business coach

I am a certified Business Coach with ActionCOACH, the World’s #1 Business Coaching Franchise (Entrepreneur Magazine, Jan. 2004 & 2005). As your coach, I will be working with you in five key areas. The emphasis on…
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Marketing

5 Minute Marketing Plan: Tool

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Business Coach Malcolm Upton, ActionCOACH in Fort Worth, TX serving the greater Tarrant County area discusses the Tool used in the 5 Minute Marketing Plan“OK, Bubba, we’ve talked about Action, Benefit, and Hunting Niche; what is the next part of the 5 Minute Marketing Plan?”

“That’s the ‘Tool’ section, Coach.”

“Good, and what goes in the Tool section?”

“That’s whatever it is you’re using in your marketing, like the Internet or print advertising.”

A little alarm bell went off in my head. “Bubba, when you say ‘Internet’ may be a tool, what do you mean?”

“Well,” Bubba answered carefully, “I’m guessing that if I were to use the Internet as a tool in my 5 Minute Plan, I’d be talking about my website and Google site and Facebook and… what?”

I guess I’d been shaking my head again – this really wasn’t bad enough for me to be banging it on the table. “Remember, Bubba, the 5 Minute Marketing Plan is about focusing our efforts – a laser, not a light bulb. If ‘the Internet’ is all those things and we are trying to focus, is that really focused enough to be a good answer for ‘Tool’?”

“I guess not,” Bubba had to agree.

“So how could we use the tool of the 5 Minute Marketing Plan if we needed to address all of our Internet marketing?”

Bubba thought about that for a good while. “I guess I’d need a different 5 Minute Marketing Plan for each of those things – one for Facebook, one for LinkedIn, one for my website…”

“Maybe, but think of this. On your Facebook page – do you have a single marketing message or initiative, or do you have more than one?”

Bubba thought about that for a bit. “I guess I have more than one. One of them is just to keep my name out there – responding to posts and stuff. But sometimes I have events or post links or stuff. I guess I’d need a 5 Minute Marketing Plan every time I put something up.”

“That might be a little overkill – after all, a lot of times, especially with something like Facebook, you are just having a conversation. Doing a 5 Minute Marketing Plan for every post would be like doing a 5 Minute Marketing Plan every time you opened your mouth at a networking event or block party. Really, you just need a plan for your major announcements or events – even then, a posting on Facebook, or a tweet, or a status update on LinkedIn, might be one of the tools mentioned in a 5 Minute Marketing Plan.”

“So, I can have more than one tool in this part?”

“Yes, but you need to have a primary tool that may or may not have one or more secondary tools used to support it. For example, you might have a video advertisement as a primary tool with a page on your website, a Facebook post, and a couple of YouTube ‘trailers’ all as secondary tools. Or another example, you might have a presentation at a meeting as a primary tool with handbills and an e-blast as secondary tools.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to have a Plan for the presentation with another Plan for the handbill and a third for the e-blast?” Bubba asked.

“If that helps you focus better and get better results, sure. Remember, Bubba, everything we do at ActionCOACH is more about results than process. Use the tools. Use them the way I coach you to. Check the results. Make intentional choices based on what you learn. Change the process to fit your needs, your strengths, the specifics of your market better. Repeat until you have a commercial, profitable enterprise that works for you.”

“Yep, Coach – that’s what I’m aiming for…”

 

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Marketing

5 Minute Marketing Plan: Hunting Niche

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Business Coach Malcolm Upton, ActionCOACH in Fort Worth, TX serving the greater Tarrant County area talks about laser focusing Bubba's marketing“Bubba, we’ve got both the Action and the Benefit parts in the 5 Minute Marketing Plan. Now let’s talk about the Hunting Niche. What do you think you need to put here?”

“Oh, I heard a great definition for my target market – ‘anyone with skin’ – what do you think?”

It took me a bit before I could answer that one. “Weelll, let me ask you this. Do people in Australia have skin?”

“Sure, Coach,” Bubba replied looking puzzled.

“And folks in California?”

“Yeah.”

“And folks in Houston?”

“Sure”

“Are any of them in your target market?”

“Of course not, Coach, you know I’m a local business. Sometimes I get folks from Parker County or Denton, but most folks are from the west side of Fort Worth.”

“So is your target really ‘anyone with skin’?”

Bubba looked a little sheepish before replying, “I guess not. I guess it isn’t everyone with a pulse and a checkbook either.”

“No Bubba, probably that is still a little too unfocused. When we are talking about ‘target market’ we need to really focus on the needs and wants we fill and the geographic and economic factors that will effectively limit the reach of our business. But when we talk about hunting niche, we need to get even more focused. Think of it this way, if you put 100 watts of energy through a light bulb shining on a sheet of metal – how much impression are you going to make?”

“Not much of any – maybe warm it a little bit.”

“If you take that same 100 watts of energy and put it through a laser, what sort of impression are you going to make on that same sheet of metal?”

“A lot more of one, I reckon.”

“Exactly right, Bubba. Hunting Niche is the same thing. We take our marketing energy and want to put a laser-like focus on it to reach a specific niche in our target market. With Hunting Niche, we aren’t even talking about our whole target market – just a specific niche portion of it. So what do you think that would look like?”

Bubba thought for a moment or two then answered, “So, if I’m talking about a truck wrap, that’d be my customers who are driving at the time, right, Coach?”

“That’s right, Bubba. Or customers walking by if you are talking about a window display; but what if you’re talking about a mailing piece?”

“I guess that could be about anyone.”

“We need to focus in on a specific hunting niche, though. How would you do that?”

Bubba thought a moment then his face lit up, “That’s what the Benefit is, isn’t it, Coach. My Hunting Niche is going to be determined by which Benefit I’m going to be focusing on – won’t it?”

“Absolutely right, Bubba, although sometimes it will be the Benefit that is chosen based on your Hunting Niche. That’s the beauty of The 5 Minute Marketing Plan – within the 5 minute limit, you can go in any order you want with one area influencing another.”

 

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Marketing

5 Minute Marketing Plan: Benefit

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“So, Bubba, now that we’re clear on what the Action in the 5 Minute Marketing Plan is, let’s talk about the Benefit part. What do you think you need to put here?”

“Well, Coach, you’re always talking about how our marketing is supposed to be an investment, not a cost, so I guess this is the benefits we expect to get from the marketing.”

Obviously, I haven’t done a real good job of explaining the 5 Minute Marketing Plan before…

“We’ll be looking at that later, Bubba, when we talk about the dollars. The benefit we are talking about here is the benefit that will appeal the most to the person in the hunting niche you are trying to reach. It might or might not be the only benefit you mention, but you need to showcase only one.”

“So how do I figure out what to put here?”

“That’s why the 5 Minute Marketing Plan isn’t a one-way street. Sometimes you’ll need to go work on your hunting niche before you choose a benefit. Sometimes you’ll need to do some work in the USP/Guarantee section before you choose one of those benefits to highlight. Sometimes the benefit you highlight here influences what you put in those other sections. You might even make changes to the Action last thing before your 5 minutes runs out. The point is to let all the pieces influence each other and don’t get hung up on doing the process in the ‘right’ order.”

“So if I have a pretty good idea about what benefit I want to put on show for a bill-board, say, I could start with this section and then go on to the rest of them?”

“Absolutely, Bubba.”

“And if I wanted to kind of make a whole list of benefits, like for a brochure, for instance, I could do that in the USP/Guarantee section, then choose one to showcase and put here?”

“That would work fine as well.”

“So as long as I’ve got my USP/Guarantee put together, the hardest part of this section is choosing which one thing to make the one thing to focus on.”

I had to puzzle that one a bit, “Yeah, Bubba, that’s pretty much it. The one benefit you’re going to make the core focus for this marketing effort.”

“Got it, Coach”

 

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Marketing

5 Minute Marketing Plan: Action

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Business Coach Malcolm Upton, ActionCOACH in Fort Worth, TX serving the greater Tarrant County area discusses the Action section of the 5 minute marketing planBubba came into the café and he plopped down across the table from me and said, “Coach, I just don’t get it at all.”

Now, those of you who know Bubba, don’t lose the bubble here – he really is trying and you shouldn’t be rolling on the floor laughing right now.

“What is it you don’t get, Bubba?”

“It’s this 5 minute marketing plan, Coach. I just don’t get it.”

“Well, I can understand how it might not be real obvious the first time you try to do one. Let’s just take it one piece at a time, OK?”

“That sounds great, Coach.”

“OK, Bubba, let’s look at the first section: Action. What do you think goes there?”

“I’m not so sure, but I’m guessing it’s what I’m planning to do with the marketing plan.”

“Not quite, Bubba – it is really simpler than that. It is the action you want someone to take.”

“Why would I need to write that down, Coach? It’s always to buy my stuff.”

“Just a minute, Bubba, we’re talking about the marketing plan, not your sales process. Remember, the first step is to connect with people who may need or want what you have to sell and get them interested enough to do something about it. That something you want them to do is the action.”

“So it would be to come in or contact me then.”

“Right, Bubba, but just like everything else, especially marketing, the more focused you are, the more likely you’ll get what you want. So you need to define a specific action. ‘Come and visit us’ – then give your address or a map link. ‘Call’ – then give them the phone number. ‘Contact us’ – and give them the e-mail link or URL.”

“Can’t I just do all of those and let them have a choice?”

“You can, but remember, people are overwhelmed by choices these days. They see hundreds, if not thousands, of marketing messages every day. Giving them one action, or at most a choice of two, is all the complication you should put in a single marketing item. If you want to let them come in or call, it is better to have two marketing pieces released through the same channel, one saying ‘come in’ and the other saying ‘call’ and then testing and measuring to see if you want to continue both or just one of them.”

“So ‘Action’ is just a simple ‘call’ or ‘come in’ or something like that – with the minimum information to let them do that.”

“That’s right Bubba – when folks are sorting through hundreds of marketing messages – you need to keep it simple.”

 

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Coaching

Figuring Change

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“Why is it so hard to get my folks to change? And why is it so hard to get folks to buy from me?” Bubba was complaining.

“Same answer to both questions, Bubba.”

“Huh?”

“Both your questions have the same answer – you aren’t figuring the change correctly.”

Bubba was really confused now.

“I’m sorry, Bubba, I don’t mean to be confusing – but it really comes down to understanding and using a really simple model called The Change Equation.”

“Is this like the equations I had to learn in engineering school?” Bubba asked.

I had to laugh a little, “Nothing anywhere as hard as those. This is just a mental model, not a mathematical one. It looks kind of like an equation, but you don’t put numbers into it.

Business Coach Malcolm Upton, ActionCOACH in Fort Worth, TX serving the greater Tarrant County area describes the Change Equation“Basically it consists of three factors: D – the dissatisfaction someone feels with where they are, V – the vision of how cool it will be after the change is made, and F – the first step they need to take to get from D to V. If those three things are present and greater than R – the innate resistance they have to any change, you get C – the change you are seeking.”

Bubba nodded – he was with me so far.

“Think about it this way, Bubba. If someone is happy where they are, if there isn’t any D, why would they ever change?”

“I don’t suppose they would – no reason to.”

“Exactly, same thing if they don’t see anything better, there isn’t any V. A lot of the time we prefer the devil we know to the devil we don’t.”

“Yep, I can see that.”

“The interesting thing about both D and V – they’re emotional. Dissatisfaction with where I currently am. A Vision for something I like better. D ends up being 45-50% of the force in making a decision. V ends up being 45-50% of the decision as well. The logical piece – the F of the first step or first few steps, is only 1-10%.”

“So as long as I get the D and the V down, I don’t have to worry so much about the F, right, Coach?”

“No, Bubba, F is still multiplied in the equation. If you don’t tell your customers what to do – call, come in, whatever – they are left all hyped up and ready to take action as soon as one of your competitors tells them how to take a first step. Way too many artsy advertising agency campaigns do great on D, or V, or maybe both, and forget to tell people what action they need to take. Never leave out the F, even if it is only a few percent of the decision.”

“That’s great, Coach. I guess that explains why just putting the word ‘call’ in front of my phone number boosted the results on that ad so much. I guess it also explains why just threatening my guys with firing didn’t work so good until I tied the new service levels in with our vision for great customer service. Wow, it explains a lot of things.”

“That’s why it is my favorite model, Bubba.”

 

 

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Business Mastery Skills

Defining Good Service

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Business Coach Malcolm Upton, ActionCOACH in Fort Worth, TX serving the greater Tarrant County area discusses how to measure customer service levelsBubba and I had a discussion about how he had been defining good service and he’d decided that he might not have been doing it correctly. That left a big question hanging in the air…

“OK, Coach, I lost track of the ball when I put the 2 hour expectation in place. What should I do instead?”

“Well, Bubba, that starts where a lot of other things start – with your vision and values. Based on your vision and values as you have them stated, what are the key performance indicators that would define ‘good service’ to your clients?”

“I’m not sure, Coach. How many KPIs should I have?”

“That is going to be different from business to business, but generally one or more measures of timeliness and one or more measures of quality – meeting or exceeding the customer’s expectations – are the minimum. Often one or more measures of efficiency, or at least the resource investment you make per customer and/or transaction is also a good idea.”

“So a KPI for how long a service call takes is a good idea?”

“An excellent idea, Bubba, but it needs to be in line with your vision and values. For one set of vision and values, fast service, the faster the better, may be the right answer. That would be the right standard for a fast-food or other fast-service establishment to have. For another set of vision and values, being on time at the start of the appointment might be the critical KPI. Companies in industries notorious for making customers wait all day for them to show up would want to focus there. For others, that the appointment takes no more than the specified amount of time. This could apply to a lot of companies – people are really busy and often don’t care so much about how long something takes, as that it doesn’t take longer, or a lot shorter, than they were promised. For others, it might be that the service or product is delivered before, or maybe even right on the due date or promised time. Industries from printing to restaurants find this important – after all, a meal delivered to your table when you are half-way through your appetizer isn’t near as enjoyable as one that gets there at just the right time. It really depends on your vision and values – and what your unique selling position is.”

“I guess I need to go back and get an idea of how long it really takes to do a service call right. Then I can use that to set my service level standard.”

“Sounds about right, Bubba. What about the quality and efficiency measures?”

“Well, quality is a big deal for me, I guess at least one thing I need to measure is how often we need to go back. It should be never, but I know you’ve told me that if I measure it, it is more likely to happen.”

“That’s true. Is that the only measure of quality you want? It only measures when you have a failure.”

“Yeah, that wouldn’t be enough. I guess I can also put into the follow-up script a question like, ‘would you use our service again,’ or ‘would you refer us to a friend’ and get an idea of whether the service was just ‘good enough’ or something better.”

“OK, what about efficiency?”

“Well, the most limited resource I have is my folk’s time – I guess just measuring how much time it takes would do that.”

“Not bad, Bubba, but remember that efficiency is the ROI (Return on Investment) of your resources, in this case the ROI on your people’s time. Almost always it is a ratio of return to investment. What is a measure of return you could put into a ratio with the time your people spend?”

Bubba thought for a minute then said, “I guess there are a number of things, but one measure that would go across everything we do would be revenue. I guess I could do revenue per hour worked. That could help me do a bunch of management things.”

I had to laugh a little, “My professors would be mortified to hear you say that, but I’ve got to agree, revenue per hour worked would be a great indicator. As it varies it could point to a number of different things you could explore in more detail to improve your business in general and your profitability in particular.”

 

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Business Mastery Skills

Good Service?

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Business Coach Malcolm Upton, ActionCOACH in Fort Worth, TX serving the greater Tarrant County area, talks about customer service levelsBubba was having issues with his employees again. “Coach, I don’t know. I’m afraid I’m going to have to fire Joe.”

“Why is that, Bubba?”

“He just takes way too long and does a rotten job. I can’t have that, can I?”

“No, Bubba, you sure can’t, but if you don’t mind my asking, when you say ‘too long’ how long does he take?”

“Way too long.”

I waited for a bit to see if Bubba was going to say anything else. Finally, I said, “Sorry, I guess I wasn’t clear. When you say ‘way too long’ how many hours is that?”

“Too many.”

I was beginning to feel like I was in an Abbot & Costello sketch. “Let me ask it this way, how many hours should a service call take?”

“It shouldn’t take more than 2 hours, tops.”

“OK, and how many hours does it take Joe to do a service call?”

“Way too long.”

I promise I didn’t bang my head on the table… “Let me ask this question, Bubba, what happened that made you decide you’d have to fire Joe?”

“Oh, it was terrible. A couple of days ago, he spent 4 hours on a service call. When I pointed it out to him, he said he had to spend that amount of time in order to get the work done right. I reminded him that if he took that much time, he’d only be able to do half as many service calls in a day and I wouldn’t be able to break even, but that didn’t seem to faze him one bit.”

I caught myself before I started shaking my head… I think.

“Bubba, let me ask something different. You said that the standard for a service call was 2 hours. How did you decide on 2 hours instead of 1 or 3?”

“Do you think I should push them to do a service call in 1 hour instead?” Bubba asked.

I could see that this was going to be one of those difficult coaching conversations. “That is absolutely not a suggestion I’m making, Bubba. In fact, I’m not making any suggestions right now. I’m just trying to understand how you set the 2 hour standard.”

“That’s easy, Coach. That’s the time it takes El Cheapo, my competitor, to do a service call.”

“Is that the same El Cheapo that you use as an example of how you don’t want to do things? The ones that cut corners, use inferior parts, and generally treat their customers as one-time, get as much money out of the transaction because they’ll never call again, dupes? The ones that are revenue at any cost rather than problem solver sellers?”

“Yep.”

“You’ve told me before that it’s been years since you were in the field doing service calls, did you talk to your experienced hands about the 2 hour standard?”

“Don’t need to, everyone knows technology is better, they should be able to do a service call in half the time I used to take.”

“What new technology are your hands using?”

Bubba thought for a moment, then said, “They call in on their cell phones instead of the radio. I guess that’s about it.”

I don’t think I banged my head on the table, but I do have this mark on my forehead I can’t explain.

“Bubba, tell me again what your vision statement is.”

“To provide the highest quality service – fixing it right first time, every time – a great value at twice the price.”

“And how do your prices compare to others like El Cheapo?”

“Well we talked about that, I don’t compete on price, I compete on service and relationships with my customers, so my prices are some of the higher ones in the area.”

“How often does El Cheapo have to go back out to fix something that didn’t get done on a service call?”

“Not that often, Coach. Most folks call me or someone like me to come in and fix what El Cheapo doesn’t. I’d guess that happens to about half of El Cheapo’s customers.”

“Why do you think that about half of El Cheapo’s customers need a second service call, Bubba?”

“Because they don’t put the time and effort into the work – they’re so focused on getting out of there in 2 hours, sometimes they leave everything taken apart and laying in pieces to get out in their time limit.”

“So the 2 hour limit El Cheapo uses, the same 2 hour standard you want your folks to use, is the primary reason El Cheapo doesn’t retain customers the way you want to retain customers. Is that right?”

“Yep.” Then I saw the light go on above Bubba’s head. “I’m setting my standard by looking at the wrong things, aren’t I?”

“I reckon you might be, Bubba, I reckon you might be.”

 

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Uncategorized

Is This On?

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Business Coach Malcolm Upton, ActionCOACH in Fort Worth, TX serving the greater Tarrant County area, asks a quick questionYou know how sometime people tap on the microphone and ask, “Is this on?” This week’s blog is kind of the same thing. If you read this and find any value in my posts – please leave me a comment or at least let me know.

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Time Management

Now What?

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Business Coach Malcolm Upton, ActionCOACH in Fort Worth, TX serving the greater Tarrant County area discusses a default schedule to help get important, not urgent business tasks doneBubba and I were in his coaching session and he had had a really tough week.

“Coach, I just couldn’t seem to get anything done this week. I looked at my weekly goals at least once a day, but I just didn’t ever seem to find the time to do the marketing piece or make the follow-up calls.”

“When did you have them on your schedule, Bubba?”

I knew we had a problem when Bubba gave me the deer in the headlights look.

“You did have time on your default schedule for marketing and sales follow-up, didn’t you?”

“My default what?”

I promise, I didn’t bang my head on the table, or even shake it… I don’t think I shook it…

“A default schedule, Bubba. It is time you put on your schedule on a recurring basis to do the work on your business. Most of the time, this sort of activity is one of those important, non-urgent activities that we need to do, but if we don’t schedule time specifically for it, we’ll never get around to it.”

“So I need to schedule time for working on marketing?”

“That’s right. Remember we talked about you needing to spend 4-5 hours every week, outside of coaching sessions, working on your business. Given what we talked about today, what do you think you need to do?”

“Well, Coach, it looks like I need to go back and make some appointments with myself. I guess 4-5 hours’ worth of them…”

“Sounds like a plan, Bubba, sounds like a plan.”

 

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Coaching

OAR or BED?

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Allison Kone’ of Minds Matter Education and a member of our ActionCOACH community took the story of Bubba and the line and ran with it putting together this great graphic to illustrate the points. I’d like to recognize her publicly here because she is taking an active role in the business coaching she is getting and owning the information – which is a great way to learn how to own your business – not be owned by it.Business Coach Malcolm Upton, ActionCOACH in Fort Worth, TX serving the greater Tarrant County area presents Allison Kone's graphic about having a good attitude in business or life.

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