How to Beat the Hiring Paradox of a Slow Economy

One instantly assumes that during slow years of economic growth, it would be easy to find great employees. Unfortunately, the opposite is true. During years of recession or slow growth, those star, A-level employees, are not hitting the job market. Instead, it’s the B and C level employees that are rushing to the classified section. Now, as a business owner, one of the most important aspects of your company is the people who work under you. It’s crucial to have as many A- level employees as possible. But when your help wanted ads are filled with B’s and C’s, you must be creative in finding great help.

The first place to start is in how you are reading resumes and determining what you are looking for in a subsequent interview.

When you read resumes, it’s important to remember that education, although important, is not the be all and end all. Resumes don’t tell you if the person was a C student who did the least amount of work possible in order to graduate, or if they were an A student who never took a day off. Resumes also don’t tell you if the prospective employee spent hours in the library, educating themselves on topics they weren’t able to take classes in. Instead of just looking for educational merit, look for something that shows they are a person with a passion for life, and for hard work. Have they spent volunteer hours coaching a sports team? Acted in a local play? Written for a non-profit newspaper? These types of candidates will be able to bring a passion and creative spin to your business that no degree will. Remember, merit can be bought, passion can’t.

As for the interview process, before you go into the interview room, have a list of questions and make sure you know why you’re asking each and every one. Just because everyone asks “What’s your greatest strength?” doesn’t make it a good question. Ask questions that allow you to determine facts about the person on a deeper level. Situational questions will offer a glimpse into the future. Finding out how they would do the job they are applying for is more important than finding out what their stress reliever is. Give the potential new employee a task to do and see how they do it. Put them under some stress and make them answer questions they couldn’t have rehearsed. This will allow you to really see how your potential new hire will work.

Most of this isn’t what you’re taught in business school and you don’t want to have to learn the key methods during hiring time. Thankfully, at ActionCOACH Canada, we are here to help make sure your business is always doing everything the best way possible. We’ll guide you in how to find great employees that are a perfect fit for your company. Our business expertise will insure your company is always ahead of the curve.

6 Steps to Growing Your Business- and benefit a Charity!

Do you want to make more money?
Do you want control of your time?
Do you want to find and keep good people on your team?

You’ll Learn Specific Ideas and Systems at 6 Steps to Growing Your Business
How to work ON your business instead of IN your business
• How to take immediate control of the time you spend at your business
• How to turn your advertising and marketing into an investment instead of an expense
• How to get back thousands of dollars in lost profits
• How to recruit, motivate, educate, and retain exceptional employees
• How to leverage your time to maximize efficiency and profits
• How to systemize your business to provide consistent, exceptional customer service
• How to get the quality of life that you started your business for in the first place!

Come to the seminar and learn “6 Steps to Growing Your Business.” You owe it to yourself to invest some of your time learning how your business can reach its full potential.

10,000+ business owners in 26 countries trust ActionCOACH to help them get
control of their time, earn more money, build better teams and get more out of life!

March 26, 2009
Time: 8:30 a.m. – 12:00 noon
Cost: Special Early Bird Registration Fee
$79.00 plus GST
(after March 13 – $109.00 plus GST)
10% of all ticket revenue will be donated to the Children’s Stollery Hospital
Location: Chateau Louis Conference Centre
(Roseberry room on the lower level)
11727 Kingsway Ave,
Edmonton, Alberta

Register online at www.actioncoachalberta.com
Fax the registration form
to 1-866-243-1654, or
Call 780-478-0790
to guarantee your place

All You Have to Do Is ASK!!

When it comes to sales your customers quite literally have all the answers. Have you ever answered a question with a question? Would that be making a difference to your conversion rate? The answer to the latter is most definitely yes! Asking questions not only increases your conversion rate, but builds rapport with your customer and ensures that the sale becomes their idea and not yours. It's all about active listening, and with questions you are remaining in control of the conversation. Once you find yourself doing all the talking you are no longer in control. Just remember that person asking the questions sets the direction for the conversation. If the customer is dominating the conversation by asking you questions make sure you answer the question with a question. However, try to vary the questions that you ask. And of course, don't get crazy with it, know when to draw the line!

Questions can guide consumer interest, discover a need and give accurate information. There are two commonly known types of questioning-open ended and closed questions

Open-ended questions are an excellent way to ensure customer involvement in the conversation and are key to identifying not only what they need but a lot about themselves.

Examples are:
Who are you buying the product/service for?
How often would you use the product/service?
What features were you looking for in this product/service?

Closed questions tend to get one word answers- yes or no. They can be used to gather information quickly not unlike a check list, and can also be used when confirming a buying details and help confirm the sale.

Whatever way you pose them, pose questions and often and you'll see great conversion rates. Got it?

Home Based Businesses = Success!

There are 5 key motivations fueling the growing popularity of professional home based business; time, lifestyle, profit, team and technology

Obviously time is a key factor when working from home. Home-based professionals are not disadvantaged by the down time normally spent travelling to and from work and they enjoy flexible hours. Clients also benefit from the flexible working hours and can schedule appointments to occur before or after work.

The lifestyle of a professional working from home allows for increased interaction with family members, a tailored work environment and the freedom to set the self paced completion of tasks. A win-win relationship also exists between home based business and their client base due to increased profit potential- due to low overheads. What you save on renting an expensive office suite can be passed onto your clients- creating a win-win solution for both parties.

Business owners often can work with their partner to create a great team synergy in the home environment. After years spent working in separate careers many home based professionals can involve their partner in the business. Partners can be involved in a business development and support role and teenage children who have excellent computer skills can earn some extra pocket money.

However, the home office environment is not immune to the challenges faced in the conventional work environment and a day in the life of a home-based professional is anything but average. There is no such thing as a typical day. By necessity, business owners should reserve time in each day for different kinds of chores eg. starting Mondays with a meeting and ending Fridays with writing reports.

There should also be time reserved for training and attendance at workshops. Home-based professionals must be proactive and consistent in furthering their own personal and professional development. Networking opportunities are also important in keeping up with the latest changes in the industry and provide a catalyst for new ideas and strategies.

Just hire an Action COACH and your problems will all be solved!

Prescription for Success!

It's 2009 and for some the economy is all gloom and doom- but not with ActionCOACH!

Follow our prescription for success during this Economic crisis and come out ahead of the rest!

1. Look for the opportunities, eg. Buy out a competitor, where do people need your product or svc in the world
2. Set new goals
3. Who is your sphere of influence and how are thinking: negative or positive
4. Make sure you have quite time to think up new ideas
5. Need a plan. The plan helps to take you out of overwhelm. Eg. In the 60’s how get to the moon and back. If you know how to get there it’s a plan not a goal. What do you have to learn to change the goal into a plan
6. Prune don’t prune (cut) for the sake of doing it use a plan to determine where to prune: strategies, cost, advertising, etc
7. What is your current product and service line up. What is doing well, what is not, what do you need to add, what are your high margin items, do you need to bring in more high margin items, Buyers moods are changing so you may have to provide difference prod/svc
8. Examine your market and sales strategies and change it. In good times people bought because they had disposable money and wanted things/toys. Now it is a what do I really need basis. So change your ads/mkt/sales to reflect the current market. Measure and test everything
9. Cashflow – monitor it what credit terms do you offer and what payment terms. Manage them better. What is your time of lag from when money comes in from a sale. It may kill you
Do not put money into a business you don’t know anything about, look at the management team
A good product delivered well will always sell!!

Holiday Sales Techniques!

Only 6 more days left for Christmas Shopping!
With all the economic upheaval going on, getting the most bang out of your buck is on everyone's minds. As people focus on their budgets for the new year, one thing to remember is that even though you may be a small business it doesn't mean that you can't compete with the big boys on price.

The perception in the market place is that people are shopping on price alone. That's not correct. Customer service and sales technique play a big role in establishing a strong clientele and putting those big companies on notice.

How many times have you gone into a business not really know what model, style, colour, or features you were looking for and purely asked for the price? Did the sales person give you a straight answer or did they ask you about who or why you were wanting to purchase the object?

Personal experiences, and honest feedback always points the way to securing sales, and a good salesperson should be able to give you several options for your needs that will leave the customer feeling good about there purchase. Taking the time to listen to a customers request is priceless.

How then does this apply to your business? Showing a genuine interest in solving a client's problems works equally well on cars, houses, furniture, service based business and any other product I can think of, including funeral homes! You just need to work out what your customers are actually looking for when they ask for the price, and what's more important to them in their buying decision!

This holiday season be sure to listen to your clients and consider hiring an ActionCOACH to point the way!

All the best to you and your family!

Greg Kopchuk

Testing and Measuring

Business Coaches with ActionCOACH use the term testing and measuring frequently. This practice forms an essential part of our ongoing mentoring programs with clients. What are we talking about anyway? It's quite simple so read on...

Why it testing important? We don't realize it but we test everything in our daily lives. You always take a new car for a test drive before you sign the dotted line. When you go shopping at the supermarket, clerks are standing in the aisles with samples for you to test before you buy. Waking up in the morning and checking the weather before selecting your clothing for the day is also a form of testing. We do it all the time we just don't think about it.

Yet businesses persist in embarking on expensive marketing campaigns with little or no idea of the outcome. These same businesses will spend thousands of dollars on an ad campaign and hope they get a response. Action firmly believes in testing a new ad campaign before the majority of the budget is committed. It may be a whale of an idea but no one knows with certainly the outcome of a daring new campaign. We at Action suggest that our clients commit 10=15% of the new campaign budget and test for the outcomes.

This then leads to the balance of the phrase..testing and measuring. There is little point in going to the trouble of conducting a test in the first place unless one follows through with some type of analysis of the results. Imagine taking that new car out for a test drive and not paying any heed whatsoever to the quality of the ride, the noise levels and the engine performance. Not reasonable is it? You would instantly compare this new car to your old one or other new cars you were considering wouldn't you? You would have your own form of measurement to compare the car with others. Your taste is a form of measurement when you try those samples in the supermarket. If you lost your ability to taste..why bother trying the sample at all?

There is not point in testing the outcome of any type of marketing campaign with no measurement of outcome. Careful measurement and analysis of the results of a test campaign will provide much needed information on which to base decisions. The results of the measurement will quantify the success of the campaign. The results can be extrapolated to test the soundness of the campaign. An example of this is:
A test mailing to 500 households yields 10 responses. Each response results in an average sale of $150.00 with a margin of 40% that adds $60.00 to the company's profits which is $600.00 overall ( $60 X 10 responses). Let us assume the overall cost of mailing is $1.00 each or $500.00 in all. The company then made a net profit of $100.00 ( $600.00 profit less costs of $500.00). This campaign would appear to be a winner!

If you would like to learn more about testing and measuring in your business call ActionCOACH Gregory Kopchuk at 780-478-0790