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Summary: In this session of the Dan and Matt Podcast we discuss the importance of Twitter and give away the 12 Keys to Twitter success. Matthew explains in detail the meaning of #tags for the novice learner and introduces some great scheduling apps; one I?m sure you?ve never heard of. Daniele then down the 140 Twitter character count, introduces URL shorteners and explains why you should only ever use 120 characters for any Tweet. Jam packed with content; make sure you give this one a listen. Items mentioned in this Podcast: 1.Twitter -?www.twitter.com 2. MeetEdgar.com?-?http://meetedgar.com 3. Bit.ly?-?https://bitly.com Show Notes: With its 300 million active users each month who tweet over 500 million tweets each in and every day in 35 languages, Twitter has become not only the leading micro blog but also one of the indisputable foundation planks for any scalable social media marketing strategy. Aptly dubbed the ?Pulse of the Planet?, Twitter has undeniably become the most likely source for any form of news to be broken locally, nationally and indeed internationally with its? global reach. Today?s podcast takes a close look at the key behaviours known to drive higher levels of performance, reach and engagement in what is arguably the most dynamic and talked about digital platform in the world. Please also ensure that you support the Dan&Matt.com Podcast by subscribing and reviewing the episode on iTunes. Simply leave a review and the ?star? rating you feel the show deserves and by subscribing you will automatically be notified of all new podcasts ensuring you won?t miss a thing. The 12 must do?s: The importance of a profile picture and an appropriate background image. The need to keep your tweets to 120 characters or less. The advantages that URL shorteners offer Twitter users both in terms of minimising space and tracking metrics. The use of Twitter hashtags to enhance your posts ability to be found. Why you need to define your Raison D?Etre to outline what you stand for and what followers will learn from you. How to determine who your ideal target market is based on key criteria, why this group is important and what needs they have that you will help meet. The need to vary your choice of media selection over time. How to generate excitement. Key benefits Twitter Analytics users are likely to derive. New Twitter apps such as TWperiod.com that further assist your performance Why Scheduling Apps improve both your efficiency and reputation. How frequently should you tweet both of your and other people?s material.

Summary: In this session of the Dan and Matt Podcast we discuss the importance of Google AdWords and why it is much less risk than normal advertising. Daniele steps you through how to format your add and Matthew highlights a new feature called re-targeting, which has been proven to increase conversion massively. Items mentioned in this Podcast: 1.How to gain access to the?Dan and Matt training package -?https://www.danandmatt.com/marketing 2. Leadpages – www.leadpages.net? 3.?Google AdWords -?https://www.google.com/adwords/ Transcript: Matt: Hi, and welcome to the Dan and Matt podcast. This, our 8th episode, we’ll be focusing on Google AdWords. And as always, I have with me, Daniele Lima. Dan: Hi everyone. Matt: So Dan, we are – get asked and get inundated constantly with, “Look, I understand marketing, I understand sales – or at least I’m starting to understand that.” But people keep approaching me and sending me emails about SEO and Google AdWords, and sponsored links. And so, I think in this podcast, what we’ve agreed to do is, is have a chat about this, and I guess really cover off on why AdWords is so important. Dan: Yeah, absolutely. Matt: So Dan, why don’t you start by running us through, Google AdWords and why they’re the main buzzword for marketers at the moment? Dan:?AdWords really are one of the most powerful and for SME’s especially, still under utilised tools out there. Essentially, an?AdWord is a paid ad. And generically, we call them sponsored links. But if we’re talking about the Google search engine – and remembering that all search engines have these paid ads. For Google, they’re?AdWords. And essentially what they are is that you write an ad that appears on the home page. Generally they’re on the left hand – sorry down the right hand side of the page. But also, sometimes you’ll see at the top, 2 or 3 spots above the organic ranking results, also as?AdWords. And these are basically paid ads. Matt: Definitely, definitely. And a lot of people don’t know this, but statistically, most people don’t look past the first 3 entries in Google. And generally those 3 entries can be sponsored links or Google?AdWords – advertisements if you like. Dan: That’s right. Matt: And it was important that you – what you mentioned there Daniele about the fact that 4 Google?AdWords, the – sorry – for Google searching, Google?AdWords is what they call the sponsored links. However, all Facebook, Twitter – as you said, any search engine – Yahoo, Google, and different– Altavista’s, even some of the older ones, they all have different versions of sponsored links. But most people don’t realise that Facebook and Twitter are search engines themselves, and offer the ability to have these sponsored links as well. Dan: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely that’s true. Matt: So, I – I also, I guess– Most people don’t understand the power of Google?AdWords and why it’s important to advertise on Google?AdWords. So, what I guess we should get to Daniel, is what the customers miss out on if they don’t start to take on this, this trend? Dan: Yeah, now you’ve kind of hinted at it Matt, that – the large proportion, the majority of people never go beyond the first page let’s say of Google. So, if you’re not on page 1 of any given Google search, to the vast majority of the market, you don’t exist. Now, it is critical, and we will obviously get to SEO again and again in this podcast. And, through week in, week out, we always want to improve the organic ability of everything we do. But while that’s happening in the background, it’s vital that we’re on page 1. So?Google?AdWords, first and foremost. They give us that incredible ability to be on page 1, and to be seen. So that’s the first thing. The other thing is that unlike a lot of other types of advertising, your ad will only ever appear on the search page if the keywords that you’ve put in the ad campaign correspond exactly with the key words and searches and terms that are being put in by the person searching. So, it really is, Matt – a case of perfect alignment between what they’re looking for, and what you’re putting out there. Matt: Just to, to really hone that in for people and the listeners at home. People constantly will pay for magazine advertising, for radio advertising. And anybody that has seen these or listened to them, they’re like, “Oh, not another ad.” If there’s an ad coming on for home loan insurance, the only person that cares about that ad hypothetically is a person that’s actually looking for home loan insurance right now. And, as a consequence of that, everybody else is upset with the advertisement – and may remember you when it comes time for them to look at home loan insurance. However, predominantly, you’re paying to speak to 100 000 people or a million people that perhaps aren’t – just aren’t interested in what you have to offer. Where,?Google advertising, or?AdWords really allows you to hone in on a person that says, “The cheapest way to get home loan insurance.” Dan: Yeah, absolutely right. Matt: Yeah, perfect. So, let’s, let’s, let’s continue down some of the other advantages for a business, Daniele? Dan: Yeah, well – apart from what you’ve just said there, that it will only appear when someone’s interested in it. You as the advertiser are only ever gonna be charged for it when they click on your ad. Whereas with other forms of advertising, such as pay per day, pay per impression. As you’ve internated, you’re gonna get charged no matter what. And that’s particularly concerning to me. Because these days Matt, as you know, one of the real trends that’s emerging is that people are downloading apps that block ads, and depending on whose data you go by, up to 20% of people now actively block their ads. So, you might be paying let’s say $100 in advertising, but only 80% of that are actually seeing the ad, because of what you said. That they just don’t care about those ads. Matt: Well, I know that I use – I use TIVO – well at least, I used TIVO a lot in the past before I got to just buying TV shows off iTunes for instance. However, TIVO allowed me just to fast forward the ads, and even provided a button that kind of got a good gist of how long the advertisements were, and just completely skipped past them. People are paying money for these – big money for these. Dan: Yeah, and it’s because – as you’ve said, they’re not interested in what’s being put in front of them. Whereas, with pay per click advertising like?AdWords, you only get shown ads that are relevant to you. And, as the advertiser, you only pay for that ad when someone clicks on it. And I guess the other thing Matt that goes with that, is that as an advertiser, you don’t want to wake up the next morning and find out you owe Google $27 000. So, it’s very reassuring to know that you set a maximum daily spend. Where you, you control precisely the level of cost that you’re gonna spend each day. And once you hit that level, your ad just disappears, and then it reappears the next day. So, you’ve got that perfect control of your budget and how much you can allocate to this, to optimise it’s effect. Matt: There’s a couple of other factors too Daniele. It actually allows you to tap into a customer that is interested when they’re looking. For instance, I may be interested in getting a new credit card. However, while I’m in the car driving to work, worrying about other things, a credit card ad on the radio doesn’t have the impact as much as when I type in, “best credit card to get for my Qantas frequent flyer points.” or, “My United Airlines points.” Because at that specific time, I’m online, and looking to advertise. It also allows you to cover off on – when I’m advertising, I’m advertising for results. Anybody that advertises to not get results – it just doesn’t happen. So, with?Google?AdWords, what we’re really saying is– Somebody types in, “I’m looking for the new credit card.” They click on my link, I now have an opportunity to sell to that person – as opposed to a radio or TV campaign where I’m letting them know it exists, and as a result I’m hoping that they one day hop on a website, think of me, and type in my web address. It’s a lot more effective way of getting bang for your buck. Dan: Yeah, I totally agree. And Matt, as you were just saying all that, one final advantage came into my mind. And that is that?AdWords does allow you to – I guess – preset what sort of range you want the ad to have. So, from where you are, do you want it to go out with a radius of 20 kilometres, 50 kilometres? And a lot of businesses really are sensitive to the distance people will travel to get to them, such as retailers. So to have that precise control to be able to tell?Google, “I don’t want this ad to go out any further than 10 kilometres.” Again, it really maximises the benefit of every dollar you spend. Matt: Exactly right, and look, there are a lot of people that have a hairdressing salon for instance in a specific suburb, in a specific state. And, doesn’t matter how many customers they have finding them on Google from 30 miles away or 30 kilometres away. Those people aren’t going to travel to get their hair cut there. So, it, it, it safeguards the search engine. So you’re not paying money for waste of time. I mean, as a – perhaps a luxury i

Summary: In this session of the Dan and Matt Podcast we discuss the importance of your LinkedIn profile. Matthew breaks down the key steps to getting your profile working for you as well as a little known secret for personalising your LinkedIn URL. Daniele discusses how to target your skills towards your targeted Niche market and gain credibility with the right photo. Items mentioned in this Podcast: 1.How to gain access to the?Dan and Matt training package -?https://www.danandmatt.com/marketing 2. Small job outsourcing?https://www.fiverr.com 3. Matt’s LinkedIn Profile -?https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewpollardspeaker 4.?Free Video?s From Dan and Matt???http://danandmatt.com/free 5. Contact us -?https://www.danandmatt.com/contact-us Transcript: Matt: Hi and welcome to the Dan and Matt podcast. This is our seventh session. We’re going to be focusing primarily on LinkedIn. As always I have with me Daniele Lima. Dan: Hello to everyone and welcome again. Matt: So everyone, thank you again for lending us your ear buds for today. And before we get started I just wanted to mention that we had a few people send us an email – and different things on our contact ask page. Asking where they can get access to more of a structured training program or something along the lines of sales and marketing. And we’ve directed these people to our website. However we’ve set up a special link for people straight away to get access to our package, which is the Danandmatt.com/marketing. And basically that will lead you to our product page which will talk about what we offer – a ten session course on sales and marketing. Which will take you all the way through the difference between marketing, how sales fits in, how to find your niche market and how to translate sales of interested customers directly into money in your bank account as more systemised as possible, as systemised as you can possibly make it. So, but with no further ado, I wanted to get straight into the content, and we really wanted to focus today on the seven must do’s for?LinkedIn?success. Now, number one is to complete your?profile. Now Daniele how many?LinkedIn?profiles have you seen that don’t even have basic?information on them? Dan: Many and you know, Matt I can’t tell you how disappointing it is because this is such a genuine opportunity to position yourself. We now know that?LinkedIn?has over 300 million people who?are looking to network – to do business. And here you are with a profile that’s incomplete, and it?s a really disappointing trend. And I really want to fire people up to challenge them to get it all the way up to the all-star level and really put themselves in the position where they can make an impression out there. Matt: Look it’s funny for me because I started off not knowing whether or not I was going to be bothered with?LinkedIn,?because it was just another social media. However what I realised was it?was the single most important social media for business direct sales. Because people would always look at your profile on?LinkedIn?to work out whether or not your?business or your self were worth the time – spending – talking about the product or service. And when I looked at how long it would take me to set up a?LinkedIn?profile, because it did?look like an arduous task. I was surprised – it took me the better part of an hour to get my entire page from your an nobody with no profile photo or a basic profile to, “you’re an all-star.” It took me less than an hour. Now given, I did have a resume that I copied and pasted a lot of things out of. I also had a bit of a bio that talked about who I was and what I did. However, predominantly it did not take long. Daniele how long did it take you to get yours done? Dan: Look, the the initial bit was maybe half an hour, literally just a – put the bones out there. But as we were talking about before Matt, it is critical to keep going back and to keep refining and adding and taking away things that are no longer relevant, so the real commitment in terms of doing it is that ongoing refinement all the time. Matt: Definitely it is, and on that note, let?s talk about the specific things you need to do to get your profile up to a standard that people consider not only okay or at par – but the all-star level. Where people look at it and go, “Wow he’s done or she’s done a lot of things and she’s been a lot of places or he’s been, done, been to a lot of places.” And the first one is that, most people underestimate the importance of the tagline or the title of who you are. So some people will say, “I’m a manager. My name is Daniele Lima and I’m the manager.” And that gives no detail whatsoever about who you are. Some of the best profiles I’ve seen and I mean – and look – I’ve seen great profiles where people have just said, “Looking for new opportunities.” And they’re very involved in LinkedIn, and people are offering them jobs because it’s very clear that they’re looking for new opportunity, but they’re also still very vocal in their specific topics. Other people write, “Speaker, author, business coach, consultant.” And this gives them the power of really helping people understand that, ?You liked my article. I have a book available that you could read. You liked my article or the thing I posted or the involvement in the discussion that I had. I have an article that you can read. I speak – Do you have any speaking engagements?? It allows people to step back and go “Wow, okay I do like this person,” without worrying about trying to ask how they can get involved with that person. They know that they speak, so they don’t have to say, “Hey, do you speak?’ They can directly just say, “Hey I’d like you to speak at my organisation or at this event.” And that makes it front of mind for people, because I can’t tell you how many speaking events I have had, and Dan I’m sure you’re the same. Where somebody has recommended you because they say, “Hey, I’ve read this article or I listened to this podcast or I heard this person speak. I know they’re a speaker and it can be something as simple as the tagline on their?LinkedIn?profile. How would you like me to?approach them about speaking at that event for you?” Dan: Yeah, look, again it’s something that is probably counter-intuitive because the traditional training is you put a job description there, but this is where it has you say Matt, we can really rise above the pack and differentiate ourselves. Matt: Look, it really is. And especially – I mean my name is Matthew Pollard and there are hundreds of matthew pollards on linkedin. So by separating out that I’m a speaker, and people know that I’m a speaker – they look for the Matthew Pollard the speaker. If I just had “manager of–? Well, not even the name of the company that I am, but just “manager,” people would never find me. They’d be looking for the profile photo, which obviously helps immensely. However without that they’d just have no way of finding me. So, there are visual people that would find the photo. There are other people that look at the words and say, “Oh that’s what I’m looking for, I’m looking for that speaker Matthew Pollard.” Dan: Exactly. Matt: So that’s a great help. The other things – I’ll go through them quickly is – setting up a good summary of who you are. Now this can take a little while, and if you’re not a great writer, get it professionally written. It might cost you $50. If – some people will write a great one for you on fiverr.com. And I know you’ve heard me talk about this a lot, but for people who are adverse to spending money, $5 can get you a good profile or at least good enough for you to put in your two cents to get it done properly. And allow the profile – to allow your summary to really overpower others. Most people write two sentences and I remember meeting somebody that had a business card, and handed it to me about this new company that he was starting. And his summary is, “I will not be defined by a bio.” And what that really meant to me was that he didn’t have enough to write about, or he wasn’t important enough or he just didn’t want to put in the effort to write a bio. I didn’t see that as cool, but he probably saw that as a way of getting out of writing it. It takes $5 to get something simple done for you on fiverr, maybe $10. For writing it yourself it’d probably take you half an hour to an hour. I would spend a bit of time on that though, you know, when somebody clicks on your profile that’s the first thing they see. Your work experience may be impressive but without a good summary you’re somewhat leaving yourself behind. The other things are, make your work history absolutely spot on. Like, put in the things you’ve done. People spend a long time on their resume, and then all they have to do is copy and paste that information across it in a lot of ways, yet they don’t do it. So go in and put your work history in?LinkedIn.?Make sure the dates are all there. Make sure all of your careers and pasts are there, so that everything is in. Write up a paragraph summary on what you did, and make yourself seem more important than a blank profile would be. Put in your qualifications. Make sure all of your qualifications are in there. I know for a fact that HR organizations look at not only your Facebook profile, but also your?LinkedIn?profile before in a?lot of cases they hire anybody. And as a result you want to make sure that all your qualification

Summary: In this session of the Dan and Matt Podcast we discuss the importance of emotional intelligence to success. Matthew highlights that it is a learned skill and more highly linked to success than IQ and Daniele show a quick and easy template to start you on your way to learning this amazing skill. Items mentioned in this Podcast: 1.Free Video’s From Dan and Matt?-?https://www.danandmatt.com/free Transcript: Matt: Hi, and welcome again to the Dan and Matt podcast – this our sixth episode, and today we’ll be discussing the ever important topic of emotional intelligence. Today, again, I have with me Daniele Lima. Dan: Good morning, Matt, and good morning to all the listeners. Matt: What we’re covering today, Daniele, is emotional intelligence. And there’s been some really interesting studies out there of late – well over a very long period of time, actually, of why emotional intelligence is so important, especially in the world of sales. But before we get into that, let’s first cover off on what is emotional intelligence? Dan: Yeah, a perfect starting point. And I mean, Matt, E.I. can be described in a number of ways, but fundamentally it’s the ability to understand your own emotional state, and let’s accept now that as human beings we’ve always got emotions happening within us. So, to understand, right, this is what’s happening within me right now, and the ability to be able to control that whilst also being able at the same time to look at someone else that is in and around you and be able to be aware of what they’re going through and act accordingly. Matt: Definitely, and for the listeners today, I’m going to specify that?E.I.?is the term that?industry uses for emotional intelligence, and you’ll find that now knowing that term, you’ll hear it spoken of quite a lot, because it is quite a popular thing and quite an important thing for most people to be aware of. Dan: Absolutely, I couldn’t agree with that more. Matt: So, Goleman broke emotional intelligence into four critical elements, and those elements were – self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy and social skills. And I think that – for what we’re trying to achieve right now Daniele it’s important that we at least understand the basis for what those are. Dan: Yeah, so look, in that case, Matt, let me quickly go through them, and you articulated them perfectly there. If you consider that Goleman wanted to split it up into you and everyone else. So he spoke of self-awareness and self-control so literally, right now, this is what I’m feeling. You know, I’m frustrated in this situation because this person’s not listening to me. By understanding that I’m frustrated, I’m able to regulate my behavior by not allowing that frustration to come through, so that’s self-control. The other side of the coin is that empathy, which is really awareness of other people’s emotions and understanding why they might feel that way, and then the last bit you mentioned was social skills. So it’s one thing to empathise with someone that yeah I can see why this customer’s upset about something, but because of that, I’m going to act in a?way that’s appropriate based on how they feel. So, they’re the four essential building blocks to E.I. Matt: Now, I can imagine that while, and we’re going to go into detail for why this helps people in the sales process, and why it’s so important in the sales process. But I can imagine that these concepts would be just as applicable in every other profession, not just sales. Dan: I tell you, you just – for me, you’ve just made a definitive comment there, because E.I. isn’t just a work skill. It’s one of the true undiminishable life skills, not just work skills. It can help you in every aspect of your life, and every aspect of business life as well. Matt: Well, we discussed just in the last episode the importance of self-regulation when addressing poorly performed sales people and in regards to self-regulation, this is a large principle of Goleman. So it’s very important that we’re always across, making sure that we self-regulate ourselves and as part of self-regulation, it’s very important to understand what our motivators are. If our motivators are purely external, i.e. financial, that sort of thing, it really is not going to allow us to regulate ourselves in the best way. We need to focus on what our internal motivators are, what our wire is – then more of a chunked up level, what were we actually trying to achieve? I mean, if it’s financial, why are we trying to achieve that? And that can help us really handle the regulation of what we do when we’re talking to others. The other important factor I think that we need to mention here is empathy is something that is so oftenly forgotten, especially in sales encounters. Dan: Yeah, because people are so inwardly focused on what they’re trying to achieve through that call, that they forget one of the basic tenants of selling which is, it should all be focused around the customer’s needs. Matt: Definitely, and that’s why in our process, the?danandmatt.com?process which you guys can access this?video, it’s at danandmatt.com/free, we actually discuss the sales process and pillar three is asking questions. And again, because of the lack of empathy, most people just go through and ask questions because they’re on the sheet that they have to ask questions for, or they ask questions purely to start selling their product. And empathy means that you ask questions with a purpose of asking further questions and to develop an understanding of what the customer wants and what the customer is trying to achieve. And this is why in sales, it is so important. Dan: Yeah, totally agree and Matt, isn’t it reassuring to know that the things we’re talking about today because as you said earlier,?E.I.?now has been around for the best part of thirty?years, that we’ve got some wonderful data to support it? Matt: Well, let’s go through that in a second, Daniele. The first thing just before we get there, I know a lot of people will say, emotional intelligence – look empathy it’s something I’m not great at. And it’s important to first recognise that those people can learn this skill. Goleman really spoke about with individualised coaching and working on your emotional intelligence it is a skill that you can not only develop, but master. Dan: Yeah, and that’s really one of the key differentiators between emotional intelligence and what we would call normal intelligence – your IQ. That with your IQ, you are – we’re all born with a certain level of IQ. Now, some people are lucky. They’re born and they’re, you know, Leonardo Da Vinci or Einstein, you know, they’re blessed with phenomenal IQ and the reality is whatever you’re born with is what you’re born with. There’s no real way to move IQ. Where as with E.I.Q, emotional intelligence quotient, the great news is that you can move it with training. And we’ve shown, the studies have shown that even though your?E.I.?tapers off naturally in your late teens, if you do the study in?E.I.?as you’ve suggested,?it?continues to grow throughout your entire adult life, and I think that is great news for people to know. Matt: So, the fact that people don’t have large amounts of empathy and perhaps are not great in social paradigms, and perhaps can’t regulate themselves, it can be said that it’s a choice. They’ve chosen not to and they can make a choice to actually work on these skills. And one of the common concepts that I like to put across at this stage, is that everything in life is a choice. People can choose to be the effect or at the cause of any problem, and if you’re at cause, it’s something you can work on. There are courses that you can do to work on social empathy. There are courses you can do to work on your entire?E.I.?framework, and we’re going to cover off on the specifics of the framework shortly. There are also many, many people that can work with you directly, hands on, and help you develop your emotional intelligence. However, if you choose to be in effect of this and say, “Well I’m just not an empathetic person,” or “I’m just not great, I’m an introvert, I’m not great in social encounters or – I just sometimes, I explode.” That’s putting you back to just an effect. There’s nothing you can do to fix the problem or nothing you choose to do to fix the problem, and I’d really like you all to step over into cause so we can start working on exploring and building our abilities in emotional intelligence. Dan: Yeah, and Matt, you know what’s funny, as you just said that. I just had a like a throwback to a manager that I used to work with twenty years ago. And this lady, I remember she was a very difficult person to work with, and a very famous quote from her was where she basically erupted at someone. And she was a very senior manager, and made a comment along the lines of “Oh look, I’m just not a people person,” to justify that behavior. And I totally agree that these behaviors will limit you in every aspect of your life unless you make a conscious decision to get better at them. Matt: And look, you really need to, because these are career destroying mistakes. If you explode for no reason, it’s a career destroyer. If you’re in an environment where all the important people in your organisation are there, they just discount you from any other further promotions. They can also discount you from large sales if a customer is

Summary: In this session of the Dan and Matt Podcast we discuss the controversial topic of whether to train or fire poor preforming sales people. Daniele Lima explains his three prong approach to reengage struggling sales performers and Matthew explains the positives of keeping their heads off the proverbial chopping block. Items mentioned in this Podcast: 1.Free Video’s From Dan and Matt?-?https://www.danandmatt.com/free Transcript: Matt: Hi and welcome to the Dan and Matt podcast, and today our fifth episode, we’re going to be discussing the important topic of whether to train or fire poor performing sales people. ?And as always, I have with me as always, Daniele Lima. Dan: ?Good morning everyone and welcome.’ Matt: ?Now obviously the topic of to train or fire poor sales people is definitely a topical one. ?I know for myself I’ve spent at least four or five podcasts in the last few months discussing this topic. Daniel, why do you think this is such a hot topic at the moment? Dan: ?Look Matt, it’s because essentially your most important resource as it’s always been has been human resource and for example if you’re a sales manager or director, it is absolutely vital that you keep, not only the best sales people on board, but the team that you’ve got in place. You’ve got to keep it firing on all cylinders and optimised for optimal performance. Matt: ?Definitely, definitely. ?And look from my point of view, I think that there has to be a line though. ?I mean, a lot of people say, “Look, just fire sales people. ?Sales people, there is a natural ability and if they don’t have it, you should just get rid of them and work with the people that can sell.” ?What do you think there? Dan: ?Look I think that’s easy to say and certainly if you’re starting a team from scratch, you’ve got the luxury of hand picking the best that are available. ?But for a lot of people, Matt, as you know, you become a sales manager, you go into an existing situation where you may inherit a team of 10, 15, 20 people and it’s not so easy to do. ?You’ve really, the onus is on you to perform a gap?analysis on each of those people and really help them come up to the mark if they’re not already there. Matt: ?Look, I’m with you and I keep getting asked this question, I mean it’s a topic that we talk about on the danandmatt.com program that we have available at the moment on sales and niche marketing. ?That so many people think that sales is a natural ability and if they don’t have them, they ship the people out. ?But you’re right, there needs to be a gap?analysis, you need to work out whether or not that person is A committed, and I think committed is a very important fact to learning the concepts of sales. ?But secondly, that they have a, I guess some sort of skill set that they want to adapt. ?As in, they understand that there is a hole, a concept that they don’t know and they actually have a want to fix that.?I think those are the two important qualities – the willingness to move forward and achieve and perform better. ?And then secondly, their understanding that they aren’t achieving now and that it’s just a gap, it’s not a failure in ability. ?And I think Dan, you’ve got a very good step process on, I guess unfreezing a person to that specific I guess problem. Dan: Yeah look I think you’ve really captured that perfectly, because as you know in a former life I was a national sales manager for a major pharmaceutical company, Bristol Myers. ?And it’s incumbent on all of us who have got that sort of a role to work people through this process. ?Matt, before I go into that three step process, I really want to just establish two important terms that we need to have to work with. One of those terms is coaching. ?Now, if you’re improving someone’s skill set, they’ve got to be coachable. ?And what I mean by that is, they acknowledge, “Yes, look I – there’s a skill here or a number of skills that I don’t do well, I understand I need to do them well to do the job effectively and I want to learn.” ?So if someone as you’ve hinted ticks all those boxes, in my book they’re coachable. ?You can actually help them to get better. On the other hand, if someone says to you, “No, I don’t believe I need that skill,” Or, “Yes, look I know I need that skill but I don’t want it.” ?Then, they’re not coachable. And unfortunately, when they’re not coachable, we go into another camp of counselling. ?And I think we’ve really got to differentiate these two camps because if someone’s in the coaching camp, certainly you can train them and you can make them better and hopefully you keep them. ?But if they’re not willing and able to do it, then they’re in a counselling camp and unfortunately Matt, as we know, you’ve got to start managing them out of the company based on failure to meet the basic KPI’s. Matt: ?Now, I think at this point it’s important to recognise that what we’re specifically saying here is that there will be a group of people that do want to make a change and that do want to get better. Dan: ?Absolutely. Matt: ?On the other camp, there will be a group of people that don’t want to or don’t see the purpose or don’t see it as achievable. ?And for these people, normally the process would be to cut and run with these people, call what you’ve spent on them thus far sunk costs and fire them all or just stop their employment and move on, hire somebody else. ?However, this person generally has a lot of core competencies and a lot of knowledge about your company. ?So if it’s save-able, why not at first try? ?And the response will generally come that they don’t want to learn. ?And before we look at moving them out, we need to try this three step counselling process that Daniele will now run you though. ?Which the purpose is to get the person to become on board, with the idea that first change is possible and secondly, they want it. Dan: ?Absolutely. ?And Matt, let’s assume we’re sitting down with a representative, we’ll call them Fred or Helen, any fictional name. ?And when we sit down with them, and remember to any aspiring sales managers or current managers, when we’re talking to anyone about performance, it’s vital, it’s imperative that we only talk about actual behaviours, because actual behaviours are things that we’re seeing and hearing, and they’re the things we need to comment on. ?And that’s just as a matter of law, they’re the things we need to review with this person. But understanding that we’re sitting down with Fred the rep. ?And we’d say, “Fred, the reason we’re here is because you are not meeting this KPI. ?This behaviour or set of behaviours that we said initially was vital to the success of your role. ?So these behaviours you’re not doing.” ?Now at this point if Fred said, “Well I don’t believe that’s important,” or, “For whatever reason, I don’t choose to do it.” ?Then here are the three steps Matt that you’ve suggested. ?Number one, you would talk to that person about the impact these behaviours are having on their own outcome in this firm. Matt: ?So Dan, I just want to clarify here, it’s not the purpose to then say straightaway, “Well this is affecting me.” ?And I can assume for an employer, especially for a person that’s giving up perhaps their own meal on the table to make sure that the employee can go home and feed their family, this would be quite an emotional thing. ?So, would require a little bit of self-regulation to make sure that they handle talking about the person first. ?So what’s the motivation with talking about how it affects, what’s the impact on the employee first? Dan: ?Yeah, look good point and you’ve made two good points there, the fact is as managers, you mentioned self-regulation, which of course is a critical aspect of emotional intelligence, that self-control. ?And really one of the must have qualities of any manager is that ability to have that awareness of how they’re feeling in what could be a very tense situation. ?And as you’ve said, regulate their behaviour. ?So I just wanted to highlight that, because I think that’s critical in any of these discussions. But then to answer your question directly, why are we stuck starting with the employee, simply because many people, their primary focus is specifically that – how is this going to impact me? ?So if this person is primarily focused on, well we call it self-interest, then it’s the most logical place to start. ?”That Fred or Helen, if you continue to pursue this line, this is going to be the impact on you.” ?And that might be something as mandatory as a first warning, “That you’re in breach of the KPI’s that we’ve agreed on, and there’s a first official warning against you.” ?So that’s very powerful and I’ve got to tell you Matt, that I’d say probably three quarters of people, when faced with that tend to come straight back into coaching mode. Because they start to realise the gravity of the situation and they say, “Well, have I misjudged this?” ?And generally three out of four will step straight back into, “Ok, what do I need to do, coach?” Matt: ?So I think the important thing to point out here about this step is that a lot of people, at least the people that I coach, frequently say, I understand that if I address them and tell them about the impacts, I’m almost playing police officer here, and they

Summary: In this session of the Dan and Matt Podcast we discussed the importance of niche marketing and how it can pull you out of the everyday price war with competitors. This session is a powerful thought provoker that highlights exactly how to pull your business out of mediocrity. Items mentioned in this Podcast: 1.Free Video’s From Dan and Matt?-?https://www.danandmatt.com/free Transcript: Matt: Hi and welcome to danandmatt.com. Today we’re going to be discussing the important topic of finding your niche market and to help you understand why it is that important to your business success. Again, I have with me, Daniele Lima. Dan: Good morning everyone. Matt: And as it is our fourth episode, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everybody for listening to us and if you are starting, if this is your first episode, I appreciate you spending time with us today. So Daniele, before we get into specifically why niche marketing is so important, I guess I’d like to first discuss why so many businesses go broke because they don’t understand the importance of finding their own niche. Dan: Yeah, look Matt it’s a critical question that you’ve asked and tragically as you’ve alluded there, it’s really one of the root causes why so many, especially SME’s, the smaller businesses with let’s say under 200 people employed go out of business. And it’s essentially, the thinking is that I suspect that, “The market is big, so why don’t we go after the whole thing? We’ll have a bigger chance of success if we don’t limit who we’re going after.” I suspect that’s part of the thinking behind not niching and not segmenting a market, breaking it up and targeting bits of that market. I suspect that’s the thinking that underpins that process. Matt: So Daniele, why do you think it’s the wrong tact to be taking? I mean the market is big, which means there’s lots of customers out there. Why wouldn’t we target them all? Dan: Yeah again a great question and I think essentially the key point that we’ve got to make to the listeners Matt is that even though the market is huge, depending on whichever market we’re talking about, the needs within that overall market are quite different from segment to segment and to do a mass marketing approach, it assumes one very, very important thing. That the need is pretty consistent across all the people in that market. Now that can work if you’re Coca Cola, because most people like a refreshing cold soda or soft drink. But very few products can be mass marketed like that to the masses. And that’s the fundamental flaw in mass marketing. That the needs for people within the overall market aren’t the same. That they can be quite different in different niches. So what ends up happening Matt, as you know is that the company tries to put out one message to the whole market and unfortunately the message is lost because it really doesn’t fit anyone’s exact need. Matt: Look, I agree with you, I mean as Daniele you know and some of our listeners who are aware of my experience. I’ve worked with numerous different types of businesses. Everything from telecommunications to education. And most people that I speak to when I first start in those different industries will continually tell me that whatever has been thought of is all that can be thought of. Because, especially in education, there are some really educated people working in that industry. So of course anything that could potentially create a huge market must have already been done. And it doesn’t take much time to be able to explore the entire market terrain and say, “There is a group of people over here that are currently not being serviced in the way that they want.” Or, “Currently one brand is stretching out to that market for lack of a better option. Where all of a sudden, I can capture an entire market and have no competition, just by saying, “I will offer the services and the products that you request specifically for you, tailored specifically to your industry group. Dan: Yeah, spot on. Absolutely, and those firms that do that invariably achieve a higher level of success and awareness within the market, greater retention of customers, greater loyalty and ultimately greater advocacy. Because those people not only use it, but they end up telling their connections and networks about you. Matt: Well it makes sense that they would do that too. Because if they’re currently not being serviced by the other industry leaders, when they find a product or service that actually does suit their needs, they are generally through group think, talking to lots of individuals in their industry that are experiencing the same problems. So it creates it’s own self-propelling marketing proposition as opposed to having to continually look for customers. And I’m continually approached by people that are saying, “I, my product fits everybody. Everybody should have my product, yet I don’t have any customers.” And when we look at it, the reason why they don’t have any customers is because they believe that their product works for everybody, just like every other product in that marketplace. And as a by-product of that, they don’t get any customers because they speak to everybody but they speak to no one specifically. And as a result of that, their market reach is so broad that they don’t, no specific customer identifies with their brand and as a result, nobody is heroing their cause to their friends, their family members and their business connections. Dan: And I think it’s a great point because remember when someone actually, and I’ll throw in a couple of stats here Matt. We’re told by the latest researchers that on average, the average person you’re going to meet in the street today is a member of three social media networks and generally these networks have somewhere between 120 and 150 people on them who are your members. Now I think Facebook’s about 140 on average, Twitter’s just marginally below that at about 120. So essentially most people that you bump into in the street, they’re gonna have about 400 connections that they’ve got. Perhaps they’re on LinkedIn or any other number of tremendously powerful platforms. But the thing is, regardless of how many networks you’re on or how many people you’re connected to, we’re all very proud of the credibility that we have within our network. So we’re not going to promote anything to anyone unless we really believe it’s a good thing. So if we take a step back to what you just said a moment ago, that someone who’s trying to target everyone is basically putting a product out there that doesn’t perfectly fit anyone. Then no one’s going to risk their credibility talking about that. Matt: That’s exactly right and if you don’t have a group of people that identify with you and champion your cause and offer you referrals. I mean, every business I speak to says they get 90% of their business from referrals these days. Because developing new markets is not only expensive, it’s time consuming. And so as a result they get most of their business from referrals. However they spend no time understanding who their current customers are, what specific niches those people are from and using that information to build their differentiator to continually have those people champion their cause and bring other people within that niche to their cause. I mean, I’ve seen businesses just for instance, business book writers. Both Dan and I are working with a ghost-writer at the moment. And he wanted to offer books for every single type of industry, yet he specialised specifically in one, and as a result of trying to keep it broad because he needed customers, he actually disqualified all of the people that were looking for a person that specialised in what he did. So let’s say, and hypothetically ’cause obviously I won’t divulge names, but let’s say hypothetically he was very, very good in technology, in the technology industry and a great ghost writer for technology. He had people for all sorts of things, including astronomy or physics or mathematics people that wanted to write their own books. And the technological people have said, looking at his website saying, “Well you know, perhaps not for me because I really need a specialist.” Because he was trying to suit a whole broad spectrum. And as a result of finding that pure niche, I mean it didn’t take as much Daniel? We just changed a few things and all of a sudden his entire website and his business just improved. He was getting the customers that he wanted, that he preferred to work with and he was championing a higher income. Just as a result of saying, “Well I specialise in this, if you want a specialist, you need to pay premium. Dan: Yeah and you make a great point there Matt, that really it’s about what is your defined area of excellence? Because people want to know that they’re getting someone who is first rate at that thing they need. So, it’s that thing of ok, what is my positioning in the market? What do I want people to associate me with? I want them to associate me with excellence in the following area dot, dot and now fill in that space. So I want everyone as I say that to think, “Ok, what is my area of excellence?” Write it down and then ask yourself, “Am I actively targeting this group? Or does that group not realise that I am the perfect solution for them? Matt: And look, a lot of times people say to me when we run through this exercise Daniele, their response is, “But I like serving everybody and I have all dif

Summary: In this session of the Dan and Matt Podcast we discussed the importance of time management paying specific attention to how it applies to a sales person. We then look at two simple strategies that can drastically change your ability to manage your time. Lastly we look at some FREE software you can use to better understand how you?re spending your time.   Items mentioned in this Podcast: 1.Free Video’s From Dan and Matt?-?https://www.danandmatt.com/free 2.?Free Project Management -?https://app.asana.com 3. Application for monitoring your time on your PC – http://www.rescuetime.com 4. Application for monitoring PC usage of staff -?http://www.hivedesk.com 5. Websites for outsourcing large projects -?http://www.oDesk and http://www.elance.com 6. Website for outsourcing small projects -?http://www.fiverr.com Transcript: Matt: Hello again and welcome to danandmatt.com, today being our third episode and I’d like to take the opportunity again to introduce Daniele Lima. Dan: Good morning everyone and welcome. Matt: And I’m Matthew Pollard and today we’re going to choose the topic of time management. The reason for that is within the sales and marketing world, one of the major problems people ?experience is that they’re very busy doing other things and say they do not have the time to be spending time learning sales and marketing. So we felt that it was very important before we delved into the depths of the sales and marketing strategy that we first allowed you to free up some time with some good strategies today. Now, before we get started, we wanted to also take this opportunity to thank people for the great emails that we’ve received through the danandmatt.com website, the “contact us page. We’ve had some great people including Derek, a ghost writer in Texas who has said that this has had a substantial impact on their business. And we love to get great feedback like that. And obviously with iTunes, iTunes has a feedback or a comments section. So if you do get something out of these podcasts, please let us know, we would love to hear about it. And on top of that, if you’ve got any questions or you feel that we haven’t covered off on something, that you’d like to hear us talk about, then please feel free to contact us through the danandmatt.com “contact us” page. And have a chat with us about, or just email us about what you would like us to discuss, or if you have a specific question that you think we haven’t touched on, then list that question and we’ll try to cover off on it in the next session as a specialty answer just for you. And we’ll also give a shout out to you and your business. If you leave that on the “contact us” page for providing us with a question to talk about. So with that being said, we’re going to move on to the question of, onto the topic of time management. And Daniele Lima has offered to discuss at first, the Ivy Lee model of time management. It’s an older model of time management, but still highly effective in today’s world. And then we’re going to cover off on a different model, the Covey model, and we’re going to try and attach this to the World of Sales for you. To try and really help you tap in, to see how is this going to free up your time and make you more effective on a day to day basis. So with no further delay, Daniele, I’ll get you to first tell us little bit about the Ivy Lee model. Dan: Yeah, absolutely Matt, I mean it remains one of the most intriguing examples of how, if you put your time management on the agenda and you really install some very good technical or should I say technique, it will provide you amazing quantum leaps in improved performance. And the story of Ivy Lee goes back to 1930, so it really is something that has almost – not quite a hundred years but has endured he test of time and the situation was this. Ivy Lee was what we’d call a marketing and business consultant today. And Ivy approached Bethlehem Steel, which at the time was absolutely one of the great organisations in America and you can imagine that equivalent to a BHP today. And what Ivy did was he went to the then CEO of the company, a gentleman called Charles Schwab. And said to this head honcho, “What would you do if I could improve your capacity, your performance by more than 10%. And of course he laughed at this, because he said, “Do you know where you are or who you’re talking to, the efficiencies that we run under? And Ivy just said, “Give me a chance to do it and you’ll see that I’m not exaggerating.” So intrigued by the audacious offer, I guess you could say Charles allowed Ivy to come in and spend one day with his management team. And what Ivy did was this. Ivy said to all the managers there, I want you to list on a piece of paper all the things you would typically do on any given day of the week. So you can imagine for the Monday, they listed all the things they would typically do. For the Tuesday, the Wednesday, the Thursday and the Friday. So they had five lists of tasks that would typically be done on those days. Now, the second step – and remember that in those days they didn’t have highlighters. Because if we did that today Matt, we’d just pull out three highlighters. But presumably Ivy would have handed out three coloured pens or something like that. Ivy said to this group of managers, “Now I want you to circle in three different colours, those things that on that day are a must do, a should do, or a could do. Matt: Now Daniele, I’m assuming that these people would do hundreds of things in a day. How do they get the list down to a small number of things? Or did they just write the core things that took large amounts of time? Dan: Yeah, look it’s a bit of both. Obviously all the core things were definitely put down, but some of the variables that may appear on any given day were factored in as well. So that’s a great question, and obviously there’d be a little extrapolation there based on history and a person knowing the contingencies within their role. So at that second stage, each of these managers all of a sudden had this list times five and they then were asked to circle in three different colours, those things that absolutely had to be done that day. Those things that should be done that day, but realistically if they weren’t done that day, they’d probably become a must do the next day in many cases. And the third grouping, well things that if they got done would be nice, but honestly it wouldn’t matter. It could easily drift a few days or even into next week, which we call the could do’s. Now, each of these managers was then asked to take the must do’s and remember that not all our must do’s can be done at eight or nine in the morning. Some of them are appointments with people that will come in at two in the afternoon, four in the afternoon and ten in the morning. So although it’s nice to think we’ll do them all right up front, that’s really not practical. But they were asked, “Right, insert these into your diary as must do’s, wherever they may fall in the day. Then around that, insert as many of the should do’s as is possible, because sometimes a should do and a could do, you can only do them up the same point in the day. So if you can’t do it, then obviously it’s got to become a must do a day after or two days after. So they did that and then the could do’s were basically the filler, that then would just move forward as required. And it’s interesting, then the day finished the final instruction was, “Live and breathe this agenda for the next two weeks.” Two weeks later, Ivy got a letter in the mail from Charles Schwab and interestingly that letter had a cheque in it for $25 000. Matt: Wow. Dan: Now, you and I know the value of money doubles every seven years, and this was 84 years ago. So I’m telling you Matt, this was an absolute fortune for one day’s work. Matt: Well look, it doesn’t shock me Daniele because the amount of times I’ve moved in to consult with people – and when you start to realise how they’re spending their time, it doesn’t take long to realise that they’re always doing things that may be in their comfort zone, maybe keeping them from trying to generate revenue or just literally getting themselves into a mundane work life that doesn’t get them to stay within their comfortable zone. And as we all know in business, if you stick within your comfortable zone, you’re not succeeding, you’re not moving forward, you’re not growing. Dan: Definitely. Matt: Based on that Daniele, you had an antidote we discussed before from the 1980’s was it? Dan: Yes. Because of course Matt, as you very, very aptly said earlier in this podcast, at every point what we’re really looking to do is to align the theory that we’re giving people with real world – what they’re going to do, how they’re going to use it in field. And although you’ve prefixed this by saying the ’80’s, as you know, we both keep training people right up until the current day. So this literally is an example of how an experienced sales rep will take what I’ve just said and apply it every day. So, you’re a sales rep, you’re out there. Obviously you’re going to have a call rate, an expectation your company has of you to go and see customers. So let’s say you work for a pharmaceutical company and that company says to you – a Pfizer or Bristol Myers Squibb, or a Merck Sharp & Dohme. And they say to you, we want you to see seven doctors every day, that’s your call rate. So you’ve got

Summary: In this session of the Dan and Matt Podcast we discussed the importance of SWOT analysis when searching for niche markets to capitalize. We also address that neglecting this critical analysis is a ?common cause of unforeseen business hardship. Bringing the S.W.O.T Analysis into the 21st Century Businesses should never overlook the humble S.W.O.T analysis as the basis for their entire strategic decision making. Yet it is perhaps the most under-utilized weapon in the marketing arsenal for many businesses. A S.W.O.T analysis is the tool used to list a business? internal strengths and weaknesses as well as the prevailing external opportunities and threats in their market place. Strengths and weaknesses are usually listed relative to your key rival businesses. For example, if you have cash reserves of $10,000 (which is undoubtedly an asset), you may regard it as strength. If, however, all your key rivals have at least $500,000 cash reserves, your $10,000 is in fact a relative weakness. Traditionally the S.W.O.T analysis has been presented as a window diagram with four quadrants and in each quadrant you have key bullet points for each of the four areas: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. For example, a typical SWOT analysis for a given firm might look something like this: STRENGTHS: Prime CBD location Experienced and skilled staff Reliable referral network WEAKNESSES: Limited cash reserves Little computer skills within the business Undifferentiated service offering OPPORTUNITIES: Key rivals shutting down soon Government incentives being proposed to stimulate demand for your service Expanding market need THREATS: New business opening in the same vicinity Increased reliance on e-technology Negative ?attitudes in some clients ?towards some aspects of your service Critics of this model would ask, ?what do you do with it now?? and although there is nothing wrong with the traditional approach, its greatest drawback is simply that it treats the points listed in a static way, and not as dynamic items that need to be acted upon and reviewed over time. So is there a better way to present this data? A way that will list each point, and direct your thinking specifically to how it may effect your business and what needs to be done about it. Consider the following model as we examine each of the four new columns to see how it may help to make your next S.W.O.T analysis more insightful and actionable. S/W/O/T Implication Indicated action Resources Opportunity Cost Items listed . . . . Indicated Actions Each point listed in the SWOT analysis will almost certainly have some implication for the business and consequently some desired action linked to it that should be performed or at least be considered by the business. Each of these desired responses is called an INDICATED ACTION. In the case of the Business with a relatively modest cash reserve, it might not be possible to take advantage of upcoming opportunities. Therefore, the indicated action for this business would be to investigate and arrange for an appropriate line of credit (or equity loan). You must know exactly how much additional capital you can borrow, by when, from whom, over what time frame, at what interest rate, etc. It is not enough to know you do not have enough liquidity; you need to act to take control of the situation. Resources Once appropriate indicated actions are formulated, it is important to decide on the level of resources required to carry out each indicated action. Again, using the example of the firm requiring additional access to cash, different types of resources will be needed to negotiate this. To begin with there is the obvious financial resource (cost) in the form of an establishment fee which financial institutions typically charge when creating new business loans. Moreover, in the longer term, these borrowings will require additional funds to be paid off. From the point of view of non-financial resources the most precious resource is time, i.e. someone from the business will need to prepare the appropriate documentation. Opportunity Cost ? ? The final aspect of a thorough SWOT analysis is to include any thoughts on Opportunity Cost. Put simply, Opportunity Cost is the cost of not doing the next best alternative. For example, if you are thinking of spending money in one area, the idea of Opportunity Cost challenges you to think about where else that money could be spent, possibly with a better result. It is possibly the least understood cost and yet potentially, can give great insight into how valid (or not) your contemplated actions are. Opportunity Cost forces you to consider alternative actions as well as the preferred action. Using the ongoing example of the firm needing to organise a line of credit, the opportunity cost could be as follows. In addition to approaching a bank, the business owner may consider other ways of generating the cash. For example, by selling off non-essential assets (or surplus stock in the case of? a manufacture of retailer), or perhaps redirecting a portion of projected profit previously earmarked for another use. In this instance, given the relatively low cost of choosing the original bank option, it is likely that the alternatives would not be viable.? In other words, the opportunity cost of not implementing the next best alternative is low and therefore the original action is likely to be carried out. Below is a summary of some examples, as they would appear in a SWOT analysis. S/W/O/T Implication Indicated action Resources Opportunity Cost Strength: Experienced and skilled legal and administrative staff. Need to maintain a high level of retention of key staff members. Incentivise and reward employees to both maintain motivation levels and loyalty to the business. Funding of incentive programme. Divert proposed incentive funding to other capital expenditure items. Weakness: Lacking cash reserves when compared to key rivals. Decreased ability to quickly respond to opportunities and changing conditions which require prompt cash outlays. Organise relevant documentation and arrange interviews with preferred financial institution to discuss the business needs with regards to an equity loan. Financial and human resources to facilitate the specifics. Redirect some income to this function or conduct a partial sell-off of any surplus assets to increase cash reserve. Two rivals closing down in the new year. Potential to gain client base from these rival businesses. Incentivise rivals to selectively direct business your way. Funding allocation to cater for B- to- B incentives. Use resources to fund other areas of immediate need and growth potential. Major new rival opening soon in the same area. Potential for lost business as clients are made aware of and potentially attracted to this rival firm. Gather market research to uncover why clients ?might be attracted to this rival and whether you are meeting your customers? needs, based on the known key drivers of both client demand and dissatisfaction Funding and time to confirm market needs and to conduct competitor analysis. Continue to support marketing activities at the current level, without any regard to the potential impact from the new rival. In summary All businesses need to perform an annual analysis for the business. From this analysis it will be able to capture the key findings that make up its SWOT analysis. The new SWOT analysis template discussed here will allow your business to identify all the key issues, action them in a timely manner and follow the progress of each to ensure that each item is carried out properly. The SWOT analysis needs to be done each year and reviewed at least quarterly to ensure that it remains current and reflective of what is relevant today and into the future.

Summary: In this session of the Dan and Matt Podcast we discussed the importance of setting SMART goal for yourself and business. Having SMART goals is important first step in the transition of any business from day to day survival to growth and prosperity.     Items mentioned in this Podcast: 1. Free Project Management -?https://app.asana.com 2. Website Building Tool -?Weebly – The Easiest Way To Create A Website – http://www.weebly.com Transcript: Matt: Welcome to the Dan and Matt podcast. Now, this is our first ever episode of: The Dan and Matt podcast. So, before we get started I’d like to thank you for listening, and for people that have gone back to listen to our first podcast, welcome and thank you for starting with us. Now, before we get started, I’d love to explain the reasons behind starting this podcast, but before I do so, I’m going to introduce Daniele Lima to the podcast as well. Dan: Good morning Matt and welcome to everybody. Matt: So for people that don’t know me, my name is Matthew Pollard and Daniele and I started this podcast specifically to help business owners or potential business owners with their sales and marketing strategy. But also their business strategies because with that, if additional sales come through, a business can collapse. And also, without structure in a business, the marketing and the sales don’t know where they’re heading. So before I get started, I just want to highlight that the core purpose behind this podcast is specifically to help business owners and we’re going to do our best to hold nothing back. And I’m going to ask, if anybody has any questions throughout any of these podcasts, feel free to email us, finding our email address on our website through the “contact us,” page on danandmatt.com. But during these episodes, we will be talking about a lot of concepts and we hope, and it’s our soul and belief that you will be able to apply these directly to your businesses. Now, primarily, we wanted to focus these podcasts in the world of sales and marketing. But as all business owners realise, without having business goals to know where you’re heading and why, it is very hard to set your first marketing strategy. And then your sales scripts and strategy after that. So we wanted to talk to you primarily on the setting of goals today. Now Daniele, why is it so important that business owners have goals? Dan: Well Matt, essentially we have got, literally hundreds of years of experience in business documentation that shows us, the businesses that perennially do well regardless of geography, regardless of market, regardless of economic conditions, the ones that do well are the ones that set their goals. The ones that fail are almost exclusively the ones who didn’t have goals, who didn’t plan. So it’s a very clear cause and effect relationship. Matt: Look Daniele, that makes perfect sense because the more and more that I consult with business owners, I tend to find they keep saying to me, “I’m stuck in the day to day, I go to work every day, I do what I do. Sometimes I make money, sometimes I don’t and regardless, I don’t feel like I’m heading anywhere. I got into business to get that quality of life that, as a person taking that risk definitely deserves, but I don’t feel that I’m getting anywhere.” And what I, I guess you’re saying is without goals, it’s very hard to know where you’re heading and set plans to do that. Dan: Yeah, absolutely and it’s not just very hard, I’d say it’s impossible. I mean, when do you know if you’re doing well? When do you know if you’re not doing well? It’s a virtual impossibility and ultimately those businesses are doomed to fail. Matt: Ok, and look I agree with you and especially with, I mean whether people believe there is a global financial crisis or whether the economy is struggling, the fact of the matter is 95% of businesses fail within the first five years and then the future for those other businesses seemed bleak. Without making plans and making goals, you’re just setting yourself up to fail. So today, we’re going to be focusing on something we call and the rest of the people that are big in goal call smart goals. Now anybody that’s heard of smart, today we’re going to be focusing primarily on the first five letters, however Daniele will also be introducing at the end of this session, two additional letters, or we’re going to call smarter goals, to allow you to really drive your businesses forward. Now, first I guess the main thing we need to do is define what this word smart means. So Daniele, I’ll get you to take us through each and every letter and then we can further break down what each one of those is for and key points behind them and what happens if you don’t utilise that letter as we move forward. Dan: Yeah absolutely and in fact as you said that Matt, I’ve got a fantastic real world example that I’d love to share with our listeners a little later as to what happens if all five aren’t present. But we’ll leave that for the moment. The five letters in smart stand for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely. Matt: Ok specific, how do you know what a specific goal is? I mean, if I just set a goal to make a million dollars before the end of the year. Is that a specific enough goal I’m trying to make a specific amount of money? Dan: Yeah look that is, it’s a finite amount i.e. I want to make a million dollars and you know exactly what’s required to achieve it. Putting it another way, if I asked you the question Matt, “What does success look like?” You’d say, “Well, I’ve got zero today, by the 31st of December I need to generate a million dollars. So it is a very specific objective you’ve set then. Matt: So I guess though, if you’re looking at, “I want to make a million dollars,” without anything else around it, that’s just a wish really isn’t it? Dan: Exactly. It’s incomplete. It may not be wrong, it may be the perfect goal for your business, but it’s incomplete. Matt: Ok, so let’s look at the measurable element then. Dan: Yeah, the thing is, if you want to achieve something, it’s got to be measurable. You’ve got to have a tangible way to show whether or not you have achieved that thing. So for example if in a business you’re wanting to increase your sales to a million or by a million, then if that is measurable – which is the second component. Because basically we have the ability to monitor, to track what revenue stream comes through the business. So it’s definitely specific and it’s definitely measurable. Matt: Ok, so for those listeners who are out there thinking, “Oh a million dollars turnover, oh I’d love to, or profit – I’d love to do that, I’d love to make a million dollars. But at the moment, my business is lucky to make 30 or 40 thousand dollars.” Or, “I’m just about to start a business, that’s kind of a hard goal for me. We’re going to be moving in to some, I guess the next steps that allow you to pick more achievable goals. Dan: And that’s spot on Matt and I mean you’re absolutely online here, how achievable is it that if you’re, you’ve pre-empted there by saying it’s a new business. Well, very few new businesses, which by definition are in the first year of operation actually make money. Forget about make a million dollars, the majority of businesses in their first 12 to 18 months don’t even break even. Because they’ve ploughed so much money into investment and set up costs that even if they’re earning money, they’re not even breaking even on their investment. So if you’re a new business, then making a million dollars may be unrealistic. Matt: So what you’re suggesting, I mean let’s really tap this back into the smart concept, the third letter is achievable. So you really need to be looking for goals that you actually can achieve. It’s great to set yourself stretch targets, and I’m definitely one to set stretch targets. But you’ve got to make sure that they are achievable. As a new business, setting yourself an unachievable goal is setting yourself up for failure. It not only won’t motivate you, but it also will make sure that you’re not having your sights on goals that are achievable for yourself and things you really should be striving towards. Dan: Yeah, and that’s particularly relevant in the first stages of a start up business. Now, you mentioned earlier the mortality rates of start-up businesses. And this is globally, it doesn’t really matter what country we’re talking about. And it’s possibly in part because people are unrealistic about the objectives that they’re setting. In simple words, they’re not achievable. So Matt, for the sake of this example that you wanted a million dollars in your first year. It may be that you’re dealing in a market like selling exclusive motor vehicles. So if it were that sort of a market, I’d say you’d get your million, because they’re worth about half a million each. But if you’re in a hamburger store or something a little more modest, it would be quite difficult to achieve. Matt: So the most important thing, and I think that this is – I guess we want to set this as a base line for all of our podcasts moving forward. Is that we want to sit and we want to be able to give advice that makes people able to directly apply it to their business. And setting unrealistic goals or goals that are just too much of a stretch target, it d