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How to Know If You've Lost Track of Your Vision

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Where Do You Want to Be?

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It’s well-thought business wisdom that we need vision for a business or a career. Knowing where we’re going makes our daily decisions easier, quicker, and more lasting, because we’re building a road to a specific destination. Having a vision for our work is the same as having goal we’re saving our money to enjoy — a vacation or a great retirement.

I’ve not met anyone who disagrees with the wisdom of doing that. Yet, when I ask folks about their vision, most people have to stop, find some long ago thought, and dust it off. Holding that vision in the sunlight, they see how long it’s been set aside. Real-time issues and day-to-day decisions have taken all of their attention.

Many folks have lost track of their vision and don’t realize.

How to Know If You’ve Lost Track of Your Vision

If we don’t keep our business vision in our sights, we lose direction. A business vision is the energy that fuels our decisions, especially when situations get trying, and we’re learning new things under new conditions. With no clear focus to guide us, we start to compromise. Here’s how to know if you’ve lost track of your vision.

  • If you wake up in the morning thinking the day is going to be boring, you’ve probably lost track of where you’re going.
  • If you look at your life in the future and what you see is more of what’s right here, you’re not heading anywhere certain.
  • If you’re watching other folks get places and your response is that could have been mine, you’ve set your dream aside.
  • If you think that having a vision for your business is too [put your word here] for a serious person like you, you’ve given up trying.
  • If you cite the roadblocks and barriers to making your vision a reality and consistently stop there, your vision is just a story.

The road to making a most amazing vision happen is paved with our thoughts, our passion, and our decisions. No outside barrier can stop a person who’s willing to stay fully invested in getting where they want to go. Winners keep their vision in front of them, adjusting and tweaking it to fit reality and their changing skill set. They do the work and stay the course, holding onto the future they see, even when other choices come along.

That’s the purpose of having a vision — to guide us to where we want to go.

Is time to take out your vision and dust it off again or are you on the road to making it happen? Do you know where you’re going?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
If you need to refocus where you’re going, let’s talk.

Is My 'Work With' Page Doing What It's Supposed to Do?

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Work with You or Work for Them?

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Last night, I enjoyed a delightful, long conversation with Shama Hyder from After the Launch. We talked about how her business and mine match up. Shama”s strongly drawn niche is in marketing. She offers service professionals a six-month marketing makeover plan. My background is product, community, and strategy. I help businesses and people find their vision, develop compelling new products and services, and write irresistible offers about them.

During our conversation, we talked about that topic I mention so frequently . . . that you can’t be inside the thinking and outside it at the same time.

Our conversation got me wondering whether my ‘Work with Liz’ page is doing what it’s supposed to do as well as it might.

Is My ‘Work With’ Page Doing What It’s Supposed to Do?

So often I say, “Everything needs to be about THEM — the customer, the reader — not YOU (or in this case, me). It’s time I took a look to make sure that I’m following my own advice.

Section 1: Outstanding and Irresistible

This section is most certainly about the clients I want. It’s a little sparse on words. In the world of needs-benefits selling, this puts forward the needs. The subhead might be stronger if it said, Outstanding and Irresistible Business, because that’s what the three questions are about.

Connector and Performance Manager

Connector and Performance Manager
This section is about the features and benefits of the “product,” which is me. [Each phrase in bold is a feature — something that is delivered. The words that follow are the benefits that each feature offers the “buyer.”] The execution could be more tightly done. The YOU in each benefit phrase is hidden. I need to state it outright as I did in the fourth bullet. This whole section could be a whole lot more YOU.

Connecting All Parts of You

Connecting All Parts of You
This section does what the section above should do. It’s interesting that I added it several days after I wrote the rest of the page. Distance from what I write helps me.

What Folks Have to Say about Working with Liz

What Folks Have to Say about Working with Liz
This is the proof and the call to action. If I don’t ask, people don’t know that we seriously want them to buy what we’re offering. I think this does that clearly enough.

Overall, in most places I seem to be selling the right things. My heart says I could do it more concretely.

What changes do you think would improve things?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

How to Think a Way Out of a Losing Situation

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Stuck and Going Nowhere

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Have you done an evaluation of your situation lately? When you think about where you are and were last year, are you gaining ground, losing ground, or standing still?

A small company client was hit hard by the changes that came out of September 11, 2001. Since that time, their business has been stalled or declining. Even they described their situation as “stuck and going nowhere.”

When I started asking about the problem, the answers formed a curious pattern. Reasons they offered included:

  • Their customer base had dwindled.
  • The “no call” law on telemarketers had hurt their sales.
  • Direct mail no longer worked.
  • They couldn’t get funding because they didn’t have connections.

Do you see the pattern? Every cause — every wall, pothole, and barrier — they offered was something outside of them. Other companies had faced the same things and found solutions, but this company was focused on the causes — they only saw what they couldn’t control.

A fine company and some great managers were stuck for 6 years because they got thinking in the wrong direction. They had painted themselves into a losing situation. Their view was that they were unable to fix their problems.

How to Think a Way Out of a Losing Situation

Not a person, not a business, can get to success without a few failures and losses. It’s the downs that build the skills to keep us climbing upward. At the center of winning is the ability to look at a losing situation and think a way out. Here’s how to do that.

  1. Think back to when you were last winning. How long has it been? What about you or your business was different then? Look for the differences between the you or your business then and now.

  2. Think about the hidden payoffs of losing. If you’re truly stuck and can’t see a way out, you must be getting a hidden reward for being where you are. Is that you’re able to lay down responsibility? Is it that people give you attention? Is it that you don’t have to try winning again? Whatever put you in the situation, you’re the reason that you’re still there.

  3. Think away from the center. Get some perspective. You’re not the first or the only to have been there. Thinking you are keeps you focused on the wrong things.

  4. Think yourself out of the fairy tale you’ve bought into. Are you waiting for a knight, a mentor, a patron to fix it? Needing help and waiting for someone to rescue you won’t change where you are. Knights, mentors, and patrons are attracted to people who show signs of winning.

  5. Think about a far off future unchanged. If that doesn’t motivate you to find a new answer, maybe you like where you are.

  6. Think up one small positive action. Then MAKE IT HAPPEN.

Walls, barriers, and potholes don’t stand a chance of holding back a winner.

Can you think your way out of a losing situation?

Of course you can.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!
SOBCon08 is May 2,3,4 in Chicago. Register now!

How What You Know Can Kill a Business and Thanks for Listening When I Call

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Once You’re Inside . . .

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We all do it. We misfire on a key point that shoots us in the foot every time. It’s a major disconnect that I see almost everywhere.

We think we can be the business and still represent the customer. As a result, we end up only thinking that we’re delivering on what the customer wants or needs. The reality is

We can’t be the business and the customer at the same time.

A certain kind of thinking goes into building a product or service. Decisions are made about how the offer works and why it works as it does. When it comes time to judge the value of the finished offer, those who did the thinking can’t forget what they know about how it was made.

It’s impossible to participate in the thinking that builds something and then to respond as if you don’t know what that thinking is.

Unfortunately, businesses everywhere — from entrepreneurs to corporations — try to do exactly that. What happens then is that we offer our customers, clients, readers a flawed product or service assuming that they know why we made it as we did.

I reviewed an interactive site where, four clicks inside I was lost in “helpful” information. I was unable able to find navigational signs to get to the content that was past the “lessons” up front.

Their intentions had been excellent service, but the result had the opposite. The developers didn’t know about the barriers . . . because they knew why each “lesson” was there.

That’s how what you know can kill a business. It’s hard to not to know what you already know. It’s hard to see the disconnects from inside the system.

So if you’re one of the folks that I call to talk about what I’m working on . . . thank you so much! The questions you ask really help to keep me on track.

Have you bumped into products that offer you plenty of extra “stuff,” but not the one thing that you want?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Time to Check Social Media Return on Investment

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Infinite Room Is NOT Infinite Time

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We live in a world of Social Media, where we can choose from a seemingly unending list of new universes — places where any small group suddenly finds we can join up to be our own majority. Like-minded thinking is one of the pleasures of getting together on any social site.

Don’t like how I think?
Click on.
No harm. No foul.

The infinite Internet has room for everyone.
It’s not hard to find like-minded thinkers anymore. As the number of Social Media sites grows, we can’t keep adding to our lists.

We don’t have infinite time to spend.
We need to know that time we’re spending is time well invested.

Time to Check Social Media Return on Investment

It’s easy to get comfortable on a social media site, especially if we’ve never fit so well anywhere before. But, now that the choices are so many, maybe we should check to be sure that the time we’re spending is time is adding something, not wasting away.

Here are five values to check the return on your time investment. Maybe you’ll find some time to save.

  1. What’s the big idea? What do people do there? Do they exchange information, look for jobs, act like schoolkids? Is that focus important to you? Do you look forward to time spent there?

  2. Who’s there? Are the people there friends, fans, or contacts? Are they there for relationships or information or votes? Are there people to learn from and people you aspire to be more like? Can you see them? Can they see you?

  3. What are they saying? What do you take from the conversation? What ideas are on offer? What ideas directly apply to what you do? How often do you see real value?

  4. What’s the time/goal orientation? What do the people focus on? Do they come to achieve; then leave? Do they hang out for conversation? Are their goals in line with yours?

  5. What is the payoff? Is this site redundant with another place you visit? Can you accomplish the same thing in a better way? Would more time here return more value? Would more time somewhere else make this site a non-starter? What do you get there that you can’t get anywhere else?

I quit visiting certain places, got back that time, and have suffered no loss. Well, actually, I’ve gained. The folks I interacted with in those places are in all of the other places I’ve still visit. So I’m trimming my social media portfolio to only those that work for me and my business.

What about you? Time to rethink your Social Media Investments?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Are You Letting Customer Relationships Pass You By?

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Don’t Let One Customer Click Away

One customer. That first customer. That next customer. Will that customer click away before you connect?

Most businesses don’t realize that the missing out on a single customer relationship is more costly than it appears. The customer that passes by today doesn’t mean the loss of one sale. That one customer gone represents

  • today’s sale
  • every purchase might have returned to make.
  • and every friend that customer might have brought to the business in future days.

Every customer that doesn’t connect takes those benefits to another business.

Strong businesses are built on strong relationships. Strong relationships are built on connections that stick.

Relationships that last don’t happen by accident.

Connection Central for Solos Opens Today

I’ve been working on a way to make useful 20+ years of education, the strategy, business, and relationships. The result is a sleek and flexible set of courses called Connection Central for Solos. They’re smartly focused on conversations connections, relationships, customers and paying the rent.

Connection Central is two carefully crafted curriculum — one stands alone, one comes in three versions. Each is designed to show you how to attract, delight, and form long-lasting relationships with customers. Both offer solid methods and strategies you can use to connect quickly, profitably, and predictably. I only made two because I only have so much time

Don’t let another customer click away.

Connection Central for Solos

Choose the course that fits your situation. Or call to discuss something tailored precisely to what you need. Visit SOBNet: Connection Central. If you have questions, call or email me. Don’t let those customers keep passing by. Isn’t it time that you connect?

Course 111: Getting Paid What You’re Worth

Are you ready to charge more for your services? Are you having a problem naming your fees?

Course 111-TeleLiz

Work with Liz to set the rationale for your fees. Use value, time, and math to discuss what you charge. Develop and price smaller offers. Check what you offer for missed opportunities to deliver value. Learn how to change the amount of work rather than lower your fees.
Enroll at Connection Central.
3 Telephone sessions with Liz ……………………………………………$295.00

Course 222: Connect with Customers

Like to Work Alone? Email Self-Coaching Course

Learn on your own with all of the tools you need or learn through conversations with Liz. See the complete 16-Step Curriculum in the box at the bottom of the page.

Course 222-Email

Self-coaching means just what it sounds like. You’ll get the tools and information and a push in the right direction. Weekly coaching plans and worksheets crafted by experienced educational publisher will guide you to define your product or service, fine tune your presentation, write a compelling offer, attract ideal customers, and close the deal. Begins January 20th, 2008
Enroll at Connection Central.
16-Step Email Self-Coaching Course …………………………………… $ 97.00

Don’t have 16 weeks to wait?
2 TeleCourses with Liz

Course 222 -TeleLiz-1

It’s the same curriculum with all of the same content, but fast-tracked through telephone sessions with Liz. Identify, connect, and form a relationship with your ideal customers by providing them with an atmosphere they recognize and an offer they value more highly than the price.
Enroll at Connection Central.
6 Telephone sessions with Liz …………………………………………… $585.00

Course 222- TeleLiz-2

Invite a colleague to work alongside you and share the benefits.
Enroll at Connection Central.
6 Telephone sessions with Liz ……… $970.00 [$485.00 each for two]

TeleSeminars are available to limited number immediately.
The first session of the email course will begin January 20th.

–ME “Liz” Strauss