Category: Startups

How to Create a Marketing Plan for Your New Business

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

When you think of marketing, your mind may slingshot to social media. While this is one aspect of marketing, there are many other elements to digital marketing that you need to know before you jump right into social media. It’s important to design your digital marketing around a plan so that you’re spending less time, in the long run, working and posting your digital marketing than you are in the other aspects of your business.

 

Marketing Plan Step #1: Build a Website

Make sure to have your own website with your domain name. No one else can pull your information off the internet when you have your own website and domain name. You also have control over all your content. Make sure not to mistake having a social media page as your “website.” Your content or entire page can be pulled down at any moment, with no recourse, leaving you to start all over with a new site.

 

Marketing Plan Step #2: Choose an Email Service

While there are many email services out there today, Convertkit is one of our favorites for creators. Start with an email service that gives you a free account, then add the emails you have from prospects. Start with three to five tags, which are categories that you can set up to identify your email subscribers. A few categories that are good to start with are: clients, prospects or leads, and workshops (if you offer a free workshop). Whatever works for your business, categorize your email subscribers so that when you have an email campaign in the future, it’s easy to develop a targeted campaign right to the avatar you want to send them to.

 

Marketing Plan Step #3: Design a Lead Magnet

What is a lead magnet? A lead magnet is a freebie that you offer that is typically easy for you to generate and doesn’t use more of your time when your potential client takes you up on the offer. A lead magnet is a way to collect the email addresses of potential clients interested in what you offer.

Examples of freebie lead magnets are: ebooks, a mini-online course, a video series dropped via email, or a newsletter. Take one of the most common questions you get in your business and give them that information in your lead magnet. If you’re not sure what’s popular in your niche right now, take some time to do a Google search to find out what’s hot and trending online. 

 

Marketing Plan Step #4: Create Content Pillars

Content pillars are themes that you want to build your content around. For example, if you’re a florist, weddings, proms, and holidays are three content pillars you can build your content around. Create a theme for one to three months of content and build all of your marketing content, both print and digital, around the same theme. In doing this, you are continually reminding your followers about the service you offer. 

Why do you want to build your content around pillars? 

Because nowadays, in marketing, it takes up to 15 impressions for people to buy from you with all of the content they see on social media, email, and video. With that many impressions needed before someone considers buying, you need to think long-term for your digital (and traditional) marketing efforts.

When you’re building your marketing plan and content, remember that your plan doesn’t have to be perfect! Start small and see what works. Your first plan may be an email once a month, social media three days a week, and adding one blog to your website each month. Once you have a groove and are comfortable, start adding more content to your marketing!

Business Pitfalls to Avoid When You’re an Entrepreneur

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

When you’re starting a business, especially as a first-time entrepreneur, it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of building your business, such as making your new website, your new company branding, and creating business cards. However, many new entrepreneurs fail to plan, which is why 80% of start-ups fail in their first year. To avoid failing in your new business, you’ll want to make a plan after you come up with your new business idea and before you start to make your new logo. This way, you can avoid many of the pitfalls that new businesses make when they start out.

 

Start Your Business with a Business Plan

The first mistake many business owners make is to start a business without a plan. 

Ignore market testing and push on with an inaccurate plan. When you lay out a plan for your business, you have steps to take that will make your business grow more rapidly and run smoothly. 

You can purchase many business planning books if you’re unsure where to start when building a business plan. Start by reading through one to three books. Find takeaways that appeal to you and use those for your personalized business plan. 

 

Make Sure to Recognize the Problem and the Solution for Your New Business

Your new business is exciting, and you’re ready to go! However, do you know the problem you’re solving for your new potential clients? If not, then you need to step back and figure out what the problem is that you’re solving and if this is a problem that people are looking for a solution to. You can find out by surveying people online to see if your services or products offer a solution that people are looking for. If so, does your product or service offer many of the features that consumers or other businesses are looking for? These questions need to be answered before you start investing in a logo or a website.

 

Build Your Own Website with a Domain Name that You Own for Your Business

Many people feel the need to be on social media, even more so than having their own website. This is a huge mistake to make when you’re a business owner! Why? Because a social marketing platform can take down your social media page without warning, leaving you without a site or a place for your clients to contact you. Even if you’re a brick-and-mortar store, this can hurt your business. Think of the many hours of time you’ve spent on your social media page (as your only source of an online website) that’s lost because someone on the social media platform didn’t like your content. That’s not a chance any business owner should take!

Make sure you have your own website with a domain name that you’ve purchased. Gandi is a great site to purchase your domain name from, which you can migrate to any platform on which you’re building your website. Whether you’re using a drop-and-drag website or an online marketplace, you want to own your domain so that you can control your content 24/7.

 

Build Your Email List After You Have Your Website Built

Many people mistake building their social media channels and completely ignoring their email list. Did you know that your email list is the BEST marketing tool out there? Even though it’s one of the oldest forms of digital marketing, sending messages out to your email list regularly is the best way to get in front of your ideal audience.

Make sure to know the basics, who your audience is, and do the legwork of data collecting to find out if your business idea is a needed asset to consumers or businesses. Once you’ve achieved that goal, then start your logo, branding, website, and email list.

Four Essential Keys to Marketing Success Part II

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

When it comes to marketing, you need to have some essential components in place to make your efforts result in an effective strategy that turns into business profits. So, if you haven’t read our last blog, go back and read about our first two essentials to marketing strategy, then read this week’s post to find out more about how to effectively market your business.

 

Marketing Essential #3: Avoid Marketing Pitfalls

As a business owner who wears many hats, you may not have the time to comb through all the information about digital marketing to familiarize yourself with what to do. In short, there are several significant mistakes you can make when marketing. Here is a summary of the major marketing pitfalls many businesses fall into. You should avoid them when running your business. To learn more, visit our blog to read more about these pitfalls.

The first mistake many business owners make is to start a business without a plan. 

For most, a passion they adore will become a business. That’s not to say that passion is bad, but you have to do the marketing to find out if you have a market for your product or service. 

Secondly, business owners don’t completely answer why people should use them over their competition. Don’t try to be full-service or solve everyone’s problems; that’s not realistic. Instead, you need to find your why and how it’s different from your competition.

Third, some business owners overlook the needs of their prospective customers and clients. They believe they know why they buy; however, there may be an underlying reason that the business owner doesn’t know about. Surveying your potential client base is key to finding out what they want or need that you’re offering. 

Next, many business owners fail to diversify their marketing options and fail to get market opinions on their offers. You’re missing out if you only use social media and don’t have a website! In addition, your business needs a Google My Business listing so you can collect reviews so others can understand what services you offer and the quality of your services.

 

Marketing Essential #4: Use a World-Class Marketing Perspective

A world-class marketing perspective is essential, especially if you want to attract customers and clients worldwide. Attracting global clients can be accomplished with several techniques and activities, such as using a marketing journal, a digital marketing plan, and creating content pillars for your marketing. 

Using these techniques, you can put your name out there in the digital world. With consistent content marketing, your business can become one of the top brands in your industry!

Four Essential Keys to Marketing Success Part I

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

Marketing is a word that scares many business owners but is a necessity to bring in new clients. Whether creating digital or traditional marketing, you can always repurpose or reuse your content. However, use these guidelines to create a successful and reusable marketing campaign that you can duplicate with minor adjustments – making less work for your small business in the long run!

 

Four Essential Keys to Marketing Success

While there are many details to successful marketing, we’ll be going through the four essential keys to a successful and reusable marketing campaign. Once you have these basics down, you can use them every year, making minor changes for new ideas you have to add to your marketing campaign. We’ll go through each of these, so you can see exactly how to use them and how they all affect the overall outcome of your marketing campaign.

 

Marketing Essential #1: Define Your Unique Selling Proposition

Your Unique Selling Proposition, or USP, is the perspective your clients who hire you will have about your business. To find out your USP, take the time to ask yourself questions from the perspective of your current favorite customers and clients. What gets their attention? What needs are you meeting? Which pain points are you solving for your clients? What promises are you fulfilling for the people you provide a product or service to? Why are they hiring your services? Once you know the answers to these questions, you can start putting together a plan to meet the needs and wants of prospective clients.  

Next, take a look at the USP of your competitors. Then, utilize the components of the USP they are using to help you develop your unique USP. Your focused USP is what you are “promising” your customers and clients. Your unique selling proposition will set you apart from your competition and distinguish what you do and who you serve as a small business.

 

Marketing Essential #2: Putting an Effective Sales Offer to Work

You’ll want to take the time to develop an effective sales plan for your business or platform. If you don’t plan, your marketing efforts could be as effective as throwing spaghetti against a wall, hoping your efforts will pay off. Often, a good marketing plan will not only give you a sense of satisfaction. Still, it will pay off in more income and profitability for your company. Check out our weekly blog for a future post about how to create an effective sales plan and for more detail on the steps to take when making a sales plan for your business.

With a sales plan, you’ll combine what makes your products and services unique and stand out among your competitors. Your sales plans should compel customers to buy. The plan you come up with should make them feel they need to buy, even if the product doesn’t cover a basic need. Your sales pitch should answer a question, solve a problem or feed an obsession with your ideal client.

 

In your sales pitch and plan, you’ll want to provide your lead with all the information they need to make an informed and confident decision. When you do, you’ll be sure to land the sale and make a new customer! 

 

Check back for this series on marketing essentials, as we will post part II at the end of this month! 

Strategic Steps to Take For Business Growth

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

Strategic Steps to Take For Small Business Growth

The first step to creating a more profitable business is to consider the 80/20 or pareto principle. This rule states that 20% of your actions result in 80% of your results. This is true, no matter what vertical or category your small business falls into. Now, consider this. If you multiply the 80/20 rule by 4; it states that only 1% of what you do generates 50% of your business income. Imagine what would happen to your business if you found that 1% activity and focused on it relentlessly. Would you agree you would have one profitable business?  

Let Me Hold Up A Magnifying Glass To What Makes Up That 20%

The five elements of business that make up the 20% of activities that are making you the most money in your small business are leads, conversions, transactions, pricing, and profit. When you look at these components that make up your 20%, seek out one action item in each area. Focus on your best lead generation effort, tighten up your conversion rate, add value to create another point of sale for your customer, examine your pricing structure, and audit your costs; if the cost is not making you money, get rid of it. That’s just a few options out of literally hundreds of strategies. Even a small shift of 1-3% can make a big difference to your bottom line. Would you like to see how compounding works, visit my free Profit Simulator >>

How to Make the Right Marketing Decisions for Your Business

Okay, so we know that we all HATE being sold to but we do LOVE to buy stuff! Each time we purchase anything, we are looking to either solve a problem, create certainty, or have a meaningful experience.

With more than 10,000 messages per day bombarding consumers online, how do you get your message to stand out among your competitors with your marketing?

You’ll need to find your voice and narrow down what you’re saying to your prospects with focused messages. To break through the noise and create a message so compelling it’s like a dog whistle to your superstar client or customer, you’ll want to get down to the fundamentals of what your message is for your business (also known as your market dominating position or unique selling proposition). Really, what separates you from everyone else selling what you sell? Besides examining the inside of your company or its services you also need to know who your target customer is for your business. 

Your Target Customer is More than Just Demographics

Instead of looking at typical demographics such as age and gender, I coach companies to dig deeper and find out more about their ideal customers. When you’re only marketing based on common demographics, you’re only scratching the surface. Instead, I want you to think about the process people go through when they buy anything. The buyer’s journey is where 99% of prospects that consider buying what you sell are in the investigative stage. They are considering reasons to buy a product/service and overcoming objections to the purchase. It’s not until the very last 1% that they are considering WHO to buy from. 

To dive beyond simple demographics and create this compelling message, we need to tap into the emotional reason for your customer to buy. 

How Do You Know What Your Superstar Client Looks Like?

To identify your superstar clients/customers, you need to do nothing but look at your most loyal customer or the easiest clients you work with. You know the ones, who jumped at your offer, are excited to become customers, love what you do… really in their eyes, you do no wrong. The relationship is fluid… you’ll hear me say, in Changing the Sales Game Podcast, “If you feel goosebumps talking to someone, they are close to your ideal client.”

To find out more steps you can take to grow your small business, listen to my interview with Connie Whitman here >>

 

How to Bring in New Customers with Incentives

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

While offering incentives to new clients to generate business isn’t a new concept, it is a process that has worked in the past and still works today. Even in a digital world, incentivizing your offerings gives your client base more ways to buy from you and more reasons to purchase your services.

There are several ways to turn a prospect into a customer. Look through these types of incentives and choose an incentive that works for your vertical and speaks to you. If you’re not interested in creating a specific type of incentive, you won’t follow through. In business, the fortune is in the follow-up, including creating, publishing, and utilizing any of the incentives you choose from this list!

 

Incentive #1 Offer a special price for a beta test

Beta tests are soft launches to test out the idea of a product or service. In a beta test, you can get feedback from your testers on what you’re offering. This way, you can improve upon your original creation and put more marketing dollars and time behind a better product or service when you launch.

 

Incentive #2 Offer affiliate commissions

Offering an affiliate commission is common to have others refer you for work. When others refer you, you kick back a percent of the sale to them as a “thank-you” for the paid referral.

 

Incentive #3 Free or inexpensive first product to build trust

Lead magnets, newsletters, and other freebies are a great way to get people onto your email list. Once you have them on your email list, you can sell a low-cost entry-level product to them, such as an ebook. In addition, you can also offer a low-cost ebook as a direct sell on your website.

 

Incentive #4 Package deals and bundling products or services

Bundling packages for your clients to get a better deal is a great way to upsell or get your clients to purchase from you. When you bundle, you can show the savings they get by purchasing the bundled product. In addition, the package price clearly shows how much they are spending, so they don’t have to continually purchase an add-on product.

 

Incentive #5: Trade-up or upgrades

Offering a trade-up or trade-in is a great way to get your client to buy from you or purchase the next-level product. You can offer these in any vertical, and they make for a great upsell incentive.

Incentives are an excellent way to persuade your followers to buy from you, regardless of your vertical. First, decide which one best fits your business and start there. Then you can see what works the best. When you find the incentive that takes off, utilize that specific incentive in your marketing to optimize your sales!

How to Generate More Business for Your Company

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

Generate More Business by Having Satisfied Clients

While getting new clients is essential for growing your business, obtaining new clients is 11 times more expensive than keeping your current clientele. So, suppose you can keep your current clients happy and return to repeatedly buying your products or services. In that case, you can create a more sustainable and profitable business model that allows you to spend more time getting business and less time pounding the pavement looking for your next job or project.

 

Customer Satisfaction is Important in Business

If your customers aren’t satisfied, you’ve wasted time, money, and marketing resources. In addition, your word-of-mouth advertising is also compromised because if your customers aren’t happy, they either aren’t talking up your business or telling others about you; it will be a negative association. Now while you can’t make everyone happy all the time, if you offer a quality product or service and make customer service your top priority, then most of your customers will be satisfied. You can satisfy your customers by:

  • Providing quality products and services
  • Giving high-quality customer service
  • Creating a low-pressure, highly informative sales experience
  • Taking away risk with a guarantee

 

How to Generate More Business with Marketing

To grow your business, you’ll also need to use marketing. Digital marketing, or using the online space to market your company, is essential in today’s business world. You’ll want to make sure you are putting out consistent content relevant and valuable to your clients and prospective customers. 

When you start off with digital marketing, or if you’re revamping your marketing, you’ll want to start off slow. Choosing one of the following marketing ideas and utilizing that idea for three to six months, you can use one or more of these marketing techniques to generate more business for your company.

Build your database with a contest. This is a fun way to get your base involved in what you do. Create a challenge, make it fun, and think outside the box.

Schedule regular mailings or workshops on Zoom with sales, discounts, or other incentives. Having consistent meetings, whether once a month or every week, is a great way to contact your buyers.

Create educational blog content. Making consistent blog content of 300 words or more for each blog you write educates your customers and creates terrific SEO for your website. In addition, when you post blogs regularly, you increase the searchability of your website, so more people online will see your business.

Media Blog | Real Talk | Creating and Sustaining Your Business Partner Relationship

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

Having worked in the non-profit, marketing, and entertainment industry for over a decade, many of my friends thought I would be unequivocally in that space for many more years to come. However, I threw everyone a curveball when I decided to start a gluten-free bakery after a celiac disease diagnosis. 

Even though outwardly this seemed like a stretch, my family knew our history with entrepreneurship and that I spent my early years cooking and baking with my grandmother on their farm. Though my experience in baking was limited, I did know that what was available to me as a celiac consumer was slim and not of great quality. I tell a story about going to a local bakery and buying hundreds of dollars worth of product for a birthday party, only to have it all moldy the morning of.

With my bakery business, I wanted to focus not only on a quality product but also the education and customer care side that came with this type of fresh-zero preservatives product. I wanted to be known as the most exciting, fun, and caring place for the gluten free community. 

Creating a Gluten-Free Business 

Three years later, after staying up late nights researching and collecting data, I came up with a business plan for my gluten-free bakery. My business plan at the time included a partner because I knew I couldn’t do it all in this entrepreneurial bakery business. I needed a partner who could own the product development side.

I was able to find my partner via @glutenfreegirl on Twitter, who retweeted my request for a bakery business partner on her feed. Several people were interested, and the interview process started. One of the six potential partners made its way to the top of my list, and we started working together at the local farmer’s market. After a few months of working with my partner, I was able to leave my career to build out the bakery idea fully.

Creating a Business from a Problem to Solution

The majority of businesses are created for two reasons: either to solve a problem (gluten free bakery) or as investment opportunities for those who are really good at their jobs (think attornies, bookkeepers, landscapers, etc). In both cases, the business model should be developed around your why. You’ve likely heard it before, people don’t buy your product they buy your why (or you). 

From a financial stability standpoint, think about your runway. How are you going to sustain your lifestyle as you build? People talk in terms of five years, I like to think of investments in terms of three years. What capital do you need to get to to know what you’re doing is successful? Do you need outside investment to make it? What curveballs (pandemic? hurricane? economic downturn?) could derail your business and to what extent? We have a lot of examples of potential threats to businesses as of late, including inflation and supply chain challenges.

When developing the concept, what is the end goal. Even now, if you aren’t building with the end in mind, let’s dig into that.

How to Choose a Good Business Partner

I’ve been asked a number of times what I would have done differently in my business and one of them would have been to look at the business partnership in a different way. I dove in with a nice pair of thick rose-colored glasses. In hindsight, I coach partnerships through a series of sessions to address inter and intrapersonal issues that have come up in the past and what could come up in the future. We explore all sides of the business, leaving no stone not talked about or duty unassigned. From a partnership standpoint, that looks like changing your operating agreement a bit as the company grows, shifts, and changes direction. Having a neutral third party such as a business advisor, coach, or consultant can anchor the big picture for your business, especially if you’re in a fast-paced company.

Why Business Partnerships Fail

Partnerships fail largely due to power or lack of power. One partner can feel that the other partner is running everything or doing all the work, and their partner is feeling as though they aren’t pulling their weight.

I think there’s also a lack of visibility of successful women and family-owned partnerships available to us entrepreneurs as we build our partnerships. When I went searching on how to form a successful business partnership, many books or articles highlight only tech companies run by men. There are other verticals that thrive in partnership status including multi-generational businesses that don’t often show up on those searches, yet, are an integral part of economic growth and sustainability in America.

I hope you found some nuggets to take into your business. If you want to explore more about these topics and more, including a section on employee relationships and other key takeaways from my business journey thus far, you can find it on this interview with Keith Coniers on Real Talk Podcast episode 11.

Three Steps to Create a Successful Product Launch

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

Have you ever launched a new product or service and wondered why no one bought it? You’re looking at competitors and thinking, wow, I did all that. How can they be successful when I’m not?

Well, there are two things to consider: either they are lying or the answer is in their messaging. Getting a message heard is harder now than ever before but it still can be done, let me show you how.

Below, we’ve got three essential steps that you can take to make a big splash when launching your new product or service. Let’s take a walk on a marketing journey, so you can see exactly how to use them and how they can affect the overall outcome of your marketing campaign.

Step #1 Define your Unique Selling Proposition for Your Product Launch

Define your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) by taking time to ask yourself questions from your clients’ perspective. What would it take to get your attention? What needs do you need to be met? What objections could come up? What are the promises you want to be fulfilled?

Viewing your product/service launch with a customer-first approach means you’re really looking at the full competitive landscape and how your company falls into everything that is available to our ideal customer.

If you already have a following, you could ask direct questions to your existing base by creating a poll on social media, asking survey questions in your email newsletter, or by calling directly and asking your clients what they would like to see or use that can help them solve pain points in their personal or business life. 

Once you know the answers to these questions, you can start putting together a plan to meet your clients’ needs. 

So many people had questions about creating their unique USPs, we built a series of videos dedicated to the process. Watch videos 1-7 in my Chaos to Calm Business Academy to learn how >>

Step #2 Develop an Effective Sales Plan Before Launch

To develop an effective sales plan, you’ll want to take the following steps. 

  1. Put together a headline that gets immediate attention.
  2. Share the benefits of your products and services by speaking from the customers’ perspective.
  3. Identify the specific needs met by your offer.
  4. Share your sales proposition by telling customers what you don’t do or how you’re different than anyone else selling what you sell.
  5. Motivate buyers with a call to action by making it easy to do business with you. This offer should be backed by a guarantee or no-risk entry point.

When you put together what makes your products and services unique, you can compel customers to buy. You need to answer a question, solve a problem, or feed an obsession. Provide them with all the information they need to make an informed and confident decision. If they don’t feel a strong want for your product, they won’t buy it. 

Step #3 Use a World-class Marketing Perspective for Your Product Launch

Research Phase:
To develop a world-class marketing perspective, you must take the time to study what does work. Keep a marketing journal and write down your innovative ideas. Take screenshots of quality ads as you find them so you have a folder of proven concepts when you go to create your own.

Development Phase:
Now, as you develop your materials, you’ll want to make sure your marketing fits the company image, service, and quality. Do you need to hire a designer or will the piece turn out well using a self-design tool like Canva? Search for quality images that represent your company and the people it serves. Who is or isn’t represented in those images? Offer more information in your marketing than anyone else. The more information you offer, the more products/services you’ll sell. Develop all your ads, campaigns, and sales materials with attention to compelling and factual information.

Testing Phase:
When out in public, watch how consumers behave in different situations and how they consider their purchases. Watch for when you say something that catches a person’s attention and, maybe more importantly, when did you “fire hose” them and lose their attention? Improve on your best marketing areas and drop what isn’t working.

A great marketing plan can only get better. So continue fine-tuning and refining your marketing based on testing results and feedback. Continuously test markets, ads, and marketing techniques.

By using these techniques, you can put your name out there to the world and become one of the top brands in your industry. You can’t lose when the reward is directly related to your product or service; so why not get started today with a low-cost monthly membership to my Chaos to Calm e-Learning Marketing system?

 

How to Hire and Retain Employees in the Aftermath of The Great Resignation

Posted on by Amanda Bedell

Unless you’ve been living in a cave (and even hermits would have heard), you’re well aware of the hiring crisis besieging US companies, both large and small. Whether you’re a mom-and-pop shop or a big corporation, finding and securing dependable employees is hard when you have a good candidate pool to choose from; however, the past two years have been challenging because of the large number of people who have exited the workforce and aren’t planning to return.

When I had my bakery business in 2017 in the Seattle area, many employers had a hard time retaining employees, especially when the minimum hourly wage was raised to $15 an hour. While many small businesses ended up having to reduce their staff to keep their costs down, other companies were having a hard time retaining and keeping employees, even if they offered above minimum wage hourly rates for their employees.

I started brainstorming unconventional ways to hire and keep new employees to address this issue, as the cost of onboarding and hiring someone new is much more expensive than using your resources to keep your current employees. Especially in today’s market, retaining employees is at the forefront of every business. 

So when your employee isn’t happy, or they are looking for something different in their workday, are you ready to pivot and create an environment they want to keep working in? Are they excited to be a part of your team each day? If not, then read on to learn some new and effective ways that I used to retain employees for several years in my business, so you can apply them to your company to keep your workday filled with staff and team eager to be at your business!

 

Ask Your Employees to Refer their Friends

We all know that people typically hang around and associate with others with similar values. Utilizing this part of human nature, a great idea to find good employees is to ask your superstars to refer their friends to your company for employment. I call this technique Succeeding from the Inside Out.

There are common threads in the people you hired and those that are successful in your company. Help employees understand their unique contributions while also showing similarities. Employees that feel valued and heard make great ambassadors, and in turn recommend you as an employer to their friends and family.

This one is a kicker for some: acknowledge your employees won’t be with you forever. Rather than having this elephant in the room or people feeling terrible about leaving, celebrate the next phase in someone’s career and be a part of making the experience they have with you a positive lasting memory. People take jobs for the money and benefits but they stay because they are respected and have an opportunity to learn and grow. In my bakery days, I had staff that this was sometimes their first experience working. Through conversations, I found out a number of them struggled financially. I used to tell people, I can see if you are upset, stressed, or mad by what your cookies (or bread) look like. And, it was true! Once staff member wanted to ensure she got her own apartment by the time her baby turned one. To help her and her partner understand where their money was going and how they could save to make an apartment a reality, I hired a financial coach. Once she met with the financial planner, they were able to save enough money to get into that apartment in 3 months. Now, how much did that financial planner cost me? I can tell you a LOT less than having to retrain staff. Programs like this decreased our turnover and increased retention. A win-win on the bottom line.

Look for Employees Using Social Media

Finding potential employees through industry-specific networking sites such as GitHub, Crop, LinkedIn or Poached can be a great place to start. Once you’ve found someone’s profile that interests you, reach out to them via private messaging on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, giving your invitation a personal touch.

 

Utilizing Events to Meet New Recruits

Creating and attending events that draw in your ideal employee is a great way to meet a potential job candidate – and they don’t have to know that you’re looking for a new recruit! Think about events like hackathons or business startup week. These events are an excellent way to find out more about someone in a more relaxed, informal setting. In addition, you can find out who they know and see their professional circle and network. 

 

Finding New Recruits in Fair Chance or Second Chance Employment

Finding your workforce locally is more economical than doing a national job search. Organizations such as Goodwill can be a great source of workers whose lives can be materially improved by joining your company. In addition, the Department of Corrections (DOC) has employment specialists who can be a good point of contact. Finally, be proactive in sourcing employees from disadvantaged communities, apprenticeship programs, and partnerships with disability non-profits in your local community.

Worksource is an organization business owners often skip as they see it as a resource for workers. But the local office is a great resource for finding candidates for a number of open positions. Worksource specializes in placement for dislocated workers such as mothers returning to the workforce, veterans, disabled, formerly incarcerated, or unsheltered folks. Besides having access to a lot of workers, they provide support for both the individual and the business to ensure the employer match is a win-win. 

 

Tips for Attracting Employees

Sourcing great talent begins with a well-written job description. I encourage business owners to use my marketing conversion formula to create a job description that will help attract the employees they want. Make sure to utilize these prompts when writing the content for your employment application:

  • Interrupt: a headline that appeals to your ideal candidate.
  • Engage: a subheadline that provides insight on why this is the best place for them to work.
  • Educate: provide additional information on growth opportunities and what success looks like in the position you’re hiring for.
  • Offer: provide a compelling low-risk informational offer. A way for the candidate to raise their hand that they are interested but without the pressure of a 1st interview. This could be an informational interview or an invitation to sit in on a department meeting or company virtual event. 

Interview Tips 

Pick three key questions and remember that although you may get tired of asking the same questions, this gives you the ability to compare apples to apples, in terms of the responses you receive.

Assessing personality or potential can be as important as judging an employee’s suitability in terms of experience or qualifications. In your employee search, you’ll want to identify the potential within an individual to problem solve at the moment, if they collaborate well, and how they jump in when there’s an urgent task.

The Crystal Knows personality test can also be helpful in ensuring communication is smooth throughout the interview process. Knowing an individual’s personality type can give the interviewee insights on how best to ask questions and how to create an atmosphere that allows for a candidate’s personality to shine. 

 

The Importance of Retaining Your Team

Retention is vital nowadays, with your competitors looking to poach your workforce. Make sure to hold “stay interviews” with your team. Your stay interviews are a process in which you ask your employees questions and make sure your best employees are satisfied and engaged at your company so that they don’t jump ship unexpectedly.

An important part of understanding how to care for a team member is creating a culture of individuality and letting them shine at what they are really good at. When people work in their talents every day they are more productive and less likely to leave. To aid in this, I use Clifton Strengths. In the assessment, there’s a 1 in 22.5M chance someone has the same strengths as you in the same order. Knowing this information is powerful for managers to increase the performance of a team and team members. 

As stated earlier, the likelihood of workers staying at a company for 8-20+ years is less likely now than ever before. So, celebrate growth in your team and encourage them along on their next endevor. You’ll be glad you did when they become customers themselves or ambassadors out in the world.