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Our lives as professionals marketing our own services/products would be much easier if clients would simply read our sales copy and decide to hire us. But in the real world, it rarely works that way. Instead, we must have conversations with our prospects before a sale takes place -- sometimes several conversations.

These selling conversations can seem difficult or intimidating, but they don't have to be. Here are four simple steps to turn conversations into paying clients.

Step 1. What do you need?

Keys to success: Being curious. Listening. Letting go of assumptions.

Begin every sales conversation by asking prospects to tell you about their needs, and listen carefully to what they tell you. Forget about what you think they should want, and pay attention to what they really do want.

Common mistakes: Starting with Step 2 instead, or beginning Step 2 too soon.

Even when prospects start the conversation by asking you to describe your services, take a moment to find out more about them first. When prospects tell you their problems and goals, they are handing you the secrets of how to sell to them successfully.

Step 2. Here's what I have.

Keys to success: Matching what you have to what they need as specifically as possible.

Describe your services in direct response to the needs your prospects tell you about. If they're in a hurry, tell them how you can work quickly. If they want accuracy, describe your attention to detail. Use the same words and phrases they used, and speak to the same issues they did.

Common mistakes: Sharing features and processes instead of benefits and results.

When prospects ask how you work, what they really want to know is what results you produce, not the steps you follow to get there. They want to hear what benefits your services have for them, not an inventory of all the bells and whistles included in your service package.

Step 3. Is there a match?

Keys to success: Collaborating with your prospect. Consulting or coaching instead of persuading.

You'll make more sales when you and your prospects are on the same side, instead of being adversaries. Act as if they have already hired you, and help them solve their problem. Don't just talk about how you could help; show them what it's like to work with you.

Common mistakes: Ignoring your prospects' concerns. Becoming defensive. Trying to coax prospects to buy.

Every concern a prospect has is legitimate. Acknowledge each one and explore together what resolution might be possible. Stay focused on their needs instead of your own. Trying to convince prospects you know more about what's right for them than they do will backfire.

Step 4. Will you hire me?

Keys to success: Asking a yes or no question, then waiting for an answer.
Once you've completed the first three steps, it's time to ask your prospects if they are ready to work with you. Be sure you've resolved their concerns from Step 3. Ask a direct question; don't wait for them to offer. Then stop talking until they reply.

Common mistakes: Asking too soon. Not asking at all. Giving them reasons not to buy.
Don't talk yourself out of a sale by bringing up their concerns again when you ask if they're ready to get started. For example, "Would you like to work with me? I know you said the price was higher than you planned, but..." Just ask, and wait.

The good news is that once you arrive at Step 4, the answer is rarely "no." If your services aren't a good fit for your prospects' needs, you'll find that out by the time you get to Step 3. (And in that case, you won't be asking for their business at all.) You're more likely to hear a reason they wish to delay their decision. Help them determine a timeframe for making up their minds, and set a date to resume the conversation at Step 3.

If selling conversations are challenging for you, rehearse these steps with a friend, colleague, or coach playing the role of prospect. Once you become more comfortable with the process, you'll find your prospects begin to relax also, and these conversations will become easier for both of you. And that will lead naturally to more sales.

Remember, although everybody cannot be your client, everybody can be your referral partner!

How to Evaluate Your Referral Relationships in Seven Steps


Taking time to work through this 7 step process helps you get clear about a few things:


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1. Am I on track to reaching my revenue goal for 2012?
2. How do my expenses and profitability measure up?
3. What do I need to stop doing...  start doing... or do more of?  
4. Is there anything I'm tolerating that's limiting my success?
5. Are any of my behaviors (or ways of being) getting in the way of what I want?
6. What one thing should I stop doing that's taking me in the wrong direction, is a waste of time or resources, or is something I'm not invested in?
7. What is my best client getting activity?
8. What one activity that if done consistently, would make the biggest difference in my life and/or business this year?
9. What am I thankful or grateful for?

 

A cash flow gap occurs when your cash inflows and cash outflows don't keep pace with each other, leaving your business short of cash.

This is an especially common problem for small businesses, where copious cash outflows may repeatedly precede cash inflows; all kinds of expenses, from purchasing materials necessary to do the work through licensing or permit fees, may have to be paid out before your small business gets paid for the work completed.

How do you close this cash flow gap and keep your business solvent?
Keep a close eye on your cash flow, so you can forecast potential cash flow problems and take steps to remedy them. One of the easiest ways to monitor your business' cash flow is to compare the total unpaid purchases to the total sales due at the end of each month. If the total unpaid purchases are greater than the total sales due, you'll need to spend more cash than you receive in the next month, indicating a potential cash flow problem.

Take steps to shorten your cash flow conversion period, so your business can bring in money faster. These steps may include:

1) Preparing customer invoices immediately upon delivery of your goods or services to the customer. If you wait to prepare your invoices at the end of the month, for example, you may be adding as many as 30 extra days to your cash flow conversion period!

2) Monitoring your customers' use of credit and adjusting their credit limits accordingly.

3) Offering customers a discount for paying their invoices early. For instance, if your usual policy is to have payments due in 30 days, offer a small discount such as 2 percent to customers who pay within 14 days.

4) Establishing a deposit policy for works in progress. For example, if you deliver a service, such as software development, home repair, or landscaping, you can adopt a policy that customers pay a certain percentage of the total invoice up front before the job begins.

5) Tracking your past-due accounts and actively pursuing collections. Most accounting software programs let you easily track past-due accounts, but you also need to have a clear process for pursuing collections. Such a process might involve sending out a series of letters letting your customer know that his or her account is past due and what steps will follow if he or she does not pay, such as turning the account over to a collection agency.

You have to have money coming in regularly to maintain an adequate cash flow for your business, not just endlessly streaming out. Monitoring your cash flow and taking steps to shorten your cash flow conversion period will go a long ways towards eliminating those dangerous cash flow gaps.

• 5 Ways to protect your cash flow

What small business owner hasn't worried about whether or not he or she would get paid at some point? Whether it's the number of customers that are running overdue accounts or the client who seems to be reluctant to pay for the job completed, not getting paid is one of the most frustrating aspects of running a small business - and, when not getting paid chokes off your small business's cash flow, one of the most dangerous, too. Here are seven ways to make sure you get paid for the goods and services you sell.

1. Don't extend credit automatically to new customers/clients.

Small businesses, just like large businesses, need to have credit policies in place that provide guidelines for determining which customers or clients will be extended credit and on what terms.

Doing Credit Checks Can Really Pay Off explains how to do customer credit checks in South Africa. It may be your business's policy, for instance, to never accept personal cheques as payment, but only cash, debit and credit cards.

If you are considering extending credit beyond that point to individual clients or customers, you should have a procedure set up where the customer or client has to fill out a credit application and/or do a customer credit check. 

2. Take partial payment in advance.

Worried that you won't get paid for that sale or service? If it's sensible in terms of the price of the goods or services, ask for a deposit or retainer up front. This is an increasingly common business practice for higher-ticket items and services; no reasonable customer should be offended by such a request.

For instance, if you provide services, you might charge a percentage of the projected bill or a set amount as a retainer before you start work on a project with the remainder due on completion of the task. Or break the bill into thirds, asking for a third before work starts, a third halfway through the project and a third upon completion.

The beauty of partial payment is that it ensures that you get paid something even if the customer or client defaults on the rest of the bill.

3. Invoice promptly.

This seems like a no-brainer but I have personally dealt with businesses that haven't bothered to bill me for months on end for products or services rendered. Besides being annoying because I want to know exactly what the charges are, I can't help but wonder if the rest of their business practices are as slipshod. And with their own example, why should I be in any hurry to pay them?

Customer/client invoices should be prepared and presented immediately upon delivery of your goods or services to the customer or as soon as reasonably possible. Not doing so can make your business look indifferent to getting paid and slow down your cash flow for no reason. 

Waiting to prepare your invoices at the end of the month, for example, you may be adding as many as thirty extra days to your cash flow conversion period! Small business accounting software and POS (Point of Sale) systems make quick invoicing easy.

4. State payment terms visibly and clearly.

If you want to get paid promptly, don't leave it up to the customer or client to decide when your invoice should be paid. Rather than giving them invoices that say vague things such as "Payable upon receipt", make sure your invoices state specific payment terms, such as "Payable within 30 days" or "Due Date: ____________".

5. Reward customers for paying promptly.

Waving a carrot at customers or clients, such as offering customers a discount for paying their invoices early, can help you get paid more quickly too. For instance, if your usual policy is to have payments due in 30 days, offer a small discount such as two percent to customers who pay within 14 days.

Unfortunately, even when you use all of these proactive ways to get paid consistently, you'll still have some overdue accounts. When the carrot doesn't work, it's time for the stick – otherwise known as collections.

6. Establish a follow up procedure for customers who miss payments.

The more quickly you follow up on a missed payment, the better your chance of getting paid. So set up a system for flagging late payments if you need to and a standard procedure for contacting the customer or client when his or her payment is late.

Typically, such a procedure starts with a letter that simply states the bill is overdue and requesting the customer's immediate attention to the matter and then moves through a series of collection letters expressing increasing concern. If there is no response to these letters, you are left with choosing between writing off the bill as a bad debt or turning the account over to a collections agency.

Nowadays there are many channels that you can use to contact the customer. However, some are more effective than others. If time allows, I recommend starting out with a phone call to "touch base" with the customer or client. You want to come across as friendly and polite, not threatening in any way. Sometimes the person has just forgotten or missed seeing a bill and a quick phone call is all it takes – meaning you get paid and you don’t have to go through any of the rest of the collections procedure.

Sending collection letters via email is nice because it automatically creates a copy of the collection letter for your files - and automatically date stamps your message. However, because of email filtering and email overload, it may not be a very effective way of getting your collection letters to customers and clients. You'll want to send them in other ways, too, such as regular mail, fax or even courier, depending upon the size and importance of the debt.

7. Turn the overdue account over to a collection agency.

Collection agencies collect debts for a fee or percentage of the total amount owed. This fee is based on how old the debts are (the fresher the better) and how much business a creditor has to offer. The standard rate in the industry for business-to-business accounts is 30 per cent. The rate for collecting consumer accounts is higher.

However, collection agencies have experience with and knowledge about debt collection that we, as individual business owners, don't have and hiring one can be well worth it if the amount of outstanding accounts receivable warrants it.

Proactive Policies Are the Best Way to Get Paid

As you've already guessed, the best ways to ensure you get paid for the products you sell and the services you provide is set proactive policies and procedures in place to cut down on the number of delinquent accounts receivable your small business has to deal with.

Things such as having credit policies in place, performing credit checks on customers and clients, having a partial payment policy and being clear and upfront about your payment expectations both in person and on your invoices will go a long ways towards ensuring that you get paid and your small business doesn't get stuck with a lot of bad debt.

I get a lot of email that starts, "I just lost my job!" Somewhere in each email, the writer goes on to ask, "How do I start a business?"

More people are getting downsized, terminated or just plain fired all the time. And because of the state of the economy, finding another job can be difficult. Creating a job of your own by starting a business looks attractive when you can't find a job - or just can't stand the job you have.

But "How do I start a business?" is not the first question you should be asking if you're in this situation; the first question you should be asking is "Should I start a business?" Before you start thinking about the different types of businesses you might start, you have to do some thinking about you.

Starting a business is not for everyone. Being self-employed is very different than being an employee. And some people find it impossible to adjust to the differences. Let's see if you have the necessary entrepreneurial mindset to become self-employed. These are the six traits that I think encapsulate the ways you have to think and behave if you want to make a successful transition from being employed in some one else's business to starting a business of your own.

1) You have to be flexible to be self-employed.

If you start a business, you no longer have "one" job with clearly defined duties and responsibilities. You'll suddenly have multiple jobs, which will be often interrupted by unforeseen crises (particularly in the start up phase). Many employees are used to having days filled with predictable activities; many self-employed people don't.

And once you start a business, there's nowhere to pass the buck. As an employee, you may be used to passing problems up along the food chain or not be very involved in decision making. As a self-employed business owner, you're the one who will have to deal with whatever the crisis is and solve the problem. You're the one who will have to make the decisions.

2) You have to be a self-motivated initiator.

When you're an employee, other people tell you what to do, either directly or indirectly. You get used to having your actions directed by others. But you have to direct your own actions as a small business owner. You can't just sit there and hope that maybe some clients stroll in or that someone will drop by out of the blue with inventory for your retail store. No one's going to drop work on your desk or point out what needs to be done. For many people who try to become self-employed and start businesses after having a long-term full-time job, this is the hardest adjustment to make.

3) You have to be able to recognize opportunities and go after them.

Most employees do what they're assigned to do. There's someone else who's "assigned" to look out for opportunities, either a boss in a small business, or perhaps a sales department or a managerial team in a large corporation. If you start a business, you need to be the one constantly watching for opportunities - and be able to recognize them when you see them. It might be a small opportunity, such as the chance to pick up a new client, or a large one, such as getting your product on the shelves in a large retail chain, but as a small business owner, you have to keep scanning the horizon yourself and positioning yourself to benefit from the opportunities that you find. As an employee, you may be used to operating in a "head-down" position; if you're going to start a business and become successfully self-employed, you need to start operating in the "head-up" position.

Being self-employed is very different than being an employee and can be a difficult transition. Here are three more traits you must have if you're going to move from being an employee to being successfully self-employed.

4) When you're self-employed, you have to be able to plan ahead.

Your last job may have involved no planning at all, as that was someone else's job. Or perhaps your job involved planning on a localized level, such as planning a particular project. If you want to start a business, you need to develop expertise in both short-term and long-range planning; it's about to become a big part of your life.

When you start a business, one of your first tasks will be to work through a business plan. As your business becomes operational, you'll find that this plan (however detailed) needs to be revised and that other plans need to be created, as you work towards the long-range goals that you've set for your business. From following someone else's plan as an employee, you have to learn how to create the plans yourself - and adapt the plans to changing circumstances.

5) You need to be prepared to put in a constant and consistent effort.

We've all seen employees who are just going through the motions, or who were just "putting in the time" until retirement. You don't need to be a co-worker to know who these people are. As a customer or client you can tell, too. Bluntly, starting a business takes energy, and you need to be able to give it 100 percent. You can't afford to just coast along, or go through the motions, if you're running a business. Your customer and/or clients need to know that you are devoting 100 percent of your talent or skill or attention to them - and will go elsewhere if they don't feel this is the case.

Worse, you need to deliver this constant and consistent effort without the employee safety net. Many employees are used to being able to "call in sick" and have someone else cover their job, for instance. As a self-employed business owner, you'll have to go in and give it your best effort no matter how you feel or close up shop if you don't have employees who can fill in. You can also say goodbye to the holidays that many employees enjoy, both the annual x number of weeks and the statutory holidays, at least until your business is established to the point that you can manage your own time.

6) You have to be able to deal with uncertainty.

As a self-employed entrepreneur, there's no guarantee that the products or services you offer will be in demand six months from now. There's no guarantee that your customers will pay their bills on time or even pay them at all. There's no guarantee that your current big client, who seems to be perfectly happy with your work, won't drop you next week. There's actually no guarantee that you will make any income this month or the month after. For many ex-employees who are used to having a pay cheque arrive regularly every two weeks, the uncertainty of being self-employed is very difficult to deal with.

Are you still asking, "How do I start a business?" Good! Because the point of this article is not to scare you off, but to make you aware of how you have to readjust your thinking to make the transition from employee to self-employed business owner. Hopefully as you read through this list of traits you need to become successfully self-employed, you were saying to yourself, "I can do this". Because every one of the traits I've listed here is an attitude or behavior that can be learned, and when it comes to being self-employed, awareness is more than half the battle.

Now that you know that you're the kind of person who can start a business and run it successfully, where do you go from here? If you don’t have a clear answer on this feel free to contact us and we will be honored to assist you

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