by Greg Milner | Apr 26, 2014 | Blog
Q
uestions.
They are one of the most powerful language tools you have for getting agreement.
But it’s rare to see a question used to its highest and best sales use.
So I thought I’d offer up some examples of how to get your reader or video viewer to start agreeing with you before she actually commits to the sale. 
There are many ways to do it; here are five:
1- Describe the problem, agitate it, and then ask the obvious question:
Skin is the largest organ of the body and, perhaps, the most misunderstood. That means LOTS of frustration for you, not to mention a lot of money down the drain. So what can you do?
2-Ask a question your reader is already asking herself:
Can’t figure out why your color is fading prematurely? Here’s our practical and easy list of prevention tips to keep your color beautiful…
3-Get the reader to imagine the result she already wants, but thinks she can’t have. Then ask the question.
Imagine harnessing the power of flowers and diamonds to give your skin back its youthful look! How?
And another one-Plus, there is no damage to your natural hair. What could be better?
4-Get the reader to think about how she feels about her problem, then ask for agreement:
With such grumpy skin, it’s no wonder you may feel like your skin is holding you hostage, dictating the terms of your surrender. Sound familiar?
And another one using the same logic:
Tangles, frizz, and breakage are all signs that your hair has been pushed to the limit. So what can you do?
5-Address the question she has about getting a new service:
But what happens when you get weft hair extensions? Does that mean you can no longer have any fun with your hair?
These are just a few ways to use questions to help your reader see the value of your expertise by showing them you understand.
They are also excellent examples of how to “enter the conversation” already going on in your client’s head. Plus, you can use them when talking face-to-face with your clients, too.
“Yes” questions early in the conversation educate and increase the likelihood of having your client get the product or service she wants or needs.
Nothing is worse than having a client walk away from a service you know would benefit her. Don’t you hate that?
Peace, Love, & Profits,
P.S.
Don’t have time to write marketing articles and Facebook posts, but wish you had someone you trust to do it for you? Check out the Salon & Spa Beauty Bank here.
by Greg Milner | Apr 21, 2014 | Blog
Take 100% Responsibility for all that you have or haven’t created.
The first step in getting to where you want to be in life is to recognise and acknowledge where you are at present and then be clear and set your intention in the direction of where you want to go or what you want to be. It is not always an easy road but when you are in harmony with your life’s purpose and you are passionately on purpose the road becomes easy and effortless. You are in the vortex, in the flow. When you are moving in the wrong direction, no matter how hard you try and push forward, you seem to meet with resistance at every corner. You experience roadblocks, challenges and speed bumps
So I guess it’s time to meet the person responsible for the life you live right now. The person that created all that you have or don’t have in your life, a great relationship, financial security, your attitudes and behaviour, or is it debt, loneliness, health issues and a job you hate. When you are brutally honest with yourself and take responsibility for your future from today, you can start shaping, restyling, re-creating, re-designing and rebranding yourself and the journey that you choose to have.
We know who is responsible for all that we have created but we try and convince ourselves that external factors are the source of our situation or failures, disappointment or unhappiness. We believe that somehow this outside world of influence and illusion is responsible for how we feel but the reality is that we are truly and fully responsible. External factors do not determine how you live. YOU are in complete control of the quality of your life.
It’s time to look at the life you’ve created for yourself and look at what’s working and what isn’t working for you. It’s time to stop blaming, stop complaining and look at what changes you might need to make to have the life you want. It might mean that you have to change the way you think, change your behaviours, it might mean you have to put in more time, more effort. It might mean that you will need to stretch yourself out of your comfort zone. You must get uncomfortable to get comfortable. It’s your choice. You can shape your life the way you want it, when you start taking responsibility for all that you have already created.
It is time to stop looking outside yourself for the answers. To achieve all the success you want and deserve, you must assume 100% responsibility for your life. You have to give up all of your excuses.
Look at the things you’ve been doing, saying, and thinking. Looking at your plan of action, how may these things affect your success? What changes about yourself should you change in order to see that success manifest itself in your life? Make a list of all these things, and begin making the changes one item at a time.
Give up all your excuses today, giving up your victim stories today, all the reasons why you can’t and haven’t up until now, and all your blaming of outside circumstances.
Next you have to make a decision. Focus on what you want and don’t worry about it too much. Then you must commit to your decision.
Once you’ve made a decision go forward boldly with enthusiasm and passion and don’t be second guessing it every five minutes. You will undermine any possibility of having that decision work for you.
Don’t give up. If you hang in there long enough, you will eventually reach your goal. It’s always too soon to quit.
Believe in yourself and go for it. Sooner or later, those who win are those who think they can.
You have to believe in yourself when no one else does, that’s what makes you a winner.
There is an old Japanese Proverb……Fall down seven times, get up eight times.
We all make mistakes, have setbacks and challenges . This is a normal part of life and is how we grow. The biggest difference in life between those that succeed and those that fail is the ability to get back up.
We find excuses for just about anything we often do. Look at your outcomes. Look at your current roadblocks, frustrations and challenges and see if there is another response you could choose, so you get the outcome that you desire. Just simply change your response to an event, in such a way until you get the outcome you want. You can change your thinking, your communication, the way you see the world, change your behaviour and the things you do. I like to write down my challenge and then write 3 possible solutions beside it.
YOU are the solution. YOU will always find the answers to your roadblocks and challenges.
If you don’t like your outcomes, change your responses.
Everything you experience today, is the result of choices you have made in the past.”
Life is like riding a bike. It‘s never in perfect balance. When the bike wiggles to the left, we move back to the centre and rebalance. When it wiggles to the right, we move back to the centre and rebalance. We won’t always experience life in the centre, but when you learn to recognize that you are off course or out of balance you can always find the centre and rebalance yourself.
Anni Diamond, International Best Selling Author, Speaker, Trainer
www.beautysaloncoach.biz
by Greg Milner | Apr 19, 2014 | Blog
When you think you’ve got the corner on the market for…well, just about everything, it’s nice to know that even big headed people can learn a thing or two.
Enter Kanye West. Big Head Galore.
It’s not enough to re-brand the Confederate flag and consider it “his,” Mr. Big Mouth took a shot at Zappos and failed.
Evidently and not surprisingly, you don’t offer advice to the Big One, even if you are the CEO of Zappos, one of the most customer service-oriented companies on the planet.
West didn’t like it and said that Zappos “sells shit product to everybody.”
So what did Zappos do? At first, nothing.
Then, Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, tweeted, “Kanye West says Zappos sells sh-t product. It’s true.”
In a brilliant move, Zappos took a potentially harmful situation, and not only de-fused it, he flushed all objections. In the end, West was the one looking foolish. (Although I doubt he knows that.)
Zappos launched The Zappos.com Shit Product. You can check out the video here.
The point of this very biased harangue is to show that you, too, can take harmful, unjustified criticism and turn it to your advantage without the incident going viral on the Internet.
Usually, these kinds of assault happen individually and much less publicly. Unlike Kanye West, you don’t have to make a video and broadcast it to the world that the customer is unreasonable and unfair.
It does mean:
- You can listen and repeat back to the client the complaint as you understand it
- Ask how the client would like to have the complaint resolved
- If the request is reasonable just do it
And for bonus points, offer him/her a gift certificate of $25 to enjoy later.
Sometimes that’s the hardest part; going above and beyond when all you really want to do is slap them around a bit.
But when you offer something so unexpected in addition to resolving the complaint, you knock the wind right out of their sails.
What are they going to say, “They were so awful they also gave me a $25 gift certificate!”
The whole point is to rise above and let your company’s integrity speak for itself. That’s what Zappos did.
When you look at the bigger picture, handing over that gift certificate is a whole lot easier because you get the last laugh.
North by North West,
P.S.
Hate to write marketing articles and Facebook posts? Wish there was someone you trust that could do it for you? Check out the Salon & Spa Beauty Bank here.
by Greg Milner | Apr 15, 2014 | Blog
Ever slept through the flight attendant’s safety presentation? If you’re a regular flyer, like me, you’ve heard it all before. You sit down, pick up the newspaper or magazine, and pretty much ignore it. Which is a problem for all airlines, not the least because it’s their first attempt at trying to convey an important message to passengers.
By far the most difficult task for anybody trying to get a message to customers and potential clients is….getting ATTENTION in the first place.
And you simply will not do it with ‘me-too’, bland, same-as-everybody-else kind of marketing. It just won’t ‘cut through’. With that in mind, a sharp-witted flight attendant with South West Airlines in America decided the standard, garden-variety pre-flight safety demonstration (the one almost every frequent flyer ignores) just wouldn’t do.
Take a look at this. (I particularly like the line about what happens if the oxygen masks fall down!)
[cf]safety[/cf]
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by Greg Milner | Apr 14, 2014 | Blog
Are you your own worst enemy? Do you know what is holding you back from reaching your full potential? Over the last couple of years, I have spoken with many salon owners, run workshops and master classes and it’s become glaringly obvious – there are a couple of major factors that hold back the growth of their businesses. Firstly, so often when you get down to it the underlying lack of self belief keeps the salon owner playing small. This can be a conscious belief or an unconscious belief, but inevitably it paralyses the business owner from achieving all that they desire for themselves. It stops the business owner from taking risks. Believing in yourself is a personal choice. It’s an attitude that you can improve and develop over time.
Let go of past programming. Just because something didn’t work before or you had a few hurdles, challenges, roadblocks or failures, it doesn’t mean it will happen again. This is just part of business and part of your personal growth. Have you heard the expression “fail faster to success.”? Do you think that Walt Disney, Stephen Spielberg or Steve Jobs didn’t have failures along the way? As a young man, Walt Disney was fired from a newspaper job because he, “lacked imagination and had no good ideas.” Stephen Spielberg was rejected from USC’s film program on three separate occasions. At age 30, Steve Jobs was fired by Apple .
Any of these future business leaders might have given up right then and there. Thank goodness they didn’t. You have to believe in yourself when no one else does, that’s what makes you a winner. We all have automatic negative thoughts I like to call, ANTS. When a negative thought creeps into your head just stomp on it. Flip the switch and replace it with something positive. Perhaps a small victory you’ve had recently. Take a risk – Trust that you can do it. Start with small risks until you have a few wins and begin developing your self-belief.
? You get paid for risk. ? No risk, no reward ? Minimise risk – minimise reward.
Next, the belief that what ever is going wrong in your life or business is someone or something else’s fault. By this I mean that we are all doing business in the GFC. Some of us are knocking it out of the park, whilst others are being swallowed up into the abyss that has devoured so many small businesses over the last 2 years. Why is this? Well unless you truly accept that you are 100% responsible for everything that happens in your business, you won’t move closer to reaching the success you desire. I can already hear some business owners saying, “Well no one has any money, people are losing their jobs, yada yada.” This may be so, but we are all hearing the same thing. So why is it then, that some of us are thriving in the same economy and some of us are dying a slow painful death?
One thing I can tell you for sure, that it is much harder to run a failing business than a successful business. The answer is that we are totally responsible for our situation. You can choose to change it by firstly changing your way of thinking. Your current level of thinking has got you into this predicament, so to get change you will need to enlist a different type of thinking. You will need to find other ways to solve your problems. Think outside the box.
There are absolutely 3 MUSTS in getting where you want to be.
? Firstly you need to make a decision. Stop saying, “I should” and commit to actually doing. Your life will change the instant you make a decision.
? Secondly you must make a commitment to your decision and consistently commit to that decision.
? Thirdly you must make an investment. This could be time, education or money or all of these things. ?
Ask yourself this question. Are you an ambitious business owner or are you a therapist who owns a business?
Your level of success will be determined by how you think.
Give up all your excuses. You either have results or you have excuses. Are your excuses bigger than your dreams? Stop blaming and complaining because YOU have the answers inside you. YOU are the solution. Consistent action plus solid business strategies will produce results you never imagined possible.
About Anni Anni Diamond is a Gold Coast-based salon owner, author, serial entrepreneur and motivational speaker. Anni has an online programme for salon owners available at www.beautysaloncoach.biz and you can find her speaking at Cosmetex on the Gold Coast this year
by Greg Milner | Apr 12, 2014 | Blog
It’s a game changer for sure.
And Google can certainly do that since they pretty much run the online show.
So, here’s what new and decidedly different.
Google has made the biggest change to their search algorithms since 2001. Called Hummingbird, the new change affects 90% of all searches.
Instead of the old style traditional keyword search, Google now uses conversational searches to deliver results. Why? Because that’s how most people search for what they are looking for.
And yes, that means searchers are using longer search phrases and more specific phrases to find what they want. Instead of “iPhones,” searchers are using phrases like, “Where can I get the best price on an iPhone 5?” (Business News Daily, 10/1013)
But here’s the kicker:
“Content for the sake of ‘words on a page’ doesn’t have the base value it once had,” said Bill Sebald, owner of Greenland Search Marketing, a search engine optimization consulting group. “Now your content really has to answer something. This should move content strategy higher on the list of business marketing objectives. It’s now even more important for desktop and mobile SEO.”
- Searches are more conversational
- And your content has to answer something
No more poorly written copy stuffed with keywords like a Thanksgiving bird.What you write has to add value. It has to mean something not only to your clients, but to Google. I’ve preached that forever. Thanks Google for catching up with me!If you ever needed validation that conversational copy paired with a message makes you money, you now have it.
This makes the 580 articles in the Salon & Spa Beauty Bank the equivalent of Internet gold. Go here to learn just what you get with The Bank. Then, as Nike says, Just Do It. Join up! As a bonus, I’ll also give you 4 articles that encourage gift certificate sales, a value of $400. None of these are in The Bank library.
Work Smarter,
P.S.
Hate to write marketing articles and Facebook posts? Wish there was someone you trust that could do it for you? Check out the Salon & Spa Beauty Bank here.
uestions. 
