Free Seminar | 6 Steps to Building a Better Business by Coach Michael Snedeker

6 Steps to Building a Better Business

 

Building a Winning Business 

 

Friday, October 30, 2015

10:30-1:00

 Waltham Public Library

735 Main St, Waltham, MA 02451
 

 

What You’ll Learn at 6 Steps to a Great Business:

How to work ON your business instead of IN your business.
 How to take immediate control of the time you spend at your business.
 How to turn your advertising and marketing into an investment instead of an expense.
 How to get back thousands of dollars in lost profits.
 How to recruit, motivate, educate, and retain exceptional employees.
 How to leverage your time to maximize efficiency and profits.
 How to systematize your business to provide consistent, exceptional customer service.
 How to get the quality of life that you started your business for in the first place!

  

The workshop is complimentary,

However seating is limited.

  

RSVP BY October 21st

 Click Here to RSVP

Coach Michael Snedeker on How to Build a Successful TEAM…

How to Build a Successful TEAM…

Selecting the right people is just the beginning of building a successful team for your business. However, you cannot simply expect that your team alone will transform your business and take it to its next level of performance.

It is equally important to have the following six elements in place:

1. Strong Leadership:

Tom Landry, the former coach of the Dallas Cowboys, said "Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gain confidence, seeing how you react. If you're in control, they're in control."

Strong leadership requires creating a working environment that encourages the cooperation of your team members. By encouraging and inspiring them, they in turn, will inspire and encourage the customers.

The goal of strong leadership is to maximize the "discretionary effort" that team members provide to meet team or company goals. That's the extra effort people provide, if they want to. Too often employees will do just what they have to do in order to get by.

In his best-selling business book Good to Great, author Jim Collins identifies common leadership elements that top performing organizations have in place to allow them to tap into this wealth of discretionary effort.

The most important element is what Collins calls "Level 5 Leadership." While these leaders have the ability to motivate their teams to pursue a clear and compelling vision and generate higher performance, they also demonstrate a unique blend of personal humility and professional will as they lead from the front to create the discretionary effort from all team members.

Another important element is the "the window and the mirror" concept to both protect and energize the leader's team. When things are going well, “Level 5” leaders look out the "window" and credit their team for the success; when things are going poorly they look in the "mirror" and take the responsibility for poor performance.

2. Common Goals:

Teams need to understand what their common 

business goals are and those goals need to supersede all individual goals. Sports teams provide an excellent example of this concept.

If the team understands that a common goal is to win the championship, then it will be easier for all team members to focus and concentrate on the team goal. If one or more team members are focused on individual goals, such as winning the scoring title, the performance of the entire team can be negatively affected.

Business is similar in this respect. If the salesperson is just focused on bringing in orders regardless of the cost to produce and ship that order, the common goal of maximizing profit will be at risk.

As people do what they are recognized and rewarded for, it is critical that the recognition and reward structure for individuals and for teams is consistent with the company's common goals.

Setting common goals for the business always starts with the owner's vision. This must be regarded as the central aim and leaders must enlist the support of all team members to inspire them to do the things that they have to do.

3. Rules of the Game:   

Employees also need to understand the rules that govern the way the owner conducts the business. The rules must be written down and made available to them.

If the owner doesn't provide employees with the "rules of the game" they will go outside the boundaries.



The process of setting the rules of the game will include specifying company culture and values as well as ensuring that individual roles and responsibilities are defined with positional contracts, and operations and procedures manuals.

Without providing defined rules including the company's culture, the owner or manager will need to rely on policing to run the business. Also, if the owner doesn't establish the culture, the employees will create a de facto culture that may not be to the owner's liking or in the best interests of the company.

4. Action Plan:

A key element for a winning team is a strong action plan that is spelled out in clear and unambiguous terms to all members of the team. While the common goals referred to above, help identify what the owner and the business want to do, the action plan identifies how the goals will be achieved. A good action plan will assign ownership of tasks, identify what resources are required, set timelines for when tasks should be completed, and provide measurement details of the current status of the tasks over the defined time-periods.



5. Support Risk-Taking:

Business is all about risk and reward. To make the business grow, a leader must be willing to support prudent risk-taking by the team. If the owner doesn't allow risk-taking, the business will lag behind market leaders. The level of risk-taking is usually related to the company's culture.

6. 100 percent Inclusion and Involvement:

The art of inclusion is driven by communication to all members of the team. By providing 100 percent inclusion, the owner can then require 100 percent involvement as an expectation of the organization's culture.

This will lead to trust and a comfort level by the owner to delegate responsibilities.

Michael Snedeker | Over come procrastination

 Over come procrastination 

                              

Do you have a problem with procrastination?

It’s so easy to do it later…or tomorrow…or next week.

It’s so much easier to stay in my comfort zone than to create that new project and create that new test.

In fact, even though I’ve accomplished quite a bit online, I still find myself facing the procrastination monster from time to time.

Here are 7 quick tips to help you overcome procrastination.

1. Make Action Notes

Create action notes when you’re studying any type of information product, listening to a teleconference, or attending a seminar.

It’s easy to simply make notes on all the great information you hear, but that won’t do your business any good. The only part of the information that does you good is the part you USE to build your business.

So create a list of action points. I do this when reading an ebook or any other form of information. If I write down just one action point, the product has been worthwhile. If I have an empty page when finished, it wasn’t worth my time or money.

What you have to be careful about is to make sure you don’t write dozens and dozens of “action points.” Those are notes. You’re going to be hard pressed to really pull out more than 3 action points at any time.

2. Get Rid of Fear

Part of the reason we procrastinate is because we’re afraid of what’s going to happen when we step out.

Some of us are afraid of failure…while others are actually afraid of success (their mind is blocking them).

For me, I’ve simply changed my attitude about “failure.” If a project doesn’t work, it isn’t a failure. It’s a test. Well I tested that and it didn’t work. Now I’ll test something else.

That way you’re not personalizing the “failure” to yourself. All marketing is simply a test that we keep learning and growing from.

Growing experiences aren’t always fun, but they happen.

3. Turn Off Distractions

You know you have to write that article, produce that video, or create that website. It’s so much easier though to live in a state of distraction where you’re constantly checking your email, answering the phone, or visiting your favorite forum.

Turn off all those distractions. Focus on the task at hand. When it’s time to write, sit down and write. Don’t edit. That comes later. Simply start typing whether it’s good or crap. It doesn’t matter. It’s taking the action.

4. Daily Plan

At the end of each day I spend about 3 to 5 minutes writing a quick schedule for tomorrow. When I slack on this, I end up wasting at least an hour trying to figure out what to do.

Don’t ask me why that is. I don’t know. Five minutes to write a schedule for tomorrow…an hour of wasted time if I try it in the morning.

What’s the primary goal tomorrow? How will I grow my business tomorrow? What’s a rough schedule for each hour tomorrow?

Real simple…and written on normal paper in a desktop calendar. I don’t even use any software for this basic planning.

5. Do the Most Profitable Activities First

What is the most profitable activity in your business? Do it first. It might be creating that new product, writing sales copy, or contacting potential partners for your upcoming project.

One activity that should come in every day is a marketing activity designed to generate new business (even when you’re busy). It could be as small as adding five new keyword phrases to your Adwords account, running one ezine ad, or submitting your post to social sites.

Which activity you take isn’t what I’m focusing on here. All I’m looking at is making sure you’re doing something to generate new business and/or buying visitors everyday.

6. Reward Yourself

Set milestones and reward yourself. Maybe your goal today is to write 10 articles. Your reward could be that you’re done for the day even if it only takes you 2 and a half hours.

Maybe it’s that item you wanted to buy if you finish the project by Wednesday. Maybe you get a 4 day weekend if you get done on Thursday.

Reward yourself with something when you reach your daily and weekly goals…even if it’s just a small item.

7. Accountability

Make yourself accountable to someone for what you want to accomplish. This could be a coach you work with or it could simply be a business friend. They tell you their weekly goals and you tell them yours.

Now you know you’re going to asked about how you did.

Have you ever tried working out alone compared to a workout partner? You’ll find yourself exercising even when you might have slipped because you can’t let your buddy down. Having someone who is relying on you in business can produce the same results.

For example, if you want to really make sure your project is done on time, make a commitment to others. Let those affiliates know when the new product is releasing. Tell your customers what is coming.
In other words, assign your own public accountability.

Michael Snedeker is a Certified Business Coach. With almost two decades of experience in high level positions in the banking and investment industry, and nearly a decade of experience as a small business owner himself, Michael has thorough experience building teams with businesses and entrepreneurs that are focused on advancement. A prolific public speaker, he has a passion for helping businesses grow and become profitable so that business owners and executives can enjoy the lifestyle they desire. Michael works with his clients to set clear, achievable goals by proposing specific management tools that can be implemented immediately into any business plan or model. Depending on a client’s needs and situation, he offers a number of one-on-one and group coaching programs to help them grow their businesses, engage their teams, and excel in their various fields. A member of a multitude of local and national professional associations, Michael enjoys following college and professional football, motorcycle riding, and fishing in his free time.

How does a business become successful?

How does a business become successful? Is it about the quality of the product or service? The customer experience? The convenience? The local need? Building a successful company is about all of those things – but it all really comes down to SALES. You can have the best product with the most helpful team, but if you can’t close the deal, your business will still fail.

For this blog, I thought it would be a good time to talk about a common misconception – that sales is a department. Sure, you may have people who dedicate their entire day to selling your product or service, but every single person who works in your business needs to understand that sales is part of the job. Even if they won’t be putting sales on a resume, every single person a potential customer interacts with is involved in the sales process.

So how can you help your employees understand that selling is part of every job? It’s all about changing the mindset. If you can get your team to understand that providing an excellent customer services experience translates directly to improved sales and a stronger business, your products and services will nearly sell themselves.

If your sales people – or your entire team – could use a mindset adjustment, then it might be time to consider bringing in Coach Sned to work through his one year-long Sales Mastery program. Business Coach, Michael Snedeker will provide your team with the tools and experience needed to be successful. It’s about more than teaching professional skills, it’s about helping the members of your team grow personally.