Performance Archives - Monetization Magic

Divorcing Clients: When to Let it Go!

You have screened your client, agreed to create a relationship and have created value for your client. Recently, you notice that the energy of the relationship has changed. Any of the following could be occurring:

General disrespect from either party
Client does not honor ground rules originally set at the beginning of the business relationship
You no longer enjoy servicing this customer
Your clients needs have outgrown your capabilities
It is getting harder and harder to please them
They are no longer honoring your original agreements
The amount of time spent to fulfill the agreement is more than the value of the agreement
Verbal abuse – It happens!
Client has stated that they (or someone they know) can perform the job better than you can
Constant drama
Insufficient lead time given to accomplish agreed upon work
Client is not clear on the intended goals
Client is not completing their required tasks and blames you
Client is not giving clear direction even when coached
Client is not devoting time needed to the project
Client wants you to be their personal psychologist
Client is expecting free services because you have become “friends”
Something has changed for you which does not allow you to honor the original agreement

Obviously, this is just a sampling of reasons to part ways with a client. You may have found one of the reasons above applies to one of your clients or you may have a completely different situation with which you are dealing. One thing is clear though, you are at a crossroads with your business relationship!

You will want to attempt to resolve the situation; however, if you still cannot resolve the situation it is time to work out how to amicably part ways.

Some of the things to consider are:

Settling the financial end of the agreement – my take on this is if it costs more to collect the monies owed than the actual amount owed, just let the client know that they will have 10 days to settle the account or you’ll be sending them a 1099 at the end of the year for the remainder outstanding. If the amount is more, you’ll need to look at how you allowed that to happen and adjust your processes to not allow that in the future along with contracting a lawyer to handle the settlement of the account.
Turning over control of the digital assets – give the client the information they need to gain control of the account once all monies are paid in full.
Meeting with your replacement – meet with them to turn over control and be courteous. You never know if they might be your next joint venture partner! If you find that they do not have the skills to replace you, advice your client of your concerns and give them 1 or 2 references of more qualified replacements.

Occasionally, there are times when emotions run high. Do everything you can to take the high road and not get baited into an emotionally heated argument. This is a transaction, nothing more, nothing less. If they wish to raise emotions, simply suggest that the meeting be postponed until they can gather their composure. Here’s a trick that I learned from my son this past weekend: He said that if he’s talking on the phone, he always listens with his left ear because the left or logical side of his brain hears the conversation first and he’s less likely to get into an emotional discussion that way. When emotions are raised, intelligence is lowered – remain intelligent!

The way you end a business relationship is just as important as how you begin the relationship. You want to part ways as quickly as possible with the least amount of hassle on both sides and allow yourself the bandwidth to move on to your next ideal client. It is possible that after a period of time, this client may realize how good they had it with you and may decide to employ your services again or they may refer someone to you based on how well this transaction is completed.

Website Design/Development versus Virtual Assistance

By SoftwareGirl

Let’s start with some definitions:

Web design encompasses many different skills and disciplines in the production and maintenance of websites. The different areas of web design include web graphic design; interface design; authoring, including standardized code and proprietary software; user experience design; and search engine optimization.

Web development is a broad term for the work involved in developing a web site for the Internet (World Wide Web) or an intranet (a private network). Web development can range from developing the simplest static single page of plain text to the most complex web-based internet applications, electronic businesses, and social network services. A more comprehensive list of tasks to which web development commonly refers, may include web design, web content development, client liaison, client-side/server-side scripting, web server and network security configuration, and e-commerce development. Among web professionals, “web development” usually refers to the main non-design aspects of building web sites: writing markup and coding.

A virtual assistant (typically abbreviated to VA, also called a virtual office assistant) is generally self-employed and provides professional administrative, technical, or creative (social) assistance to clients remotely from a home office.

What does all this mean? In layman’s terms, basically the website developer builds the house, the website designer decorates the interior of the house and the virtual assistant creates the open house party. Now if your foundation cracks, typically you would not call the person who created your open house party, you would call the person who built the house.

What I see happening in the market place is that in a rush to make some money, folks are advertising that they are some sort of web/virtual guru who have no business even attempting much less getting paid high dollars until they have some training, certification, degree, sizable portfolio or massive experience. But they’ll only charge me $2.00 per hour! That’s great! How do you know they’ll finish the job? On time? With quality workmanship? It seems the entrepreneur is now learning exactly what the Fortune 500 companies had to learn and that is that not everyone has a great work ethic, experience and commitment and it doesn’t matter how much you saved on the job if those ingredients are not included because what you’re really losing is the time that you could’ve been pursuing income generating opportunities. You’ll never recover that time.

Technically what I see happening as a result of the blur between these terms is half built websites, websites that look like a 13-year old built them, hacked websites due to non-existent security, angry entrepreneurs who are dazzled by the buzz words but don’t really know what they want beyond they want a professional looking website that brings them money every month.

To help bring clarity to the intimidating task of hiring your technical team, here are 7 basic questions that you can start with to get you closer to what you really want:

1. How long have you been doing web design, web development, virtual assistance? 2-3 years is a good starting point

2. Do you offer a guarantee? If they won’t even guarantee that they will honor their word and deliver what is promised, RUN AWAY!

3. May I have a link to your online portfolio? Even someone who is just starting out will have done some practice work and will have digital portfolio.

4. May I see your testimonials? If they haven’t started collecting testimonials, ask for references who can speak about their quality of work.

5. Do you maintain the solutions that you build? If they’re not willing to maintain the solutions they build, again RUN AWAY!

6. Do you have any degrees or certifications? Degrees and certifications tell you that this individual has spent some time, money and effort to advance their knowledge. Yes, there are some who choose to teach themselves and that’s where the portfolio comes into play.

7. Who are you currently being professionally coached by? A true professional is always learning new techniques, expanding their pool of knowledge!

When you’re starting out as an entrepreneur, don’t be afraid to work with a true professional who has experience and produces quality work. If that little voice in your head says, “But you can’t afford it!” acknowledge the little voice by saying “Thank you for sharing” and ask the professional how you can work together to make this more affordable for you. You may need to sell some of your products and services before you can contract the professional or perhaps they have a payment plan that you can take advantage of that is not advertised up front.

Hosting: What does 99.9% uptime mean?

By SoftwareGirl

A website is housed on what is called a website host or a computer in a data center (rather than a computer under your brother-in-laws bed, ew!) that serves the website to the internet. A site that is “down” is as good as not having a site at all – no visitors, no traffic, no revenue, nothing – zilch. Because of this, a very high uptime guarantee percentage should be your top, or at the very least, major criterion when choosing a host.

99.9% uptime is currently the industry standard for most hosting companies that service the average Joe/Jane on the street. So what does that actually mean in terms of actual hours and minutes? It’s a rather simple calculation really.

The total number of minutes in a month x (100-uptime%)/100
= 30days x 24hours x 60min x (100-99.9)/100
= 43200 x (0.1)/100
= 43.2 minutes (max downtime).

So, if it is 99.9%, it means your website should not be down for more than a total of about 43.2 minutes in a month. Mind you, the total number of minutes in a month is about 43200 minutes or 720 hours. So, 0.1% of downtime is actually very minimal. Out of this much time, your host should only down your site for a max of 43.2 minutes – whether it is for maintenance work, reboot, troubleshooting (because some monkey shares the same server as you and ran some mass emailing program/malicious script that cause CPU usage to go red ?), change of failed hardware etc.

This does not mean that your site will be down for 43 minutes every month. That figure is actually the longest or maximum down time. That’s not a lot of time unless you’re in the middle of a massive launch and you’re bleeding money because your potential customers are unable to get to your website. Some good hosts might actually give you 100% uptime for months in a row in reality – even though they state 99.9% for the guarantee that they give. These are hosts that take care of their CPU / RAM / executable file security etc – overall server environment properly.

Who tracks this? Well hopefully, the hosting company that you are contracting with is tracking this because they will be able to determine the cost effectiveness of the hardware that they are using so that they can make intelligent decisions regarding their own hardware maintenance costs based on this and other information. In theory, you can ask for your money back each time that they don’t honor their 99.9% uptime guarantee. They don’t freely give out money when they miss the mark, you need to ask for it. How would you know they didn’t miss the mark? You would need to track this information. Hosting companies are literally banking on the fact that most folks will say, “Ain’t nobody got time for that!” at this point. They’re right, most people (virtual assistants, online business managers, business owners) don’t have time for that. Most website developers who are worth their salt will write a computer program to track that information for you.

Some hosting services exclude normal maintenance time from this uptime guarantee and you will want to watch for this.

10 Ways to Expand Your Brick and Mortar Business – Part 2 of 2

By SoftwareGirl

This post is a continuation of 10 Ways to Expand Your Brick and Mortar Business – Part 1

Meaningful content on the website. Due to the Google search engine, it is imperative that meaningful content be placed regularly on your website. That is why most static websites do not rank well with the search engines. The search engines and your potential customers are interested in what is new and exciting. If you just have a billboard website that states your name, address and phone number, and your competitor has a website that talks about weekly events, what’s new in the industry, new inventory, new employees and is constantly updating their website, they will naturally outrank you in the search engines. Ranking is what the industry is all about because let’s face it, if you’re not on the first page or two of search results, most folks will never see your website. The object is to engage your customer so they see you as a friend even before they pick up the phone or park in front of your business. People buy from people they know, like and trust. They want to see people and people in motion on your website rather than just having pretty pictures and text to read.

Google places. Google places is a free ad for businesses so that their basic information can be found out on the internet. Optimally, your place on Google places will also have a link to your highly interactive website along with your business hours and a map so that your business can be located.

Host events. Your business needs to be a hub of activity and the way to make it a hub of activity is to host events. Invite people into your business. Host a Chamber of Commerce after hours event, ol’ Cal would often film the commercials at his lot so there was always a new animal to view. You can also invite people in for free maintenance or checkups to ensure they will not need expensive service later. For a car dealership, offer to have heater and air conditioning check ups, tire rotation, brake inspection, belt and hose inspection and other easy value added services. The events you host are done to add value to the customer experience. When you add enough value, your prospective customer will come to see you as a trusted resource.

Incredible Offer. You want to give prospective customers an incredible offer. For the car lot, it could be a coupon book for discount services or free detailing on their current vehicle. When you give the incredible offer it is always something they would definitely want and it is in exchange for their name and email. You will continue to use their name and email to notify them of future events and other items of interest.

Complimentary Products. Once your customers purchase an item or service from you, they usually will purchase complimentary products to make their initial purchase last longer or to decorate their initial purchase. In the example of the used cars, complimentary products would include extended warranties, car insurance, supplemental car insurance (like AAA), car washes, car audio, specialty rims, car security, tinted windows, windshield replacement and repair, mobile oil change services, after market part suppliers and apparel.

Digital Products. Digital products are great because you can make them once and sell them over and over again. Digital products for a car dealership might include a video of what to check when buying a used car, it could be an affiliate link to a supplier that carries something that is commonly ordered that you choose not to stock, digital products could be tickets to a concert for a celebrity that happens to be coming to town next week that sponsors your vehicles, or sound file of what your cool mufflers actually sound like when installed on your car. You’re probably laughing about that last one but that is an actual product…and my friend paid $29 for that sound file….still laughing?

Newsletter. The newsletter is published at least twice a month telling your customers about upcoming new events and information having to do with your business. You can also tell them funny stories or invite to future events. For the car business, a newsletter could be used to notify customers of recalls and give them ways to quickly and easily take care of needed maintenance. Let them know about your shuttle service.

Social Media. Social media is where you create a community around your business. You’re still being of service and it helps to create a buzz around your business. For the car dealer, you might want to list videos of the latest sliding cars due to the ice storm last week, or pictures of the most modified cars. You could have poll on the upcoming changes in the new car models. You could have a poll on whether girls or guys like a particular model better than the other. You would want to take pictures of your live events and post those up on social media for others to see.

If you like what you read in this article and would like to see how you can expand YOUR business, apply for a complimentary Action Strategy Session so that you can have a clear roadmap to take your busines to the next level! The Action Strategy Session is valued at $297.00 and will give you concrete ways that you can move forward in your business.

10 Ways to Expand Your Brick and Mortar Business – Part 1 of 2

By SoftwareGirl

httpv://youtu.be/QOsLdT4slsk

When I was a little girl, my family moved to New Mexico from New Jersey. In New Mexico, we only had 3 TV stations and they would only broadcast during certain hours of each day. The information broadcast on that TV station was selective and even back in those days, what they broadcast was determined by what would get the TV station the highest ratings. Everyday, I would see a commercial for a used car dealer who was in California and has some of the goofiest commercials I had ever seen. His commercials often featured his “dog”, Spot. His dog was often not a dog but would be an elephant or a tiger or some other wild animal. Sometimes I wondered if people would watch him just to see the day when dear ol’ Cal actually got eaten by his “dog”, Spot!

I tell you this to make this point…Cal Worthington was all the way in California and I was a little girl all the way in the desert of New Mexico…but I knew who he was. Cal Worthington sold a lot of cars when he ran those commercials. Eventually Cal passed away. Many years later, I had an opportunity to visit the great state of California. When I got there, what did I remember about California? You guessed it! I remembered ol’ Cal Worthington and his wild dog, Spot. I actually passed by the car lot and it was an event to me because I was able to remember all his commercials and the friends I was with at the time remembered him too.

Cal Worthington used TV to advertise his car lot and he attracted customers from the next town, the next county, the next state away. There are a lot of people in the great state of California and he advertised so well that a little girl all the way in New Mexico (954 miles away) and 30 years later remembered his car lot. Think about it, he was just another used car dealer and he found away to make his name known to a much broader audience. Within 10 years of beginning in the business, his dealership was #1 in the nation! He attracted so much attention that Johnny Carson even had him on the Tonight Show which had a national reach!

You are blessed because business owners now do not have to purchase TV air time to get our message out! We are able to rely on the technology that we have at our figure tips and our own ingenuity to promote our message.

To illustrate how this works, I’ll be using ol’ Cal Worthington’s business to show you how we could expand his business using today’s technology:

Website. Your website is the virtual hub of your business. The website could be used to show people the new car models, book appointments with customers to come in a look at a car, apply for car financing so that they could have the convenience of knowing that they were already approved for a vehicle before they arrived and they could just come in a pick out their new vehicle. They could schedule their normal service appointments, talk to a mechanic live via the website chat feature, order new accessory items for their new car or get a trade in value for their vehicle.

Keywords on the Website. Using keywords helps the search engines to direct customers to your website. Cal Worthington’s keywords might have been “Ford”, “dog Spot”, used cars, new cars, Long Beach, CA, and so on. Today, Cal Worthington dealership still exists and the keywords they use are as follows:

long beach ford, ford long beach, long beach ford parts, long beach ford service, used ford long beach, new ford long beach

Business Processes Create Business Bliss

By SoftwareGirl

Every business has it’s processes. Sometimes they are something as simple as a tickler file in a cabinet so that you know when to initiate a certain activity. It can be how you answer your phone, how to process a payment or refund, how you interact with your customers or even how you deliver your service. The processes can be as complicated as a fully integrated software sequence with checks, balances and validations at every step of the way. Your business processes may begin looking somewhat like the course shown in this video:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MejbOFk7H6c&feature=player_embedded

What is your business standing on? Taking the action to begin defining the processes is a great first step.

Business Processes Serve the Business.

The complexity of the business process can enable or constrict a business. Business processes need to be modified as a business grows. When the processes are not designed for flexibility from the outset, they can create complexity where none is needed. This will show up with extended time frames for getting some action done. It will show up with people who circumvent the process as it was designed which oftentimes causes other things to break. It can show up as confusion and chaos in the day to day operations. The business process needs to serve the highest good of the business which is meant to produce the highest profit with the least amount of effort. When business processes are designed properly, they work fluidly with little stress and a very high amount of efficiency.

Business Processes Ensure Quality Remains Constant.

This can be a double edged sword. Processes ensure that your quality remains the same. Growth requires some amount of change. How do you remain the same while changing? This can happen in a phased sequence. You don’t have to change everything at once. You can create the new process and implement the new process a step at a time knowing that it won’t be perfect from the beginning and giving yourself the latitude to make adjustments along the way to perfection.

Start small. Pick something like regular hours or answering the phone or producing your newsletter to start with and create a process around it. It can be as simple as writing down the steps on a piece of paper and executing the steps on a consistent basis. Once you’re able to execute the steps without disruption from unknown factors you can move to the next logical step.

Business Processes Provide Structured Platforms.

You can use the step you just completed as the launch pad to give you the structure necessary to move business upward to the next level. When you find your self in a place where you’re fighting fires all day long, fight the fire in front of you and fight a second fire proactively. Over time you will find that you begin to run out of fire and processes begin to work to bring order to your environment. Once you have order, then you can begin to grow knowing that it will again become a little chaotic until the new process is refined.

Planning to Succeed in 2012

By SoftwareGirl

Do you have the processes in place to help you to succeed in 2012? If you’re just starting, do you have your list in place? If not, what are you actively doing to create your list?

The ability to use processes for the basic functionality of your business tells the tale of whether your business is a smooth running machine or if it’s an only half drafted

Rube Goldberg mechanism

Rube Goldberg mechanism that changes with each day. The difference between the two is the ability for the system owner to focus on what is actually occurring repeatedly in the business in order for the business to create revenue. The good news is that you already do this to some extent when you get up in the morning.

Most people get up, attend to personal hygiene, eat, drink and then move to the first item on their to-do list for the day. At the end of the day, they come home, eat, recreate a bit, personal hygiene to prepare for bed and then bedtime. The getting up process and retiring process that are used here personally could be compared to the process that you use to bring a customer on board and the process that you use to let a customer go.

Processes can be used in all areas of your business even when you’re just starting. Processes are generally put in place in a rough form and refined over the course of time. So the good news here is that you can start with just the idea that “Hey, I think this is a good idea for a process!”. Once the process is in place, working well and refined to where you could almost do it in your sleep, then you’re ready to automate the process and take yourself out of it so that it runs by itself without you. That’s the real beauty of having a process! You don’t have to hire somebody, you don’t have to double check anything, you just have the confidence of knowing that until IT tells you it’s having an issue, you know it’s working! This is where the machines truly begin to work for you and it’s a beautiful thing when this happens!

So you have the beginning and the end processes of what you need for your business. The rest is just the processes in the middle. Those will vary in specifics from business to business. In an information marketing business, you might have processes such as newsletter creation and production, speaking engagements, order fulfillment, credit card processing, reversing credit card transactions (hopefully there are at a minimum), affiliate communications, and so on. Once you have found all the processes at a high level that you need, you will label and define those processes. Think of the processes as a point of arrival. For instance, once a customer has arrived at the “on board” stage, what does that mean? What activities have already occurred that have brought the customer to this point. Those activities are your action steps. You will have at least one action step between each stage.

Obviously, this is a very simplified version of what you are doing; however, I believe this will give you an idea of the basic structure. Some of the common business processes are procurement, financing, marketing and sales, human resources, manufacturing, transportation and customer service. To assist you in getting started with thinking about what you want to present as offerings to you customer, I have created for you a Freedom Funnel, calendar and cash flow projection template to assist you in planning for 2012 in your business.

Heat Wave Kills Electronics

By SoftwareGirl

Do what you can over the next several weeks to keep as cool as possible! That goes for your electronics too. As the heat wave in the US continues to move East and get even hotter, remember to keep your electronics out of the heat and do not leave them in your vehicle. That includes your GPS device, cell phone, laptops, all your electronics. The excessive heat can warp the circuit boards, keyboards, and the screens.

Leaving electronics in the trunk of your vehicle will expose your equipment to temperatures in excess of 115 degrees. If you find yourself out with your electronics, just take them with you. It’s much less hassle than having to repair or replace and reprogram everything.

If you have sprinkler system or alarm system circuitry in your garage and the temperatures are creeping over 110 degrees, it’s time to think about moving a fan into the garage to attempt to cool things down there too.

Venturing out to the pool to keep cool? Don’t leave your iPad or laptop on a metal table as that will cause issues as well. It’s best to keep the electronics inside where it is much cooler. Think cool thoughts everyone and we’ll get through this!