By Guest Blogger Sandra Martini

Every time a “customer” (usually called “lead” or “prospective client” ) visits your site, emails you, or contacts you in any way, whether she realizes it or not, she’s about to embark on a journey with you.

And you have a choice:

1. Let her take the journey alone or
2. Create the path, take her hand and lead her on her journey

Successful business owners are creating the path.

Ultrasuccessful business owners are creating the path AND leading customers on the journey.

First, you should know that every business includes several different journeys:

1.    There’s the journey of simply doing business with you – from that first awareness to eventual completion
2.    There’s the journey of each product or program – from awareness to purchase then consumption and completion

The steps to each journey are relatively simple – provided they’re done in the right order and the right way.   No worries though…the steps are intuitive and chances are you’re already doing most of them in your business.

10 Steps of the Client Journey:

1.    Attract and Connect
2.    Ideal Client match?
3.    Interest in solving problem?
4.    Do you have THE solution?
5.    ROI on solving the problem
6.    Make an offer
7.    Eliminate risk
8.    Why now?
9.    Actual purchase
10.    Nurturing the relationship

Not sure about what each of the steps includes?  Download a new free report on The Client Journey here.

Now that you know the steps, it’s time to implement them!  I’d love to hear how you’re implementing the above and we’ll talk more about leading your customer on the journey in a future post.

About the Author:

Sandra Martini (www.SandraMartini.com) is a strategic marketing and productivity consultant who helps entrepreneurs create sustainable businesses without losing their integrity, with services such as coaching, client systems development, consulting and Team Sandy Done 4 You Online Business Marketing & Management as well as a variety of informational products.

Visit Sandy’s site at www.SandraMartini.com to pick up your free audio series “5 Simple and Easy Ways to Put Your Marketing on Autopilot” today.

Are you hiding your best strategies ONLY for your highest paying clients?

Do you clearly see solutions for your lower paying clients… but hold back so you can keep them buying from you?

You may have been taught to teach the “what” but not the “how”. Or to deliver only part of what you could and to drum up a desire for what’s missing. I was taught that by some mentors, tried to believe it, but it never felt authentic. It felt deceptive and quite frankly, like an insecure person’s fear based version of how to run a business.

There’s a power dynamic in this thinking… the person with the sought after information suddenly becomes more important and the person seeking the information is relegated to a lower level.

Am I the only one who thinks this is insane? I can hand you sheet music of Beethoven’s symphony, but that doesn’t mean you’ll play like a master. We have all the information in the world at our fingertips- it’s mastery that we need and that doesn’t happen by sharing a few trade secrets.

I got really in tune with this a few months back. I created a mastermind program where a small, hand-selected group of soul-driven women could work on creating great offers. Offers that made us stretch and say “yikes!” and “holy crap, I can’t do this!” My invitation to this group clearly stated that it was a “studio” experience- that while I work on my big offers, I’d share exactly what was going on and for everyone else to do the same.

So I created this whopping big VIP package that would cost a small down payment on a home, and brought it to the group. I thought I’d invented the new gold standard in high end coaching packages. I felt luminous just thinking about it.

It got shredded. Totally absolutely unequivocally shredded. “Too complicated”, “Sounds like work- why would anyone pay for this?”, “It’s overwhelming”.

Here I thought it was brilliant, but it sucked.

And the beauty of all this? My clients LOVED watching me work my way into and out of a problem in a real world scenario. It helped them open up about what worked and didn’t work for them and also gave many permission to drop the veneer of perfection we’re “supposed” to show the world.

It’s like that scene from Gone With the Wind where all the ladies got to take a rest break and unlace their corsets for a bit. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, breathing feels so nice!

So where can you be transparent?

• Can you let someone know you’re making them an offer instead of dancing around until your big close?

• Are you willing to Tweet that you’re NOT happy with a situation or does everything have to be perfect all the time?

• Would you be open to sharing mistakes with your clients, mistakes you’re in the middle of or recently solved?

• Will you raise your hand and freely admit that the “lifestyle” you’re peddling doesn’t reflect you at all  and that all your marketing is a lie? (OK, that’s a stretch, but one of these days it may happen!)

You don’t have to suddenly bare all to the world or go neurotic on this. We’re not asking for TMI (too much info) or bashing of others in the name of speaking the truth.

Simply  look at your business and your clients. Where can you infuse some reality, some authenticity, some transparency? What “trade secrets” are you willing to loosen up on? How can you use that to invite in a desire to learn mastery from you, not just info? And how can you be clear about this?

That’s what I’m doing in my business and it’s awesome. I’d much rather mentor towards mastery and watch the real results instead of safeguarding information.

I’d love your comments on this and where you’re willing to loosen the reins of control and to invite your people behind the veil of your expertise.

By Guest Blogger Lou Bortone

Entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, mompreneurs… thispreneur, thatpreneur – seems every solo professional wants to niche out and get in on the entrepreneur game.  Nothing wrong with that, but how do you keep track of all those entre-buzz-words?   Here’s my own handy guide to help you sort it out!  (See if you recognize a bit of yourself in any of these!)

Videopreneur – An entrepreneur who blazes a business path with the use of video. (That’s me!)

Megapreneur – A biz maverick who has transcended the regular entrepreneur ranks to become an entrepreneurial superstar, like Sir Richard Branson or Steve Jobs.

Minipreneur – An entrepreneur who hasn’t quite taken that leap of faith; or a future entrepreneur who has yet to leave their full-time, 9 to 5 job.

Bootcamperpreneur – An entrepreneur who spends too much time (and money) on bootcamps, retreats and coaching conferences.

WarmandFuzzypreneur – A coach or trainer who spends so much time helping others, often not charging enough, that they forget to actually make money.

GoDaddypreneur – An entrepreneur who owns more than 100 domain names, just in case they ever need them! (Yes, I’m guilty!)

Twitterpreneur – A business person who spends an excessive amount of time on social media sites. Can often be identified because they speak in short, 140-character sentences.  (OMG, is this me?)

Hyperpreneur – A sales-obsessed marketer who is constantly pitching, pitching, pitching.  Hyperpreneurs often become Spammerpreneurs.

Dinopreneur – An entrepreneur who risks extinction by not using online video in their marketing!  (Sorry, I couldn’t resist!)

Here’s hoping you biz is booming, whateverpreneur you may be!

About the Author:

Lou Bortone is a long-time marketing and branding consultant who helps entrepreneurs build breakthrough brands on the Internet, with services such as online video production, video branding, coaching and creative support.  Lou is a former television executive who worked for E! Entertainment Television and later served as the Senior Vice President of Marketing & Advertising for Fox Family Worldwide, a division of Fox in Los Angeles.  Lou is an author and ghostwriter of six business books, a Certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach and a Book Yourself Solid Certified Coach. Visit Lou’s website at http://www.OnlineVideoBranding.com or find out about our signature “Video in a Day” program at http://www.VideoinaDay.com.

Do you have any idea what the last 100 conversations you had about your business were?

Talking about your business is key and can literally transform your marketing and your income.

It transforms your marketing because it puts new words and phrases together in a real life setting. You may notice yourself describing what you do in a more powerful way and that alone can create dramatic results. Verbal processing does wonders for finding the best way to say something!

It transforms your income, because as you connect with more potential clients, people will say YES to you more often! That’s simple math, the more you get out there the greater your chances are of people working with you.

Here’s something I keep on hand that helps me keep track of conversations and results. It’s a 100’s chart.

It’s nothing fancy, just a 10×10 grid with the numbers 1-100 in each box.(I grabbed this one from About.com’s section on teaching elementary grade math)

Every time I have a conversation with someone interested in working with me, I put a little note in the 100 chart. I even color code it so I can see at a glance what resulted from my conversations. I love this and have even had challenges with friends to see which of us reaches 100 awesome people first. (Warm and fuzzy high achievers, take heed!)

Here are some other ways you can use a 100 chart for your business:

1. Use it to track conversations you have where you’re directly making an offer.

2. Use it to track 100 times someone says YES or NO. (Sales pro’s say you earn your wings after 100 people say “no”  to you)

3. Use it to track how many offline connections you make with your social media network.

4. Use it to track sales.

5. 100 Tweets - pick your angle: retweets, people sending you props, people using your hashtag

6. 100 articles or blog posts

What else?

I love this tool because it’s so dang simple, it’s visual, and it is very motivating. It doesn’t require much more than an pen and paper and it sparks action.

Like this idea? Have ideas to share on this topic? Drop me a comment!

My friend and regular guest blogger, Shannon Cherry, is kicking off her 5th annual “Be Heard Day” celebration to help business owners like you find your voice, find your story, and be heard.

She does this every year on March 7 and it gets better and better each time.

This year she’s got 16 gifts valued over $5500 from some super cool experts including Sandra Martini (another regular guest blogger here!), Lisa Manyon (fun and inspired marketing messages ), Felicia Slattery (public speaking pro extraordinaire), Michele PW (look no further for amazing copywriting) and others.

Shannon is one of the top voices in publicity with a specialty in low cost, high impact strategies. If you read this blog, you’re probably already a fan of hers!

Here’s all you need to do:

Go to www.BeHeardDay.com and learn how to access the gifts she’s put together for today.

I just downloaded my gifts and they rock.