Advice on How Small Businesses Can Recruit Top Talent

by Yoon Cannon | Attract More Customers, Build Your Dream Team, Business Growth Tips Blog, General, Management-Leadership, Management-Leadership, Outsourcing and Hiring Tips Blog

In today’s world, many small businesses are struggling to compete against large companies because most people would love to work for those organizations. The most typical scenario is that small businesses get what’s left from the applicants of big companies.

Your employees will help you make your business bigger. So it’s always best to look for top candidates as they’ll contribute to your organization more.

Hiring top talents in a company is one of the keys to its success. If you’re running a small business, one of the challenges your company faces is recruiting excellent employees.

This article will give tips on how small businesses can hire top talents and improve their company’s performance in the industry.

5 Recruitment Strategies For Small Businesses

It may sound easy to create your hiring system, but it is challenging, especially for small businesses. There are plenty of ways you can secure the best candidates.

Offer Flexible Schedules

Small businesses can attract excellent talents by offering flexitime. Most people are looking for a flexible job, especially regarding schedules. Employees use the time to search for other ways to earn money, such as freelancing, while others use it for personal growth.

Most employers think employees might not do their tasks if they don’t keep an eye on them. On the contrary, giving them flexible time allows them to increase productivity in your organization.

For instance, they have to finish 40 hours a week. Instead of making them complete it in five days, they can finish the 40 hours in four days with a 10-hour shift. They would have more free time for themselves to be used for personal growth or family.

Another example is they did 12 hours today; they can come in late the next day. Not only will it give your team more rest, but they can also make critical decisions for the company’s betterment.

Offer Competitive Compensation

Let’s be practical. We all need money to live and enjoy our lives, so job seekers consider salary before applying for the opening. If they have the skills but think they wouldn’t get the salary they deserve, they’d most likely turn away and look for another company.

Their skills are investments. They have spent countless hours studying to earn from them.

However, when it comes to compensation, salary isn’t the only thing involved. You can also add insurance, incentives, bonuses, and other perks that employees can get. Doing this will also improve your employee retention rating.

If your business is in sales, you can offer incentives if they reach their weekly or monthly target. This will make them try to sell more, increasing your sales.

Providing competitive compensation can also increase productivity in your organization. The employees will become more motivated to do their job, improving your business situation.

State Clear & Appealing Job Descriptions

Job seekers dislike unclear job descriptions. Before they consider the position available in your organization, they will read the description. If they find it very confusing, they’re more likely to give up on the job before applying.

Nobody wants to read texts that are full of jargon. So, it’s best to create straightforward job descriptions. You should include all the essential details, especially about the compensation, qualifications, and responsibilities.

Serious applicants and job seekers always want to be clear on what they are getting into. They don’t want to waste their time going through a hiring process that doesn’t give them clarity about the job description and requirements.

Job descriptions are your first move to attract top talents, so make sure that you write concise and appealing words to reach your target people.

Create a Referral Program

Small companies have more limited funds than larger ones. They would try to save costs as much as possible, including the recruitment process. You can lessen the cost of your recruitment by using referrals.

Referral programs are affordable. You don’t need to allocate a large budget to run the program because your employees will do it for you.

It’s one of the best ways to find new talents for your company and, at the same time, promote a stronger employer brand as your current employees would recommend your company as one of the best places to work.

Your current employees will help you look for the talent you need. For it to become more effective, you can offer the referrers monetary incentives for every successful referral. Giving them gift coupons or shopping vouchers will encourage them to invite the people they know to apply for the job.

Remember to keep the referral program simple and keep the referrers updated even if their referral didn’t qualify. This will boost the employer-employee relationship.

Share Equity or Ownership

Sharing equity/stocks or ownership is not a very common approach when looking for talents. However, it is very effective and can keep the key people in the company.

Candidates are not just looking for jobs; they want to ensure their future and create opportunities for themselves.

Offering them a certain amount of your company’s equity can motivate them. The percentage isn’t necessarily large. A small amount is a good start, but when the company becomes bigger, its share value also increases.

You’re also teaching them how stocks work and probably become great entrepreneurs in the future.

Build a Strong Employer Brand

Think about large companies, such as Google and Amazon. They have built their brands that many people could easily recognize as one of the biggest companies in the world.

To build your company brand, you will create a strong connection with your clients or customers as a company. Creating beautifully designed logos, attractive websites, and effective marketing strategies are some ways to establish your brand.

Creating a strong employer brand is similar to your company brand. As an employer, building relationships with current employees is beneficial in successfully recruiting the best people.

Talents want a stable job where they can work for a long time and see improvement. Aside from offering competitive compensation, invest in upskilling and professional development. You can provide them with free training and seminars. This will help you acquire high performing teams to help your business improve and become bigger.

Serious job seekers will surely love to work for your organization because they can also improve themselves and become better at what they do.

Start Succession Planning

Employees usually ask themselves what they would get if they stayed longer in a small company.

Larger companies offer various opportunities to their current employees. A small business might not be able to compete with all of those, but when you offer promotions, such as leadership, to your current employees, they would feel valuable.

Recruiting external candidates isn’t the only option for small businesses. You have your current employees to become the next key person you need. You don’t need to look elsewhere to find the right person because your employees are your excellent people source.

Always use data to back up your succession planning. It’s important to know who the right candidate is among your workforce. Using a metric performance system is the best way to identify the person.

You can check which person has been doing well and deserves a promotion.

Use Combinations of Recruiting Techniques

Small businesses shouldn’t just focus on their recruitment process; they should also consider the ways to secure top talents for their companies. Posting a job and waiting for a candidate isn’t a strategy to help your business grow.

Follow the tips above to attract more top talents. You’ll have more candidates to choose from and will be able to hire the best ones to improve your company.

How SMB Owners Are Attracting Top Sales Talent in 2022

by Yoon Cannon | Build Your Dream Team, Business Growth Tips Blog, General, Management-Leadership, Marketing and Sales Blog Posts, Outsourcing and Hiring Tips Blog

SECRETS TO ATTRACTING TOP SALES TALENT FOR SMB OWNERS

There is a growing crisis in sales talent. According to Forbes, companies are “struggling to keep the sales reps they have, and having an even harder time finding and developing sales reps to replace them.”

Recruiting and retaining top sales talent has always been challenging. But, if you are trying to grow a small or mid-size company, it’s an added struggle to compete with the bigger salaries Enterprise companies can offer.

To help you attract top sales talent and navigate this era of the Great Resignation, I’ve rounded up six SMB owners to share their advice how they overcame specific constraints to recruiting sales talent.

SALES HIRING CHALLENGE #1. Hiring Salespeople Who Can Produce Quickly

How ClickGuard Overcame This Challenge:

Hiring is tough and in 2022 hiring the right sale people who can produce and ad value quickly is even tougher.

“I’m a strong advocate of hiring and building teams
based on the right culture for your organization” ~ Ralph PerrierClick To Tweet

Sales is a competitive sport, and like any good general manager, you should recruit and evaluate candidates based on their track record.

Hire candidates that are already active within your industry with a strong social network of relevant contact which you can benefit from.

Ralph Perrier, CEO of ClickGuard
Protect Your Google Ads from Bot Clicks,
Click Farms and Competitors and Prevent Waste.

SALES HIRING CHALLENGE #2. Limited Budget and Limited Local Talent Pool

How Function Fox Overcame That Challenge:

When we hired our first sales team – we are looking for people physically in our geography, so it was a limited market and we didn’t have big budgets.

Rather than looking for highly experienced talent, we looked for aptitude and attitude which opened up our market considerably. By Corina Ludwig Click To Tweet

We hired a former chef who had never really worked in an office before. He became one of our top performers and stayed with us close to 10 years and even got a FunctionFox Tattoo!

We always try to “Stay Creative” with any challenge that comes our way.

Corina Ludwig, President/ Partner – FunctionFox.com
Timesheet and Project Management Software

SALES HIRING CHALLENGE #3. Finding Salespeople Who Were Willing to Hold Themselves Accountable

How Green Rope Overcame That Challenge:

The biggest challenge we faced was finding salespeople who were willing to hold themselves accountable (fortunately, we have a great team now).

Salespeople generally are either hunters or farmers, and each has a different personality for the role, says Lars Helgeson Click To Tweet

We have focused our energy primarily on inbound marketing, which is conducive to having a team of farmers.

Farmers are generally better with accountability and providing the data needed for closing the loop on the customer journey. Hunters tend to be more outgoing, extroverted, and harder to keep track of. We have found this role has been the hardest to fill and keep and are still in search of a good one.

Lars Helgeson Founder / CEO, GreenRope
All-In-One CRM with Marketing Automation

SALES HIRING CHALLENGE #4. Managing Budget & Expectations of the Sales Team.

How WeStrive Overcame This Challenge:

As a first-time tech founder, the biggest challenge has been managing the budget and expectations of the sales team.

To overcome this, I’ve taken the time to meet with people who have been in my shoes before.

I've taken time to meet with both tech founders and sales leads to better understand sales salaries, commission types, and more, says Cory McKane Click To Tweet

Cory McKane, CEO at Westrive.com
The All-In-One App for Personal Trainers

SALES HIRING CHALLENGE #5. Making the Pivot to Enterprise Sales Teams

How Read Cube Overcame That Challenge:

ReadCube is part of Digital Science, which is part of the broader Holtzbrinck Publishing conglomerate. People who work in the Science Technical and Medical (STM) sectors know that Digital Science is a hot commodity.

So, I leveraged three core ways to be able to attract top sales talent.

I engaged my network looking for potential sales candidates who already had a rolodex.
The sellers I recruited worked for me in a past professional life, so we had/have mutual respect for each other.
I also worked with a headhunter.

From those tactics I was able to source 15-20 top qualified candidates to interview.

Miles McNamee

Senior Vice President – Enterprise Sales, ReadCube

SALES HIRING CHALLENGE #6. Not Getting Enough Candidates

How DSP Helps Companies Overcome This Challenge:

In our 15 years in business we have been through many challenging times such as a recession and Covid 19. 2022 has been just as challenging, the challenge this time is finding quality talent.

Only 4-5 years ago if we contacted 20 potential candidates we would get 10 quality resumes. Today, if we contact 50 we are lucky if we get 1 strong candidate. What we have done to combat this situation is think out of the box and consult with our clients to do the same.

One example of this to change the limiting belief that a candidate must be from your industry.There are many industries that cross over. By Jim McKenna Click To Tweet

Although the clientele might be different the core processes and sales cycles are the same.”

Jim McKenna, President at Definitive Search Partners
We Partner with You to Bring You the Highest Quality Candidates!

SALES HIRING CHALLENGE # 7. Candidates Who Change Their Minds

LinkedIn recently published the top challenges facing recruiters. A staggering 75% of recruiters report they’ve dealt with candidates who went through the entire interview process, only to then change their minds last minute. (Ugh!) Unfortunately, this is growing problem that’s been happening at an increasing rate in the post pandemic world we are living in today.

How Yoon Cannon Helps SMB Owners Overcome This Challenge:

While it is unrealistic to completely eliminate this problem you can expect to greatly reduce candidates changing their minds by focusing on the big rocks I call the 3 R’s:

Remote Options: The latest studies are finding that 56% of candidates turn down jobs because of lack of flexibility to work remote. They want flexibility more than they want pay and security. Where we have been able to help SMB owners is by designing systems to help you effectively manage a remote or partially remote team while boosting their sales performance.
Retention through Relationships: Working remote certainly gives your sales team greater work-life balance, but it can also lead to your sales team feeling too isolated and disconnected. Pandemic or not, never forget human nature has proven throughout history that people will often stay with a company longer, not necessarily, because they love the actual work they do, but because they love the people they get to work with.
- Introduce candidates throughout their interview process to multiple managers and peers in your organization.
- Show the vibe of your people and the camaraderie they enjoy through your company videos.
- Create and showcase several videos of you, the founder as well as your leadership team. Don’t make it “corporate”. Be your genuine selves. Candidates will want to work for you if you give them ways to feel like they got to know, like and trust you.
Recruiting Funnel: There is no one reason why a candidate changes their mind last minute. There are multiple reasons.

Setting up a recruiting funnel for all your key positions(not just sales hires) takes candidates through a process that demonstrates to you while at the same time helps Then decide that there is a strong fit in all these 7 decision… Click To Tweet

Skills fit
Personality fit
Financial fit
Timing fit
Lifestyle fit
Future fit and
People fit / Culture fit

So, by the time you are reviewing your top candidates you can be confident each of those candidates have determined for themselves the role they are applying for is truly the right fit for them.

Yoon Cannon, Business Growth Coach,
Founder, ParamountBusinessCoach.com
Helping entrepreneurs scale your business growth!

SALES HIRING CHALLENGE #8. Generating Enough Sales as a Startup to Hire Sales Talent Without Any VC Funding

How Peeva Overcame This Challenge:

FIrst off, to make sense of this here is an analogy. Startups are like rock bands. Whereas, rock bands will send out demo tapes to whatever label will throw money at them. StartUps send out pitch decks to whatever VC will invest in them.

Either way, most of them never make it out of the garage. To get a record deal in your favor, getting out of the garage and touring is the best way to do this.

Investors want to see traction and there is no better way to show this than to have paying customers. It doesn’t matter who you know. People with money have it for a reason, they don’t spend it foolishly. Ironically, the far majority of VC funded companies also fail.

My best advice to any Entrepreneur is to get as many paying customers as possible and as quickly as possible. This also comes at great cost if you are irresponsible.

Peeva’s approach is a top to bottom approach.

Rather than hire a ground swell of boots on the ground (outside sales professionals) to make cold calls and hand off marketing literature and then pay them to chase and bother busy prospects, it was much more productive for us to establish a beta relationship with a large corporate chain of vet hospitals.

From the C-level down, we were then able to scale at a much quicker rate with veterinary professionals and hospitals without ever meeting them let alone speaking with them. Our veterinary professionals essentially do sales for us, by selling Peeva to pet owners.

I would also recommend getting a channel partner for the mutually beneficial relationships; such as credibility and marketing exposure via email introductions and follow ups, says Michael Hamilton Click To Tweet

I did all of this myself, before requiring any sales professionals. It was not until after I established these types of accounts before brining on a veterinary relations director that overseas 3 other sales professionals that follow the traditional meet face to face sales model. No VC needed, and the only VC’s I ever speak with at this point are those that reach out to us.

I hope this helps many entrepreneurs that will go broke or focus on an exit strategy before getting started.

Michael Hamilton, CEO / Founder of Peeva

Universal pet identification and central database

SALES HIRING CHALLENGE #9. Sales People Who Are Transactional

How Qnum Analytics Overcame This Challenge:

The biggest challenge in hiring my first sales team was the transition from their past selling “norms” into trusted advisors that would solve the customers problems as opposed to selling our products and solutions.

I hired sales talent who had the desire and hunger and weren’t too worried about their sales track record as that was in the past and CVs are exactly that past achievement. I was more interested in how I can transform the potential that existed to meet what our customers needed. So, I trained them to be consultative and not transactional.

Getting this balance right helped us build better relationships and retain those clients with upsell opportunities as well as referrals, says Bheki Nkomo Click To Tweet

Bheki Nkomo, Founder, Tech Entrepreneur Qnum Analytics

Digitize end to end inventory data capture

SALES HIRING CHALLENGE #10. Attracting Highly Motivated Sales Talent

How Fin vs Fin Overcame This Challenge:

The key is well-structured, performance-driven incentives. Why not offer unlimited upside to grow your business?

Of course OTE must be achievable so that your team can accurately forecast income and plan their lives. But incentivizing sales talent to treat your business like it’s their own has been the single most important thing. How can you make them feel more like an owner, rather than a rep?

Alex Goldberg, Founder Fin vs Fin

Discover the best wellness products

SALES HIRING CHALLENGE #11. Making Our First Sales Hire

How Conmitto Overcame This Challenge:

It’s easy at first to try to go too big, too fast especially while building a solution or consulting business. While growing an early sales team, it usually works well to start with one great sales professional to help you begin bringing your product or service to market.

Early on, it’s about learning quickly and allowing the sales, marketing and product development cycles to evolve together. It’s more difficult to do this with a large team in place, and I’ve seen firsthand how painful it can be to change or adapt once you’ve made a few great but potentially mistimed hires.

The first sales hire should either be considered a ringer with serious connections and a strong sales background, or an industry expert that would really act as a sales advisor, says Akash Agarwal Click To Tweet

That will help you define and grow your offerings to fit the needs they’ve seen solving this problem first hand.

Based on the approach that works, it may make sense to hire more sales professionals with a similar background, or it may make sense to partner with a larger firm that is in the industry that can be trained to cross-sell or up-sell for you.

There’s no one-size fits all method, and you may find that direct sales hires, outside SDRs that focus on meeting generation, or a partner channel oriented approach work for you, or a healthy mix of the three may be the best approach. It’ll all depend on your industry and the state of your business, so the first step is to start trying and learning!

Akash Agarwal, CEO, Conmitto

Configurable cloud software for supply chain management

SALES HIRING CHALLENGE #12. Creating a Large Team of Sales Advocates as a Startup Company

How Aqai Overcame This Challenge:

Having been an entrepreneur for over 20 years, growing and scaling multiple teams and companies, sales is the lifeblood for growth. The challenges in hiring great salespeople and teams have evolved over the years. In my latest start-up at AQai we have focused on two key aspects to grow our company through a specific sales and go to market strategy.

Firstly, having a compelling mission, one that deeply resonates and connects with our audience of coaches and HR leaders. This driver to inspire & empower every human with the skills to adapt and thrive. Ensuring no-one is left behind in the fastest period of change in history, has been the corner stone to attracting truly great talent.

The second and important strategy has been to empower a global network of distributed agents to act as our sales advocates. With this strategy we have managed to rapidly train, certify, and enable over 200 coaches and consultants to win more business, and do more interesting work. With their sales and success, driving exponential growth on our adaptability assessment and training platform. This strategy has removed the traditional thinking for hiring, and the barriers of initial funding the growth of a direct sales team.

Using this strategic approach has enabled us to land significant projects with companies like Microsoft, IBM, The Federal Reserve Bank and Havi, among many other pioneering, people focussed organizations.

To find out more about our work, the community we are building focussed on the mental health and wellbeing in the future of work, please check out www.aqai.io

Ross Thornley, CEO & Co-Founder AQai

Change, retain and prepare your people for change

SALES HIRING CHALLENGE #13. Making Sure We’re Hiring the Right Kind of People to Fill the Role.

How Sched Overcame This Challenge:

The biggest challenge we’ve faced in hiring sales talent is making sure we’re hiring the right kind of people to fill the role. Sched helps individuals and teams create great events with our event scheduling software.

We invest significant resources in training our sales team to be able to offer solutions for our customers’ challenges when trying to plan great events.

We want to make sure our salespeople can uncover problems, explain our solutions and build trust along the way.

How SMB Owners Are Attracting Top Sales Talent in 2022 Click To Tweet

Instead of just hiring a Sales rep, we are trying to hire people who over time can expand their roles.

Our company is remote, distributed and filled with self-motivated, accountable people. We look for bright, hard working, results-oriented individuals with high levels of integrity because they are the most likely to succeed within our team.

Finding these people makes our typical hiring process look more like an audition than the typical “application and interview” process.

Hiring good people is tough. Hiring good sales people is even tougher. Our hiring process helps reduce some of that risk and increase the probability of a successful sales hire.

Marvin McTaw, CEO of Sched.com

Event Scheduling Software & Event Mobile Apps

So, there you have it. Thirteen founders sharing their personal advice on how they overcame specific Sales Talent Hiring challenges.

▶ QUESTION: What specific hiring challenge would you like to see covered in this article? Please share your comments below.

▶ Not Sure What The Best Way is to Solve Your Sales Hiring Challenges?

Book a complimentary business strategy call with Yoon Cannon here:

https://www.paramountbusinesscoach.com/coaching/coaching-call-sign-up/

▶Hiring for the first time?

Download the free printable Hiring Checklist here:

How to Build a Dream Team as an Entrepreneur

by Yoon Cannon | Build Your Dream Team, Management-Leadership

How to Build a Dream Team as an Entrepreneur (for Startups)

The purpose of this guide is to help you build your startup from a team of one to a team of many. You’ll know how to identify your startup needs, find the right people to fill those needs, and how you can bring those people together to create a high-performing team.

If you want to get your ideas off the napkin and on the ground running, it can be helpful to prioritize the growth of your team. These are people that you can mold into your workflow, and bridge the gap between your expertise and business knowledge. Not only will you have to expand it, but also make sure these individuals have a strong foundation to launch from.

Have a Clear Vision for Your Startup

If you’re reading this you probably have an ideal plan for your business, but the development of a business idea still has to be completed. Either way, solidifying the vision is a great first step toward a clearer direction.

Once you’ve outlined your idea or “vision”, set SMART goals for building your future team. As a refresher, these are goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timebound. They can always be adjusted throughout the different stages of your startup so don’t limit yourself, or feel limited to sticking to your original plan.

During the stage of crafting your business’s vision, find individuals to network with and learn from. They may have gone through a similar process before, or have a well-rounded knowledge of establishing a startup. If conversations go well, and you build trustworthy work relationships with others, you can always further the mentorship process and ask them to be an advisor for your startup team.

These don’t have to be full-time employees, but more of a mentor or phone call away if you needed a helping hand. Without one, you could be missing out on necessary industry and experience-based knowledge so take additional time to prioritize those networking events, and connect with as many people on LinkedIn as you can!

Once your advisor or board of advisors is established, make sure to take the time to review expectations and schedules with them. Take their areas of expertise and experience into consideration when developing a strategic plan for your business. ask questions such as: How involved will they be in the process? Will there be weekly or monthly meetings?

Evaluate Your Startup Needs

As an entrepreneur, you may pride yourself on being self-sufficient and independent, but you doing everything by yourself can actually lead to burnout. Skills that you may lack, another person could really excel at. Instead of thinking that you can do everything the best way, delegate the tasks to other people and work along with their strengths to help build your business.

Write down what skills you can improve upon, and what the main needs of your business are, and find the gaps in between each to create roles for your future team. Remember, self-awareness and honesty are key to benefit from this exercise.

Hiring people who are different from you helps to create a well-rounded team with a diverse skill set. Diversity leads to more creative solutions to problems. Hiring people who are not only equipped with different skills and backgrounds but also different personalities and interests can lead to more success. While keeping diversity in mind, there are a few key abilities and traits that you should also look for when bringing on team members.

First and foremost, startups can be completely unpredictable. Most of the time, they may be strapped for resources, tools, and possibly money. You will want people who can bounce back from mishaps that are bound to happen when you’re working in a company that’s in its early

stages. People who are adaptable, innovative, and capable of multitasking will thrive in this ever-changing and evolving work environment.

Use Your Connections to Your Advantage

This may seem obvious, but making connections is essential when you’re recruiting new business team members. Take advantage of networking events, industry-focused workshops, and other opportunities that may broaden your social reach.

As mentioned earlier, it’s important to first find someone (or maybe even multiple people) you trust to serve as an advisor on your team. Depending on what you’ve identified as your business needs, you’ll need people to fill those roles. Typically, the starting lineup of any company will include these positions:

Chief executive officer
Chief marketing officer
Product manager
Chief financial officer
Chief technology officer
Business development manager
Sales manager
Customer service expert

However, don’t feel tied down to building your dream team around these positions. You can adjust or delegate multiple roles to team members.

If you feel like the number of connections is looking limited, don’t hesitate to use hiring platforms to build your team too. Indeed, Linkedin and Glassdoor are reliable for finding and recruiting top talent. If you’re not confident using this method by yourself, consider involving your advisor in the hiring process. They can assist you in interviewing and choosing candidates, and it never hurts to have a second opinion on something that’s going to affect your business.

Another thing to have handy in the hiring process is an employee checklist for candidates you’ve decided to move forward with. You’ll want to make sure your employees are set up for success early on in your business beginnings. On the note of successful beginnings, make sure your team is properly compensated whether it’s monetary or otherwise from the start of employment.

Take your advisors, for example, they’re not just doing you a favor by mentoring you through your startup journey. There are a few ways to go about compensating advisors, one of the most common is to utilize the FAST Agreement from the Founder Institute. This is a flexible approach to providing compensation as it depends on the company’s maturity and the level of advisor engagement.

As for your other team members, you may be wondering how you can not only compensate top talent but also entice them to work for you. For startups strapped for financial resources, it might seem like working for a startup is undesirable. Job seekers might opt for work at a larger company with higher pay and better benefits. But, how long does it take until those benefits are outweighed by a lack of satisfaction?

It all depends on an employee’s value, and how they are able to connect with your start-up’s overall mission. Even though a larger company is most likely more established, it does not mean they are prioritizing employee growth and opportunity. It’s all about how you advertise your business to those who you want to hire. Relate to an audience and show them that, even though you’re smaller and in a more development phase, it could give them a lot of experience!

Working at a startup and on a smaller team fosters a sense of belonging and purpose as well. There is a clear goal for the team to work towards, and reaching that goal is the most satisfying feeling. Furthermore, a startup with a clear vision and personable leadership is more attractive than a big corporation with less than ideal morals and goals. As stated earlier, a startup may lack resources and constantly change. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing though, it gives employees a challenge that they can benefit from professionally.

Making and utilizing connections is an effective way to form a team but it’s also crucial for finding support outside of your internal team. You’ll need people to advocate for your startup to help you achieve your goals. Accelerator programs are a great resource for breaking through a heavily saturated market.

Rafael Ilishayev and Yakir Gola, co-founders of the delivery company Gopuff, understood the importance of having an advocate in the early stages of a startup through their small business accelerator program. These are great for business-minded people who are starting their own companies because it gets them in front of the right people to find funding or other resources that can set them up for success.

If you’re looking to expand, take advantage of the resources and opportunities that these company-created programs give you especially as you’re growing your team. And who knows, maybe one day you can give back to the entrepreneurial community with your own accelerator program or fund!

Instill Strong Values In Your Team

When you have finally assembled your team, consider having them take a personality assessment. This test can give you an idea of how individuals will work with you and the rest of your team. Remember, it’s less about who is on the team and more about how the team works together. Once you’ve done this, you know how your team can most efficiently work together.

But, that’s not the end of things. What foundation are efficient and high-performing teams built on? A few things; trust, consistent communication, respect, and honesty. If your team consists of people with all these traits, they’re more likely to be there to support you and each other. From day one, you need to set up the expectations of these values for your team.

Re-evaluate Your Team as Needed

Now that you have your team and know how best to work with each other, it’s important to keep track of your progress as a business. If you find your team is missing something, like a specific skill set or perspective, consider bringing someone on to help. You can either hire someone to fill a role on your internal team or you can outsource an individual or an entire team.

Let’s say you’re lacking the marketing tools to propel your business and you find your team unsure of how to tackle this issue. Ask yourself, “Do I hire a team to do in-house marketing, or should I outsource?” While there is no right or wrong answer to this question, and it depends on what works best for your business, this outsourcing vs hiring guide may help you find perspective on what to do if you find yourself in a situation like this.

At the end of the day, your team is what makes or breaks the success of your startup. Hence the saying you’ve probably heard countless times, “Teamwork makes the dream work!” By utilizing the tips mentioned above, you’ll build the startup team of your dreams in no time.

Blogging to Generate Leads: A Guide to Blog Marketing

by Yoon Cannon | Business Growth Tips Blog, General, Marketing and Sales Blog Posts

Lead generation is crucial to any business – but that doesn’t mean it needs to be expensive, or difficult. Blogging to generate leads is one of the most powerful, easy and effective ways to generate leads; and these 3 methods will have you inundated with new leads in no time.

Blogging to generate leads through SEO

Search engines represent the most direct route for generating leads. Prospective customers search for businesses and products through the likes of Google and Yahoo!, and click the most relevant links – with 33% of all search traffic going to the business ranked #1 in the search engine results page. Blogging allows you to climb these rankings by filling your webpage with relevant keywords and links.

The more times you include a particular keyword in a page, the more likely that page is to appear high-up in the search engine rankings. Blogging allows you to regularly create keyword-rich pages, boosting your websites search engine visibility and directly generating leads.

Great blog content is also regularly shared; and the more people share it, the more links your website receives from other sites. This is great for lead generation for two reasons:

1. The more links your site has, the higher it will appear in search engine results. This generates leads because of your increased visibility.

2. If other websites share your blog content, your post becomes visible to a whole new target audience – generating traffic and leads as a result.

Blogging to generate leads through Social Media

Social networks, like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn , allow your business to engage with thousands of potential leads. Each social network is home to industry-relevant communities – from health and fitness through to digital marketing – and every single community member represents a potential customer.

Your business can attract these leads by blogging. Social networks are built on sharing, and by making your blog a resource of problem-solving, industry relevant content, you encourage people to engage with and share your posts. If your business is blogging to generate leads in the health and fitness industry, create content that answers the common questions in that niche:

* How can I lose weight?

* How can I gain muscle?

* What’s a protein shake?

Sharing this content across social media attracts visitors that are looking to answer their questions; and by the answers, you achieve two things:

You bring your visitor one step closer to purchasing a product or service.
You create gratitude for your business, for providing your visitor with beneficial information.

In other words, blogging to generate leads not only creates the lead; it also sales-qualifies them.

Blogging to generate leads through email marketing

Great content is half of the puzzle; and to generate as many leads as possible with your blog marketing, you need to publish consistently and regularly. By tackling the latest industry issues, and periodically releasing new and beneficial information, you create an incentive for your visitors to regularly return to your business website. This allows you to create a blog subscription call-to-action, and build an opt-in email mailing list.

Opt-in email is a tried-and-tested lead generation technique. It allows you to communicate and engage directly with your blog readers; building trust and appreciation of your business, and encouraging visitors to become leads, and eventually customers. By sending out a monthly blog summary, you ensure that your lead is regularly benefiting from your great blog content, and as a result, they’re more likely to respond to your promotions and special offers. Best of all, you can keep track of your leads through email open rates, and continue the process of lead-nurturing with further, targeted emails.

QUESTION: Do you regularly use keywords, social media and mailing lists alongside your blog? Have you used blogging to generate leads for your business? Let me know in the comments!

Blogging is just one key piece in your overall marketing strategy. Be sure to grab your free copy of MARKETING CHECKLIST for SERVICE BASED BUSINESS OWNERS here.

Top 3 Business Networking Mistakes and How to Fix It

by Yoon Cannon | Business Growth Tips Blog, Marketing and Sales Blog Posts

Networking is a crucial skill every entrepreneur should develop that can help you grow your business. But, many small business owners avoid networking thinking it requires schmoozing and slick selling. Successful networking is actually the opposite.

Here is what I have found to be the top three business networking mistakes. And, don’t feel bad if you’ve made any of these mistakes. Many of us have once made these same mistakes too. Let’s just focus on which one might be hurting your business and get to work on fixing them to start seeing positive results from your business networking.

Networking Mistakes #1. Using your 30 second commercial to recite a long list of all your services.

How do you answer the question, what do you do?

I’ve watched people’s eyes glaze over many times as they try to process the long list of services the business owner is rattling off. Here are a couple examples:

BEFORE Example 1:

“I am the owner of ABC Natural Healing Center. We offer: acupuncture, chiropractic care, Myofascial release, NAET, Neuro Emotional Technique, Pulsed Electromagnetic Field Therapy, Reiki and yoga classes. Come in for an appointment at our offices in Anytown.”

Yikes! Most people probably don’t even know what half those things are!

How about this example:

BEFORE Example 2:

“I am a business coach. I offer personal one on one phone coaching, group coaching, training courses, mastermind programs, marketing consulting and speaking engagements. I also have a free newsletter and I offer free webinars and business coaching discovery consultations.”

Why this does not work effectively.

People tune out on the PROCESS you use. But, people tune in on the PROBLEMS you solve. Click To Tweet
Solution: Tell people who you help and what specific problems you solve.

AFTER Example 1:

“I am the owner of ABC Natural Healing Center. We help kids and adults recover quickly from sports injuries, back pain, headaches, insomnia, anxiety and many other chronic symptoms without using pharmaceutical drugs or surgery.”

My Own AFTER Example 2:

“I am a business growth expert. I help solo entrepreneurs and small business owners recover quickly from sales slumps, scattered focus and overwhelm. I can help you create and hit the right business goals in 90 days or less.”

Networking Mistakes #2. Focusing on converting customers at networking events.

If you evaluate whether a particular networking event was a good or bad use of your time based on whether you made a sale or picked up an immediate referral you are probably focused on the wrong goal. Objectives for networking events are different than for trade shows.

First, understand It’s not your fault.

It’s only natural as a business owner to want to see immediate results from your networking efforts. After all, much of your success was due to your unbridled commitment to being results focused.
You invested several hours to attend the networking event, so of course you feel as if you should get something from your time.

Why is this a networking mistake? … Because that’s not how people buy.

People don’t buy from companies. People buy from people they know, like and trust. Click To Tweet

Solution: Focus on making new friends not just new clients.

Since you are networking to grow your business, it might feel contrarian to NOT focus on getting new clients out of it. But, if you’re trying too hard it shows. People can feel when someone is looking at them as just their next sale.

In order for networking to be successful, you do need to connect with people. Be genuine and sincere in making new friends. That’s not to say you should be passive and avoid talking about your business at all. But, first, focus on just being yourself, and not just you the “company” or you the “sales person”.

Years ago I attended an evening networking event for coaches. I was taken aback by a woman who sharply interrupted a conversation I was having with another attendee. Without any announcement or waiting for a pause for permission she shoved a flyer in our hands and told us to sign up for her certification training today because the $2,000 price expires tomorrow.

Here are key reasons why this tactic doesn’t work:

Her sale offer was to spend $2,000 today, but $2,000 is not an impulse buy price point.
The problem wasn’t so much that she handed me a flyer. The problem was how clear she made it she was on a mission to leave with lots of sales.

There were about 80 people at the event. Instead of leaving with 1 or 2 sales, she could have easily left with 50 to 70 new subscribers, especially because this was such a targeted group of people. Over time, she could convert 25 to 45 new customers which is far more valuable to her business than the immediate 1 or 2 sales.

This is a much easier networking strategy, but it does require having a list building system.

Networking Mistakes #3. Not having a list building system.

What is a list?

This is an email list of people who are potential customers and clients who are subscribed to be on your email list.
You can not simply take the email addresses off of business cards or directories of people you met and put them on your list. That is actually against the CANSPAM laws.

Why have an email list?

You may have heard the expression, the “fortune is in the follow up.”

The problem is it’s really hard to keep up with the follow up when you’re taking the manual approach of sending one email at a time. A list building system makes follow up a cinch.

What is a list building system?

It starts with having an irresistible, free lead magnet.
A lead magnet is a free offer people receive instantly when they opt in with their email address.
You let subscribers know they will also receive more tips from you through email.
You stay top of mind and convert more clients over time when you follow up with valuable tips you deliver through your email system.

Remember, 10 new subscribers is worth far more to your business than 1 new sale.

SOLUTION: Shift your focus from getting more sales to getting a more subscribers.

It takes time to build trust and confidence. When you have a subscriber list you can scale building a relationship with your group of prospects.

Networking is one of multiple marketing tactics you need to have included in your marketing plan today. Be sure to grab my free printable MARKETING CHECKLIST to develop your winning marketing plan today.

QUESTION: Share your comments. What is getting in your way of creating a list building system for your business and networking?