The Best Ten Ways to Be Business Smart

TIPS FOR BEGINNING HYPNOTHERAPY PROFESSIONALS - THE 10 BEST!

1. Professionalism

It is very important to think and act as a professional. This would mean dressing to look professional too, especially when one is new in this line and needs to convince others to trust you. The place where we operate should also be visibly professional and should be designed to make people feel comfortable. Being a member of a professional group is also good.

2. Confidence

Being confident is very important, especially since most of the cases you work with are on self esteem issues. If you do not project confidence, how can you expect our clients to be confident in what you do? When my clients tell me " I hope my ....." I tell them, "Don't hope. Just believe. And if you want it so badly, you will get it". This is a great confidence booster.

3. Knowledge

No one can deny the importance of knowledge in our field. Although you've had the best training, there's always something new to learn. So actively seek knowledge in your field. Taking a refresher course is also useful. In fact, when you take advantage of repeat courses, your knowledge of the essential parts of the course can become clearer. Then there are many books you could read and you could gain much from being an active member of email groups that discuss hypnosis.

4. Practice

Also, there is little gain if one just keeps on reading and gaining more and more knowledge without practicing. When you actually do the work, not only do you learn more, your confidence also soars. You can always learn from your 'mistakes'. Remember, the more you practice, the better you become. And when you actually start practicing, more questions will arise and so will answers and you'll find yourself filling spaces of your hypnosis puzzle!

5. Interpersonal Skill

You will need to talk to a lot of people and learn how to interact with them. Sometimes how you say something will make a difference as to whether they want to be seen by you. This is applicable not only for face to face conversations but also for telephone conversations. Due to moods, sometimes even the well seasoned speaker may make a mistake or two and lose customers as a result, so don't beat yourself about this. Also the more 'slips' you make, the more you learn and the more the next client will benefit from your experience. So, just keep refining your speech as you continue practicing

6. Competence

Competence comes with lots of practice and knowledge. When we are competent, we get more clients who will even recommend others to us. Keeping in touch with all the latest techniques available polishing our skills all the time through practice makes us competent in what we do. To be competent is to be skillful.

7. Mailing List

Keep a mailing list of all those who have enquired about your services and send them regular emails by providing some interesting details. However it is important not to spam them and you should allow them to unsubscribe from the mailing list whenever they wish. And when they need to see a hypnotherapist, they'll think of you- someone who's available and easily accessible.

8. Advertisement

You may want to do some marketing of your services so that people out there know that you exist. Today the best way other than the yellow pages is to maintain a web presence. Also your satisfied clients will be your walking advertisements, so make your work client centered. And most importantly, they should be truthful and reflective of the true nature of your business.

9. Perseverance

Sometimes things may seem like an uphill task. These are the times when you need to be like the deaf frog that continued hopping up the hill despite taunts from the crowd and despite the fact that all the other frogs succumbed to the heat and the steep slope and gave up. The message is: Don't give up easily!

10. Contribution

The most important asset of a service provider is the contribution he or she makes to the community, either in individual services or in a group. It is alright to want to achieve financial goals, but you can also contribute to your community by volunteering to give free public talks to educate the masses about the benefits of doing hypnosis. This way, more people get to know about your profession, and of course at the end of the talk, you may distribute your name cards and brochures about your service.

Ten Ways to Double Your Customer Base in Four Weeks

The secret to a truly successful business lies within a keen understanding of the needs and desires of the market - and it is ultimately individual people who constitute that market. By connecting to those who want the products and services offered and communicating consumer benefits to them, businesses gain new customers and clients. But the problem faced by many entrepreneurs is that they either fail to define their potential customers or they lack the skills, resources, and strategies necessary to forge valuable relationships with them.
Promotion is essential, and a focused and effective marketing plan to promote one's business can easily double the customer base within four weeks. By following a few tips and engaging in some time-tested initiatives, the process can be both easy and lucrative.
Here are ten tried and tested methods for adding new customers in record time...
1) Build a Loyalty Ladder to Create "Raving Fans"
Loyal customers are ideal customers. Those who sometimes refer others to the business are even more valuable. But the most prized clients and customers of all are those who become so energized about the level of service they receive that they cannot stop telling others about it. These "raving fans" are a tremendous source of new customers. If a business makes a concerted effort to identify loyal customers and then offer them such a high level of service that they become cheerleaders for the business, the investment pays off many times over by expanding the customer base with premium customers.
When others witness this kind of VIP treatment they will likewise become inspired to rave about the business in order to enjoy the exclusive benefits of this preferred customer relationship.
2) Identify a Target Market for Direct Mail
Direct mail campaigns work best for reaching a consumer demographic that is defined and identified as a focus group. Unlike broad methods of advertising that hit everyone within a given geographic area, direct mail is intended to arrive at the doorstep of those consumers who are already known to be great candidates for products and services. To clarify the demographic, it may be helpful to know, for example, basic information about the recipients such as their age, gender, income level, buying habits, and place of residence.
3) Weed Out Bad Clients and Cater to the Best
Contrary to popular belief, it is sometimes advantageous to lose customers if the business owner deliberately orchestrates the loss. Prioritizing the kinds of customers a business prefers to have makes it possible to eliminate those who create unnecessary headaches and detract from better serving other, more valuable customers. And it also allows a company to focus on attracting those desirable customers who represent the bulk of the business and contribute most to the profits.
Losing those who are a liability is actually an asset that can help increase the number of customers in the profitable database.
Identify who the best customers are and treat them particularly well and invest extra energy in satisfying their needs while extending service above and beyond the call of duty. They form the core of the customer base, and by cultivating them it is possible to create more customers who are similarly extraordinary, loyal, and lucrative.
Birds of a feather flock together and the needs of the best customers will always be the same as the needs of the best potential customers the organization is trying to attract.
4) Create Strategic Business Alliances
By partnering with other businesses with which there is a common customer demographic but no actual direct competition, a company can expand its customer base quickly and easily. Those customers who trust other businesses and have proven their loyalty to them will be inclined to follow their recommendations or perceived endorsements of an alliance partner - which is why corporate sponsorships of major events like auto races and concerts are so common.
Locate businesses that share the same philosophy, style, and corporate culture or personality. By choosing good alliances it is possible to build all sorts of creative campaigns to increase the customer base.
Create a "win-win-win" situation for your business, their business and for shared clientele.
5) Use Radio, TV, and Newspaper Advertising
Getting the word out through mass media is often the only thing necessary to vastly increase the number of customers, but many businesses devalue this kind of effort because they are not willing to pay for advertising or they don't understand how it can help.
For those businesses that are on a tight budget, classified ads in local newspapers are an easy way to enter the local ad market. Another affordable but effective tactic is to use press releases.
6) Train and Support Employees to Improve their Skills
Valued employees - are ones that business owners invest in to help them further their careers and skills by developing a sense of ownership and responsibility that can boost a business' customer base dramatically. Employees come in contact with people every day, both inside the place of business and elsewhere. Someone might be a potential customer because they walk through the door, but it may take a certain level of professional skills to convert them into paying customers. By helping that employee learn the skills needed to promote the business to those contacts, it is possible to capture new customers.
7) Improve the Conversion Rate for Leads and Contacts
Keeping tabs on leads or sending contacts costly mailings can be a drain, not an asset. As leads and contacts are made, they need to be converted as soon as possible into customers. Otherwise they can simply become a nuisance and a labor-intensive list of names. Once someone becomes a lukewarm lead, it is important to warm them up so that they become a hot prospect and then a loyal customer.
If the current conversion rate is 20 percent for every 100 contacts or leads, boosting it to 30 percent represents a 50 percent increase in customers. Then, systematise your conversion strategies so that once a new contact enters the leads database, they are automatically cultivated and nurtured to become a paying client.
8) Convert a Single Customer into Multiple Customers
One of the easiest ways to increase the number of customers is to concentrate on those already in the database. This kind of conversion is often just as lucrative - but far less expensive - than trying to drum up business from cold-calling those who have never stepped foot in the store.
9) Go Online and Drive Traffic to the Brick and Mortar Location
Create a website and it will act as a customer magnet that never sleeps and a business presence that extends around the entire world almost overhead-free. Give site visitors something valuable in exchange for them providing more information about themselves. But keep it simple so visitors are not intimidated or tired out by the process.
Attract 10,000 visitors to the site per month and convert only one percent of them and that will add up to more than 1,000 new customers per year. Convert 10 percent and 1,000 new customers will show up within the first four weeks - an astonishing result that is entirely plausible and achievable.
10) Increase Visible Exposure
Brand recognition is powerful, and we live in a visual world of shapes and colors that are constantly competing for our attention. Capitalize on visible exposure at every possible opportunity and it will soon increase the customer base while strengthening the brand. Put a business logo and tagline on shopping bags, give away beverage coasters, key chains, and coffee mugs. Look for every chance to come out from the shadows and be seen, because the more a business is seen by potential clients, the greater is the chance for that business to double its customer base in a short period of time.
Once a business manages to recruit customers, it is important to maintain consistency through ongoing marketing campaigns that strengthen the relationship, expand upon it, and further respond to the wants and needs of those customers. The investment necessary to find, identify, and attract a new customer is much greater than the energy and effort that is required to retain an existing customer who will reward the business with loyalty, referrals, and greater profits over multiple transactions.
Neglecting to follow through and preserve "top-of-the-mind awareness" once it is accomplished is a common mistake made by business owners, and it is a costly one, because those customers will be lost to competitors. Once a customer shifts loyalties it is twice as hard to win them back.
So it is imperative that the end of the initial four-week strategy be viewed as the beginning of a lifelong relationship.

How to Lose Customers

Have you found that you have just too many customers? Are you looking for a way to get rid of some of those pesky customers who seem to keep coming back and taking up all of your time? Would you like to have time to do more important things, like spend your time trying to get new customers, rather than spend so much time taking care of existing customers? Have no fear, we have gathered some of the top ten tips for weeding out the heard and getting rid of customers.

- Play games with their finances, avoid paying rebates or ignore discounts

- Lie to your customers or intentionally mislead them

- Forget previous promises and refuse to live up to your commitments

- Make false claims or advertising about your products or services, practice "puffery"

- Make it virtually impossible to get in touch with a human being, add more menu options to answering services do not return messages

- Disrespect your customer, pretend they are not there, ignore them, be rude or condescending

- Blame problems on company policy or coworkers, take whatever tact is necessary to avoid personal responsibility

- Remind your customer that you are the only option

- Assign numbers to your customers and avoid using their names, make them look for their number

- Tell them to quit whining because there are other customers who have the same problem or have it much worse

Have you tried any of these tactics with your customers already?

If you are not trying to give away your customers to your competition, what are you proactively doing to insure that the opposite approach is being taken? It is not just a matter of trying to avoid these top ten tips for thinning the customer herd, it is about proactively doing the opposite. The odds are that several people in your organization are already practicing one or more of these top ten tips. What can you do to instill a culture that embraces a well defined alternative approach?

The odds are even greater that many members of your competition are practicing several of these top ten tips for getting rid of customers. As your competition becomes more prolific at practicing the art of losing customers, what can you do to create an environment that rewards associates for embracing and evangelizing customers?

There is a very simple barometer for measuring which side of the customer-centric fence your organization inhabits. Just ask this one simple question, "What gives you a greater sense of satisfaction, getting rid of an annoying customer or keeping one?"

- Act responsibly to protect the finances, assets and investments of your customer, they are investing in you

- Be honest and trustworthy, especially when it seems uncomfortable to do so

- Only make promises that you can keep and then keep them

- Exercise Truth in Advertising

- Design automation for customer ease and convenience, not for avoidance

- Treat customers with courtesy and respect, they are your shareholders

- Take ownership and command to find solutions and then coordinate internally if other resources are necessary

- To keep the competition away you need to 'win' your customer with every contact

- Numbers and Accounts are for identification, but authentic relationships are for people

- Listen

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Words of Wisdom

"Sow good services; sweet remembrances will grow them."

- Madame de Stael

"Always render more and better service than is expected of you, no matter what your task may be."

- Og Mandino

"Quality in a product or service is not what the supplier puts in. It is what the customer gets out and is willing to pay for. A product is not quality because it is hard to make and costs a lot of money, as manufacturers typically believe. This is incompetence. Customers pay only for what is of use to them and gives them value. Nothing else constitutes quality."