously be in the forefront of your entrepreneurial mind every day! This is the kind of mindset that makes for a successful business!

Two minutes can significantly change your life…

by Mandy Schumaker Leave a Comment

This week I saw a very powerful TedTalk that made a big impact on me. I have always been interested in leadership, presence and what makes some people more successful than others. Why this person got the promotion or the speaking gig, or the coaching engagement over someone else. Many times, it seemed to me, the person who didn’t get any of those things actually had the more powerful message. But if you watch this TedTalk, with social psychologist, Amy Cuddy, you will learn that your body language is more important than your words.

In fact the research shows that judgment of political candidates’ faces, in just one second, can predict the outcomes of 70 percent of the U.S. Senate and gubernatorial races. In this you will learn a two minute exercise you can do, that can significantly change the outcomes of your life!

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