We are in unprecedented times right now amidst the COVID-19 public health crisis, and a lot of us self-employed business owners are finding ourselves forced out of work, or waiting for the economy to pick up and the customers to flood back in.

It’s important to take a minute, take a deep breath and focus on what you CAN do right now, while you are staying inside to #flattenthecurve. In this video, I talk about how you can take advantage of the extra time in your business right now and get productive while you prepare for after the dust settles from all this.

Here’s what we discuss in this video:

• Audit Your Marketing: Website, Social Media, Emails, etc.
• Audit Your Messaging for Audience Focus
• Organize your Database and Prepare Email Marketing
• Do a SWOT Analysis on Your Business
• Create Helpful Content for Your Audience

Take advantage of this extra time you’ve always been waiting for. The world is sort of in a state of “PAUSE” right now and you can talk this as an opportunity to get organize, re-evaluate, and create some amazing content to take your business forward! Stay safe and good luck!

HERE’S MORE CONTENT FROM LEARN IT – DO IT:

FREE MINI-COURSE “How To Present A Proposal” : https://learnitdoit.teachable.com/p/how-to-present-a-proposal

LEARN IT – DO IT PODCAST: https://learnit-doit.com/podcast/

INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/learnit_doit/

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/learnitdoitedu

The post What Should I Be Doing for My Business During COVID-19 Crisis? appeared first on Learn It - Do It.

In this video, I outline some content ideas you can be making right now, amidst all this COVID-19 chaos. Now is not necessarily the time to solicit business from your customers, but now is a great opportunity to build credibility, lend a helping hand, and stay memorable in the eyes of your clients.

Here’s what types of content we discuss in this video:

• DIY Video Content Ideas
• Email Content You Can Create
• Social Media Messaging

It’s important to avoid being tone-deaf and simply talking about yourself right now. Think of ways you can be helpful and inform or entertain your potential and current customers right now and you’ll stay top of mind in a positive way through this unprecedented time in our history. Stay in and Let’s DO IT!

HERE’S MORE CONTENT FROM LEARN IT – DO IT:

FREE MINI-COURSE “How To Present A Proposal” : https://learnitdoit.teachable.com/p/how-to-present-a-proposal

LEARN IT – DO IT PODCAST: https://learnit-doit.com/podcast/

INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/learnit_doit/

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/learnitdoitedu

The post Content You Should Be Making Right Now appeared first on Learn It - Do It.

In this video, I go over 4 habits for you to implement to save you from wasting over a day each week on your phone so you can be more productive. We know cell phones can be time suckers, but I’m here to help you change the way you use it!

When Apple created the new screen time app, I was horrified to learn how much time a day I spent on my phone. That’s when I implemented these tips on myself and now I want to share them with you!

For all you people who think there’s not enough time in the day, I’m going to help you save 10-20 hours each week with these tips. You’ll soon find that there is plenty of time in the day to be productive.

MY 4 TIPS FOR LESS SCREEN TIME & MORE PRODUCTIVITY

1. Set app restrictions using the apple screen time app.

2. Turn off unnecessary notifications.

3. Use “sleep mode” [do not disturb]

4. Schedule a window of time for “productive phone time”

By the end of this video you’ll have learned 4 ways to be more productive and spend less time on your phone. So the next time you think there’s not enough time in the day to get all the things done, remember this! Share this video with your procrastinator friends!

FOR MORE CONTENT FROM LEARN IT – DO IT FREE MINI-COURSE

“How To Present A Proposal” : https://learnitdoit.teachable.com/p/how-to-present-a-proposal

LEARN IT – DO IT PODCAST: https://learnit-doit.com/podcast/

INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/learnit_doit/

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/LearnitDoitEdu/

The post 4 Ways To Use Your Phone To Be More Productive appeared first on Learn It - Do It.

1. Understand that tasks take time

We’ve all made the mistake of saying “give me 10 minutes,” only to realize an hour later that you totally lost track of time.  When we used to photograph weddings, we’d have brides tell us that the church was “5 minutes away,” and on the day of the wedding, we’d be scrambling into the ceremony with seconds to spare because NOTHING takes 5 minutes. Remember that things DO take time and even writing a short email takes longer than 2 minutes, so be sure to schedule your time accordingly ; )

If you have a To-Do list sitting on your desk, do yourself a favor and write a number next to each task so you can be realistic about your day.  Resist the urge to underestimate the length of time you need. In fact, OVERestimate. No one has ever been upset that they completed something earlier than they anticipated and I assume you aren’t the first one out there who would be.

2. Be reasonable about your To-Do lists

It’s also important to break down your tasks into “accomplishable” chunks.  For example, rather than putting a giant task on our list like “edit John Smith’s video,” which could take days of work, we learned to break things down into manageable tasks that take less than 2 hours. For example, instead of:

• Edit Video A 

We’d break that major task down to:

• Load Footage (30 min)
• Organize Footage into folders (20 min)
• Make a Project file and sync footage (20 min)
• Create Markers and label favorite takes (1 hr)
• Cut the video (2 hrs)
• Edit the Audio (1 hr)
• Color the footage (2 hrs)
• Add Graphics and Text (1 hr)
• Export Draft for Review (20 min)

Not only will you be more organized about where you are in the project, you’ve now created clear start and stop points that will allow you to come back to your project, which helps you schedule realistic timeframes to get things done. 

You’ll find that once you start checking tasks off your list, you’ll be more motivated to keep going, rather than staring at the same task on your list for 3 days while you’ve been continuously working on it.  Break your TO DO list down into tasks that take 20 minutes to an hour (2 hours max) and you’ll find yourself becoming more productive and more aware of what you can handle on a normal workday, rather than totally overcommitting and coming up short and stressing out. 

Bonus Tip: Make sure to [especially if you work at a desk or workstation] get up between tasks, have a stretch, drink some water, have a snack and give yourself some credit for what you’ve just accomplished.  It’ll help keep the positive energy flowing right into your next task.

3. Control your own schedule

We used to think that we had to work around our clients’ schedules in order to be a quality and accommodating service provider.  In a lot of ways, this is true. If you are trying to win someone’s business, you want to be able to meet them where they are and work around their needs.  However, don’t let this hurt you and your business. Sometimes we feel like adjusting our schedules to help others is the only option, but the reality is, you can totally set reasonable boundaries that allow you to be more efficient without compromising your ability to accommodate the requests of your clients.

For your client, there is a very slight difference between you saying, “I’m going to be in your area on Tuesday and Friday this week, would there be a time those days that would work for you?” and saying “Whenever you are available this week, I’ll be there.”  On the flip side, there is a HUGE difference between those two scenarios for your schedule and sanity.

Do yourself a solid and resist the urge to make open-ended scheduling for your clients, partners, and colleagues.  When it’s time to schedule a meeting, always lead by providing a few options and asking if either of those options work for the person you’re meeting with.  Worst case scenario: they say those don’t work and give you some options or ask you for some more options. In both cases, YOU are in control of your schedule and still providing an awesome service.  

Bonus Tip:  We actually found that by giving the options it was actually easier to schedule with our customers and potential clients.  Giving them an open-ended option provided too many choices and proved overwhelming and easier to put off. Giving a few choices makes it an easier decision for them and a more efficient way for you to manage your days for productivity!  Win-Win!

4.  Start to automate or simplify repetitive tasks

Think about the things you do over and over again and find ways to automate them.  How could you use a software, template, process, or video to make your repetitive tasks take less time?

We work with an awesome graphic designer that sends us videos of her recorded screen while she explains her design work rather than scheduling a meeting with us to review over the phone or in-person.  This is such an efficient way to manage all of our time. We are able to move projects forward without meeting and getting distracted with side conversations, plus we can refer back to these videos at any point.

Another way we’ve improved our productivity is to create templates for emails we have to send regularly.  You may customize these messages each time depending on the details, but if there is a large chunk of what you say that is the same every time, create an email template that you can start from and save yourself a ton of time doing things over and over again.

Lastly, see what you can do to avoid wasting time on travel and unproductive meetings.  When we first started our business, we were more comfortable in person and every time we had to talk with a client or a subcontractor/team member, we’d schedule an in-person meeting.  This meant preparing for the meeting, packing up our stuff, driving to another location (dealing with traffic, etc), arriving early, conducting the meeting and then often letting things get off-topic or letting a meeting take a full hour or more even though we accomplished the goal in the first few minutes, etc.

Think about meetings you schedule that could be more productive through video, email, over the phone, or through Skype/video chat.  A meeting that could take up 2 hours of your day could be shortened to 1 hour or less if you don’t have to leave your office!

Now that we’ve shared a few ways to improve your productivity (and sanity) let’s put this stuff to good use.  Start to use these tactics in your business and let us know how they work for you! Or, if you have any other tips you’ve implemented that have worked well for you, we want to hear about them.  

Let’s get more done in less time!

The post 4 Simple Tips to Be More Productive! appeared first on Learn It - Do It.

Learning how to control your schedule is crucial to being in business for yourself.  Without setting proper processes, boundaries, and expectations, you’ll soon find yourself running in circles and spending most of your day in between productive activities, rather than getting things done and feeling accomplished. This is a lesson we learned (the hard way) when we were running our measuring business.

How We Learned This Lesson The Hard Way

As we described in Episode 0 – Who are Rhi & Pete and What’s this Podcast All About? we started a side business doing carpet estimates for multiple carpet installers who were contracted with a box home improvement store while we were in college.

Every week, we’d be sent the contact information for 20-40 people in the New Hampshire and Northern Massachusetts areas that we had to schedule appointments with for that week.  Our territory included 9 stores that spanned 86 miles at their furthest points. In order to effectively schedule ourselves, we had to account for: 

• The location of the home we were measuring
• Any traffic or construction we might encounter on the way
• What we had to measure and how long that might take 
• Hoping the people we were meeting weren’t running late or not showing up
• Using map books, printed directions and old school GPS devices without real-time traffic updates.  

Needless to say, scheduling all these appointments was quite the cumbersome task.

When we first started, we would simply call each person in our pile of paperwork and ask them when they were available, and put them in our calendar.  We’d write down the list of appointments we’d scheduled in order, print out directions from the internet, hop in the car and hope for the best.

Before long we realized there had to be a better way.  We’d run into traffic, no-shows, incorrect directions, and endless days full of stress, running late, and rescheduling.  Our days were long, stressful, and inefficient and we realized that it was costing us time and money. It was pretty agonizing at first…what had we gotten ourselves into?!

So how did we attempt to fix this problem?  Well, we started by sitting down and outlining all the places where we were running into issues.

Once we outlined our major issues, we decided that if we could improve our ability to estimate how long tasks actually took and improve our customer process, we could get more estimates done in less time, and create days with less stress and more productivity. 

Sound like a dream come true?  Well, it certainly was for us! We went from barely getting 25 estimates done in a week to easily scheduling 50 estimates and working fewer hours…this was like doubling our income without increasing the number of hours we were working!!  It was all about efficiency.

So, let’s take a look at how this could be applied to your business to save you time, decrease your stress, and increase your productivity (and hopefully increase the amount of money you’re making)!

How We Solved This Problem

1. The first thing you need to do [and as we did in our situation] is to define the problematic areas of your scheduling process.

Take a hard look at what processes or routines (if any) you use to schedule yourself.  

• Is it first come first serve for your time slots?  
• Do have dedicated days for certain clients, geographic areas, meetings, or work? 
• How do your personal obligations fit into this schedule? 
• Are there certain tasks or obligations that keep being bumped for “things that come up?”

Consider your answers to all of these questions and try to pinpoint the places that are creating the logjam and stress for you.

For our measuring business we uncovered that our biggest roadblocks were:

1. We were constantly underestimating the amount of time it took to complete a measurement, travel between point A and B, and stop for lunch/gas, etc.
2. We were assuming that every appointment we made was going to be kept by the customer without any sort of reminder process.
3. We were letting each customer set the day and time when we would come to them, rather than being more efficient and scheduling similar locations in the same time window (kind of like batching our stops together based on location).

2. Second, we brainstormed solutions for each of our roadblocks.  

Problem 1: We realized that it was extremely important for us to be realistic about estimating the amount of time we needed to do our jobs correctly.  In order to do this, we recorded the time each task took us for two weeks of measuring (because each job and destination was different every time) and we used the averages to help us schedule and plan.  This is what we came up with: 

Time spent measuring

• Single Room: 10 minutes
• ½ house: 25 minutes
• Whole House: 45 minutes

Driving Times

We used MapQuest at the time and just added a 15-minute buffer for each stop.  This gave us time to get gas, eat and helped with any traffic we encountered.

2 Hour Window

We gave our customers a 2-hour window on when to expect us.

Having these numbers allowed us to use a formula for scheduling. We’d just plug the numbers in and know exactly how much time we needed and it saved us from guessing or trying to figure it out every single time.

Problem 2: We encountered a lot of no-shows.  Most of the time people just forgot because they too, are bad at making or keeping a schedule.  So to fix this issue, we told each customer that we’d call when we were about 15 minutes away and we made sure to get the phone number of the person that we’d be meeting.  This is twofold — first, a lot of people were meeting us and this 15-minute heads up ensured that they’d have time to still get there if they forgot; second, we weren’t always meeting with the person who we originally scheduled the appointment with.

Problem 3: We’d just start calling the customers as the jobs came in and asked when they’d like us to come. This made for total chaos in our schedule and made for very long and stressful days.  To solve this issue, we batched together when we made our phone calls. We decided since the store’s policy is to call the customers within 48 hours of receiving their paperwork that we’d wait until multiple jobs came in so we could organize them by geographic location, map out our ideal itinerary and begin making calls.  

We also decided that we were going to give the customer two options for the appointment (ie. We’ll be in the area on Monday morning or Wednesday afternoon, do either of those times work for you?).  The majority of the time those time slots did work and that’s the moment when we started making our schedule on our own terms.

Realizing that our clients don’t know our schedule and don’t assume we are always available for them was a big lesson.  We always felt like we needed to accomodate them in order to provide an awesome service, but the truth is, the more efficient we are the better service we can provide.  It’s also so much easier for our clients to choose between two options than to review their entire schedule and toss out their own ideas. We assume that their suggestions are convenient for them, but sometimes they are just as random as you allow your schedule to be when you don’t control it.  Giving a few options shows that you are organized, efficient with your time, and accommodating because you are giving them options.

Improve your process to get more done

Lastly, think about ways in which you can improve your process to control your schedule more.  For us, it meant letting our customers know the window during which we would arrive, and telling them we would call them when we were on our way to their location with an exact time.  It didn’t really take extra time on our end because we were already in the car. What it did do though, is allow some flexibility for us if there was traffic or other unforeseen reasons why our day was running a bit off schedule.  It also meant that our customers knew exactly what to expect, knew that we valued their time, and made our “no show” ratio almost zero!  

Now, if you’re schedule meetings with your clients, no-shows may not be a big issue for you.  But I am sure we have all had meetings cancel last minute, or arrived at a location to find that our client was running behind or no longer had as much time to meet with us as we or they had planned.  This can really mess with your schedule and efficiency. Think about simple ways you can improve or add to your client process in order to improve your efficiency and I am sure you won’t regret it!

Let’s do this!

Now that we’ve outlined a few ways you can audit and improve your processes, habits, and management of your schedule, it’s time to put it into practice.  Take a few of these tips and start implementing them in your business and see how you can start to be more efficient, avoid unnecessary stress, and take control of your schedule!!  

Have you tried any of these methods before?  Have other ideas you want to share? We want to hear what works and doesn’t work for you!  Comment below to share the scheduling challenges or successes you’ve experienced.

The post How to Control your Schedule and Accomplish More Each Week appeared first on Learn It - Do It.

In episode two, we talk with Alison and Toni of BlueLion, LLC an HR consulting firm from New Hampshire, about different ways to get more meetings with potential clients.  We dive deep into various sales and marketing strategies to help lead potential clients down the sales funnel. We tackle how to work around being a reactive service and advise on how to provide value and education to help potential audiences be proactive with their human resource needs.

Guest Bio – [from their website] “BlueLion, LLC is a human resource and operations consulting company. We partner with small to midsize companies in the New England area to assist them with their HR and Operational outsourcing and training needs. We pride ourselves on becoming strategic partners in an organization’s growth. We work to create streamlined processes, ensure compliance with all federal and state-mandated regulations, and give time back to key employees to focus on what is important to them in their business!

Alison and Toni founded BlueLion to be able to make an impact on small organizations in a BIG way! With over 20 years combined experience in HR and Operations their passion and goal was to bring BIG knowledge to small to midsize companies to help them grow, and have an impact on their future success.”

Host Bio –  Rhi and Pete [Rhi-Pete – now you’ll remember] are a wife and husband team who have been in business together for over a decade.  They run a creative media agency [Do Something Different Media] that provides strategy and consulting, video production, website development, photography, graphic design, and content writing for small businesses.

Episode 2 Topic Summary

• Use language that speaks to the client’s perspective
• Always use solution and transformation based language
• 7 touches of sales and sales funnels
• Reactive vs. proactive services
• Content and Pillar campaigns
• Utilizing marketing content to help save you time and energy
• Email etiquette when you’re list building
• How to use email [properly] for sales
• Effectiveness of email vs. social media
• Auditing marketing and messaging

The Challenge & The Next 3 Steps

Alison and Toni do a great job of closing their prospective clients, but they’re struggling with getting a volume of sales meetings and are simply looking to have more meetings that lead to sales meetings.  In order to help them solve this roadblock, we created these next 3 steps to help them hit the ground running.

1. List all of the solutions and tangible benefits that you provide to your clients.  Put yourself in your client’s shoes and write this list from their perspective – how does your solution benefit them directly?
2. Using some of the solutions and language from step 1 – write a 1-2 min quick pitch video script that you can use to share with your referral networks and prospective clients. You can simply record this video using a tripod and a cell phone. And if you want to know how to up your game check out our course on “How to Write, Shoot, Edit and Share Videos for your Marketing”
3. Audit your current marketing.  Set aside a few hours where you can do a formal SWOT Analysis on your website, social content, print marketing and any other forms of marketing that are currently being used.  Once you have a list of your weaknesses and threats, you can make a game plan to fix them.   

Recommended Resources 

BlueLion, LLC Website – www.BlueLionLLC.com

“How to Write, Shoot, Edit & Share Videos for your Marketing” – https://learnitdoit.teachable.com/p/write-shoot-edit-share-video-content

SWOT Analysis Worksheet – https://learnit-doit.us20.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=d9e305b3e7ab615f40dc49f64&id=eb58752b69

The post Episode 2 – How to Nurture your Pipeline to get more Sales Meetings appeared first on Learn It - Do It.

Why did we decide to write our first course on “How to Write, Shoot, Edit & Share Videos for your Marketing?”  

The answer is pretty simple.  Professional video is pretty expensive — however, extremely beneficial.  A lot of business owners see the price of video production and immediately dismiss it — completely ignoring how effective it can be for their business.

In addition, every single one of us has the means to create effective video content with the device that is in our pocket right now.  By now, we all know the statistics that video marketing far outweighs plain text and graphics — but still, tons of business owners drag their feet when it comes to creating video content for their marketing.

IN-HOUSE TRAINING

For over a decade now, we’ve been producing professional video content for small businesses.  During this time we’ve also been hired to train marketing teams and employees how to create effective videos.  Most of those companies had us come in and teach the basics of how to produce a video in a four-hour training session.  By the end of the session, our students were able to film and edit a quick video for social sharing on their own.  

Once we knew it would work, we decided that we’d not only teach people how to film a video, but we’d focus on how to write and plan a video.  You’ve never watched a video just for its quality, right? You usually watch it because of its content. So we took our 4-hour, in-person video training outline, and wrote an entire course on how to write, shoot, edit, and share videos for your marketing.

We want everyone to be able to use video to help their business grow.  Why? Because we know how valuable it will be for you. There are numerous applications [testimonials, sales, promotions, training, reviews, etc] for video, and most importantly, it allows you to engage with your audience in a way that other media can’t.

CASE STUDY 1

During our Beta-Test group for the course, we sent the course to a friend of ours who is the head of marketing at her company.  Since her company was trying to incorporate more video content into their marketing plans, she asked if she could share the course with her team members, to see if they could learn exactly what they needed in order to make quality video content for the company on their own.  

After taking the course this is what one of her team members had to say.

“This course covers most, if not all, of the information I spent weeks going over in college classes that were very expensive. Pair this material with some practice making your own videos and you will have a recipe for success. – Liam M.”

Just a week after finishing the course, her team member Liam was able to create and fully produce a Team Member Spotlight video with interviews, B-roll, and basic animation that they were able to share socially and on their website blog!

Now the team can produce their own in-house videos for their daily social sharing and they’re seeing their social post engagement grow.  In addition, their C-Suite is very excited to jump into regular video production both in-house and professionally produced. That’s a Win-Win.

CASE STUDY 2

Another member of our Beta-Test group is a self-employed business owner who provides IT consulting for local businesses.  He took the course thinking that he could use it to help train his internal team and save himself some time repeating certain processes over and over.  While taking the course, a client of his needed to know how to set something up on their computer for a new employee. Rather than packing up and heading to their office, he decided to give video content a try!  Using what he learned in this course, he recorded his screen and walked the client through each step of the process and sent it over via email. The client was instantly able to see how to do the process on their own and now will always have that video as a reference when this particular need arises again.  This saves the business owner time and it saves their client money. Another Win-Win!

WHO IS THIS FOR?

Whether you are a self-employed business owner, a small business owner, or you’re in charge of a marketing department — you will benefit from this course.

We’ve broken our entire creative process apart into bite-sized pieces so that you can learn how to come up with ideas and organize your script and plans, all the way to how to edit and upload your video to different sharing platforms.

Here’s what you’ll learn:

• How to come up with good ideas for video content
• How to write a script
• How to plan your shoot
• What gear you need to be successful
• How to get good shots
• How to load and organize your footage
• How to edit your story
• How to prep your video for sharing

WHAT ARE THE DETAILS?

This course is entirely self-paced, meaning you can go through it as quickly or slowly as you would like.  Once you purchase the course, you will always have access to it, so you are free to take your time with the material and come back to it for reference at any time.

This course is filled with video explanations, written lessons, PDF downloadable worksheets, helpful visuals, and sample videos that peel back the curtain on every step of the video-making process.  By the time you finish the course, you won’t only have learned how to make a video for your marketing, you will have already made your first video!  This is why throughout the course we created DO IT assignments that walk you through each step of the video-making process with examples, visuals, and hands-on worksheets.

HOW DO I GET STARTED?

Our course, “How to Write, Shoot, Edit, and Share Video Content for your Marketing” is available on our website at www.LearnIt-DoIt.com/courses for $499.  This price includes forever-access to the course, and a 20-minute, ideas consult call with us, where we can help you generate video content ideas for your specific business to help you get started on your video making journey!

The post Enhance Your Brand’s Visibility with Video appeared first on Learn It - Do It.

Because we don’t want to come off as slimy salespeople, or we are so scared to be shot down, we tend to take the easier route when it comes to asking for money.  I used to always email our quotes over using an old Apple pages template and I’d just cross my fingers, hold my breath and hope something would happen. Generally speaking, it didn’t work too well – yes, I did sell some jobs that way, but most of the time we’d get a response back saying something like, “We’ve decided to go another way.”  Because the idea of selling our services any other way was so uncomfortable, we kept emailing proposals anyways.

It wasn’t until we lost a prospective client, who told us they had emailed our quote to another vendor who said they could do everything we outlined for less, that we realized we were doing this all wrong.  Thinking about all the time and energy I had put into the research and planning of that proposal, just to have someone else swoop in and put a different price tag on it, forced me to get outside of my comfort zone.  Ultimately, I realized that the whole scenario was my fault! I made it so easy for this to happen, and it was all because I was too uncomfortable to sell my services. So, I smartened up and decided I needed to shake things up and change the way I share proposals with my clients.

Now, I know what you’re thinking…

• It takes me so long to make a proposal, I barely have time to send it via email.
• My clients want me to email them the proposal.
• My competitors are emailing their proposals.
• I don’t want to feel like a sleazy salesperson…and my clients can read

Honestly, there are many reasons why emailing proposals seems like the right thing to do.  I used to think that because other vendors who offer similar services email their proposals, I should, too.  My clients are busy and don’t have time to do anything other than read my quick email to decide to hire me. Not to mention, I am busy, too.  It’s much easier for me to hit SEND on an email than to take any more time out of my day for proposals. But the truth is, no matter what your reasons are for emailing proposals, the ultimate goal is to close the deal, and I guarantee you, emailing the proposal is NOT the best way to do that.

Here are 7 reasons to STOP emailing your proposals or pricing to potential clients

1. It’s easy to say “No” to a number.

If you are just emailing an estimate over with no dialogue or explanation, then all they are immediately reacting to is the price.  Let’s face it — when you’re expecting to spend a good amount of money on your business, do you feel better hearing an explanation of what needs to be done, or simply a price?  If your potential client is anything like most of us, they are skipping through everything in your proposal to look at the bottom line and making a decision based solely on whether or not they like the price.  Unless your goal is to be the cheapest guy or gal out there, this is never going to work in your favor.

2. You don’t get to explain or tell the whole story.

Part of what your client is paying you for is expertise.  If we’re being honest, I’m sure there are lots of people who can provide the checklist version of the service you are offering.  Sometimes the biggest value you are providing your client is the time and expertise you’ve put into figuring out what they need and putting that into the proposal.  When you email the proposal over, you’re not giving the client any information as to why you’ve recommended the services you’ve outlined, what your version of these services looks like, and why they should trust you with the project. This is a huge part of what could make or break your sale, and it’s not going to happen without your guidance.  If you email your proposal, it’s like sending over the last page of a novel and hoping people understand the value of the whole story.

3. You give away all control to the client.

Remember when you were in school and the teacher would pass around a packet and everyone in the class would flip to the last page before the teacher got through the explanation?  The truth is, nothing has changed. When you email your proposal over, you’re hoping that your client reads through the entire document, but the reality is, you have no control over what they do with it.  You’re essentially relinquishing all of your negotiating leverage to the client and have no idea what they actually looked at, what they skipped over, and what they are thinking or basing their decisions off of.  Sales 101 would tell you that you need to be in control of the situation at all times, even if you make the situation feel like the client is in control.

4. It’s so impersonal.

Sending a proposal in an email means you are just like everyone else.  If the client is getting multiple proposals, you and everyone else are just words on a page.  You don’t get a chance to set yourself apart as THE company or person they should hire. Especially when you’re selling a service, you need to set expectations of what it will be like to work with you and to see if you vibe properly with the client.  It’s extremely important that you get to explain who you are, why you’re different, and how you can help them achieve their goals. Think of this as an opportunity to build a relationship with your client right from the start.

5. They can share the proposal with competitors.

As I said earlier, it’s happened to us.  By building a relationship with your client, you will naturally engender respect with them and the odds of this type of behavior happening will decrease.  Emailing your proposal over means it’s a simple click or two for the client to shop out your ideas and find the lowest bidder. And although you might think it’s unlikely, believe me, this happens a lot.  Because you’ve emailed the proposal over, the potential client thinks of it as just words on a page and most of the time wouldn’t think twice about sharing it to get a better price; even with the best of intentions.

6. You don’t get a chance to handle objections or questions.

This might be one of the most important reasons to stop sending your proposals in an email. As any trained salesman knows, dealing with objections is a huge part of the gig.  It’s your job to handle any questions or concerns and to act as a trusted advisor for your client. Emailing your proposal leaves them totally on their own to figure things out.  And no matter how simple you might think your proposal is to understand, there are ALWAYS questions or comments that potential clients have, and the longer they go unanswered the bigger they become and the more likely they are to ruin your chances of closing the deal.  Picture this: Your proposal arrives in their inbox and although everything looks good, the potential client wonders if you could break out payments differently. A simple question for sure. But their day gets busy, and the next day, too, and now another proposal comes in their inbox and it outlines the payment option they want.  That’s it. You’ve lost the sale and you never even knew how close you were to working with them. Questions left lingering or unanswered can certainly kill the sale.

7. Emailing proposals leads to a way lower closing ratio.

When we redirected our proposal method away from email our closing ratio went through the roof.  We not only closed more projects, but we were able to charge more money for the same services, and we were working with clients who respected us and our work more.  

By simply following our easy proposal strategy, you’ll put yourself in a way better position to close more jobs and make more money!

Now that you know all the reasons why emailing your proposals is hurting your business, it’s time to make some changes.  If you know that this is an area of weakness for yourself, then it’s definitely time to sit down and audit your own process.  Write down your current system and strategy for writing proposals and selling jobs.

If you want to see our proven system for successful proposals, access our FREE Mini-Course here: “How to Present a Proposal.”

The post 7 Reasons to STOP Emailing Your Proposal or Pricing Today! appeared first on Learn It - Do It.

Organization is Key — Introducing Content Campaigns

We organize everything we create into content campaigns.

What are content campaigns?

Content campaigns are topically-focused streams of content that are distributed throughout your proper marketing channels. In other words, we like to categorize what we can talk about, write the content, make the designs, and then distribute it based on our overall marketing plan.

Sharing is Caring

Once you have your content campaigns, you need to let the world know about them.

Where do I share my content campaigns?

When creating a content campaign you should look to use this content across the following channels:

• All social media accounts [Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linked In, SnapChat]
• Email Newsletters
• Your Blog

What Should I Say?

Believe it or not, this is where it gets fun provided you have a plan to generate good content.

We suggest that you have yourself an old fashion brainstorm session geared around the following pain points and questions:

• List your services, products, skills.
• What are some questions your clients or potential clients may have about you?
• Describe the process of becoming your client.  Break this down and use it to educate your audience.
• List the industries that your clients or customers interact with regularly.
• List any industries that may be related to your company.
• What are some things that you could take pictures of that you do?
• What are some trivia questions your company could use to encourage interaction?
• What are some other things your clients could be interested in besides your product/service?
• Are there any contests or giveaways you could plan?
• What’s happening in the news or pop culture that relates to you and your industry?
• What’s happening seasonally that you could post about?

Take these lists and use them as inspiration to begin writing some posts. ALWAYS keep your audience in mind.

Remember: This content is NOT for you, it only exists to help your potential clients solve a problem, or maybe to engage them with laughter, knowledge, information or a fresh perspective.

Group Topics into Categories

Each category will then become a campaign. Each campaign should stand on its own, and you should try to run 3-5 different campaigns at any given time. These campaigns should be outlined and written with your specific audience demographics in mind.  

If you need help discovering your audience, download our Audience Profile Worksheet and get started now!

Examples of Campaign Categories

• Company Brand & Mission – Here you’d write all of your posts to highlight specific details about who you are and what you stand for while keeping your audience in mind.
• Product/service – You would highlight all unique selling points of what you’re offering while keeping in mind that the purpose of your product or service is to solve a problem.  Make sure that you aren’t just shouting about your product. Cater your posts to help your audience solve their pain points.
• Testimonials – Leverage the positive feedback that you’ve received by breaking it down into bite-sized chunks and share it!
• Event or Contest Promotion – If you have a time-specific launch for a promotion or event coming up, make sure that you create a content stream that reaches your audience on all platforms and engages with them about the event or contest.
• Blog or Newsletter – If you write a blog or newsletter for your business, you re-use the content that you’ve already prepared by breaking it down to targeted bite-sized posts.

These are just a few ideas to get your brain juices flowing. Once you get started, you’ll find that you may write down too many ideas or have too many categories. It’s never a bad thing to come up with too many ideas. If this happens, welcome all of the ideas and write them down. Once you’ve got them down you can refocus and start working on the most pertinent 3-5 campaigns that are the closest aligned to your current goals.

Make sure to keep the rest of your ideas handy because before you know it, it’ll be time to write some more content.

Broadcast Your Content in Your Brand “Voice”

In order to understand what your brand voice needs to be, you need to understand your customers and clients. You need to know who they are, what they are looking for, what obstacles they face and what would help them. Once you know these things about who you’re trying to market to, you need to write simple messaging directly to them.

Remember, messaging is not about what you want to say or want to hear, it’s about what your ideal customer needs to hear. You want to think about your voice as if you were having a conversation with your audience. Don’t shout your message on the screen, think about how you would say it in person and create a brand voice that really speaks to your audience. Consider the words you use, whether you are formal or casual, and what would your audience really want to engage with.

Again, it’s not about you. It’s about your audience. Write directly to your audience. And no, your audience cannot be everyone. Ever.  

If you need help discovering your audience download our Audience Profile Worksheet and get started now!

Pro Tip

I always write out what I think each post should say in an outline or spreadsheet before I work on any design. Sometimes if you start with design, you will realize that as you were focused on making things look cool, your message may have been ignored. Messaging is always 100% more important than fancy design.

Create Designs & Media

Video and images get far more traction than text posts, so it is silly to just post a plain text post. Go ahead and scroll any social feed right now and you’ll quickly notice that it’s an extremely visual place. This ultimately means that you, too, need to have visuals to coincide with your posts to encourage engagement. We are a visual society, and if you are going to go through all the energy of creating content, you should definitely try and make it as effective as possible by adding some sort of visual.

Pro Tip

We use Canva for all of our social campaign designs. It’s a brilliant, easy-to-use, web application that allows you to create custom or templated designs and resize them for multiple social media formats with just a click of a button. If you’re not using it, start!

Total lifesaver.

Create a Schedule

What do you do now that you’ve created the content for five social campaigns?

Schedule them, of course!

You should not be manually posting to social accounts daily unless you are posting about something that is happening relevant to a live event. There are so many online services, websites, and WordPress plugins that allow you to schedule posts for all of your social accounts from one dashboard. There are almost too many to name, so I’ll let you find the one that best suits you.

How to know what to schedule and when?  

You can Google search your demographic in terms of when they use the internet, social accounts, and email so that you can determine the best time for you to post your content.  

Remember that each post will natively receive less than 4% organic reach [without paying for ads], so never assume that “everyone saw the post and it’s all washed up now.”

You can (and should) certainly recycle posts, especially across different social platforms.  Just make sure when reposting content that you change the publish time and day of the week so that you can potentially reach a whole new audience.  

I know it can seem like a lot at first, but after you’ve done it once, you can set up an organization system that works for you and start churning out content!  

Pro Tip

We like to sit down a few times a year and organize our campaigns from our master ideas list, which makes posting consistent content a little less daunting and A LOT more effective than randomly posting when we remember to do so. Ultimately, the campaigns keep your messaging focused and working towards your marketing goals, rather than sporadic and inconsistent.

It’s time to get a coherent message for your marketing with social media campaigns that are easy to create and fun to implement.

Now, let’s get social!

The post Best Practices for Creating Social Media Campaigns appeared first on Learn It - Do It.