Wednesday, December 22, 2010

12/21/10 - 3 Tips: Business Planning Tips, Marketing Tips for Finance, Sales Planning Tips

Hosts: Leo Wisniewski, Lauren Milligan and Jacqueline Camacho-Ruiz

Guests:

Michael Cooper of Sales Kitchen

Leo Wisniewski

  • Leo and Sybil Ege talk about "Beyond Your Business Plan"
  • Sybil Ege is the owner of Reach Out Marketing - an outsource marketing company working with other businesses who are too small to have their own marketing organization or just don't feel like doing it themselves.
  • The key point of last week's discussion - when you are creating a business plan, it's always critical to create some sort of business plan but the specifics depend on the kind of business that you are going to do. The level of detail really depend on the kind of nature of your particular business. If you are in business, you should have created a path/direction for the next 12 months that you could follow.
  • After you have the business plan, what are you going to do now? You need to use your business plan because it is a forecast of where you're going, what kind of marketing are you going to do, what kind of revenue do you expect to bring in, and what kind of expenses do you have. I would be a good idea if periodically you could compare how you are doing according to plan comparing the actual results with the projected results.
  • You always want to tack marketing as well as finances.
  • From a finances point of view, you track your income, revenues, and expenses to see if they are close. Within 5-10% would be good but if you are off by 25% or 50% in any particular category, you need to look very carefully what you are doing wrong and need to make a correction.
  • The same thing is applicable to marketing. You need to put in your plan the various marketing tools or techniques you wanted to implement and budget for it. You should have predicted the kind of results you would get from those activities and if you are not getting the customer, the question is , "Are you doing those activities?" or "Are they not effective?"
  • One of the challenges for small business owners is the feel isolated. It is recommended that you talks to an outside counsel in terms of business. Somebody who has a lot of experience in your industry but not a competitor or who is an experienced entrepreneur.
  • You can reach Sybil at http://www.reachoutmarketing.net/ and proceed to the "contact us" page or call (630) 365-2959.
  • Leo's Bio Page
  • Leo's Segment Playback(just click on Leo's Segment Playback to hear Leo's archived program!)
  • Download Leo's Segment(Right-click "Download Leo's Segment" and then click "Save Target as...")
Lauren Milligan

Jacqueline Camacho-Ruiz

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Sunday, December 19, 2010

12/14/10 - Sybil Returns, Be Happy, and Making a Difference

Hosts: Leo Wisniewski, Lauren Milligan and Jacqueline Camacho-Ruiz

Leo Wisniewski

  • Leo "Welcomes back Sybil Ege!"
  • Sybil is the founder and owner of Reach Out Marketing. Last week week Leo and Sybil were talking about her marketing activities and how she helps other businesses. She also uses SendOutCards as one of her marketing tools. This week, Sybil will discuss other services that her company offers.
  • There are two other services that Reach Out Marketing offers.
  1. Business Counselling
  2. Business Plan Preparation
  • A lot of people are not clear on "What does a business councilor do?", "Is that the same as a business coach?".
  • Think of your business councilor as an adviser. They help you see your business from a view that sometimes you are too myopic to see yourself. Sometime you get caught up in the details from day-to-day that you don't take the time to step back and see what's happening.
  • The business coach is similar but it's coaching as where people get hung up. They have an obstacle in their way that they can't get past it. They have a negative attitude and they're afraid they can't make anything happened and the business coach is going to give them motivation to get past the obstacle, to realize that it's just a small pebble and not a mountain. So both of these are offered by Reach Out Marketing
  • Benefits of encountering best practices of different clients. Everybody thinks their business is unique but really there are functional areas of every single business. Most small business owners have problems in two specific areas- 1.) Marketing 2.) Finances. Sybil helps people get focused and the best way to do this is to draft a business plan. Most people fear doing the business plan more than they fear getting into the actual business for the 1st time.
  • A business plan is a very simple instrument meant to give you direction, to give you what path to follow and to give you focus
  • A business plan should include:
  1. Your goals and mission of the business
  2. A good understanding of the industry that your business is in and how does your business fit in that industry
  3. Organizational issues of the company
  4. The marketing plan and approach you will take in the coming years
  5. The financial plan where you project your revenues and expenses
  • Every business has the same functional areas but their industry, niche, product is different and she makes they think through all aspects of the business because if they don't have enough experience in some of the areas, it's either a hit or miss. The range of time to get a good plan together would be about 3-6 weeks.
  • You can get in touch with Sybil Ege by logging into http://www.reachoutmarketing.net/ and go to the "contact us" page. You can also call (630) 365-2959
  • Leo's Segment Playback(just click on Leo's Segment Playback to hear Leo's archived program!)
  • Download Leo's Segment(Right-click "Download Leo's Segment" and then click "Save Target as...")
Lauren Milligan
  • Lauren offers interview tips for today's job candidates. Because the current job market has created chaos for jobseekers, they must be ready to address many issues during a job interview. Other candidates have added value to their credentials...have you? Listen to Lauren's "No Wimps Allowed" advice on today's show!
  • Lauren's Segment Playback(just click on Lauren's Segment Playback to hear Lauren's archived program!)
  • Download Lauren's Segment(Right-click "Download Lauren's Segment" and then click "Save Target as...")

Jacqueline Camacho-Ruiz

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Saturday, December 11, 2010

12/07/10 - Sales Tips, Job Search Tips, Efficiency Tips, & Welcome Back Sybil

Hosts: Leo Wisniewski, Lauren Milligan and Jacqueline Camacho-Ruiz

Guests:

Michael Cooper

Leo Wisniewski

  • Leo "Welcome's back Sybil Ege!"
  • Sybil is the co-founder of Livin' The Dream a few years ago. Both Leo and Sybil started to do a brokerage radio show for about 2 years on live radio.
  • She now has a new business called Reach Out Marketing where she does outsource marketing for other businesses. The company's primary focus is to do prospecting for other businesses. This includes not only appointment setting but also follow up afterwards, sales.
  • With Sybil's experience, she believes that you can't just use one channel to talk to prospects. You can't just use email, snail mail or phone calls. She also uses SendOutCards not as a distributor but to use it as a tool to help her clients.
  • All she needs from her clients to send her list of people they want to mail things to and she designs for them a card/post card for example a Christmas card, announcements for launching new businesses or a new product line, trade show announcements, created a collateral material.
  • She often works for smaller companies which don't have their own marketing or sales department so they're willing to outsource it because they don't want to become experts of that. After working with the same companies after a few years, you feel like you are part of the company and become their "go-to" person.
  • One of the best cards Sybil has created was a collateral material for a company who was looking for franchise candidates. They had a very good website and brochure but what they lacked was something in a smaller scale. So she created a card for then based from all the high definition pictures they provided. After sending it out, as a result people remembered her because of the very memorable card.
  • You can get in touch with Sybil through her website http://www.reachoutmarketing.net/ and go to the contact us page, call her at 630-365-2959.
  • Leo's Segment Playback(just click on Leo's Segment Playback to hear Leo's archived program!)
  • Download Leo's Segment(Right-click "Download Leo's Segment" and then click "Save Target as...")
Lauren Milligan
  • Are you a professional who is unsure of the best job search strategies or a career changer who needs help reframing your skills? If you answered yes, Lauren's segment is just for you! Join Lauren and Linda Wolfe from JVS as they discuss how mature jobseekers can tune up their toolbox and again find success in their careers.
  • Lauren's Segment Playback(just click on Lauren's Segment Playback to hear Lauren's archived program!)
  • Download Lauren's Segment(Right-click "Download Lauren's Segment" and then click "Save Target as...")

Jacqueline Camacho-Ruiz

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