I S S U E 1 S U M M E R 2 0 1 4 Rural Business Best Practices EXCLUSIVE ACCESS FOR YOU: What really works for growing a thriving, profitable business in rural areas. Are you getting you money s worth from your biggest investment? Message from Sabrina Welcome to the very 1st edition of the Rural Business Success Print newsletter! I look forward to bringing you the best practices to grow your rural business by spotlighting successful rural business owners. For each edition, I will be interviewing business owners to share with you what works! Rest assured, I know you are busy, so I will be sharing best practices that are easy to implement, have a BIG impact on your business profitability and/or make your life a lot easier. Many businesses lose $$$$$ due to poor employee performance! Access our FREE training: 5 Secrets to Exceptional Employee Performance at tapthepotential.com Watch your mailbox for these newsletters each quarter. I want to support you in taking action to move your business forward. So, from time to time, I ll be throwing in fun GIVE-AWAYS for those of you who take ACTION on the tips, tools and strategies I share with you in this newsletter. See the back of this newsletter for our current contest (Don t wait the deadline for entry is near!) Upcoming Events Sabrina Schleicher, PhD, PCC, BCC 307-856-4662 800-975-9440 ext 725 tapthepotential.com June 5 July 3 August 7 Private Platinum Business Mastery Members-Only Mastermind Call Private Platinum Business Mastery Members-Only Mastermind Call Private Platinum Business Mastery Members-Only Mastermind Call
TAP THE POTENTIAL The Wind River Realty Team: Kelli Gard, Katie Lehman, Kourtney Snyder, Mike McDonald & Olivia Prince SUMMER 2014 Mike Michalowicz, Olivia Prince & Dr. Sabrina Schleicher at the Pumpkin Plan Workshop The Wind River Realty Moving Trailer Rural Business Success Spotlight: Wind River Realty Wind River Realty Meeting Your Needs Wind River Realty is all about making selling your house as stress-free as possible If you ve ever moved, you know that as exciting as a move to a new home can be, the buying/selling/moving experience is fraught with stress. Even with the smoothest transactions, there are pitfalls. Nothing goes as planned! Olivia Prince, owner of Wind River Realty in Fremont County, WY, recognizes this. She and her team are pulling out all of the stops to make this experience as stress-free as possible. Olivia and her team are great at discerning what will make YOUR move easier and surprising you with just what you needed. How does she do this? What is her secret? Olivia, a Tap the Potential client since 2007, is building her business based on input from her best current and previous clients, using 1 simple strategy from The Pumpkin Plan by Mike Michalowicz. 2 For sellers, we offer expertise in interior design and staging. This makes your home sell FAST. If you re looking for a home, we send emails with properties that meet your standards, and provide you with honest information about listings you ve already seen. We help with the ordering and scheduling of inspections to make sure dates and deadlines are met, and will have a member of our team at the closing table to help with any last minute questions. Unlike your typical realtor, our service doesn t stop at closing. We ll deliver boxes and tape to your door (sweet!), and we provide a trailer to help with your move, free of charge. On the day of your move, we might send pizza, or do something extra to help make your day easier it s all about YOU and what will help YOU the most.
TAP THE POTENTIAL SUMMER 2014 Q&A With Olivia Prince Olivia sat down with me and shared exactly what she is up to. We hope this inspires you to try something similar in your business. Olivia This has been really fun and exciting for me! We've been doing the Ideal Client interviews from The Pumpkin Plan [a.k.a. Wish List Interviews ]. Honestly, it s kind of hard to fit that into your schedule because we're all busy. But it's very rewarding to get to meet with your past clients you've enjoyed working with. I always feel better after I've met with them. I m reminded of what I love about my career and the people I enjoy so much. That in itself is good for my attitude. Then learning where your clients are at in their needs and what they are thinking.it s a great way to focus your marketing. I ve been hearing about experiences they had in their transaction with us or through other realtors in the past. We've learned about a lot of small things that make a huge difference for the client, and they are easy for us to implement. We re making those changes based on what our clients are telling us. It s super fun! Sabrina For those who aren t familiar with The Pumpkin Plan and how to do these interviews, let s walk them through step-bystep what you did. First, you identified your top clients from the last 24 months based on the revenue they brought into your business. Then you looked at that list and interviewed the 3 clients you most enjoyed working with who are a good fit for your business and what you offer. Right? Olivia Exactly. I also interviewed a few who I d worked with further back who have been a constant source of referrals. Plus, I interviewed some people who I just really, really enjoyed working with. Sabrina You really picked the cream of the crop in terms of people you've had the opportunity to do business with and enjoyed, as well as people who continue to send you business. And you've been deliberate about interviewing them and asking them some very specific questions, some of which come directly from The Pumpkin Plan, but others that you came up with on your own, things that you wanted to know in your business. So, what are some of the questions you are asking in these interviews? Olivia Some of the main questions we are asking is about anything that they struggle with in their industry... things that are stressful for them... things that they wish were different. Sabrina Those are good questions. Why would you, as a realtor, want to know about struggles in your clients industry? Olivia It's pretty interesting because all of us go through the same things in our different businesses and careers. So, when we're not talking about us as realtors when we're talking about what our clients deal with from day to day they open up to us easier. For example, if it really annoys them when people aren't returning their phone calls on
TAP THE POTENTIAL SUMMER 2014 time, or people don't follow through, or that people don't communicate, they're really open about that in talking with me. I can take that insight into how I do business. I tell my agents, Okay, I want to make sure we're doing all these things, because we know when these things don t happen, it annoys our top clients. Sabrina So they're not talking specifically about their dealings with you at all. They're talking about their general frustrations of what they deal with on a day-to-day basis. That gives you clues about how you can be more conscientious in your dealings with them. Olivia Exactly. Sabrina Nice! What are some other questions that you've been asking? Olivia We ve been asking where they d like to see themselves in the future. whether they see themselves moving into different homes at some point whether they are thinking about investments at some point in time whether that might be something that would help them achieve their goals. We even talk about their different goals for those years. Sabrina So, these conversations are opening your eyes to different ways you can serve past clients and continue to stay relevant for them? Olivia Exactly. Sabrina You're hearing some little things that you guys have done that have made the impact for your clients. What are some of those little things that you're now being more intentional about doing because you've heard them mentioned by your clients in these interviews? Olivia In the past, we ve always tried to do extra things for our clients. So we would 4 have moving boxes for our clients. We would have packing tape for our clients. We have a moving trailer they can use. Those are all things that we thought would be really helpful. But, we never really knew for sure if we were getting a bang for our buck there or if it was just a warm, fuzzy feeling for us. So it's been very interesting to hear from a lot of clients how amazed they were that we had that extra service, how much difference it made, how much it helped them. When we asked our clients, If your realtor could do anything for you, no matter how crazy it is, what might it be?, a lot of our clients tell us, They will move us so we don't have to. Obviously we can't move them. But we realize all those little things we're doing do make their moves easier. Sometimes we order pizza for them. Those things are as close as we're going to get to actually moving them. It's something that helps them with one of the things that s a big concern for them when moving. Sabrina I think that is a very big deal. So how has going through this process of picking your top clients and interviewing them, asking them some key questions, how has that changed how you innovate and market in your business? Olivia Well for one thing, I've realized the little things really do make a difference. So we don t take those things for granted. It's amazing how just the smallest little gestures make such a humongous difference for people. The other thing that has been interesting for me is I'm asking a lot of people where they would find a realtor if they needed one if they were moving to another town. I always try to get them out of my town. So, I ask, If you're moving to another town, where would
2 1 TAP THE POTENTIAL SUMMER 2014 Olivia I'm still working on my Ideal Client you look for a realtor? Would you look in the newspaper? Would you look on the internet? Where are your social networking areas? Where do you like to network period? Where do you look at marketing? interviews and compiling the data. I actually think that I'm never going to quit doing this. Obviously, I'm fairly slow at it. So by the time this year's over, I'll have a whole new list of people that I'll want to interview, and I'll interview them next year. Our clients answers to those questions have supported some things that we suspected. We didn't think people were really reading the newspaper that much anymore. This has definitely confirmed that. Even the people that read the newspaper say things like, Oh yeah I read it. On Saturdays I catch up. We've found that most people are on Facebook or they're on County 10, which is our local on-line news media. I think the world and the economy are everchanging. So if we continue to talk to our clients, we're going to get ever-changing information from them. Sabrina Thanks for sharing your experience with us, Olivia! Olivia You re welcome! We've realized that those are the places that we need to be, as well. Putting an ad in the newspaper that none of our clients are reading is kind of a pointless thing. Olivia is ready to make you one of Wind River Realty s raving fans! You can connect with Olivia on Facebook at www.facebook.com/windriverrealty. Be sure to mention you read about her here, or you can email Olivia@WindRiverRealty.com Sabrina Great point! So you ve started paying more attention to where you're investing your time, money and energy in your marketing? Olivia Right. We are putting our efforts To learn more visit: http://www.windriverrealty.com/ toward the people we really want to work with. Sometimes that means spending money taking them for coffee, rather than spending the money putting a random billboard up or something like that. The Pumpkin Plan Sabrina Yes, it's a lot less expensive to take someone to coffee than to put up a billboard. Plus, it s a lot more enjoyable and effective. You can find the Ideal Client Interview Questions Olivia and our clients are using in The Pumpkin Plan: A Simple Strategy to Grow a Remarkable Business in Any Field Olivia It is! Sabrina Now that you've been through this process of interviewing your top clients, what do you intend to do with this process going forward? 5
P.O Box 1413 Riverton, WY 82501 Check o u FUN Giv t our e Away! Hurry, d o the dead n't miss line. Details inside... TAP THE POTENTIAL Move Forward to WIN! Enter our Summer Contest. We like to celebrate WINS around here. What is one of your recent WINS? Share it in a comment under our blog post Move Forward to WIN! at www.tapthepotential.com/blog. You ll be entering a drawing to WIN an autographed copy of The PUMPKIN PLAN by Mike Michawolicz (and some other surprises from Sabrina!). Deadline for entry is June 15. Keep moving forward! SUMMER 2014