The Accountability Formula
“When is John going to get me that report?”
“What is going on in marketing? When are they going to finish that project?”
“I can’t believe Mary is so late in making those phone calls.”
“Okay…who dropped the ball this time?”
“Hey…that’s not MY job.”
Does this sound familiar? If so, your team and company may be faced with a very big challenge with accountability, which results in finger pointing, frustration and broken trust. Personal responsibility and accountability can put an end to the blame game, saving your company thousands if not millions of dollars by increasing productivity, customer service and job satisfaction. This article offers leaders five basic approaches to increasing accountability, which are simple, yet they require actually building a culture of accountability or even going so far to adopting accountability as one of the core values of your company.
Communicate the big picture- Accountability stands a better chance of succeeding if everyone in your company embraces a larger responsibility for the success of the entire organization. Spend time talking individually with team members about how his or her project affects the vision and mission of the company. With this communication, people can make wiser decisions from the context of the “big picture” rather than from the perspective of what may seem to be a detailed and boring task.
State clear expectations- If one person on the team does not meet your expectations, the entire team can fail. It is important from the very beginning of any new project to state the expectations clearly and repeat them over and over again until your team really “gets it.” These expectations need to be crystal clear, including dates, who is responsible for what, the details of the task and how you want the finished product delivered. If your expectations are fuzzy or confusing in any way, your team can break down, and the fine and very important details can fall through the cracks.
Accountability work groups- One of the best ways to achieve accountability is to develop shared accountability among team members. Accountability within the team can be accomplished by what Morris R. Shechtman calls “accountability groups,” groups which give team members the permission to speak and listen in a way which is frank and open. This accountability group can then serve as a small unit of people working together to confide in with struggles, weaknesses and insecurities and they relate to the goals and growth the team intends to achieve.
Move to action- In order for accountability to work, people have to know that failure of completion will come with certain consequences, including written warnings, loss of a bonus or extra hours served on a week-end to complete the project on the table. Without consequences, your employees won’t take you seriously. They will think that
Reward and recognition program- Employees need to know in a tangible way their efforts are indeed driving the company forward, and it is important for them to share in the fruits of their hard work. The offer of increased pay and benefits (vacations, time off and other perks) can keep accountability and morale high and can motivate employees to continue to strive for high levels of performance.
About the Author
Bea Fields is an Executive Coach and the President of Five Star Leader Coaching and Training. She is a Consultant, Trainer, Public Speaker and author of the Five Star Leader e-course. Along with Mitch Meyerson, Founder of Guerrilla Marketing Coach, she is the co-leader of the Guerrilla Marketing Coach Certification program. She is the Visionary for the Teleclass Leaders Learning Program and the Personal Environments Learning Program for CoachVille, LLC.
I speak of VA Training very highly and it’s not because I am a coach and co-group leader.
I speak highly of VA Training because it was instrumental in getting me where I am with my business. I was reading old posts from two years ago when I first started my business and am a little embarrassed by what I wrote. It wasn’t that I didn’t have the business sense…I just didn’t have the right focus or direction.
I graduated from VA Training in June 2005 and I’m still coaching with Dale to this day (bless him….) and I’m still learning and growing.
I highly encourage you to check out VA Training to see the new options that are available to you. We’ve instituted a payment plan (because we know funds can be tight) and we also have a program now that excludes the one-on-one coaching, but has all of the group calls. (But I have to tell you, the one-on-one calls is where you dig into the “meat” of your business and it’s all about YOU and YOUR business — it was my favorite part!!!)
Here’s the website… http://www.vatraining.com/inside-va-training/february-2007.html
We hope to see you in one of the upcoming sessions!
Until next time…
Heather
Permalink 9 CommentsStrategies for Writing Effective Website Copy
By Alice Seba
It’s relatively simple to gain trust with your website copy and establish yourself as the expert in your area of business. This article will help you star doing that. Whether you sell candles or mining equipment, your online customers want to know that you are a reputable business person and that you “know your stuff”.
You need to speak directly to your target audience and give them the information they are looking for.
Writing for the Web Requires a Different Approach
Internet surfers are continuously looking for information and a solution to their problems. If they’re going to buy anything from you, you need to establish yourself as a credible and informative resource, who also happens to have a terrific product. Speak directly to the needs and desires of your visitor and you will have a captivated audience.
A Few Tips:
1. Talk to your customer - Avoid focusing on yourself. You are irrelevant. Tell your customer how she will benefit from using your product. Use the word “you” and you can be certain you are speaking directly to your customer.
2. Understand your target customer - Understand what motivates your customer and write from their perspective. Don’t try to appeal to everyone. You’ll get better results when you can speak directly the pains and problems your potential customer has than trying generic copy to sell to a wide variety of people.
3. Get attention - You can do this with a good headline and sub-headlines. That way, people will know instantly if you have what they are looking for. Forget cute and clever headlines…give your visitors the straight goods.
4. Keep it simple - Use short sentences and simple words. Your visitors eyes tire easily. Be kind to them! Break up your paragraphs and create plenty of white space.
5. Be casual - The web not the place for a formal essay. Write as you speak and be friendly with your visitor. Do double-check your spelling and follow most grammar rules, but keep the tone light, especially when your target is a more casual group.
6. Set yourself apart from the competition - What makes your product unique?
7. Prove it! - Add testimonials, sales statistics and anything else that proves your claims.
8. Create a sense of urgency - If people don’t sense urgency, they aren’t likely to click on your link. Limited time offers are perfect or showing your potential customer can no longer wait to solve her problem, can be effective. Make sure your potential customers feel the need to click on your link now.
Recommended for Further Study:
For more help with your copywriting and creating a website that people will stick around to read and buy from, check out Alice Seba’s Copywriting Sweetie. It comes complete with software and training to help you sell more of your product to customers who will buy from you over and over again.
Until next time…
Heather
Permalink 5 Comments
ROANOKE, VA – “Everybody’s doing it!” says Heather Jacobson, successful Internet marketer and virtual business owner. “It’s just a matter of time before you’ll be doing it too.” “That’s right, I’ve done it multiple times and I can’t wait to do it again!” says Laurie Dart, successful author and virtual business owner. What is IT? Writing e-Books, that’s what. Jacobson and Dart have put together an e-Book to help infopreneurs generate passive income. The Everyday Guide to Writing and Marketing Your e-Book Wisely combines their years of experience and education into an easy to use, easy to follow guide to help you write, publish and sell your own e-Book.
What’s all the excitement around passive income and what is an infopreneur? An infopreneur is an entrepreneur who makes money selling information on the Internet. Passive income is income that does not require your direct involvement. There is an initial investment of time in developing the product and there may be minor costs like the purchase of a domain name, but overall, the investment is minimal. Once you’ve recouped your costs, the income generated from future sales of your e-Book qualify as passive income.
Many successful infopreneurs generate a great deal of passive income selling information online. The most obvious advantage of being an infopreneur is the low overhead and high earning potential. Once you’ve written an e-Book, tele-seminar, e-course or other information product, it can be sold over and over again. It is even better than selling a traditional book because you do not have to print anything and you don’t have to jump through publisher hoops. The costs to produce a piece of information are the same whether you are selling to one person or to millions.
The Internet has changed the way people look for and acquire information. For many the Internet is an overwhelming network of unimaginable volumes of information difficult to navigate and lacking in credibility. Infopreneurs wade through the myriad of information available on the Internet weeding out erroneous or outdated information and consolidating and presenting current accurate information in easily accessible and understandable forms.
About The Everyday Guide to Writing and Marketing Your e-Book Wisely
Heather and Laurie have combined efforts to produce “The Everyday Guide to Writing and Marketing Your e-Book Wisely” a guide to writing, publishing and marketing your own e-Book. The process is not as intimidating as you may think. This e-Book answers all your questions from idea to income!
For more information visit the Web site at http://www.penandpublishebooks.com.
About Heather Jacobson
Heather Jacobson is the author of Making Dollars Out of Cents: 101 Tips for the Frugal Marketer, and is also the publisher of the popular ezine, Marketing Made Simple, a bi-weekly publication filled with simple marketing tactics designed to enhance one’s marketing efforts. An expert in implementing marketing campaigns for companies on a budget, Heather thrives on coaching others to achieve financial success. For more information, visit www.HeatherJacobson.com.
About Laurie Dart
Laurie Dart, owner of Writing Wisely is the author of The Everyday Guide to Writing Wisely. She provides writing and editing services to entrepreneurs and small business owners. To learn more about how you can improve your writing, visit: www.writingwisely.com.
###
Affiliate or Referral Program?
If you own a website that sells a service, hand-made products, or an informational product that you’ve created, then an affiliate program can help you to get more traffic and make more money in the process.
What is an Affiliate Program?
Affiliate or referral programs reward people for bringing them customers.
There are three types of affiliate programs:
Pay Per Click, Pay Per Lead or Pay Per Sale. If you’re considering paying for traffic, then you’ll want to check out our article about benefiting from pay per click traffic.
In this article, we’d like to talk about Pay Per Sale. That means that you’ll only pay your affiliates for sending you customers, not just for sending you leads or traffic. So, you pay them money only if they make you money.
I like to compare the Pay Per Sale model to Realtors. They make a commission from each house they sell. If they don’t sell any houses for six months, they don’t make any money during that time. If they sell 100 houses, they make a lot of money.
What are the other benefits of starting an affiliate program?
The benefits are great with an affiliate program. You get exposure from having others spread the word about your product or services, and your work is less than if you tried to do it all alone. You and your loyal affiliates both benefit.
How do you start an affiliate program?
There are several programs available for starting an affiliate program. Before you start, really consider how much growth you plan to have in the coming year.
If you only plan to launch one info product (or electronic product) and want to get it out quickly, then we recommend Clickbank.
Pros: Simple and inexpensive to start. They handle all payments.
Cons: Difficult to track and train your affiliates. You pay per transaction so, if your product becomes very successful, your monthly expenses may become higher than if you had a shopping cart.
If you plan to grow and have multiple products (or you have products that aren’t electronic, like food or skin care), you may want to look into a shopping cart system that has an affiliate program built in like WAHMCart or QuickPayPro.
Pros: All-inclusive. No per-transaction fees. Includes a follow-up responder.
Cons: Monthly fee.
That gives you an idea of where to begin to set up your affiliate program. How do you keep your affiliates loyal and happy? That’s another article…
Until next time…
Heather
Permalink Comments