Spring is here. The trees and flowers are blooming after their winter hiatus. The birds are chirping and bees are buzzing about. On your travels, you have undoubtedly noticed a spring in everyone’s step. How can you put the “spring” in your business?

Recently, we began reading Get Clients Now! A 28-Day Marketing Program for Professionals and Consultants by C.J. Hayden. This book has been instrumental in a new thought process for us…Filling Our Pipeline. Your pipeline consists of prospects, contacts, leads and referrals. According to C.J. Hayden, “The marketing pipeline empties into the follow-up pool, which you dip into in order to move potential clients and referral sources further along in the system. Your goal is to keep the follow-up pool constantly circulating, with new prospects entering the pipeline and existing ones flowing into the next stage of the cycle.” Business wise, most everyone you come in contact with should be added to your pipeline. Once in the pipeline, you continue to follow-up, then when the potential client is ready to move forward, you move onto presentations and finally closing sales.

Follow-up is key. When we first began our practice, follow-up, at times, fell by the wayside. For some reason, we felt that follow-up meant that we were being “pushy”. We wondered why we weren’t getting clients now. Hours spent on proposals and research, were resulting in nada. However, when it came to servicing the needs of our clients we were follow-up wizards. It was their business, but we partnered with them to make them successful. If we didn’t get the results that we wanted, we followed up until we did.

One day it was almost as though a light came on. Firmly believing that we weren’t getting clients because of lack of follow-up, we decided to be our worst nightmare…pushy. As we began the process of follow-up, we were surprised. Our potential clients did not find us pushy in the least. Many hadn’t had the opportunity to read the proposal or they read it and they too didn’t follow-up. In the end, we began to get clients now, but it was a process. If there is one word that we can leave you with it is FOLLOW-UP. Don’t worry about feeling pushy or coming on too strong. Your potential clients are in business too and employ the same practice.

Warmly,

Dale Noles
Becki Jaspin-Noles

Business is a microcosm of Life. To stay competitive, be successful and overcome barriers standing in your way, you need to regularly assess where you are and what you want to achieve. Your mental attitude can make the difference between reaching or not reaching your goals.
If your business has suffered a setback or you have an employee facing personal or professional challenges, maybe it's time for some rehabilitation. Many of the same approaches used to get a person back on track after a physical injury are also key to keeping your business and employees moving forward. One good example of how rehabilitation can work is to apply the characteristics of a Positive Mental Attitude (PMA).

Gary Faris, a corporate trainer, learned first-hand how PMA works. Since he was a kid, he loved to run. A few years ago Gary, 38, was practicing for a quarter mile race in the Masters category. While training on a quiet country road, he was suddenly hit from behind by a pickup truck going 60 mph. The driver had not seen him because of a small rise in the road. The driver tried to stop but Gary was knocked 120 feet into a farmer's field.

The prognosis was not good. If he lived, he would never walk normally and he would have to forget about ever running again.

During his painful recovery, Gary applied his understanding of how to create success in business and decided to search for the core characteristics of a successful rehabilitation.

The Six Characteristics of a Positive Mental Attitude Gary discovered are as applicable to all aspects of business as they are to helping someone recover from an injury or setback.

There is a science to creating a positive attitude of achievement. It is made up of very specific elements. They are presented here in a sequence, but it is the simultaneous interaction of them working together that creates the chemistry for a winning attitude and success in just about any endeavor.

1. Set Your Inner Motivation
   Inner motivation happens when you are clearly motivated toward a very specific goal and away from the unpleasant consequences of not achieving it.
2. The Value of High Standards
   Set your own high standards. This means achieving anything less is unacceptable. Personally dedicate yourself to this level.
3. Chunk Down Your Goal
   Break down your goal into manageable, bite-size chunks. The benefits are:
   You'll focus on small tasks you can and will do.
   This creates a sense of satisfaction in completing each small step towards achievement.
4. Combine Your Present and Future Time Frames
   Think vividly and fully in the positive future. At the same moment you are concentrating on achieving the task at hand, you can also see the big bright picture of your future accomplishment drawing you forward. What step can you take right now to reach your next milestone? Fully experience the present and take action toward your future.
5. Personal Involvement
   Get involved in your own success. Don't wait for it to happen to you. When you participate, you influence what's going on. It increases your commitment, focuses your intensity, and makes you more determined. Personal involvement leads to owning a bigger stake in your own future.
6. Self to Self-Comparison
   How do you judge your performance? Traditionally we compare ourselves to others, judging success and failure. Try looking solely at your own progress, comparing yourself to yourself. What progress have you made since yesterday, since last week, last month, last year? Achievement is about moving from where you were to where you are now and on to where you are going in the future.

In the physics of motion, these Six Characteristic elements are like spokes on a wheel. Together they support the hub of your life as you roll towards manifesting your dreams, your goals and your future achievements.

Now, try this exercise. Choose one of your goals and take it through the Six Characteristics.

TIP: To be successful in any endeavor you need first to know your specific goals or outcomes.

1. Do you have both specific outcomes to achieve and clear negative consequences of not reaching your goal?
2. Have you set a high standard for yourself?
3. Have you chunked your goal down to manageable steps?
4. Is your visualized future accomplishment presently drawing you toward it?
5. Are you taking action or waiting for it to happen to you?

Lighten up! Compare yourself to yourself. Use others as inspiration, not comparison. Using these Six Characteristics and a lot of determination, Gary Faris was able to get through two years of painful rehabilitation and is now running again. Amazing! Apply these Six Characteristics to your business, to a struggling employee, or to your health, and notice your increased effectiveness.

(This model was originally developed by Gary J. Faris, Senior NLP Trainer and Consultant.)
© 2000, Robert Knowlton, Options Success Coaching and Training

1. Do your homework. Start by gathering important information. Decide on the venue for your headline, then, identify the 6 key elements of successful marketing materials. These include:
   
1. The product or service.
2. The benefits
3. The market.
4. What the market really desires and the most common problem it encounters.
5. Any special offer or inducement you can think of that would increase interest.
6. The competition and any claims they may be making.
   
2. Isolate your most impressive and unique competitive advantage. Look at your product or service the way your customers and prospects do. Put yourself in their shoes. What would get these people to pay attention? What is the strongest benefit you can offer?
   
   

   If your product was the "dream solution", the answer to your customers deepest desires, what would it do for them? Now your job is to create a headline that clearly contrasts from other competing headlines, all vying to attract the same audience.
   
3. Get started and write as many headlines as you can. Your first headline probably won’t be your best work. But as you continue writing, you’ll find better ways to express your thoughts in a more compelling, provocative or arresting way.
   
   Try several different formats from questions to combination-style headlines. Don’t worry about perfect spelling or presentation --simply let your ideas flow and jot them down. This strategy is shared by some of the best copywriters in the world. After you’ve created a lengthy list of possibilities, choose your top 3 to 5 headlines and tweak them for maximum impact. Testing will reveal your most responsive headline.
   
4. Brainstorm words and phrases that colorfully express your product’s unique benefits. In a short space of time, you can generate a plethora of vibrant, expressive words and original phrases that can help make your headline stand out from all others.
   
   With brainstorming, best results are obtained with a pre-set time frame of 5 minutes or so. Simply allow your creative juices to flow and record every word, without judgment. Ignore the temptation to evaluate the merit of any particular suggestion. After a few short minutes, you’ll have plenty of power-packed, benefit-oriented headline words to choose from
   
5. Deliver a clear, concise, and complete message. Edit your headline for clarity. Make sure your words are easily understood and do not evoke mixed messages. Be direct rather than subtle... benefit-oriented rather than amusing or "catchy".
   
   Readers generally digest a headline as one item, simultaneously taking in all the words as a complete unit and processing it as a single image. You want to be sure that the image your headline delivers is crystal-clear and not open to misinterpretation.
   
6. Capture attention, pique the interest of your prospects and arouse their curiosity. Do these three things and you’re sure to have a winning headline.
   

   
   

   First and foremost, you’ve got to attract the attention of readers. Think of your headline as a visual siren. Call out to your best prospects with something that’s vitally important to these folks only.
   
   Secondly, communicate in terms of benefits or helpful advantages and make your benefits more enticing and appealing than what the competition offers. Benefits address the self-interest of prospects. Benefits are all about prospects and what they’ll get as a result of buying your product.
   
   Thirdly, add a little mystique to the picture and you’ll arouse your prospect’s curiosity. Reveal just enough in your headline to literally drive your prospects to find out more.
   
7. Think of your headline as the message on a billboard. With most headlines you probably only have a few fleeting seconds to get your main selling point across.
   
   Rewrite and refine your message to down to its most powerful, concise statement. Make it deliver your most payable punch, promptly. Give the skimming reader the opportunity to receive your essential message in one quick take. Hit hard and hit fast. If you don’t, you’ll never win at this increasingly competitive game.

• your name and title
• your company name
• your company tagline, or a short phrase that describes what your company does
• your address
• your phone, cell phone, and/or pager numbers
• your fax number
• your e-mail address (sometimes people can't get it directly or quickly from your actual e-mail)
• your Web URL (be sure to include the "'http://" prefix to ensure it will translate as a hyperlink on most e-mail programs)

• an offer for a free report or product you offer
• an offer for a free consultation or trial offer
• a company announcement (new client, new product, award won, etc.)
• a hyperlink to your latest press release, article, or Web site feature
• an invitation to subscribe to your free e-newsletter

Work At Home Parent’s: Finding Balance
By: Patty Benton

According to the US Department of labor, in May 2001, 19.8 million persons did some type of work at home, and of these 30% were self employed, which is 5.94 million persons. Whether you work from home full-time or work from home part-time, completing the rest at work, you still face the same challenges of the distractions and challenges of completing your work from home. We all experience the regular distractions, such as a messy house, yard that needs to be mowed, etc., but add to that a child or children, and working from home becomes a challenge (and a joy). Is it a challenge that can be overcome? YES! Is it a challenge worth working to overcome? YES!

I think that, as parents, working from our homes may, in some ways, can be tougher than working outside the home. Though I do recognize that working outside the home, and having children, has its own set of issues, I am completely amazed at the challenges being a work from home parent presents. When I first opened my business, I thought it was going to be a white picket fence dream. Well, though I won’t say it has been a nightmare (it definitely hasn’t), it hasn’t been as easy as I thought it would be. I would say one of the biggest challenges I faced (besides informing the world of my wonderful services) was managing when to work and when to focus on my family. When we work outside of home, we normally leave our work, or at least our offices, AT work. We come home, we are “home” with our family. Yet, when we work at home, our offices are available to us 24/7, calling us to come do that last minute project, or check our email “just one more time.” I have struggled in the last year separating my time into “work” and “family.” Though I don’t have it perfected, and continue to struggle with it on a daily basis, I have managed to find a “sort of” balance.

One of the things that I have found helpful is the abundant amount of FREE online resources, which can help you find balance. There are also resources to give you an outlet when you are frustrated or have a question. Listed below are sites that are great tools for WAHP (Work At Home Parents).

http://www.wahm.com - Work At Home Moms
http://www.workathomeparents.com - Work @ Home Parents
http://www.bizymoms.com - Bizymoms.com
http://www.en-parent.com -The Entrenprunial Parent
http://www.parenting.com/parenting - Parenting.com

Being at home with our children is priceless and worth any trials we may come across. To be able to watch their first step, attend their first day of school, go on fieldtrips and help with class parties makes all our struggles and frustrations trivial. As technology changes, and make working from home an option, more parents will encounter the struggles and joys. What we learn today, will help us balance tommorrow.

Patty Benton is the owner of JERPAT Virtual Assistants, www.jerpat.org/va/VirtualAssistant.html, which provides affordable administrative support to small businesses, religious organizations, and realtors. She also publishes a monthly small business newsletter called Virtual Insider, www.jerpat.org/va/VirtualInsider.htm. To contact Patty directly please email her at patty@jerpat.org.