Does your office feel cluttered? Does your desk have any part of its surface that’s free for you to work on? Are you shuffling piles of paper from one place to another?

As an aside, weren’t we told that computers would make our offices paperless? Well, don’t hold your breath… as someone wisely said back in the early days of computers, the paperless office is just as likely as the paperless bathroom

Back to today, if you are constantly walking into your office resolved to get rid of the clutter, you are not alone, and here are some ways to go about the decluttering process. (Of course, you could always order one of the 239 books about decluttering on Amazon, though hopefully you wouldn’t lose it under one or another of the piles.)

A plan for your clean-up project is a good place to start. Sort through the papers, notes and piles on your desk and be willing to toss! Save only those papers that have real value and put them in categories so they will have a home. Make as few categories as possible.

Stop using your desk as a filing cabinet. Review and revise your filing system in your file cabinet and make good use of it so the files you need on a regular basis are close at hand. Color coding is always a good idea. And moving the files you don’t need regularly to another room, garage or closet is a good way of clearing space in your office.

One suggestion that seems to be just plain common sense – though worth mentioning just in case – is to rid yourself of the habit of printing things out to read later. Print only what is really necessary. It saves both paper and space.

Get in the habit of clearing your desk as the last action of the day so you’ll come to a clean desk and space in the morning. It will be more inviting to start fresh without having to first clear up yesterday’s clutter.

If you need space-making or organizing products such as shelving or drawer sets, get them. The ability to stash and store the junk that accumulates in and on your workspace is worth the investment.

Get rid of old magazines, books, articles and other stuff that just sits around gathering dust and creating distraction. It takes a bit of determination, ruthlessness and a willingness to go through the accumulation and get down to the bare minimum. But it’s worth the effort.

The post Ways To Make Your Office Neater first appeared on Lane Business Consulting.

Do you feel tired, overwhelmed and slightly burned out? With Q4 upon us, we are in the home stretch, and we need to get our mojo back to finish strong. Do you want to crawl across the finish line, or do you want to be a winner in this race? Let’s do a little review and revamping so we go into the final quarter with the attitude of champions.

What are your daily habits? Seriously!

Do you have a morning routine that energizes you for the day ahead? Do you do some sort of exercise, reading, journaling, review of your goals, setting of intentions, meditation, affirmations? If not, why not?

Most successful people have a powerful morning routine. It doesn’t have to be long. It could be 10 minutes, but it sets the tone for the day. Give yourself every opportunity to be successful. From the list of possible choices to adopt into your morning practice, select one that you know you can commit to and then just do it!You’ll see that it does make a difference.

What do you do to advance your market intelligence? Do you read, listen to a blog, watch a video on YouTube?

Do you make lists of your intended actions for each day? Do you follow up with referrals? Do you do whatever you need to do to move one step closer to achieving your goals?

It’s time to GO-ALL-IN!

Win this game. It’s yours for the taking. Do the right thing at the right time for the right reasons!

The post Q4 Is Here; Finish The Year Strong first appeared on Lane Business Consulting.

Keep Your Word

Dependability can be defined as keeping your word. Truthfully say what you’re going to do and then do it. It’s as simple as that! Have you ever had the experience of exchanging business cards with someone at a networking event where they say they’ll contact you with some information or a referral… but you don’t hear from them? When you see them again and mention that the promised information never reached you, they apologize. They promise to send it to you this time. But chances are they won’t. They are showing you they aren’t dependable. If you find yourself in this sort of situation, making a promise to provide information and then getting caught up in everyday busyness instead, you are demonstrating that you can’t be depended on. And, certainly that’s not the message you intend to communicate.

It’s so easy to make a promise when you’re standing in front of someone, and so easy to forget or just plain get busy about other things. Don’t let yourself fall into this trap. The solution is really quite simple. Write things down on your calendar!

Keep Your Promises

You absolutely mustchange this behavior and deliver on your commitments. Figure out what the very next step is after you make a promise or commitment. Keep a small notebook handy to write action steps or use your phone’s notebook app. Put the commitment on your calendar or task list. Make sure you contact the person to whom you made the promise to let them know if there’s a delay.

Get known as someone who is dependable. Your business reputation depends on it!

The post How to be Absolutely Dependable first appeared on Lane Business Consulting.

What are you aware of right now? The room temperature? The chair you’re sitting on? The sun shining through the window? The music that’s playing? The hum of the A/C?

Awareness practices require keen listening and observation.

• Listen to how others communicate. One way to do this is to shut up! Most of us blabber on and while faking listening. We are just waiting to talk. As you listen, pay attention to how people say what they want. Do they say what they want or what they don’t want. You can then choose the door you want to open…the want door or the don’t want
• Choose to read a variety of publications. What piques your awareness about what you read?
• Learn to formulate your opinions and understand your own awareness in the world, in your life, and in what you truly stand for. You don’t have to agree with what you read or listen to. Actually disagreeing with an author or newscaster or speaker helps heighten your awareness.
• Once a week, turn off the media. Escape the constant barrage and go to the beach or take a hike. Push all the constant chatter out of your mind and focus on the sound and sights around you.

Awareness is all-encompassing. It includes everything you are and all that you have experienced. It embraces everything you have ever thought and said or done. And, it embraces everything you have never though and said or done. Hidden potential is the richest reward of expanded awareness.

Awareness stimulates us to know and understand ourselves at levels we could never enjoy without a conscious and purposeful focus.

The post Embrace Awareness first appeared on Lane Business Consulting.

Carla (not her real name) borrowed funds to design and equip her little shop.

Rising at 4:00 am to bake the muffins and make coffee was fun for about 2 weeks, but soon Carla became weary of the early morning rush and preparation to open the doors at 6:00 am. Customers straggled in, and she barely made enough to pay the first month’s rent. The remaining expenses came out of borrowed money and savings.

Staff issues began to erupt, and soon Carla was spending more and more time at the shop, cleaning and planning and not enjoying afternoons off. Painfully, Carla learned that entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart.

Her love of baking muffins faded. It was no longer fun. When her taste in muffins didn’t match her customers’, they didn’t buy. Her shop was too small to meet everyone’s tastes and requests. If she featured blueberry muffins, it was a sure thing that customers wanted banana nut. The joy of serving the public lost much of its charm.

The lessons Carla learned were many, and she shared a long list. One of the outstanding lessons was this: never think that your hobby or passion is reason enough to launch a business. Carla realized that her love of baking muffins was not reason enough to launch a business. She also learned that knowing how to bake great muffins is not the same as knowing how to be in business.

After six months of what turned out to be an unhappy experience, Carla sold her shop – at a loss.

Why am I sharing this story? I’ve recently encountered several wannabe entrepreneurs and realize that they haven’t done their homework. They probably don’t know what questions to ask, and even if they did know the questions, they wouldn’t know who to ask. What the business books tell you and what the reality turns out to be can be worlds apart. In my book, Business-Building Referrals, I share my own story about believing that I could build my business through networking. I was a networking dervish. When I realized that I was spending money I didn’t have doing what the book authors were telling me to do, yet not generating much business, I was stunned. How could this be? I am a good student. I was following the rules!

Having learned the hard way myself, I am offering a complimentary Q&A to any budding entrepreneur. Call me at 813-486-2837 or e-mail me at Lorraine@absmock1.us to arrange for a 30 minute call. I will take you through a list of questions that can help you avoid having a “Carla experience”!

The post You Gotta Like Making Muffins! first appeared on Lane Business Consulting.

Flush out all the tail chasing ”prospects” in your system.
We all have ”prospects” in our pipeline who take up time and energy. And, we know in our hearts they will never buy. Get them out of your system now. Don’t spend any more of your precious time on
them. Not because you are insensitive or mean, but because your time and energy are needed to focus on real prospects. Vow not to spend any more time chasing your tail ~ or anyone else’s.

Get organized.
Many of us spend as much time ”organizing” every day as we do working. This ”organizing” takes the form of searching for papers, sorting through accumulated piles, or attempting to put things in their place. Take a day or two and get yourself organized. Just do it! If the task seems formidable, ask for help. Once you are organized, you can get in the habit of spending 30 minutes at the end of your workday to prepare for the next day. Don’t waste half the year ”getting ready”.

Know who is a real prospect and focus on them.
If you haven’t already defined your ideal prospect(s) in detail, do so now.  Many business owners waste a great deal of time chasing unqualified prospects because they haven’t taken the time to define for themselves exactly who their real prospects are. If you don’t take the time to define who your prospects are, chances are you are chasing prospects who don’t qualify.  Stop chasing ‘squirrels’ and learn to be discriminating about whom you want to do business with.

Eliminate the success-killing busy work.
If what you do isn’t directly involved with finding and connecting with qualified prospects, making sales presentations and closing sales, or getting a sale completed, it’s busy work.  Busy work may make you feel like you’re accomplishing something, but it isn’t making you a dime. If it doesn’t make money, don’t do it.

Learn to generate referrals.
Referrals are the best, most cost effective prospecting and marketing method there is. Nothing can beat referrals in terms of ROI, close ratio, and promoting client loyalty.  Yet few business owners generate many quality referrals.  Less than 15% of all referrals will impact your business if you don’t learn how to generate real referrals.  Learn the process that really generates a large number of high quality referrals and make your marketing work for you.

Create a consistent client communication campaign.
If you don’t already have a consistent communication campaign for your clients and prospects, create one now.  You should be touching each of your clients and long-term prospects 12 to 16 times a year – or more.  Use a combination of media–calls, emails, newsletters, letters, postcards.  Make sure each of your communications brings value to your client.  The key question to ask yourself before making any contact is “how does this benefit my client ?”  If it doesn’t benefit the client, don’t send it or don’t call. Never waste your clients’ time.

Implementing these actions will get 2018 on track to be one of the best years you’ve ever had.

Have a Safe and Happy New Year!

The post 7 Great Tips To Make 2018 A Great Year first appeared on Lane Business Consulting.

Define Your Niche

No matter what business you’re in, you’ve got competition. Luckily, there’s the idea of the “niche market”. Identifying and carving out a niche – a special space — in the marketplace, allows you to discover the buyers looking for your products or services there. You can then focus, or target, your appeal toward them.

Your work isn’t over after identifying your target market. The next step is to create an even more focused niche, or perhaps several niches, within that target market. The idea of niche marketing is to be a big fish in a small pond, rather than a small fish in a big pond. Niche marketing is also sometimes referred to as micromarketing.

Recognize that you can’t be all things to all people. The more you can narrow your definition of a target market, the clearer your marketing message can be. The process of defining a niche within your target market is the key to success. Even large companies recognize the value and benefit of this exercise. Take Walmart. The niche defined by this big company is shoppers who are bargain-minded. Shoppers who want more upscale products shop elsewhere.

You will hear business owners talk about “finding” a niche. But a niche isn’t something you “find” at the end of the rainbow. Niches aren’t hiding waiting for you to magically discover them. According to Lynda Falkenstein, author of Nichecraft, “Good niches don’t just fall into your lap; they must be carefully crafted”.

Smaller Is Bigger

Many entrepreneurs fall into a state of confusion and get entangled into the “all over the map” trap. They think they can engage in many activities and be good at all of them. Sadly, they learn tough lessons. Falkenstein warns: “Smaller is bigger in business and smaller is not all over the map; it’s highly focused”.

She advises the small business owner to create a good niche and be as specific as you can. Otherwise you will wear yourself out and your message will be weak and confusing.

Qualities Of A Good Niche

A good niche takes you where you want to go. It supports your business vision.

Your customers are there!

Once you’ve defined your niche, a marketing plan comes together readily.

You see it as a business game you can play and win.

It evolves and supports your core business, and you can see long term success.

The post Are You in the “All Over the Map” Trap? first appeared on Lane Business Consulting.

Consider a major league baseball slugger at bat. The ball is barreling at him at maybe 95 miles per hour, enough to solidly intimidate most of us. But the slugger waits and waits and waits…, and at the precise right moment he swings his bat and sends the ball flying out of the park.

The term “active procrastination” somehow doesn’t do justice to this. What’s really going on here is mastery. Not just skill and professionalism, but outright mastery.

It’s how a great batter refuses to be intimidated (which the pitcher is surely trying to achieve), and instead waits until the right moment to swing. It’s how a great general knows which battles to fight, which to decline, and when. It’s how a great manager knows when to hire and when to wait, and a great investor knows when to sell and when to hold.

To quote the Kenny Rogers song, “The Gambler”,

You got to know when to hold ‘em

Know when to fold ‘em

Know when to walk away

Know when to run….

With the game of poker as metaphor for all the hard things in life, this captures mastery perfectly. A master is not afraid to wait – to delay – until the right moment to act. It’s not procrastination at all. It’s mastery.

The post It’s Not Procrastination At All first appeared on Lane Business Consulting.

But take a good look at recent situations where you faulted yourself for procrastinating. What happened? Did the project get cancelled, or were the due dates changed to accommodate you? When I probe what my clients mean by procrastination, we often discover that the extra time serves them well in various ways: they make better decisions because additional information came to light; they save money because an additional opportunity presents itself, or a different approach becomes possible. A slower pace to initiating action often has a big payoff.

It is important to know though whether your procrastination is of the “passive” or “active” variety.

When it is passive, procrastination shows itself as a resistance to taking action, replete with excuses and reasons why action cannot be taken. Active procrastination on the other hand shows up as handling tasks thoughtfully and in measured fashion, as more information is being gathered. Active attention to the timing sets the stage for the eventual launch.

Embrace procrastination as a skill that bears fruit. The constant put downs about procrastinators only serve to discourage people from developing an important skill that breathes creativity and imagination.

The post Procrastination: Celebrate It! first appeared on Lane Business Consulting.

This fundamental truth is important to remember when interacting with customers. Each of your customers experiences your service in a personal way. The exact same interaction can be excellent and noteworthy for one, and not-so-special for another. The implication of this reality is that experiences designed to serve everyone actually satisfy few. Understanding each customer individually is the route to excellent service.

While it may be out of the question to individualize every single interaction, understanding and customizing for market segments can have tremendous value. For instance, senior clients may enjoy chit-chat and conversation as part of their visit, but younger professionals may prefer a quick interaction that moves them along in a busy day. Knowing the subtle attentions valued by segments of your market is the all-important skill for providing the kind of service that makes you and your business stand out.

Take the time to consider what your customers currently appreciate and what additional attention would highlight your service for them – because it’s personal.

The post It’s Personal first appeared on Lane Business Consulting.