Obtainer Trainer!

Some years ago, I had a good friend who was a minister, and every Sunday he would scan the congregation, checking to see how many people were there. He took it personally when people didn't show up, and he was correct in his assumption that people came to see him and hear him preach. Whatever else they felt about that church, HE was the church. When he left, a lot of people stopped attending. Just like ministers, when you have a professional practice, YOU are the practice. People associate the practice with you, and they come in to the practice because of you.

Whether you intend to associate, or to work as an independent contractor renting space from someone, or to start your own solo practice, you need to think about how you will market yourself to people in your community so they will come to your practice.

It's all about KNOW-LIKE-TRUST. People first have to know you; they need to feel they know who you are and what you stand for. Then they have to like you; they have to feel that there is a connection between you and then through this "liking-ness" finally, they have to be led to trust you. Trust only comes by interacting with people over time. So how will you develop this Know-Like-Trust thing?

First, you have to decide who you are and what makes you special so people can get to know you. But people won't know how special you are unless you either tell them or they figure it out from talking with you. You can communicate your uniqueness just by talking about your interests and passions. In communication, when you tell someone a fact about you, this empowers them to tell you a fact about them. This exchange of personal information grows into a conversation and into knowing. You can also get people to know you through advertising. For example, include your photo in your ads; tell about yourself on your website, and include photos of your family. But "getting to know you" is only the beginning.

Next, you have to get people to like you. This may be difficult or easy for you, depending upon your personality. People like people who:

Smile

Look them in the eye

Sincerely listen and respond

Evidence compassion

Say, "I like you"

If you're not now comfortable with the interpersonal thing, you'll need to work on this. Practice smiling at people and looking at them for a second or two. (Don't look too long, or they'll think you're staring.) Learn to listen. A very wise person once told me, "You learn nothing when you talk, because you know what you're saying already. You learn when you listen." And listen actively. Active listening is the practice of paying close attention to a speaker and asking questions to ensure full comprehension. Active listening also helps promote a relationship, because people like people who care enough to listen.

What about this "I like you" business? Well, the "world's greatest salesman" (as attested to by none other than the Guinness Book of World Records) is a guy named Joe Girard. Joe sold used cars better than anyone else because he understood the KLT principle, and worked on it every day. He knew that people like people who say, "I like you." So he would say this. But the trick, as he knew, is to mean it. If you're not sincere in saying you like someone, they'll know immediately and be turned off.

But knowing you and liking you are still not enough. You must get people to trust you. The only way to gain trust is over time. And trust is about two things: professionalism and integrity. Your professionalism must be evident everywhere in the community. Do you look like an unshaven bum when you go to the store on a Sunday morning? If you're the soccer coach, do you show up for every practice prepared and enthusiastic? If you're on a Rotary committee, do you pitch in and work hard?

It's also about integrity. The root of the word "integrity" is "integer." If you remember your math, an integer is a whole number. So integrity has to do with wholeness. It means your whole life is unified; it means what you say and what you do are in congruence. It also implies completeness. Are you completely honest in your dealings with clients? With vendors? With other professionals in the community?

The sooner you get busy creating that personal marketing plan, by working on the principles of Know-Like-Trust, the faster you'll be able to gain patients when you start into practice.

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Copyright 2007 Jean Wilson Murray, MBA, PhD.
Dr. Jean Murray has been advising small business owners since 1974. As the founder of Planning for Practice Success, she specializes in assisting health care professionals with business plan construction and startup details. She can help you gain the knowledge to act and the confidence to begin. Learn more at http://www.professionalpracticesuccess.com

Doesn´t marketing just drive you crazy sometimes?

It seems that every single week a new marketing program goes on sale promising us that, once bought and utilised, we´ll be able to attract more clients and earn more money than we ever dreamed possible and that this time, this one time, we´ll hit the jackpot and succeed where we´ve failed so many times before.

They all tell us that they have THE ANSWER and yet each and every marketing program has a different answer than the last.

Some tell us that 'the money´s in the list´ and urge us to put all of our time, money and effort into building the greatest list possible if we´re serious about becoming truly successful.

Others tell us that marketing is all about sales and closing techniques and that we need to become expert 'closers´ in order to become successful, whilst others still tell us that our ability to reap a bumper crop relies upon our copywriting skills, our free reports and downloads, our 'viral infections´, permission marketing or search engine optimisation.

Now, whilst each of these approaches can and do provide successful marketing approaches (in the short term at least), they´re not really a viable way to create long term business success.

In fact, each of these techniques in and of themselves is pretty useless when used indiscriminately as most people tend to do.

I´m sure you´re aware of people who´ve spent ages (along with a small fortune) on Search Engine Optimisation either to find that their web traffic didn´t increase or, even if it did, it didn´t convert into new business income?

Likewise, you probably know people who´ve created free download after free download and grown fairly decent sized lists only to find that whenever they tried to sell to them that half of them unsubscribed and the other half sent 'hate mail´ to the effect of "I didn´t sign up to be sold to. Do it again and I´ll unsubscribe" or simply not bothering to take action at all, right?

The net result is the same. No new sales, no increased revenue and no return on investment for all the time, money and effort it took to put these promotions together.

Yep, I´ve been there too and, although it´s rather embarrassing to admit, I still go there on rare occasions when a product or service I´m promoting flops.

It´s frustrating isn´t it?

After all, you bought the ebooks, listened to the audios and took all of the actions that the experts told you to take and yet... well... nothing!

No great marketing success, no return on investment and certainly not that ever elusive passive income we´re always promised on the marketing guru´s sales pages.

What gives?

Are we being sold a crock or is marketing success truly attainable for all of us or just the lucky few?

These are questions I used to ask myself a lot in the early days when most of my marketing attempts seemed to fail or, at least, not create the success I´d been hoping for.

In my search for an answer I read literally thousands of articles and books from some of the world´s most successful business and marketing experts and found that whilst they each had their own unique slant on what it took to create marketing success and whilst they each operated different proprietary systems, they all had at their core identical principles that drove them.

In effect, they all said that in order to attract people into doing business with you or your company they have to KNOW, LIKE AND TRUST you.

That´s all!

Sounds pretty simple right?

Yet when I analysed all of the marketing campaigns that I´d done that had been a flop, I noticed that despite having great copy, tons of bonuses and, seemingly, all of the right techniques in place, I had somehow violated the KNOW-Like-Trust 'rule´ and, in doing so, condemned my product launch to failure.

Conversely, every single success I´ve had has had KNOW-Like-Trust at its core.

Now, for all that KNOW-Like-Trust sounds pretty obvious, it´s clearly not. If it were then we´d all be using it and our marketing would be super-successful and, clearly, that´s not the case.

So, let´s look at KNOW-Like-Trust and try to learn how to use marketing´s 'secret weapon´ in your own marketing shall we?

We´ll start with KNOW.

It stands to reason that in order to do business with you and, ultimately, buy your products and services, that your prospects have to KNOW that you exist. Yet, despite this glaringly obvious fact, few fitness professionals dedicate any time at all to getting known, opting instead for the 'If I build it they will come´ method of marketing favoured by the unsuccessful masses.

So they build their websites, they write their free reports and they create their opt-in newsletters and... well... no-one comes or, if they do, in such small numbers that it barely matters.

This approach is 180 degrees out of phase with the methods of the super-successful marketers who put their efforts into first finding out who will come and then build their products and services to match the demand that´s already there.

A big difference right?

But how do they do find out?

Simple. They Get KNOWN!

They create articles in their area of expertise and post them to e-zine directories and blogs as well as on their own websites.

They find subject-specific forums and newsgroups and become active members who provide great information to red-hot prospects WITHOUT TRYING TO SELL ANYTHING.

They send out regular press releases to both the paper and e-press, positioning themselves as someone with something worth writing about.

They do public talks and seminars for members of the public interested in their field and load them with so much great information that people remember, use and share it with others to great effect.

They offer to write or interview for other professionals in the same field (or interview other pro´s themselves) in order to spread their name as far and wide as possible.

The long and the short of it is that the 'Get KNOWN´ phase is NOT about selling in any way, shape or form. Rather, as the title suggests, it´s about putting yourself on the map and, crucially, in front of an audience who will tell YOU what they want to buy rather than the other way around.

Now, before you dismiss the KNOW phase because of its simplicity, ask yourself how much of this you´re currently doing.

You may be surprised with just how little you´re actually doing to Get KNOWN!

Ok, we´ll assume that you´re now well on the road to getting KNOWN, but don´t think that you´re home and dry yet.

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Dax Moy is a performance coach with studios in and around London.
Voted one of the UK's leading fitness experts and a regular contributor to numerous TV & radio shows and magazines, Dax now runs the worl'd most successful Personal Training Academy where he teaches others to achieve similar success.
Visit http://www.personaltrainersuccessacademy.com for more articles like this

While Americans are under daily assault telling them that when real estate is on sale, as now, the world is
coming to an end, no such bolox is being spread in the United Kingdom. There the subjects are being
encouraged to buy up the cheap property of the citizens.

While Americans are being told to sell off their real estate stock no matter how low they have to go, the British understand that there are more opportunities than ever for those who can buy in and who want to profit over the long-term.

Furthermore, in a recent interview for Real Estate TV, multi-millionaire US real estate investment guru Robert Shemin pointed out that British and European buyers are in a particularly strong position to buy assets in the US for well below market value because of both the advantageous currency exchange position that they are in, and because vendors and developers in America are so keen to sell off stock.

As if shooting ourselves in the foot with negative propaganda wasn't enough, the folks in the U.K. are advised that in the majority of states you can buy in low thanks to the weakness of the dollar, and if you shop wisely you will find real estate for sale at below market value that will rent well over the long-term and deliver you solid returns.

Not since the Battle of New Orleans, in the War of 1812, have the British been so eager to invade the Gulf States. Their desire is enflamed by GO Zone legislation.

The GO Zone is the Gulf Opportunity Zone that covers the Hurricane Katrina affected states such as Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana, and where there are now exceptionally attractive government incentives for investors to purchase housing stock for rental to the awaiting displaced tenant demand.

In addition to the government’s attractive fiscal and taxation incentives to buy in and effectively house American citizens in the GO Zone, local developers are also competing against each other to make their developments more attractive to more investors meaning that investors who buy in now can walk away with some really profitable property.

Sales of existing homes fell in March as the major clearance sale in housing showed no signs of abating. The median price of a home fell compared with the price a year ago.

The National Association of Realtors said sales of existing single-family homes and condominiums dropped by 2 percent in March to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.93 million units.

The median price of a home sold last month was $200,700, a decline of 7.7 percent from the median price a year ago. That was the second-biggest year-over-year price decline following a record 8.4 percent drop in February. The records go back to 1999.

It marked the seventh consecutive year-over-year drop in prices, although the March sales price was up slightly from a February median price of $195,600. Economists prefer to compare the prices on a year-over-year basis because, unlike sales, the monthly prices are not adjusted for normal seasonal variations.

The March sales decline, which was in line with expectations, followed a 2.9 percent increase in sales in February. The February rise, which followed six straight monthly declines, had raised hopes that the steep housing correction could be hitting bottom.

However, many private analysts said they do not expect a rebound for a number of months, given the problems weighing on housing from a severe glut of unsold homes to tighter credit standards for prospective buyers and a rising tide of mortgage foreclosures.

Sales were down 19.3 percent compared with a year ago, reflecting the depth of the housing bust, which is coming after sales set records for five consecutive years.

For March, sales were down 6.5 percent in the Midwest and 3.5 percent in the South but increased by 2.2 percent in the Northeast and 2.2 percent in the West.

The Northeast was the country's only region to experience a rise in median prices, which were up 4.6 percent compared with a year ago. Prices were down in all other regions of the country, dropping by 14.7 percent in the West, 7.1 percent in the South and 5.3 percent in the Midwest.

Some analysts believe sales would begin to show improvements in the second half of this year, helped by an improved availability of mortgage-backed insurance from the Federal Housing Administration and higher limits for jumbo mortgages, loans that are critically important in high-priced areas of the country such as California.

Utah college students won't have to worry about the availability of student loans for the coming academic year.

As banks across the nation and in Utah have announced they will halt federally backed student loans, the Utah Higher Education Assistance Authority on Friday said it would use cash reserves to make sure students needing loans can get them.

"We've got money to make the student loans without disruption, whereas many states do not," said the authority's executive director, David Feitz. "Because of our financial reserves, we have staying power to make loans, even in the credit crisis."

The authority's board of directors approved the plan late last month, Feitz said. Regents heard about the plan Friday.

The Utah Higher Education Assistance Authority lends about $350 million a year to Utah students, Feitz has said.

The authority, however, wants to keep students out of a financial lurch that could discourage them from seeking a college education. It plans to use its financial reserves "as a bridge to better times," Feitz said.

"Even if other lenders drop out, we're still planning to make those loans...until the credit markets turn around," he said.

There is about $200 million in those financial reserves, Feitz said, thanks to conservative management, low overhead and money set aside along the way.