Focus31

By Gerry Robert, Bestselling Author

There have to be at least a gazillion rules & quotes for writing effective direct mail copy. And, unlike other forms of advertising, these rules are proven to be effective through measured response. There’s nothing new here. These rules have been around since Mr. Sears first gave a postal carrier a hernia by sending nine pound catalogs through the mail.

Here are my five favorites.

   1. Sell benefits, not features.

                Your reader doesn’t care how many teeth are on your machine’s gears. He only cares that your machine will grind his rocks into cement cost effectively. Show him how your machine can do that.

   2. Be conversational.

                One of my early mentors said it this way. “Write it like you’d say it, then go back and take out all of the cuss words”.  Damned good advice, if you ask me.

    3. Always include a postscript.

                Research shows that the letter is the first thing the reader looks at in the package, after the outside envelope.  And, a majority of people will read the PS before they read anything else. So, always include a PS. In addition, it’s best to state your proposition in the PS, just as you do at the beginning of the letter.

    4. Long copy sells better than short copy.

                I’m not talking about lead generation here. I’m talking about selling. I’m talking about picking your prospect up by the ankles and shaking him until all of the money falls out of his pockets. That takes a few words. And testing has shown that a four page letter…or even longer…will almost always out pull a two page letter when going for the sale. This is a fact. It’s not just my opinion.

    5. Copy is never finished.

                I think it was Stephen King who said, “There is no such thing as writing. There is only rewriting”.  Type your project into the word processor. Edit it at least once on screen. Then, print it out. Edit it at least once on paper. Then, set it aside for a day or two and go through the whole process all over again. I’ve been writing for direct mail for a quarter of a century and this is the only way I know of to turn words into power communication that sells.

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A great quick Tom Peters video for SME owners to learn from. Mistakes are important! They prompt great learning. The issue, if the business is typical, is that we don’t learn from mistakes we just keep putting out fires never understanding the core issue. For example, many business owners don’t understand why they have a revolving door of employees. Take a look at who; hired them, doesn’t have an orientation process, doesn’t have contracts or job descriptions, doesn’t provide coaching moments or recognition. Bad employees?  Bad business owner!

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I’m going to take a moment and shift away from Business Planning and talk Customer Service in this brief article.

Am I the only one that has noticed a relatively new and prevailing way of saying “you’re welcome”? A way of saying you’re welcome that doesn’t mean “you’re welcome”. 

I first noticed it at various coffee and fast food drive-thrus.  Now that I’m looking for it, I’m hearing it everywhere in sales conversations. So I’m on a MISSION to remove this expression from our sales conversation vocabulary.

What do you think the expression is?

• “You’re welcome and thank you for shopping at ……….!”
• “It has been my pleasure to serve you, is there anything else I can help you with?”
• “No  thanks are needed I was delighted to serve you today”
• “You’re welcome!”
• “No problem!”

No Problem?????

I’m sorry but if it was no problem then why am I paying you?

I googled “definition of no problem”.  Guess what I found?  I actually found a resource that says it means…”you’re welcome”.  The source of this information speaks for itself.  It came from http://onlineslangdictionary.com, the On-Line Slang Dictionary!

Hey listen if you want your staff using on-line slang with your clients then ignore the issue, but if you want to differentiate your  business from your competitors then start inspecting your sales conversation and that of your staff.   Build a sales conversation strategy to reverse the trend.  Win customers, have raving fans by making every client interaction an “Opening Night” experience. 

Otherwise you can expect to walk in to work one day shortly and  hear an employee on the phone with your #1 client saying:

“No Problem, LOL, BTW, True dat, G2G, gah”

The bankers and collection agencies should be pulling up shortly thereafter to shut you down and you’ll be wondering what went wrong, where did all your clients go?

Want some help setting up that sales conversation shift…drop us a note at info@synergen-x.com we’d be pleased to talk things over with you….NO PROBLEMO! LOL!

In the meantime, here is a link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWGA6Wpcsbk to a FREE 16min video to motivate you to address this and other issues in your business in a focused and planned approach.

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The following article appeared 11/24/2010 in Bill Payne’s blog site the Entrepreneur’s Corner.  Additional details for Bill Payne are presented below.

I’m presenting this article as an alternative perspective on business planning to my own.  Bill’s methodology, while extremely detailed, is also fairly typical of the kind of business planning that ensures business owners will never start business plannning .  I’ve highlighted, in the words of a Clint Eastwood movie, “the good, the bad and the ugly” throughout his article.

Again, my opinion is just a different perspective believing that a business plan should be fast and easy!

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Columnist Bill Payne is an entrepreneur and angel investor. He may be reached by e-mail at
or see his website at http://www.billpayne.com where his book The Definitive Guide to Raising Money from Angels is available.

A business plan is a comprehensive description (20-50 pages) of a commercial venture including a description of the product or service, the management team necessary for success of the business, the sales and marketing techniques to be used by the management team to find and delight customers, the pro forma financials for the business, key operating issues for the company and a growth plan for the future. A brief description of each of these features of business plans are described below.

Bill, 20 – 50 pages?  That’s why the majority of business owners keep their business plan in their head.  FEAR!  How about a Vision Statement, Mission Statement, Objectives and Strategies along with Action Plans….all on One Page in a matter of hours not the weeks or months necessary to create your type of document?

But first…why write a business plan? Entrepreneurs write business plans as an assurance they have carefully thought through all the critical success factors of starting, growing and operating a business. Entrepreneurs also use business plans to create alignment with directors, employees, customers, vendors, lenders, and investors. Finally, entrepreneurs use business plans to explain their businesses to potential investors, lenders and, for highly successful businesses, to potential acquirers of the company.

Agreed!  But the majority of entrepreneurs don’t participate in business planning because of your positioning that it has to be 20 – 50 pages.  They don’t have the time, they won’t sustain the planning activity and they are afraid of the effort necessary.  After all, not many business owners took Creative Writing in College or University.

I am often asked where an entrepreneur can find an expert to write their business plans. My answer is that you, the entrepreneur, must write the plan. Entrepreneurs must understand every facet of their business and writing a business plan forces new entrepreneurs to carefully analyze all aspects of the new venture. Get a first class tool, such as The Business Mentor [available from FastTrac (Kauffman Foundation) for $34.99. Not currently available online, this product can be ordered by calling (877) 450-9800], then go through the painstaking process of writing the plan. But, what if the entrepreneur is not a skillful writer? By all means, use an editor to make the plan as readable as possible. The first draft, however, must be written by the entrepreneur.

Thank you for your opening perspective.  I agree no business owner should hire someone else to write their business plan.  Ownership for the outcome creates accountability.  I had a client who, after we completed his business plan, pushed back from the table and said “James, now that we’ve done this is this gut wrench I’m feeling because now you’re going to hold me accountable?  I said “no Brent, the gut wrench you are feeling is that now that you’ve said what you want to do now you’re feeling accountable for fulfilling it!”
I refuse to consider using the words “painstaking” and business plan together.   A business plan need not be difficult at all.  Read on!

What Bill doesn’t suggest that I think is important is that you should invite a trusted business advisor to any business plan session to help  you challenge the status quo.   Doing a business plan on your own is like looking into a mirror.  All you see is what you have always seen before and you will invarialby create a plan thet is comfortable for you but not necessarily valuable to you.  A 3rd Party perspective is worth the minor stipend you might pay for their involvement.

OK…now to the content:

Product or Service – Describe the purpose of your product or service, the unique features of your product, compared to others in the market and the technology or intellectual property protecting the business from infringement by others. The unique product features should be described from the customers’ perspective. Why would customers purchase your product instead of using the product or service they are using today? What prevents competitors, with a lot more cash reserves than you have, from copying your product immediately after introduction? (The most common mistake entrepreneurs make in writing business plans to overwhelm the reader with descriptions of products and technology. Don’t fall into this trap – provide a good balance all facets of your business in your plan.)

Narrative, narrative, narrative.  Stop the madness.

This all depends on who the business plan is for.  And therein lies the biggest issue with the confusion entrepreneur’s feel about business planning.  “Isn’t it just  for my banker when I need a loan or an angel investor?”  Sorry I’d arguer 99% of the time that is the wrong audience.  The business plan should be for the business owner.  Adapt it for the others!

In the business owner’s business plan the product offer can be captured in 4 - 8 words in the Vision Statement and new product development can be captured in a 3-4 word Strategy statement and an Action Plan.

Management Team – Briefly describe your background, especially your skills and experience that can be applied to starting this business. If you wish, add your full resume to the appendix of the plan. It is very important that you describe your experience in managing people and in the business sector of the product or service of the company. Follow the same outline for describing the members of your management team. If you have not yet hired key team members, describe the job descriptions you need to fill and provide some timeline for filling these positions. If you have team members who plan to join the company later, feel free to include some information on these employees. A good business plan also includes biographical information on the entrepreneur’s advisors and the board of directors. Describe the partnerships that are being pursued for the company – in development, sales, marketing and/or manufacturing. The expertise surrounding the entrepreneur is often a good measure of the potential success of the business.

Are entrepreneur’s in the habit of talking to themselves?  Do you need to justify your existenace to yourself?   So no, you don’t need this for your business plan.  When you need a bank, sure your CV and the CV for your management team may help their assessment.

The balance of Bill’s article goes on to address how, as a business owner, you can fill up 20 – 50 pages in your plan with page upon page of narrative directed at; Sales & Marketing, Operations, Finance and Growth. The value of such an approach is dictated solely by who the audience of the plan is.  If you are looking for investors, then sure you’ll likley need most of what he recommends.

But hey…hands up…how many of us are looking for investors????  Not me and not most business owners!  I’m well capitalized, my business is growing!  I just want my buisness plan to ensure my business is baased on continuous improvement, growing consistenlty to new plateaus of success and I want my business plan to be sustainable.   If I need a bank loan I don’t want to reinvent the wheel and tell them a long “painstaking” story!  I want to make it easy for them to understand what I’m doing and show them I’m committed to business planning as a management system in my business.   By the way that’s all the Bankers want too.

Just keep it simple…right and if it could be FREE all the better?   Well FREE it is!  Just click here at www.focus31.com  

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1. Organize your Files

It’s very easy to let your computer files get out of control. Keeping them organized in appropriate folders will save you many hours over time and will make it much easier for you to complete projects efficiently. Organizing your files should become second nature.

2. Organize your Emails

Emails should also be organized into appropriate folders. I always

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What is a Business Plan and tell me why I care again?

I’ll answer the question why a business owner should care in a moment. First allow me to examine what a business plan is.

Sir John Harvey-Jones (16/04/1924 – 9//01/2008), Chairman of Imperial Chemical Industries said “planning is an unnatural process; it is much more fun to do something. The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression”. As the host of the BBC show Troubleshooter from 1982 to 1987, I truly hope Sir John was being facetious with this definition.

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The following are the top five fear factors and how to remove them as obstacles to your sale:

1) I’m spending money that I think I’m better off saving.



Response: You won’t ever make money by saving it. I know you may be concerned about making a purchase at this time, but this isn’t a purchase; it’s an investment. If you believe it’s a quality product or service, as you say you do, there’s no reason not to invest now and reap the rewards going forward. Good investments start to pay dividends immediately. Why should you wait to start collecting…

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When, as a business owner, you come across a value added business tool I think it is important to share the wealth.

So here is a brief message about a new tool I was introduced to today. Thank you to Peter Cos of Flighdeck Solutions…

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