5 TIPS TO SUPPORT YOUR WHOLE WOMAN BRILLIANCE AND SHIFT YOUR LIFE

I am still on a high from all of the powerful information we shared with you on our I Didn't Start to Stop" Mid-year check-in call. There were so many juicy nuggets, resources and "clapper worthy wins" on that one call that I had to go back and listen to the recording to make sure I got some of my own notes!!! I am always excited to share with you whatever I can to make sure you stay in motion and in your greatness. We are truly in this together and I am grateful fro the opportunity to serve you. 

I know there was a ton of information shared on that call, but I want to share with you a list of resources that I discussed to support you in getting organized, getting clear and getting a handle on all of the projects you have coming your way. Here are the top 5 areas that will support your whole woman brilliance and shift your life:  

1) FINANCIAL PLANNING: If you're going to thrive in life or in business, you must keep your finances in order. Here are some great financial planning tools for business and personal finances- RESOURCE: https://www.mint.com/ is a great resource for personal finances and quickbooks.intuit.com/ for business orhttps://www.waveapps.com/ (free)

2) TIME MANAGEMENT: I believe you can't truly manage time, but you can manage what needs to be done with the time you have so focus on how you can "control your controlables.” Stick to a strict time schedule and watch how much more you can get done when you know you're up against the buzzer. RESOURCE:https://www.rescuetime.com/ or use the timer on your phone. Make sure you're realistic with your scheduling so you don't add undue stress. Block your day in 20-60 minute increments as needed for the appropriate task.

3) HEALTH/FITNESS: If your body and mind are not well, you cannot show up in your greatness! Make sure you always take time out to take care of your mind, body and spirit daily. Make sure eating well, taking breaks and exercise are mandatory daily routines. RESOURCE: https://www.jefit.com or www.myfitnesspal.com/

4) PLANNING: To get numbers 1-3 done, you must plan out your day. Get a planner or journal to track your life and support your own accountability, progress wins and opportunities. RESOURCE: Get your “Until Done” journal from HWHN at www.untildonejournal.com and keep an idea journal for all of those racing thoughts and ideas that come while you're at the redlight or on the toilet!

5) DELEGATE TO YOUR TEAM- Keeping a strong team in your corner can seriously be your lifeline. Make sure you utilize them to the best of their abilities and always show them appreciation! "But, Mothyna, I'm just getting started and I don't have a team yet." If you don’t have a team, create one. Automation is your team. Check out these great resources that can make your life a little easier until the right humans come along. 
RESOURCE: virtual assistants
www.hootsuite.com/www.buffer.com www.meetedgar.com (social media)
www.constantcontact.com www.mailchimp.com www.ontraport.com (email marketing)
www.calendly.com www.timetrade.comwww.setmore.com (scheduling)

Alright, so it's time to take action! Start downloading and apply what you need where you need it. Don't overwhelm yourself. Start with a plan and get clear about exactly where you need support the most and start there. Do you have other resources that work for you? Please share them in our online community HWHN Unlimited You. See you at the top!

Sister Mothyna James-Brightful is a self proclaimed “Self Love Revolutionary”. She has spent the last decade empowering women and girls to live authentic lives. Sister Mothyna is the Visionary Director and Co-founder of Heal a Woman to Heal a Nation. Sister Mothyna is co-author of Because I am a Queen...100 Affirmations for Daily Living. Stay connected www.hwhn.org: Twitter @mothyna

5 Sales Prospecting Techniques You've Probably Never Tried

"As originally posted on http://www.rainsalestraining.com/blog"

What is the #1 challenge or issue you face when it comes to growing sales for your business?

When I recently reached out to my network and asked that same question, 75% mentioned sales prospecting as their #1 challenge.

The problem isn’t that people don’t know what to do; it’s that what they’ve always done no longer works. Want proof? Think about the last time you met an actual decision maker at a networking event, and that conversation led to a sale. How about from a cold call? Trade show? Advertisement?

The simple truth is this: if you do what everybody else is doing, you’ll get the same results everybody else is getting.

Which, in a world where prospects are increasingly turning off their phone and turning on their spam filters, isn’t much.

So, if you want to stand out (and get more meetings), here are five sales prospecting techniques you’ve probably never tried (but should).

5 Sales Prospecting Techniques

1. Become a Video Rock Star
Everything I do these days involves video (in some form or another). And I’m not talking about those fancy marketing videos where the CEO comes on to talk about the new service you just launched. Or those happy, smiling customers on your homepage telling everyone how awesome you are.

I am talking about using video for sales. Specifically, for sales prospecting.

Email open rates have plummeted in recent years. And they continue to go down (and down). According to MailVU.com, the average email click-through rate is now around 5%, which means that if you are sending a whitepaper, blog post, or brochure to 100 prospects, a grand total of 5 will open it. To put it another way, if you want to get 50 prospects to actually read your stuff, you’d need to send 1000 emails, and risk wasting 995 people’s time and being marked as spam.

Now let’s say you were to include a video in that email. Nothing fancy, just you talking to the camera and saying a few words. Educating a little bit. Introducing yourself. Pointing to a helpful resource.

You’ll be surprised how even a simple video will boost opens, the number of people who are engaged with your content, and the number of leads that begin to move down your sales funnel. Time to break out the flip cam.

2. Leverage Your Losses
Think about the last 5-10 deals you didn’t get. Now think about why you didn’t get them. Do you know why? If not, go find out and three things can happen:

1. You’ll improve. If you lost to a competitor, use this opportunity to find out what your competitor did better – or differently – to win the deal. Rainmakers seek to improve continuously through feedback. Arm yourself with all the knowledge you can to ensure your next deal has a different result.
2. You’ll resurrect the deal. Maybe the timing was off, or maybe there was one buyer who nixed the deal and five others who were ready to go. Find out what happened and you may be able to turn things around.
3. You’ll generate referrals. Perhaps the corporate powers that be decided it wasn’t such a good idea anyway. In most cases, your contact at the company really wanted to move forward – and to do so with you. This puts you in a great position to ask a simple, yet powerful, question like, “Who else in your network can you think of that could use some help with…?”

3. Gang Up with (Non Competing) Competitors
This is one of my favorite sales prospecting techniques. Whoever you’re selling to has dozens of other services and products being sold to them. Let’s say you are a tax advisor selling to CFOs. Accountants sell to CFOs. Legal firms sell to CFOs. Auditors sell to CFOs. Even I – sometimes – sell to CFOs. You get the picture.

By establishing alliances with others selling different products to the same people, you get some major benefits. First, you both get access to each other’s “circle of trust” – people who know you and love your work. Second, you might find ways to partner on the same sales. And finally, you just instantly doubled (or tripled, or quadrupled) the number of people you can network with and sell to.

4. Organize Your Very Own CEO Luncheon
People love to be around people who are like them (or who they aspire to be like). Invite a CEO to a seminar, and you’re likely to get a 0.000-something response rate.

Invite that same CEO to an invitation-only CEO luncheon where they get to rub shoulders with other fellow CxOs, and you’ll get a friendly phone call from their executive assistant.

To make this work, you need to tackle the 3 Ps:

1. Presence: It has to be a small group of very, very senior players
2. Packaging: It has to feel, sound, and be exclusive
3. Positioning: It has to combine lunch/dinner with a “big question”

When it comes to sales prospecting, this technique may seem a little slow going. You’re not blasting CEOs with a sales message. You’re allowing them to network while getting to know you. Not only will your attendees be brushing shoulders with the big dogs, but you will be too. You’ll get to hear about the problems CEOs are having from a room full of them. The key here is building relationships and being available when those contacts need your product or service – and they will eventually.

5. Perform a Walk-in
Before you think I just lost my marbles, let me say what I don’t mean by that. I don’t mean canvassing, the (formerly popular with traveling salesmen) technique of going into an office district, knocking on doors, and requesting to see the CEO. These days, you’re likely to get looked at funny (or possibly escorted out by security) if you try to pull that one off.

The next time you meet a friend, business contact, or former colleague for lunch (you do lunch, right?), make a simple request: “Hey. Before we go out, would you mind introducing me to your [boss/CEO/VP of Marketing]? I’ve been wanting to get in touch for a while, and considering I’ll be over there anyway…?”

Do it up front (don’t ever surprise them while you’re picking them up), get their permission, be sincere about your intentions, and don’t ever, ever sell while you’re in the room. Your objective is to get introduced, get contact details, and establish a next step. That’s it.

So there you go, 5 sales prospecting techniques you’ve probably never tried. They’ve worked for me. They’ve worked for others. They just might work for you.

Making the Most of My Side Hustle Money

Starting a side hustle instead of simply obtaining a second job is growing in popularity, and it’s not only millenials. According to the Kauffman Foundation Report: 2015 Kauffman Index Startup Activity, people 65-74 years old make up 25.8% of new entrepreneurs. Most begin a side hustle to get extra money or with the aim of turning it into a small business. However, are you making the most of your side hustle money?

  I’ve heard a lot of people call money from their side hustle, fun money. This usually means:

• they aren’t paying attention to how much money they are truly making,
• they don’t know if they’re making a profit, and
• they aren’t disciplined with spending the money.

 Well let me put it like this, if you want to increase the revenue and position your side hustle to become a small business, then you have to treat it like a business. Even, if you have no plans to build a business that will allow you to transition to being a full-time entrepreneur, still treat your venture as a business. At the bare minimum, do the actions below.

 1) Track revenue, expenses, and your time.

You should know how much time you spend on creating and delivering products or services. Also track how much revenue is earned and how much money it costs you to create and deliver the products or service per month. This will allow you to determine if you’re truly making money. You should have a profit, money left over after subtracting the expenses from the revenue.

2) Designate what the revenue will be used to do.

If you feel like you’re drowning in bills or debt, then definitely go ahead and use some the side hustle money to pay those expenses. If the revenue is “fun” money then be strategic and put some of that money towards financial goals, such as completing an emergency fund, investing for retirement, and paying down any debt. You can still have fun, but ensure your financial security as well.

 3) Re-invest back into the business.

If you want to increase the money coming in from your side hustle then you will need to re-invest some of the revenue back into the business. Until you’re making a nice sized profit, reinvest 90-100% of the revenue back into the business. You want to invest in more business training, training in your field, systems for the business, materials etc. You’ll definitely see your revenue increase when you invest money back into the business. The first year and a half in business, 100% of my revenue went back into the business.

 4) Price yourself competitively.

Having the lowest prices is not a pricing or business strategy. Make sure you’re making a profit from each sale. Also check the pricing for your industry and market. How do you compare to others? You want to have competitive pricing, but also make it clear to your potential clients and customers the value in your product or service, which goes beyond price.

Dr. Maria James, The Money Scientist, has expertise with designing income management, debt management, and wealth strategies to help you live your best life. She is the founder of Pocket of Money, LLC and the creator of The Wealth Protocol™. Dr. James has also been a guest financial expert on ESSENCE, WEAA, Madame Noire and more.