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David Flannery Articles

Guest post by: David Flannery

12 Steps to Implementing Anything in Your Business: Step Nine: Use Persuasion Skills - Click To Read Article
The use of persuasion is vital to get anything achieved in your business. You need to be persuasive to win over the members of your staff/ team and also to overcome any opposition you may encounter.

The Five Most Dangerous Trends In Australian Small Business Today! - Click To Read Article
It's safe to say most business owners have attended seminars on everything from leadership to sales and marketing and they say they know their importance. Some have paid business growth gurus thousands of dollars to show them how to grow their business and increase sales; they all say they know the importance of ongoing staff training and business innovation. They attend networking events to make new contacts to grow their business. However, there is plenty of evidence to show that while Australian SME owners are talking the talk, they are not walking the walk.

The Ultimate Question - Click To Read Article
One simple question can determine how well you business is doing now and if it will succeed and grow into the future.

THE MOUSETRAP FALLACY - Click To Read Article
There are 3 big areas in which the Mousetrap logic does not stand up to scrutiny. It is easy for start up business people to get blinded by their new product and business, as they have worked hard to get it to where it is today and they believe in it, so by default they believe that everyone else should feel the same way, unfortunately they seldom do.

The Success Syndrome - Click To Read Article
I want to talk to you about an illness that strikes every single successful business at some time or another. It goes through 3 predicable stages. It is called The Success Syndrome.

Make Your Website User Friendly - Click To Read Article
4 tactics to make your website more user friendly for your customers

C.A.D.D: The Reason Your Advertising Isn't Working As Well As You Need It To - Click To Read Article
There are no doubts that direct response advertising is important to small business owners. In fact for a lot of small companies it is the only prospect/customer acquisition method they use on a regular basis. However, unless done correctly this form of advertising can be less than useless. So what determines the success of your advert and by success I mean make the phones ring and the cash registers full. To find the answer to that, you must understand the biggest problem you face in your marketplace...and it isn't your competitors!

Buyer's Remorse: What is it? And How Do You Avoid It? - Click To Read Article
Buyer's remorse is a phenomenon that occurs more often then business owners would like. It is the cause of about 35% of all returns to a business. Buyer's remorse occurs when a customer is sold something they do not need, go home with the product, and then after a couple of days thinking about it actually feel remorse even anger that they were sold the item, and return it.

Build Your Business With Testimonials - Click To Read Article
Testimonials are one of the most powerful ways for you to build your business, and it is for one reason, they come from people who have already done business with you, have bought and used your services and /or products, and continue to do so. As I have said in the past people who like what you are selling but are reluctant, and reluctant for a number of reasons , the main one is that they do not what to make a mistake or be seen to make a mistake.

Advertising: The Nuts And Bolts Of Making It Work: Step One: Make your Headlines Command Attention - Click To Read Article
Most of the advertising I see small businesses use is ineffectual, image advertising. By ineffectual, I mean not making the cash register ring. Over the next couple of articles I will show you strategies and tactics which will make your advertising work for you...and by that I mean get you more customers.

Advertising: The Nuts And Bolts Of Making It Work: Step Two: Make you Advert focus on your customer and on the benefits of your product/ service not its features. - Click To Read Article
Your customers want to know what you can do for them. They want to know how what you are offering can help them meet their needs, solve their problems, help them achieve their goals. To many businesses, when advertising, make the critical mistake of writing about themselves.

Advertising: The Nuts And Bolts Of Making It Work: Step Three: Make sure your advertising is specific, has substance and is credible - Click To Read Article
Being specific is essential in advertising. It answers questions and lends credibility to your advertising. Being specific is a surefire way to convert prospects into customers. The more specific you are about what benefits your service and/or product has to offer to your customers the better response you will have from your advertising

12 Steps to Implementing Anything in Your Business: Overview - Click To Read Article
Knowing what to do to improve and grow your business is a far cry from actually getting it done, in other words, execution. You might well ask why execution is so important. Firstly, no matter how well a business is doing, if you look deep enough you will find problems and mistakes in the execution performance of the staff, work started but not completed, work delivering less than promised, error and rework having to be done, returns and refunds etc. Second your staff, I am willing to bet, have never been trained on how to execute properly and truth be told if you want to grow and build your business your staff simply need to execute far better in order to keep up with and get ahead of the rapidly and constantly changing marketplace.

12 Steps to Implementing Anything in Your Business: Step One: Take Responsibility - Click To Read Article
The underlying assumption for my framework for execution is that you, as the business owner actually want to increase your sales and profits, and if that is indeed is the case then you need to take full responsibility for making that happen. If you are a manager reading this then you are been paid by the business owner to maximize sales and profits. This means that you have the responsibility for its success, you have to look ahead, anticipate what can happen and take action before the fact to deal with it. You cannot wait, deflect, or sidestep any issue or issues

12 Steps to Implementing Anything in Your Business: Step Two: Define Your Assignment in Writing - Click To Read Article
Ideally you need to be able to sit down with your staff, define the assignment verbally, answer any questions there may be, and then issue a written memo outlining what has been agreed. While all of this may seem very simple and management 101, the giving of assignments is usually not treated with the consideration and respect it deserves.

12 Steps to Implementing Anything in Your Business : Step Three: Organise your Staff and Create a Strategy - Click To Read Article
Step two dealt with the creation of a good clear assignment. Now, I want to speak about how to respond to a clear assignment, once you have created one. You do this by organising your staff and creating a strategy. What I mean by organising your staff is the creation of a core team. This team will be responsible for the implementation process in your business. If you have a small staff number in your particular business then you can do one of two things, make your entire staff the core team or select one person who will "champion" the process.

12 Steps to Implementing Anything in Your Business: Step Four: Get Feedback and Refine Strategy - Click To Read Article
It is usually at the end of step three in this process that things start to go bad for the business owner or manager, and for one simple reason. He has devised his strategy for implementation and tries to drive it though with no consideration for the effect it will have on other people, ultimately the process he is trying to get implemented does not get done. I have seen it happen time and time again. Step four is all about talking with people, getting their feedback and getting their buy in for the process. This will mean testing your newly devised strategy before going into detailed planning and action.

12 Steps to Implementing Anything in Your Business: Step Five: Hold a Kickoff Event To Create Momentum - Click To Read Article
Once you have your strategy and you have tested it, you need to launch it. In most cases, because of the size and scope of the issues that a small or medium sized company faces, a small meeting will normally suffice. This kickoff event is the bridging point between strategy formulation and taking action.

12 Steps to Implementing Anything in Your Business : Step Six: Use Plans, Schedules, Budgets and Controls - Click To Read Article
After your launch event you will have your staff fired up any ready to go, as this stage you may still have some minor problems to contend with but you will have a goal, major elements of your plan, your management process, your team(s) working together, and things should be heading in the right direction.

12 Steps to Implementing Anything in Your Business: Step Seven: Make Demands Effectively - Click To Read Article
Successful execution requires making demands in ways that generate productive responses. You will really need to call on your demand making capabilities during the hard work of caring out your implementation plan. That is when the forces of complexity, inertia, diversion, and even opposition assert themselves and the strengths of your leadership as a business owner or manager are heavily tested.

12 Steps to Implementing Anything in Your Business: Step Eight: Follow Up...Follow Up...Follow Up! - Click To Read Article
Getting something implemented in your business is a lot like moving a huge round boulder, it takes a lot of heavy pushing to get it going, but once it is moving it only takes the lightest touch to keep it momentum going. If you have followed the previous steps, you have already done the heavy pushing to get the implementation and execution of your project underway, now it just takes a light touch to keep it going.

12 Steps to Implementing Anything in Your Business: Step Ten: Use Creative Problem Solving to Overcome Any UnForeseen Obstacles - Click To Read Article
No matter how well you plan the implementation of a project, nine times out of ten, some barrier or obstacle is going to occur that you just hadn't foreseen, so what to you do when this happens? You will have to invent ways to get over around or though the obstacles that do occur, and that is going to take creative thinking. In my experience the main unforeseen issues that crop up are managerial issues. The people in charge of the implementation project, that is the business owner and/ or manager either fail to identify some required activities in advance or the whole planning stage was not done correctly, with the outcome being...nothing works.

12 Steps to Implementing Anything in Your Business : Steps Eleven &Twelve: Create and Manage a Final Push Towards the End... - Click To Read Article
As a project is coming close to the end, your energy, and that of your team will start to wane. This is the exact time when things can go off the rails and the project fails to be implemented. The other problem towards the end of a project is that people, whose tasks are completed before everyone else, will begin to lose interest in the project. It is entirely possible that the only person at this point of the project implementation, who is completely interested in the completion of the project...is you! It is up to you as the business owner/ manager to keep people interested in getting the project finished and implemented successfully. The easiest way to do this is organise a close event.

Advertising: the nuts and bolts of making it work: Step Four: Be clear about your offer, and what you want your prospects to do, and give them a reason to take immediate action. - Click To Read Article
It would to help to understand what exactly an offer is. Your offer is the proposition you make to your marketplace, it is what you are willing to give in exchange for a response from your marketplace. Your offer is an entire package of elements, not just your product or service.

Advertising: the nuts and bolts of making it work: Step Five: Make sure your ad does not look like your competitors. - Click To Read Article
You want your business to stand head and shoulders above your competitors business in the marketplace as the logical choice for people to buy from; therefore you cannot place an ad in a magazine, in a newspaper or on the radio or T.V. that looks or sounds like the ads your competitors are placing.

Why You Need A Sales System - Click To Read Article
Today there is a hyper focus on just one area of the sales process. There are more books written about it and more information available about than any other area of the sales process...I am, of course, speaking about the close. Recently, the close has become the end all and be all of a sales encounter, perhaps because of the pressure that salespeople feel to meet ever increasing sales targets.

Why Should I Buy From You? - Click To Read Article
This is an absolutely fundamental question that you and your business must be able to answer. It is a question that every single one of your customers ask either implicitly, to themselves or explicitly, to you. Do you have a clear, succinct, compelling, competition busting answer to this question for your business? If not, you are in trouble!

What Business Are You In? - Click To Read Article
It is the very first question I ask my new clients. The answers I get obviously vary, and I have never had a client give me the correct answer. If I was to ask you, as a business owner, what business are you in? What would be your answer? Some of the answers I have gotten in the past are: " I am in the recruitment business!" " I am in the concrete business!" " I am in the retail business!" "I am in the real estate business!" These answers are all wrong! and if your answer was like those above, then you are wrong as well!

Profit Crisis Exposed Report Released...Can it Help You? - Click To Read Article
The Profit Crisis Exposed Report is the result of my working with, and helping, business owners around the world grow their businesses and increase their profits. Through my first company David Flannery Consulting and now its successor the greatly expanded Profit Growth Dynamics International I have worked with and continue to work with a great number of business owners in Australia, Ireland,The United Kingdom and the United States.

Scarcity And The Next Best Alternative - Click To Read Article
Pricing in essence is all about looking at your customers next best alternative. What does that mean? Simply, in order to set your value based prices, you need to know what alternative options your customers have. If you are selling a service or item that is common place and easy to get hold of, that means your customers have a lot of alternatives rather than buying from you which in turn will dictate your pricing level, if you are selling something that is hard to get hold of that means your customers will have very little alternatives to buy other than from you.

It's As Easy As Good, Better, Best! - Click To Read Article
When you start to look at implementing value pricing in your business, you will undoubtedly try to find the perfect price for each of your products and services. That price which will extract the maximum profit from your customers. However, early on into the process you are going to realise the following truth, different people will place different values on what you sell, and because of this they will pay different prices.

It's All About Value - Click To Read Article
Cost plus pricing, the method of pricing where a business adds on a specific amount over the cost of their products and services to give themselves a profit margin and to ensure all costs are covered. It is easy to implement and the most used method of pricing in the business world today. It is also a hugely flawed methodology

All Customers Care About Is Price? - Click To Read Article
"If you find a price lower than ours, we will beat it by 10%" "Lowest price guarantee" "Lowest price guaranteed" " Lowest Price promise" You see these price advertisements everywhere, nowadays there is a laser focus on low price. For some businesses and companies lowest price has become their only competitive weapon in their marketplace, and not just because the economy is bad, but because it's the easiest way out. It is, however, also the least profitable way of doing business.

Anatomy Of A Buying Decision - Click To Read Article
Before your prospect makes the decision to buy your product or service, four decisions must be made. For the most part these decisions will be made inside their heads or in conjunction with others depending on whether it is a joint decision making process or not. In small to medium sized businesses one person may make the buying decision, but in larger companies it is usual for the decision be made by a group of people. Whatever the amount of people involved in the buying decision, the same four decisions must be answered.





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