The Wealth Spa

Ep #61 The Ten Commandments of Small Business Marketing Success

Posted on 08. Oct, 2008 by Elizabeth Potts Weinstein in Marketing, Radio Show

Elizabeth welcomes David Newman a nationally acclaimed small business marketing expert, author and speaker who shares his 10 Commandments of Small Business Marketing Success. David discusses his list of marketing must do’s, how you can implement these commandments in our current economy and how your mindset can affect your business. For more information about David and to join his free small business marketing resource site, visit the Small Business Marketing Center.

Elizabeth then answers a listener question about collecting from clients and customers who aren’t paying their bills and shares her Entrepreneur’s Success Tip of the Week: The Art of Relationship, Second in the Series The Art of Social Networking.

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If you are one of the first 10 Radio Show Listeners to email David you could win a free 20 minute Get Going Marketing Strategy Consultation to help grow your business. There are specific instructions for the email discussed at the half hour mark of the radio show.

Transcript: Elizabeth Potts Weinstein welcomes small business owners, entrepreneurs and anyone who dreams of opening a business someday to this empowering hour of the Wealth Spa Radio Show where you’ll find answers to your most pressing financial and legal questions.  Now here is your host, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth:      Welcome everyone.  This is Elizabeth Potts Weinstein, your host for the Wealth Spa Radio Show and you are listening to episode 61 of the Wealth Spa Radio Show.  Before we get started in today’s content, I just want to remind you if you’re going to miss any part of the show today or you don’t want to have to remember when and where to listen, you can always go to thewealthspa.com, that’s thewealthspa.com, where you can sign up to get the show delivered to you automatically by email, by rss feeds, via iTunes.  If you don’t know what to do, just sign up for the email.  And you can also submit question, listen to past show, we even have transcript on some of the past shows.  So all that stuff, if you miss a link that we talk about on the show, you can always go to thewealthspa.com.

Alright so let me give you an overview of what we’ll be talking about today.  First our guest expert today is David Newman and we’re going to be talking about The 10 Commandment of Small Business Marketing Success.  Then in the second part of the show, I’ll be answering a question from one of you all, which is about collecting from client or customers.  You know there’s, all the crazy stuff that’s going on at the economy right now.  There’s a lot of people who are not paying their bills and so how do you handle that both if they’re already not paying the bill as well as what should you put in place to try and make sure this doesn’t happen.  And then as we get close at the top of the hour, I’ll be answering the or I’ll be sharing with you the Entrepreneur’s Success Tip of the Week and this is the second in our series about social networking, about the art of social networking, so networking online LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and all that stuff.  And this week, we’ll be talking about the Art of the Relationship.

Okay so let me get in to introducing to you today’s guest.  So today we’re talking with David Newman.  He is a nationally acclaimed small business marketing expert.  He’s known for his fun, high energy, high content presentation, a lot of do it now tools, actionable take away.  So stuff that you guys can actually walk away with.  He’s got eight books.  He did a lot of speaking and all that kind of good stuff.  So today we’re going to be talking about the 10 Commandment of Small Business Marketing Success.  So, thank you for being on the show today David.

David:             Sure, Elizabeth, glad to be here.

Elizabeth:      Great.  So before we actually get into the 10 commandment, I just want to have you share with everyone how do you start talking about the 10 commandment.  Where did this stuff come from?

David:             Well when I started out in my own entrepreneurial career, I had the privilege and the honor of making every mistake in the book.  And so I am the guy that you want to have on your team when you want to figure out what not to do and then the 10 commandment really came from not only in my own experience but my experience working with clients about what it really takes to be successful in marketing your small business either as a business owner or as an independent professional.

Elizabeth:      Right.

David:             There’s a lot of misinformation out there too, a lot of flavor of the month, fad of the month kind of marketing advice that people start to get distracted and start bouncing around like a pin ball where you as if they could stay focus, they could really follow this 10 commandment and reach success much sooner.

Elizabeth:      Yeah you know out of the quote and I can’t remember the name of the guy who says that you know how you become an expert is by making every mistake that there had to be made in one narrow field.

David:             Exactly right.

Elizabeth:      Then you have to become an expert.  You’ve learned all the mistakes.

David:             I’ve done all the mistakes.  I’ve paid all the money.  I’ve lost all the money.  I’ve lost all the sleep and lost all the hair.

Elizabeth:      Right.  Okay let get in cause we’ve got 10 commandment and we’ll have to go fast to get through all that stuff.

David:             Sure.

Elizabeth:      So and I know the first commandment does relate to the crazy stuff going on the economy right now.

David:             Yes.  It does.  The first commandment is take responsibility and my advice here is to really forget about the economic headline and understand that no matter what the economic weather might be.  If it’s a storm or if its calm or if its sunny, there are people that are going to be doing well in any sort of weather and there are folks that are going to be straddling in any kind of weather and what I love to reinforce to our audience is a very very simple message.  It’s going to sound harsh but it’s not okay to be broke.  A lot of people, you know, if there’s four formula for success.  You can succeed fast.  You can succeed slow.  And those are both good because you’re succeeding and you’re making money.  You can also fail fast.  You can try some crazy stuff, blow up, make the mistake and move on.  What I see a lot of entrepreneurs do is they fail slow.  And that is really not acceptable and that is what everyone in the call needs to really pay attention to try and stop themselves from doing.  So here’s how to do.  You have to have a plan.  You have to have a revenue plan and I called it very simple tool.  It’s a bucket budget.  And so you put out there on a piece of paper the two or three or four different bucket, the two or three method of which you can make money and then you as sign those buckets, you know, how much does it cost for a certain products, how much does it cost for a certain service, how much does it cost for a certain program and then you figure out what you need to make and what you want to make each month and then the discipline of this where you take responsibility is to pay yourself pay first.  And make sure that as you’re targeting those clients and those customers that will fill your bucket every two weeks, you’re also making a commitment to pay yourself and do that bank transfer from your business account to your personal account so that you know when you’re doing well, because you can make that transfer and you know when you’re not doing well and you’re running out empty, and also a big believer in panicking early.  So if you see that your pipeline is starting to sputter and for some reason you’re not making your number, panic early, readjust the course, that’s all part of taking responsibility.

Elizabeth:      Yeah and making sure, the one big issue that I did with my business is you’re really busy and so you stop marketing.  And all of the clients, you finished those projects, they pay you the money and then like, “Oh my god, I just start over again.”  In a lot of way start a whole new business cause you stop selling the pipeline.

David:             Its that sets and start, and that’s also why we have the feast or famine cycle where for two or three months you’re doing great and two or three months, you’re back to struggling.  The next two or three months you’re doing great, the next two or three months you’re struggling because you didn’t take responsibility for maintaining that steady pipeline and that steady of paycheck that you’re earning for yourself, each and every week, each and every month.

Elizabeth:      Right.  So moving on the second one and for everybody I have them in front of me so I can actually, I was going to say before as I can talk about.  You know this one I think is great because in also going on with right now there’s a, you know, here we look at the media and it’s a very much this, think of the media of lack and that, you know, people just horde on to things and that we all have to take what we can got.  So I think this second one really is the opposite of that kind of mentality.

David:             Absolutely Elizabeth, you’re right and the second commandment is raise the bar.  And that cut across several different strategies.  One could be raising your fees.  Raising your fees offer more value, move from being peddler to a partner and really be the resource that you’re client can’t live without.  Certainly part of that is being generous and sharing your expertise as we’re doing and as Elizabeth does, such a fabulous job with her radio show.  But this also applies to things like you know ramp up your blog entries, ramp up your article publishing, give stuff away.  The people who have been most successful in any sort of business, you know, in entrepreneurial business, in a service business, and a consulting business are the folks that give away value and growth.  And the more you give the more that comes back.  Some people say well I’ve been giving giving giving and stuff isn’t coming back, I would suggest you may want to look at the kind of stuff that you’re giving and you really do want to give it until it hurt, over give almost.  That’s one way to raise the bar.  Another way to raise the bar is to raise the bar in the kinds of clients that you work with and start saying now and again this is a bit counter intuitive, if the economy is tough, don’t you want to take every piece of business that comes your way.     

Elizabeth:      Right.  You look desperate.

David:             Well no.  That’s naughty.  So be careful in the kinds of project that you’re willing to take and make sure that the services and products and the value that you’re offering are really really different.  Some of it starts in a great market position, very different, very unique.  The competition creeps up.  If we don’t pay attention, we may slip into that commodity status.  And I know these are hard questions to ask yourself but you really have to answer them probably now more than ever before.

Elizabeth:      Yeah and the thing is in the raising your fee, it’s so counter-intuitive to people.  But I have a friend who is a coach and she was charging that what we all we’re like, “Oh my god, you’re charging not enough money.”  And she she’s like, “Yeah, people are going to, you know.”  And it took her months to finally raise her fees.  When she raised her fees, people complain about them less.  It was amazing.  You know, she was also was getting different clients.  She’s was getting clients who didn’t care.     

David:             Yes.  Exactly and the bit of wisdom here for everybody is to remember the mantra that I always share when this comes up, you are not you’re client.  You know if you’re saying, “Oh, I would never pay that much for these services.” That’s great, you’re not going to buy your own product but your target market where you’re raising the bar to get a better clientele where money is not so much an issue, they would gladly pay up for the value that you’re providing.

Elizabeth:      Yeah.  And it’s not your responsibility to decide.  They’ll decide.

David:             That’s right.

Elizabeth:      Okay so what’s the third one?

David:             The third was is dream big.  And this also ties into what you say earlier about losing the scarcity mindset but when times are tough and when things are starting to close in on you, the best way to get out of that rot is to consider project that are larger than yourself.  So start thinking in terms of joint ventures or partnership or affiliate or sponsor.  Typically small dreams led to small result and if you dream bigger, you’ll get bigger result.  Not in a selfish way but when I say dream big, the strategy I want everyone to walk away with is think about ways to make the pie bigger.  Don’t worry about your slice.  Make the pie bigger for everybody and that’s going unlock the new level of success.

Elizabeth:      Right, creating win-win kind of relationship with other people.  You can both lever jacks of each other.

David:             Exactly right.

Elizabeth:      Yeah and it’s also faster.  Like I found the fastest way for me to build my list is joint ventures.  Its fast, everyone kind of wins and its fun to do and it’s faster than any other way to build a list or to build your prospect or list.

David:             Exactly right.  Exactly right.

Elizabeth:      Now, okay, so number 4.

David:             Number 4 is developed the action habit and the key phrase that is really really very smart and very important for all of us especially when times are tough economically, you got to get moving on your marketing.  You got to get moving on your business and the tag line that I want to leave people with is done is better than perfect.  So focus on doing three things today to move your business forward and to bring money in the door and to fill those buckets that we talked about with our first commandment.  Once you’ve got those three things going and that’s clicking along, think about moving that up to five actions or seven actions each and everyday.  And the important thing for entrepreneur and self employed folks, you have to separate the busy work from the revenue generating work.  I can’t tell you how many of my friends and clients say, “Oh my god.  I don’t have time to sleep.  I don’t have time to see my family.  I’m working 10, 12, 14 hours a day.”  Because they think that’s what entrepreneur should do or they think that what entrepreneur is all about.  Oh, we work our brains out and that’s what we signed up for and that’s how it works.  Well I would suggest that really successful entrepreneur probably don’t work 10, 12, 14 hours a day.  They work when they want to.  They relax when they want to.  They’re out on their yacht and their jets when they want to be and they’re not slaves to their business.  So the hard the truth really is that there are people out there working in your field who are not as smart as you, not as hard working, not as well qualified and maybe not even as customer centric and the bottom-line is they’re making a lot more money.  Why?  It all comes down to this principle, they are action focus.  They have that action habit and at the end of the day only action create result.  

Elizabeth:      Right.  So we’re about ready to go to our first break.  And I definitely agree taking action.  I’ll share a little story about that after the break how important that is.  So everyone stay in tune for that after the break and we’ll go to the rest of our 10 commandment.  So stay in tune for that after the break.

Elizabeth:      Welcome back everyone.  This is Elizabeth Potts Weinstein your host for the Wealth Spa Radio Show.  We have David Newman on with us today talking about the 10 Commandment of Small Business Marketing Success.  And right before the break, we were talking about taking action.  You know it’s amazing how often I run into someone a year after a conference and the next year at the same conference and who still don’t have their website out.  By then I’ve launched like four website.  And were they perfect?  No, but they got up and you can’t get clients or traffic until the thing exist.  You know this held back people a lot I think.

David:             Absolutely.

Elizabeth:      Yeah, they’re busy but they’re not getting anything finished.  Alright so let’s go on the number 5 one.

David:             Number 5 is visualize your success and specifically visualize your success as a specialist.  I find myself and a lot my client find that you can’t be successful as a jack of all trade.  If you master one area of expertise and really pick a lane and say I’m the expert in this and you let the rest of your “opportunity” that are probably more like distraction, let those fall away from your business, you will find yourself accelerating at a much fancier path to success.  It’s really much easier to climb to the top of the mountain that way and enhance your visibility and credibility and viability if you’re well known for one thing.

Elizabeth:      And a lot of the secret in getting and be able to do a lot stuff and get a lot of stuff done is the art of saying no to everything else.  Cause you can’t do everything.  I’ve done that.  You know I have all kind of insane ideas for new businesses and had a coach was like, “Okay, you’re not allowed to start any new businesses this year.”

David:             And that’s the key point too.  When you say this year, here’s what you say, “you say no, not now.”

Elizabeth:      Right.

David:             And that keeps you focus on your current path.

Elizabeth:      Right.  Doesn’t feel like, you know, you can’t ever do it, just not today.

David:             Put it on your someday maybe list.

Elizabeth:      Exactly and I actually have a list.  I have a little folder in my email even for that.

David:             Yeah.

Elizabeth:      Okay so what is number 6 one.

David:             Number 6 is associate with winners.  You want to look to people who are maybe one or two steps ahead on the path where you’re hoping to go.  Form a mastermind group.  Surround yourself with positive people and really try to avoid naysayers and negativity.  Even to the point where you feel if there’s bad news on TV and the radio and the web, turn off the bad news.   Literally turn off the bad news.  This is especially true with your clients.  I mean you don’t want negative naysaying clients.  People who complain.  People who the work is never good enough.  Key point here is you are as much about who your clients are not as who they are.  So be very very choosey on who you hire as your client and remember it is always a mindset before skill set, so positive mindset to achieve positive result.

Elizabeth:      Right and if the clients are you know horrible, annoying or drag you down the time, it doesn’t matter how much they pay you.  It’s not worth it.

David:             Exactly.

Elizabeth:      Yeah and you know for some people they may say, I don’t have a mastermind or I don’t know anybody else who can be a mastermind.  It’s just about reading books.  You know you can associate with people without knowing them in person.  You can read all their books and follow those people and kind of mentally associate yourself with them.

David:             Absolutely true, great idea.

Elizabeth:      Okay so associating with winner. Alright what’s the next one?

David:             Commandment number 7 is give something back and this again comes from a place of generosity.  Give back to your community. Give back to your client.  Give back to your prospect.  Give back to your colleague.  Give back to your favorite nonprofit or religious organization.  However you chose to give back. This even extent to giving a referral, giving back in all sort of ways, business ways, personal ways, always generate results in surprising and some very indirect ways.  Its just good karma to give back and also people might say, “Well I’ve been working on my referral strategy.  How do get more referrals.  How do I get get get.  Simplest answer, quickest answer is give give give.

Elizabeth:      Right.  And also I think there’s some people with like nonprofit thing they think, we’ll I’m going to give moneys to charities or whatever when I’m whatever, when you have a million dollar or when I’m retired or something like that.  And really starting out even if you can only get $5 right now, starting out small now is the way to get more money later.

David:             Yes, indeed.  And this whole again, I don’t want to get, you know, squishy on this but it’s the pull of karma of giving and receiving is that the more you give, the more I believe that you open the channel to receive.  But that’s a whole separate discussion.  I won’t go in there.

Elizabeth:      Okay so what’s the next one?

David:             The next one is embrace and be flexible to change.  Here the key strategy is to be willing rethink and reposition and repackage your business and I mean everything, your products, your services, your client based, whatever it might be based on the new reality that’s always emerging, so based on the economic condition, based on new opportunities that they come across your radar.  If you’re reading the business news, the small business news, you’re reading some of the things you want Free Journal, New York Times, Forbes Fortune, Fast Company, it’s very important to keep your finger on the pulse of where the business universe is going so that your position to embrace change, be flexible to change and put yourself into the flow of where people are already spending money.  And so again what you can gleam from those headlines is, what are your people in your target market complaining about?  What’s costing them money.  What are their urgent need and priorities and pain?  It’s very important to use their own words.  Don’t use sales copy.  Don’t use marketing speak.  Used your clients and prospect own word to describe what you do and again you want simply to condition yourself in the same categories where your target market is already spending money so that you’re not stuck trying to convince people.

Elizabeth:      Right.  And being flexible to technological change, too.  You know I have run to people especially who have local kinds of businesses who says, “Oh, I don’t need a website cause I’ve gotten business through blah blah blah” whatever the way they always got business, its like you know the you need to keep changing because now even people who aren’t 25 years are now going online to find, to look, to talk about businesses.  And they expect even the local hairdresser, the carpet cleaner to have a website.  And so be open to changing those things even if you don’t change with that, you can’t say the same, you’re actually going to go backward.  You’ll actually become smaller.

David:             And that’s definitely part of the whole equation where its survival of the fittest and remember fittest doesn’t mean strongest.  Fittest means the one most adaptable to change.

Elizabeth:      Yeah, right.  Cause change is going to happen.  You either going to be left behind or you have go with the flow.

David:             Yep.

Elizabeth:      Okay so what is number 9?

David:             Number 9 is learned to love the process.  And a lot of folks are desperate to make a sale these days.  They’re definitely afraid that each prospect they meet with might say no and what I would suggest here is stop fearing the prospect and trust trusting your process.  So again stop trying to convince people.  You’re time is much better spent filtering and sorting through the folks who are already looking for your solution.  I’ve got 7 quick questions that will help people identify who might already be a good prospect for them that they’re not even aware might be good prospect for their product and services.  So first question is who your very favorite clients and the ones who you feel that you’ve served the best.  Second question is what are their job titles?  What industries do they worked in?  What affiliations do they have?  What associations do they belong to?  What publication do they read?  Question number 3 is what problems do they have and what solutions do they need?  Again, using their own words.  Number 4 is where else have they looked previously to solve this kind of problems.  Number 5 why hasn’t that work for them.  So in other words what has prevented them from finding a good solution until they came across you and your product and services?  Question number 6 is what prospect generally hate about your kind of service or product.  Is there something that you’re, you know, god forbid you’re in one of this professions where they make a lot of jokes about your profession like a lawyer or like something else.  Why do this people really fear or dislike about that and how can you be the antidote to that situation.  So how can you position yourself as the A at last solution.  Work through those 7 questions, you will find a whole of prospect that are just waiting to do business with you.

Elizabeth:      And I really have an attitude like when someone unsubscribe from my eZine list or says they don’t want to get something for me.  Then it’s like they weren’t a good fit.  They should go be with someone else cause, you know, I was never ever have a good client or customer-business owner relationship with them.  Then now that they’re gone it brings another people.  So you have to really look up things from different perspective.

David:             Exactly.

Elizabeth:      Okay.  And then what is number 10?

David:             Number 10 is have faith and be patient.  So I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news.  The bad news is that there’s no magic pill.  There’s no silver bullet that’s going to grow your business in the next 24 hours.  There’s no such thing and it’s very very important to pay no attention to flavor of the month, marketing nonsense that might be out there.  One month for example, it might be outsource thing, get a virtual assistant do this, the next month it might be calls calling and phone script and work the phone and dialing for dollars then it might be email marketing the next month and then it might be search engine optimization the next month.  As entrepreneurs and small business owners, we’re bombarded with all these opportunities to market our business and here’s the next magic pill, here’s the next silver bullet.  Those things don’t exist and a lot of my marketing mentor client feel bounce around like a pinball trying to latch on to the latest strategy, the latest internet marketing program.  Should I buy this book?  Should I go to the seminar?  Should I use this sales program?  And here’s the good news, what works is a small set of consistent marketing activities that you find easy, effortless and enjoyable because if you don’t enjoy them, you just won’t do them and that’s human nature.  That’s what it comes down to it.  It sounds really simple but it’s true.  Once you find your two or three overall strategies, and decide on how you want to implement those, and again go back to your three actions a day, fill your bucket, meet your financial target, you’ll start to see some real results and it’s really a matter of consistency.  If you stick with your program that you love doing, you wake up everyday you feel energize and good about doing and you do those marketing activities day in, day out rain or shine, happy or side if you like it or not that’s what’s going generate small business marketing success.

Elizabeth:      So we’re almost ready to our next break.  We’ve got to get through a ton of content.  I want to let you have a chance to share with everyone the website they should go to to get your stuff.

David:             Sure.  Absolutely.  Free resources, business growth, marketing are available at the Small Business Marketing Center and the web address is www.small-business-marketeing-center.com and I’d also like to offer a free get going marketing consultation to anyone that emails me with free consultation in the subject line and send that email to david@unconsulting.com, its U-N and the word consulting and I’d love to spend 20 minutes sharing about how you can grow your business.

Elizabeth:      Okay.  Great so I’ll share that URL and the email address after the break one more time.  Thank you so much for being on the show today, David.

David:             Elizabeth, thank you.  It’s been a lot of fun.

Elizabeth:      Great.  So everyone after the break, I’ll share that information again with the URL and all that stuff and then we’ll go on to the question for this week which is about collecting from those clients or customers who owe you money and aren’t paying you right now.  So stay in tune for that after the break.

Elizabeth:      Welcome back everyone.  This is Elizabeth Potts Weinstein, your host for the Wealth Spa Radio Show and we had David Newman on with us.  We were talking about the 10 Commandments of Small Business Marketing Success.  A gigantor amount of content there.  I want to give you the link that we talk about right at the every end.  First the address for his website is it’s called Small Business Marketing Center.  So it’s small-business-marketing-center.com.  That URL will also be on thewealthspa.com if you miss it.  And also the first 10 people who send him an email and his email address is david@unconsulting.com so U-N consulting dot com with the subject line free consultation.  Get a free 20 minute consultation with him about this stuff.  So again his email address is david@unconsulting.com.

                        Alright so let’s get into the question for this week.  And I got this from a couple of different people recently.  You know with everything on with the economy etc. etc. etc. that there is people who aren’t paying the bills and their credit cards are getting declined and your sending them an invoice, they’re not paying on it.  So what can you do?  And this is actually an issue for me right I kind of got two different people I have to send out nasty grams too.  It’s a little bit different for me cause I’m a lawyer so there’s more stuff I can do myself.  Now in a perfect world, there’s a whole bunch of stuff you put in place in your business ahead of time so you have more power when this happened.  And I’m going to go into that a few minutes.  First I want to do is if you haven’t done all those things, what can you do now.  Now the secret really is to having a system cause what ends up happening is that we’re internally inconsistent.  That we sent out invoices at different time.  That we followed with them in different ways, that maybe sometimes your assistant will follow up on things or your bookkeeper or you’ll do it.  You’ll be talking to different people at the company who owns money, etc.  And that inconsistency means that it takes a lot longer for you to get paid and they don’t take you seriously.  So what I recommend is as you’re dealing with this now, you work on developing a process, a system for handling people who aren’t paying your bills.  And this is something you can do you go along.  You know the next person who owes you money, you develop this process.

So first of all look at who’s going to contact them when.  Now it depends on how your business works.  If you’re selling to end customers, if you’re selling to client where you bill them on a regular basis, business owners, businesses versus individuals but typically you want to say okay if we get a noticed that our credit card was declined, how long is going to take for us to send a message.  Who’s going to send that message?  What it’s going to contain.  How will it be sent?  It maybe as a first message if its an email, its pretty friendly.  Assuming oh it must have been a mistake.  Your credit card was declined or the check didn’t clear or you didn’t send a check or you miss a payment.  A nice, friendly email.  And the thing is a fair amount of time it actually is a mistake.  Actually not bouncing a check necessarily, but the credit card getting declined maybe just that the date is wrong.  Actually it happens, for someone where they charge my credit card, they had an old expiration date but it was a reoccurring plan that I pay on every month.  Then it has no expiration date that’s why it was declined.  Nobody’s fault.  On the other hand it maybe that they just forgot.  So one great way to have good customer service is to just have things start up being friendly. You also want to think about when are you going to escalate.  So it starts out that your stuff or your accountant contact them and then it graduates to you.  It can start up the first contact is email, the second contact is a phone call and the third contact a letter and maybe the fourth one is alike a certified letter so they like to sign for it and be embarrassed in front of the postal worker.  You want to think about how you’re going to escalate things.  I see a lot where people don’t go through enough step of contact.  Sometimes this happens a lot where you can’t get a hold of the person who writes the check.  All you get is their assistant or their bookkeeper or their office manager and you can’t get through the person who actually can write you a check.  You know this is a big issue for a lot people and I see the biggest problem seems to be when we are doing project work for small businesses also with corporation.  But they do have more formal processes usually so that it can take a long time to get your money but you get.  The small business owner where you can’t get through their gatekeeper to talk to them, you work on a big project, maybe you deliver it, maybe you didn’t but something where you’re supposed to get paid you know a $1000 or $5000 some halfway decent large amount of money and they just start flaking out of you.  Hopefully you get a deposit but sometimes you can’t even get that.  And what do you do.  That’s why I recommend you want to go through those stuff of escalation.  Eventually getting the point of sending a certified letter where they have to individually sign for it.

You also want to make it easy for them to pay you.  So maybe instead of just accepting a check, you accept paypal.  You can go online and pay that way.  You accept a credit card.  And some people will say, “Well I don’t want to accept credit.  You have to pay that X number of percent to the credit card company.”  My answer there is would you rather pay 3% to visa or not get any money at all.  And have to go to small claim and sue them.  I personally would rather pay 3% to visa.  And I even take credit cards for things that cost a couple of thousand bucks cause I want my money now.  If you want your money now, you pay the percent.  Same kind of thing with paypal, you have to paypal a certain percent but you know what, you get your money now, so if you want to make it easy and you want to have steps that you go through.  Now eventually it may come to a point where you have to do take more action.  You know do you go ahead and you file small claim, do you hire a lawyer, what do you do?  Part of that depends on how much money they owe you.  Of course cause I’m an attorney, its easier decision for me cause I do a lot of things myself.  It may make sense if you have a lawyer that you work within a regular basis or if you use one of these pre-paid legal type services, to have a lawyer send a letter on their stationary.  For many people that scares them and they’ll pay the bill.  Then of course small claim or if its enough you’re going file a regular lawsuit to collect on that debt.  If its enough amount of money to have that makes sense.  Sometimes people pay as soon as they get send the official court document.  I see that happened a lot.  As soon as they see that, they’re like oh my god.  This people are really serious. I’m going to go ahead and pay the bill.  Now occasionally if you have a lot small debt it may make sense to sell those debts to a collection agency or a collection house where they can, there’s even one that buy of the debt and they pay you a certain amount and they go hung them down.  One of the issues is if you’re going to sell things to collection agencies or use collection agencies in any way, you should understand that you’re going to be alienating that client and they’re going to be incredibly embarrassed and probably hostile.  So you don’t want to do that at the very beginning okay.  You only want to do that only as a last resort or one of your last resorts because it’s going to make people really mad.  Cause the question is it seems they’re kind of hard I think.

Now one thing I’m going to tell you do not do and I see a lot of people thinking about doing this a lot especially now that we have stuff online where you can talk about other people online.  If someone owns you money especially if they’re another small business owner, they’re a client of yours.  Do not talk bad about them in a public setting.  Partially because you’re talking about money and that is an incredibly personal thing to people especially here on the United States and the culture that we have.  Talking about people and how they owe you money is a great way to alienate clients, even the client who is not that person who owes you money.  So I do not recommend putting yelp cause they didn’t pay you or post even to their blog how they owe you money or talk to them on Twitter or whatever.  Now I’m not talking about, you know, if specific gas and electric is having problem with them not talk about that, that’s a different thing.  You’re the client, the customer it’s another issue but some reason culturally it just does not work well is for you to complain about someone who owes you money.  Now I’m not necessarily talking about things like eBay like if you sell someone a product and they don’t pay for you and there is a system specifically to deal with that, I’m talking about complaining about people in another system, in another place.  Also you can get in trouble with labile or slanders so defamation etc. so it’s a great way for you to get tune back and let’s not do that.  And let’s not degrade places for people to sue us back if we’re going to have to go after them.

Now what can you do to this so this doesn’t happen.  You want to look at your contract with clients and customers.  You want to look at your payment agreement to your client or customer or see what you have in there.  You will like to have some sort of clause that says after a certain numbers of days of being late, there’s huge interest rate to penalize against them.  If they don’t pay on the certain time you get to automatically charge their credit card.  If they don’t pay for it, you own it.  You want these things in your contract.  If you have a credit, their credit card I don’t care if you have that credit card, if they owe you money, you have specific authorization to charge them that fee.  You can’t just charge them on their credit card just because you have a number.  Just like you can’t take money out of someone’s wallet just cause they owe you money.  It doesn’t matter if they owe you money.  Okay I will be mad if the electric company stole money out of my purse, just because I didn’t pay my bills.  So think about that when you’re dealing with clients and customers, the best time to deal with this issue is before it happens.  Alright so we’re going to our next break.  After this break, I’ll be talking about the Entrepreneur’s Success Tip of the Week which is about the Art of the Conversation.  So stay in tune for that after the break.

Elizabeth:      Welcome back everyone.  This is Elizabeth Potts Weinstein.  Again, so thanks for coming after the break.  Before the break I was answering a question from all of you all about collecting from clients and customer and you know of course the idea is what putting stuff in place, get everything in place before this becomes a problem and that really is the secret.

Now I want to talk with you about the Entrepreneur’s Success Tip for the Week and this week the second in our series on the Art of Social Networking so all this networking online stuff whether its Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter all that stuff YouTube and the emphasis is that the culture and the practices that you do in networking in real life which we all do and has been doing with networking event, taking client out to dinner, all that stuff that you do in real life.  Those rules and that culture still applies online and the art of online social networking.  So this week we’re talking about the Art of Relationship.  Alright so lets take it back the whole analogy the in real life networking and how that applies to networking online, social networking online.  So in real life, if you, let say you have someone you meet in a networking event, and you want to maybe they’re a prospect for you and you want to take them out for dinner.  So you ask them to go to dinner and you sit down to dinner.  Is what you do, you sit down to that dinner and you just start pitching.  Maybe you bring your laptop and you have PowerPoint presentation and you start talking about your product and talking about the cool things you can do for them and how it fits all of their problem, just go into it.  Hopefully that’s not what you do at a dinner with a prospect client.  You go to a networking event, you just don’t walk into the group or hopefully you don’t just walk into the group of people talking and just start pitching your stuff.  What do you actually do?  How to actually get client and develop joint, you know, venture relationships and partnership with people and people will just do referrals back and forth with?.  You just don’t start up by pitching.  You don’t expect the client on day 1 the first time you talked to them.

You know back in the old boys network whether or not that still exist in the same way shape or form, how did people get client.  How did men back in that old boys network get clients.  What did they do?  They joined the same country club and they went golfing and all kinds of other stereotypical things that people did.  Well we’re they talking about business the whole time.  No.  What were they doing?  They were developing a relationship.  I don’t care if your clients are the most largest biggest corporation or government entities in the world.  You’re not selling to a gigantic corporation or government entity or to a small business.  You’re selling to a human, a person.  That’s who makes the decision or maybe a couple people but they make the decision, individual people.  And so the art of networking in real life as well as networking online is about developing those relationships.  And you don’t develop it just by talking about business deal.  When you set down to have a dinner with someone who’s a prospective client, you don’t just start up pitching to them.  You develop a relationship by sharing personal stuff.  You talk to them about where they went on vacation.  You ask them about their golf game.  You talk about some sport thing.  You talk about the home improvement stuff that you’re having done on your house.  You talk about how did you get here.   Did you get here on time?  Do you have any trouble parking?  You just talk about normal stuff that you would have in a conversation with anybody and maybe you don’t care about several personal things, sometimes you may.  But [49:06] a lot work, the kind of business that you have but the idea is how you develop a relationship with someone is not just pitching.  It’s not just by talking about business stuff.  It’s by developing a relationship.  Not all those people are going to be your friend like friend friend.  But that’s what networking is its developing connection.

So taking that to being online.  When you’re online, if you develop a LinkedIn account, if you have a Facebook account wherever you’re thinking about networking online and doing social networking.  Don’t just come in and start pitching people.  Don’t just get connection and immediately try to sell them.  It is not going to work just like it doesn’t work in real.  Just like in real life, you need to first develop a rapport.  You need to find that what their needs are.  You need to learn about them as a human being and developed some sort of connection with them on a human level even if they are just a representative of a corporation.  They’re the person or one of the people who are making the decision.  Not the faceless corporation.  So I want you to take away from this idea is that when you’re networking online, you wan to think about it in the exact same way and the same step and processes as you would if you were networking in real life face to face or if you were talking with someone on the telephone.  So you want to think about the same types of conversation.  You know last week we talked about the art of conversation, same thing here with the Art of Relationship it really all goes together.  It is not just you standing there making your pitch.  Its not just you selling it talking about your 30% off sale on your widget or the cool article that you wrote, you post it on your blog.  It’s about asking questions.  It’s about getting the answers.  It’s about sharing personal stuff about yourself.  Now you don’t need to share every too much information personal thing that you have going on.  The idea is that you will draw a line on things you’re not going to share.  I mean maybe like me I talk all kind of stuff on Twitter that probably inappropriate in some circles.  Everyone has a different one they appropriate and that’s totally fine but you want to have some part of your own personality or even the behind the scene of your business that you’re going to share to develop rapport with the other side.  With the client, with the customer, with the potential business partner and you want this to be this way conversation to develop that relationship.

So you go online on your social networking set of choice, you want to think about not how can I find more clients but how many people can I be friends with on Facebook.  How many connections can I have on LinkedIn so like there’s that number over to the left, it can be some like insane number.  I think I have like over 1 million, you know, so and so connections and I’m like yeah that’s totally insane ridiculous number.  It’s about having a relationship with those people.  So it’s not who has the most friends, right.  Cause they’re not really your friends anyway.  Its about what’s the quality of the relationship do you have with those people.  So I will suggest to you is if you’re already networking online my tip this week or my action for this week is you’re already networking online and you have a certain number of connection or friends or followers or whatever it is, go to a certain number go to 5 let say of those people and developed those relationships.  It could be sending them a message.  It could be read something about them.  It could be asking them a question.  But thinking about its not just about the number of people that you have but what junk you can send to them.  How can you develop a relationship and develop rapport with those people you are of allegedly friends with on Facebook or connections that you made in LinkedIn, etc.  So that’s the tip for this week.  It’s all about the art of the relationship.

Okay, I just wanted to remind you, we’re almost done.  Its almost getting to the top of the hour of this show, I just wanted to remind you that if you missed any part of the show.  You didn’t get the link.  You don’t want to have to remember when the next show is, you can always go to thewealthspa.com to listen to this show, to sign up future shows deliver to you by email, by rss feeds, via iTunes.  You can also find me on Twitter.  Go to thewealthspa.com and you’ll be able to find me on Twitter.  You’ll be able to friends with me on Facebook and hookup with me on LinkedIn or where sites you hot to try it on.  You can link up with me that way.  Also if you have questions you want answered on the show, you can post questions there or contact us.  Find out about the book that I wrote any of that kind of stuff, always go to thewealthspa.com.

We got about 2 minutes before the show is over, I want to give you those links from earlier part in the show and of course I put that on another screen on my computer so I don’t have them.  Okay there we go.  Its small-bussiness-markeiting-center.com so if you want to get that free small business marketing resource site, you go to small-business-marketing-center.com.  And then the first 10 people our guest, David Newman, get a 20 minute free consultation on get going marketing strategy.  So send him an email which is his email address is david@unconsulting.com, that’s david@unconsulting.com.  If you miss any of this links or if you don’t know if you’re typing it right, it doesn’t work, you can always go to thewealthspa.com and we’ll have everything on there.  So thank you all so much for listening to the Wealth Spa Radio Show this week.  I hope everything is going well for you.  If you have any question please let us and I will look forward to speaking with you again next week.  Thanks.  Goodbye.

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Tags: David Newman, economy, elizabeth potts weinstein, Marketing, relationship