ActionCOACH Pinellas has a wealth of information available to you and it is all just a click away.  Your business coaches have access to a business library that will help improve your business. 

Just a Sample:

• Getting More for Your Marketing Dollar
• Increasing Your Company's Sales
• Creating Profitable Partnerships
• Creating More Loyal Customers
• Leveraging Customer Referrals
• Cost-Effective Advertising

Each section contains valuable information you can use in the everyday running of your business.  In addition to the library, you can also get access to our Business Health Check.  Instantly check the status of your business and find out how a business coach can help.  This check is the first step in assessing the strength of your business. 

You can also take advantage of at free business coach session.  Start today and learn how to make more money, work less hours, get control of your business.  This complimentary coaching session is valued at $375.00  What are you waiting for, click here to start.

Juliet Kyes, one of our Certified Business Coaches for ActionCOACH Pinellas, was fortunate enough to attend the St. Petersburg Area Chamber Foundation’s 2011Women’s Symposium on March 3, 2011.  The keynote speaker was Elizabeth “Liz” Smith, CEO of OSI Restaurant Partners, LLC.  Juliet took some great notes and wanted to share them with you. 

You figure it out as you go along.

Leaps of faith and unexpected detours always lead to my best career moves.

1.  Being a nimble, agile leader that are willing to figure it out, open, comfortable with ambiguity.

• Rather than having the master detailed 5-10 year plan – have a scenarial plan that flexible to the current scenario.
• Kraft example – My grand plan coming out of college was I will stay at Kraft for 3 years and after that I will know everything I need to know to start my own business – ended up staying 14 years
• One driving force that guided my choices: never settle for what is comfortable unless it fulfills your passion.

2.  Follow your heart; not what is trendy or sexy.

• Find what gives you passion. Every time I thought I reached a plateau of learning, I was struck by a new exciting challenge for growth.
• Story: My friends challenged me during the Internet explosion saying, "Are you going to miss the 2nd industrial revolution?"  I was almost convinced to make a quick jump in my career to follow the Internet trend…but it just wasn’t my passion. I followed my passion of a consumer environment and stayed in a career I loved rather than chasing the newest, most profitable trend.
• At 40, I was no longer motivated and was staying only for comfort and security – I knew it was time to look for something that would give me personal fulfillment.
• What attracted me was the common mission, purpose and belief that “you can do well, while you’re doing well”.

3. Find ways to differentiate yourself because you can no longer compete on price.

• I also kept the question in my mind as a leader, “Should I be doing it differently?” I knew the value of not just following the pack.
• I knew that it would take different “business muscles” and that the marketplace would never be what it was ever again. Aptitudes
• What works now is a Differentiated holistic approach with a memorable customer experience. Customers want more benefits for a great value.
• To be successful, businesses need to listen to their consumers like we never have before. We need to innovate and stay current to what our customers want. We need to choose change or we choose becoming irrelevance.
• Saying with her team “Honor the past, Master the present, and Anticipate the future.”

4. Take the time to mentor and teach.

• I had amazing business leaders who were direct mentors, coaches and business teachers.
• They were a great sounding board and a venue for advice. I always got more from those who I mentored than they even got from me. I learned a lot from those who I mentored. One mentee gave me the great analogy of me being a newly promoted leader acting like a controlling, micro manager as a sneering dog showing their teeth with a bone in its mouth telling me to take it, take it –when he pointed out if you just put the bone down and walk away—I would be happy to pick the bone up. Even to this day, I ask myself “Did I put the bone down?” Am I getting out of the way so others can take it on and do it their way?
• The best leaders are those who can admit their failures and communicate what they did about it. Leaders with the confidence, candor, and humility to talk about their own failures have the ability to empower their employees. Always remember to Fail Fast. Recognize quickly when you have made a mistake and correct it before you have dumped excess time and money into it.

5. Final Thought… My entire identity is not tied up in one outcome.

• I live a 360 degree life and career has never been the most important thing in my life. Work has never solely defined me. My advice would be to lead inspired lives. You deserve to be fulfilled.

Ended with a quote from Jim Collins from Good To Great – who was also one of her university instructors.

This was a great symposium for me to attend.  I took away great things that will not only help me be a better executive coach but a better person.  If you would like to learn how you can improve your business and yourself, visit ActionCOACH Pinellas.  You will learn simple and effective strategies that you can implement immediately. 

Sometimes, the things we learn as business coaches come from the oddest places.  This video is about how one guy's quest for the perfect drumstick turned into a business that has lasted over forty-five years.  Vic Firth just wanted to create a better drumstick for his students and ended up growing his small business into an empire.  Who knew salt & pepper shakers could be made using the same technique as drumsticks.  

To be successful, you really have to test your own limits.  Throughout the video, you will hear many of the same things management consultants tell their clients:

• Entrepreneurs start businesses out of necessity
• Never be satisfied with status quo
• Always be your own unsatisfied customer
• Do things just a bit better every time
• Don't put a cap on standards
• Constantly modify and improve your product or service
• If it ain't broke, break it and build something better
• Think outside the box, apply same process but make something else
• If you have a dream or desire, GO FOR IT.  If you aim for the moon and make it halfway-you're up there a good distance

As an executive coach, these are great ways to improve your small business.  If you need help improving your small business, ActionCOACH can help.  Our results are guaranteed or your business coaching is free*.  Find out more now, right here. 

The Global Conference for Business Coaches is being held in Miami and there will be plenty opportunties to learn.  Business Coaches from around the country will gather to share ideas and grow in their business.  This pletha of knowledge will then be shared with their clients.  These business consultants will be not only better themselves but also better their clients.  ActionCOACH Pinellas is here to serve you!

Posted on February 4, 2011, 8:00 pm, by stevezog, under Brad Sugars' Blogs.

We are going to Miami for the 2011 Global Conference and couldn’t be more excited. While the prospect of the heat in Miami during the month of August may be daunting to some, the atmosphere promises to be even hotter in the Fontainebleau Hotel from August 21 through the 26 as some of the top speakers in the world of business deliver their message to the top Business Coaches from around the world.

On Monday August 22, Stedman Graham will be the featured speaker. Graham is a best-selling author who is well known for his two New York Times bestsellers, “You Can Make It Happen: A Nine-Step Plan for Success” and “Teens Can Make It Happen: Nine Steps to Success. Build Your Own Life Brand!”

Graham is also an educator, having taught a leadership course based on his Nine-Step Process at the University of Illinois-Chicago and at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University, where he taught a management strategy course entitled “The Dynamics of Leadership.”

Dr. Ivan Misner will be the featured speaker on Tuesday August 23. Dr. Misner has been called the "Father of Modern Networking" by CNN and the “Networking Guru” by Entrepreneur magazine.

He is the Founder & Chairman of BNI, the world's largest business networking organization, which has over 5,800 chapters on every populated continent in the world. Last year alone, BNI generated 6.5 million referrals resulting in $2.8 billion dollars worth of business for its members.

Dr. Misner is considered one of the world's leading experts on business networking. He has been featured in the L.A. Times, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times, as well as numerous TV and radio shows including CNN, CNBC, and the BBC in London.

Finally, on Wednesday August 24, motivator Les Brown will be the featured speaker.

Brown has become one of the top motivational speakers in the world through diligence, determination and focus. From humble beginnings he rose from a morning DJ to broadcast manager, then from community activist to community leader. From there he became a political commentator to 3-term legislator in Ohio.

Brown is the author of "Live Your Dreams" and "It's Not Over Until You Win." Few speakers have the power to motivate audiences the way Brown can and his speech promises to be one of the “can’t miss” events at the 2011 Global Conference.

Each of the featured speakers brings a skill set and knowledge- base that will only help the Business Coaches who attend Conference achieve their goals. The entire week in Miami will be a great time with lots to learn.

Are you ready to take your business to the next level?  Click here to take ActionCOACH's Busines Health Check to assess the strength of your business.  Call us today 727-786-2900.

Rhonda Abrams who frequently writes for USA Today recently took a flight of a lifetime.  Virgin Airways had a contest for entrepreneurs.  The basic idea was to load over 250 entntrepreneurs on a plane for seven hours and see what happens.  Rhonda said that for the full seven hours of the flight, she did nothing but coach entrepreneurs and offer business coaching advise. 

She also learned a few things herself.  This is her list:

1. Seize opportunities. The winners of this trip saw an opportunity in the British Airways contest, and they pounced on it.

2. Believe in yourself. I'm sure some entrepreneurs considered entering the contest then decided they weren't good enough. We never got the chance to see them.

3. Make the most of the opportunities you get. The winning entrepreneurs typically made many appointments at their destinations — often even extending their trips to other locations.

4. Be fierce. Learn from Marx-she wanted a meeting with Harrod's. She was absolutely, positively determined to get the meeting she wanted, and she exploited every avenue she could possibly think of.

5. Toot your own horn. Don't be afraid to let people know you're a winner.

6. Be open. These entrepreneurs were like sponges — wanting to soak up every bit of knowledge they could find.

7. Share. The program was great in part because the entrepreneurs shared their knowledge, resources and ideas.

8. Take advantage of Champagne. The Champagne kept flowing throughout the flight, keeping everyone loose and happy. (Don't drink alcohol? How about some ginger ale to keep you bubbly?)

Click here to get your own copy of FREE surefire marketing secrets that will double your business in 4 weeks.  Call ActionCOACH Pinellas at 727.786.2900 to find out how business coaching can help you. 

 

Well, we're in the second month of 2011, where does the time go?  Did you hit the goals you set for January?  If not, are you marketing yourself, and if so are you marketing yourself properly?  As your business coach, I recommend that if you want to make money in 2011, you need to market yourself or your business.  I found a tidy list of marketing tips to keep in mind as you think about your marketing efforts.  It is courtsey of Rhonda Abrams of USA Today. 

Recommened marketing tips from Tampa Bay Business Consulting Services, ActionCOACH

1. Get out there. People do business with people they know, so build your business network. Attend industry conferences, join community organizations. Be seen frequently. Connect in person and not just online.

2. Get listed — free. Want to show up in search engines and mobile devices without spending a cent? Be sure to set up your free business pages in Google Places, Yahoo Local, Yelp and others. You can list your products and services, hours of operation, specials, even add photos or offer specials. It's a key, free way to market on mobile devices and Web search engines.

3. Keep your top prospects in view. Make a list of your top 10 prospects or referral sources and keep it on your desk, your mobile phone, or use it as the "wallpaper" on your computer. Contact each of these key income-generators at least once a month.

4. Create a strong company brand and identity. Start with a distinct look-and-feel — logo, colors, typeface, etc. — that conveys what you're about. Use those consistently on everything — your website, business cards, packaging, newsletters, marketing materials, job ads. If possible, give your brand some zip and personality that makes it memorable.

5. Repeat, repeat, repeat. This is the golden rule of marketing. Whatever marketing tactics you use, you must repeat your message to the same audience in the same place, over and over again. It takes a long time for your message to sink in.

6. Tell people what they get, not what you do. In your marketing materials and messages, focus on the benefits the buyer receives — rather than just long lists of features of your products or descriptions of how you perform your services. Of course, customers compare features and services, so you'll need to include those. But always emphasize the benefits those features bring.

7. Create an e-mail newsletter. An e-mail newsletter is one of the most effective and inexpensive ways to regularly stay in front of customers, prospects, and referral sources. Make sure your newsletter provides some value for the recipient, such as useful information, details on discounts or a special offer.

8. Get a tagline. Devise a short phrase conveying what you do or makes you special (like "The world on time" for FedEx). Even a simple descriptive phrase can set you apart (like "Bonded janitorial services for banks"). Give prospects a reason to remember you. Use your tagline on your website, business cards, even e-mail signature.

9. Attend or exhibit at a trade show. Trade shows are great places to find many customers in one place, do research on your competition and meet referral and information sources. Research which trade shows target your customers attend and check them out.

10. Be visible online. Make sure you have a website. Learn about social media. If you sell to consumers, get a Facebook page and consider a Twitter feed. Monitor your reviews on Yelp and other review sites. If you sell to businesses, look for industry-specific social media sites.

11. Get a contact management system. Keep track of past and current customers, prospects, referral sources, and more. This data is an invaluable business asset — use it for staying in touch, making sales calls, announcing new products or sales and more.

Do you have any marketing tips that aren't included on this list?  If so, contact your ActionCOACH and let us know what they are. 

Brad Sugars, business advice expert and CEO of ActionCOACH, interviews author of Guerrilla Marketing, Jay Conrad Levinson. 

Brad Sugar, founder of ActionCOACH sits down with Jay Conrad Levinson to talk about marketing during tough economic times.  Responding to market conditions is a matter of finding the right answers and not necessarily luck. 

Jay gives several great ideas on how to build up your business in this recession. 

Find out how local businesses are getting 39 to 640% bottom line increases. 

Download your FREE white paper today

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Brad Sugars , founder of ActionCOACH, introduces the MindRICH program. He explains moving from income rich, to asset and paper rich.

This is just one example of how an executive business coach can help you succeed in your business.  At ActionCOACH, we offer many business coaching services that can include executive coaching consulting, executive life coaching, and business coaching mentoring.  Get guaranteed results or your coaching is FREE.  Visit us at www.actioncoachpinellas.com for more details.
 

John Jantsch is the found of Duct Tape Marketing and he recently shared some great ideas on ways to make your business stand apart from the rest.  This article really focuses on capturing the local market.  Below is his article.  It contains some really great ideas that I recommend as your business coach. 

When people want to find a business, they go online and search. Whether you sell a product or a complex, high dollar service, that’s just how it’s done these days. 

For marketers, this means they must be very, very focused on winning searches that are done with the intent of finding something local – this includes showing up in mobile browsers and on maps. 

Below are fives areas that you should address to increase your chances of winning the local search game. 

Do it now, before your competitors do. 

If you work through each section and apply a few action steps each day, you’ll gradually accomplish the entire list and put your business on its way to building a strong local search presence. 

1. Make your web pages scream local 

There are many ways to make your website pages localized. This is one of the underlying elements that tell the search engines that yours is indeed a local business. 

Here are a few steps to consider: 

    * Add your physical address to every page

    * Add city names in navigation: i.e. Omaha Kitchen remodeling showcase

    * Add suburb and neighborhood names into your content in natural ways

    * Add a local event blog and list festivals and non-profit events

    * Find relevant local bloggers using a tool like placeblogger to exchange links with

    * Do keyword research with local terms to find the best phrases to add to your pages (Google Keyword Tool or Wordtracker are good resources)

2. Claim and enhance your local search profiles 

The local search directories at Google, Yahoo and Bing want you to claim and build rich information for local profiles. This makes their job easier when people search for local businesses. 

If you haven’t done it yet, go here now: 

    * Google Places (data drawn from Google Maps)
    * Yahoo Local Business Center
    * Bing Local Listing Center

Another local search directory to pay attention to is Google Mobile Search. This is a separate directory with a great deal of cross over, but is the tool that mobile users access when they type coffee into Google Maps on a smart phone – yet another reason to make sure your listing is complete and up-to-date in Google Maps. 

In each case, you will need to claim your profile by various means. After you complete this step you will be given the opportunity to enhance your profile with the appropriate business category, hours or operation, forms of payment, area served and brands carried.
 

Want more on search? Check these out:

    * 7 Deadly Assumptions of Online Marketing Success
    * 4 Ways to Use Social Media to Kick Up Your SEO
    * Search Marketing as Core Local Business Strategy

3. Participate in the ratings and review game 

Lots of local business directories exist with the added feature of user ratings and reviews. If you’re not paying attention to the major sites and monitoring what’s being said, you may be losing business because of one poor review. 

Your action step here is to claim and enhance your profiles in each of these directories and start engaging your customers in ways that actively stimulate reviews.

 Here are the primary review sites to check out, although many industries also feature rating and review sites: 

    * Yelp
    * Insiderpages
    * Citysearch
    * Local
    * MerchantCircle

4. Update your listings and citations 

Citations are mentions of your business and address that appear on other websites. These are a key component of the ranking algorithms because they help assure your business is truly local. 

The listings you completed in the previous steps help in this category, but now it’s time to go even deeper. 

The following companies pull data from print versions of white and yellow pages and provide a great deal of core data to local directories. While it is likely that your business is listed in these directories it is a good idea to check for accuracy and add details that may not be listed. 

    * infoUSA 
    * Localeze

Getting listed consistently across the following Internet Yellow Page providers will also help with your local listing. 

    * Internet Yellow Pages
    * SuperPagesS
    * SwitchBoard
    * Yellow Pages

Two good sources of information for this topic are GetListed.org and Universal Business Listing (this site offers a service that will get you listed in numerous online directories and portals that are used by many applications and tools). It might be the best $30 a year you spend. 

5. Own a social network topic group

One powerful local play, and perhaps a good strategy to get some extra local links, is to start a local niche group and build a community of users around the local theme on social media sites such as Flickr, Facebook, LinkedIn, MeetUp or Biznik.

If you can find an area of interest to others, you might be able to build a useful and vibrant local tool while greatly enhancing your own local presence. 

Here’s a good example: The Boston Networking Club on LinkedIn was founded by Jeff Popkin, owner of BostonEventGuide.com. With over 5,000 members, there’s a pretty good bet this group serves as a conduit for Popin’s main business locally. 

Every little bit counts in this very important and increasingly competitive world of local search.

Thoughout the day, I coach business owners, such as yourself, on ways to improve their business and the executive performance.  By applying these ideas, I think you can really set your business apart from the competition while still managing your goals as a business owner or executive. 

Sign up for a FREE White Paper that will tell you how local businesses are getting 39-640% bottom line increases!

Yeah, ActionCOACH knew this already but it is great to see someone else recongize it.  According to American Express Forums, salespeople can benefit greatly from coaching.  Linda Richardson, a Wharton faculty member, talked with AE and suggested that they way sales people are trained need to change if they want to be successful. 

 “Salespeople are not needed for product knowledge anymore, so they need to be more prepared for strategic discussion,” says Richardson, who is also founder and executive chairwoman of Richardson, a global sales performance firm, and author of The New York Times bestseller, Perfect Selling (McGraw-Hill, 2008). “Salespeople are facing a sales environment that none of us ever faced before. And it’s taking a toll on morale.”

Below is an excerpt from the original article:

At one major tech company, she says, “We trained 400 front-line managers to be coaches.” The six-month training began with a one-week intensive course. “Then our trainers worked with each sales manager once a month on a 40-minute phone call to help them carry out coaching plans and to embed coaching into the culture.” The results were impressive: Job satisfaction improved as well as the retention rate of salespeople and managers. The company saw a 17 percent increase in sales year over year, and a 29 percent increase in earnings per share.
 
Richardson recently worked with a professional services firm where, she says, there are fewer deals than there were before the recession, and longer times to close. After training sales managers how to coach their sales teams, she says, “opportunities within the pipeline grew 195 percent. Targeted sales approach accounts have added $140 million in the pipeline in one year. They spent $1.4 million on the training and were able to attribute $23.7 million in new business to it.”

If you feel like the market has changed on you and you don't know if you can keep up, give us a call, 727-786-2900.  Let us show YOU how you can improve your overall perfomance, be a better boss or manager, and get the direction you need.  Visit us on the web at www..actioncoachpinellas.com.