Author Archives: Craig Bailey

Sep 22 2014
2 Comments
Business Success, Inspirational

Launching a Consulting Business – Be There!

So far, we’ve discussed our #1 Marketing Channel (the Internet) quite extensively, as well as a basic approach to networking.

To ensure we continue our marketing activities, there is another area to address: Organizations and/or associations which may have participants (members and/or attendees) who are your target prospects.

The process can be quite simple, taken in stages.

Stage 1) Attend events sponsored by these organizations and apply the networking technique shared in a prior post.

Stage 2) Offer (unofficially or officially) to volunteer. This could include performing things behind the scenes (setting up for a conference) or on the front-line (staffing a registration desk).

Stage 3) Position yourself as “front and center.” This can include performing as a moderator for a panel discussion and/or speaking on a topic for which you have significant expertise.

Know that any organization of quality (i.e., they have active members who consistently attend events) are STARVING for high quality individuals to join them in any of the above 3 “stages.”

Note: In the beginning you will most likely have to cover your own costs (travel, lodging, event registration, etc.). However, as your business gains recognition and/or you’ve consistently demonstrated you can deliver value “to the crowd” the more likely it will become for the organization to “begin” footing your bill (lodging, event registration, etc.). And, over time, you may even be able to capture a nice fee for speaking at a larger event.

Bottom-line: Showing up is half the battle. Simply, be there!

Click here to review the next article in the series.

Sep 20 2014
3 Comments
Personal Success

Planning To Arrive “Right On Time?” Then, You Are Already Late!

Want to be viewed as a courteous (even professional) contributor to society? Someone that others can consistently depend upon?

If so, a key element is: being on time! Every time!

On time for work, school, a dinner appointment, business meeting, bike ride, etc.

Not being on time is, quite simply, totally irresponsible and discourteous to others.

Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

~ Jesus

Do you like waiting for others, wondering if they are going to show or no-show?

Observing a “chronically late” person, it seems that they typically “plan” on arriving “right on time.” Guess what? They are ALREADY LATE!

That is, we can safely assume there will ALWAYS be something that comes up between the “planned” departure and arrival time that will result in an arrival later than “on time.” This can include: traffic, looking for one’s car keys (covered in a prior post) or that piece of paper containing the information we were going to discuss, someone stopping us in the hall for an important question, etc.

While there will be exceptions (which should be few and far between) a strategy to address this is quite simple: add “buffer time” to our scheduled departure to allow for the “unforeseen” TIME-SUCKERS that WILL APPEAR. The more important the appointment the more thoughtful we must be about this buffer time. And, the longer the travel, or more variables that exist (i.e., traffic) the more time we must allot.

The goal: be there first! Never make others wait.

And, if, on that “rare” occurrence, we do fall behind then the right thing to do is contact the person we are meeting to let them know our revised ETA (estimated time of arrival).

Bottom-line: Highly competent, courteous and professional contributors to society quite frankly, seem to EARN MORE $! If you’d like to be among these individuals you must simply do a lot of seemingly “little things” – exceptionally well.

Hope you are enjoying this blog 🙂

Sep 19 2014
2 Comments
Business Success, Inspirational

Launching a Consulting Business – Be Found!

At this point, we have covered a LOT of ground regarding Launching a Consulting Business. One thing I hope you are observing is that it all ties together. It is like we’ve taken a bunch of what may have seemed to be disparate puzzle pieces (along the way) and put them together into a beautiful picture (a.k.a. a money-making machine)!

In prior posts I promised to follow-up with other strategies you can use to leverage the Internet, which is our #1 Marketing Channel.

Here we go…

The beauty of the Internet is that we can hang out a very comprehensive “shingle” sharing what we do. However, if we don’t take appropriate steps it is like assuming our prospects (potential customers) will find a needle (us) in a VERY LARGE haystack.

No good…

Realize, that “most” people do their online research via Google and/or Yahoo! But, how are we to get our website to show up on the first page of search results (the goal)?

We’ve already discussed the following elements of your online presence (these are “merely” the foundation):

If you haven’t read these (or need a refresher) click on each of the 4 links above, before proceeding…Again, all this stuff ties together.

We will now “build upon” the above foundation.

After establishing your online presence, there are other steps we can take to be found. One that is very effective is: SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

SEO: The process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine’s “natural” or un-paid (“organic”) search results.

First, I’ll explain my “very high-level” understanding of how SEO works.

Google and Yahoo! determine rankings of “where” they’ll list the results of searches (1st, 2nd, 100th page) based upon:

  • How many places they can find reference to a website elsewhere on the net (within other search engines and other websites).
  • The frequency of finding the specific keyword or keywords on a given website
  • I’m sure there is more to it, but that is enough for now 🙂

So, how do we make the above happen? Leverage a Search Engine Optimization Tool / Service.

There are MANY out there. Early on, I began using a service called Submitnet.net. In a nutshell, you create an account / profile, including your:

  • Company Name
  • URL – Website address
  • Keywords – The terms that you expect people to be searching on, when they are looking for you / your services

After subscribing to the service for 2-3 months, and doing the things outlined in the post on Hanging Your Shingle you will observe your website showing up MUCH earlier in search engine results. It has been a while since I tweaked my profile, but they have a great wizard / set of parameters that you can tune to increasingly improve results (to achieve higher rankings in search engines).

Case and point: When someone searches on “customer centricity” (which happens to be a business concept AND my company name) they are presented with a link to my website as the first “unpaid” link, on the very first page of search results from both Google and Yahoo!

What a great place to be 🙂

And, I’ll say, that this (being found by prospects who didn’t know me previously) has generated SIGNIFICANT revenue! In fact, that is how we landed our largest client who has been going strong since 2005!

The cost: $19.95 per quarter (every 3 months). Mere peanuts, for the return on investment!

Give it a try!

Click here to review the next article in the series.

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