8 Profit Boosting Google Alerts Your Need To Create Today

1. Your Name – Would you like to know what people are saying about you? I do. If anyone publishes my name, I find out about it instantly. Luckily, my name isn’t James Johnson or John Smith.

2. Your Business Name – This should be obvious. If the above reviews where about your business, wouldn’t you want to know and rectify the problem?

3. Your Business Name Misspelled – How do you spell Ms. Piggy’s? Or is it Mrs. Piggie?

4. Your Niche or Specialty – Find out if fast-casual businesses are seeing increases in revenue or bankruptcies.

5. Your Local Competitors Names – Learn what they are doing and do it better, faster, and with more quality and outstanding service. Even better than that, learn which ones are going out-of-business so you can buy there tables at a discount.

6. Find Products – Are you getting the best deal on your spices, paper products, credit card system?

7. Find Better Employees – Couldn’t you create an alert that searches resumes for you?

8. Local Businesses You Want To Do Catering Jobs For – What companies are benefiting from government subsidies? Which firm just won a big contract? I’m quite sure they have something to celebrate. You might as well be the first to congratulate and offer feed them, huh?

Warning: You can only create 1,000 Google alerts per email address.  If you need to create a larger Google “spy program”, get more email addresses… I have 12 email addresses… and my Google “spy agency” works all night 24/7. They don’t sleep, eat, drink and they work for free…

The best part is when I lay some off I don’t have to pay unemployment insurance.

Your Task for Today – Create A Google Alert:

Today your task is to create a Google Alert for your business. You may not choose to create a gmail account, but I highly recommend it, because there are some tricks I’m going to show you that is going to save you about 10 hours a week.

Here’s the link to create your alert–

http://www.Google.com/Alerts

Exceeding Expectations,

Share Your Google Alerts

It’s time to go away and create your Google alerts post. Once you’ve done it – do come back here and leave the link and title in comments below. My hope in this is that participants will get a little traffic but also that you’ll inspire one another with your posts and give a much more comprehensive list than I’ve come up with above of great list posts. I’m looking forward with what you come up with!

P.s. If you would like for me to send these task to your email box, Click Here or…

Tweet This Post 

1. Some Teaching
2. A Task to go away and Do

Teaching

Today’s task (outlined in full below) is to develop a Sales Pitch for your business. Let me explain why.

What is an Sales Pitch?

“A sales pitch…is an attempt to persuade someone of something, with a planned sales presentation strategy of a product or service designed to initiate and close a sale of the product or service.” – Wikipedia

Picture this. Five years from now, in the middle of the afternoon, your mentally fading fast from being up since 4 am. You’ve had another great lunch crowd and you just hired two more employees. But you haven’t been on a two-week vacation since you quit your job. You begin to think quietly to yourself, how much is my business worth? Can I sell it and live on the beaches of Costa Rica for the next twenty years?

Many owners don’t begin their business with the end-in-mind.  They start their business because of this-or-that circumstance or opportunity and eventually find out they just creating themselves a low-paying job. I believe there two rules for small businesses.

1. To make a profit.
2. To be ready to sell at anytime.

Most small restaurant owners have never develop an investor sales pitch. The idea of starting a small business to eventually sell in five years for a huge pay day is absolutely foreign.

To have something short and sharp that you can say about your business when the opportunity arises instead of bumbling your way through explaining what your business does, is the best way to get you to beach, cruise, or whatever financial number you need… for the lifestyle you want.

The goal for an investor sales pitch is both to communicate what your business does (or will do) and to get the person you’re communicating it to to want to know more.

How To Sales Pitch for Small Business Restaurant Owners

While the idea of a sales pitch is usually something that sales people are encouraged to do when looking for leads– developing a sales pitch for your restaurant is also a smart move.

The key point is to develop a crystallized plan in your mind.

If you’re fuzzy on what your small restaurant is about… it’s unlikely than anyone else will figure it out for you… and they definitely won’t give you any money for it.

Knowing what your business is about helps you in developing every aspect of it including:

* Hiring & Firing
* Promotion – Advertising – Marketing
* Location
* Equipment
* Vendors and partnerships
* Book-keeping, accounting…. the list can go on.

In fact, almost every task that we’ll be do in this next few weeks should flow from this task.

Other Reasons for Developing an Sales Pitch

Of course coming up with an sales pitch is not just for your own benefit.  It is brilliant for communicating what your business is about to customers (both the ones you already have and potential ones), other owners, potential partners, media/journalists, advertisers and even to friends and family members who might think your crazy, but just won’t tell you to your face.

Once you’ve got your sales pitch there’s no limit to the places and situations that you can use it (either part of it or in its entirety). Here are a few that come to mind:

* Your Website – The about page is one of the most read pages by first time visitors. It is an ideal place to communicate what you’re about and to ’sell’ to potential investors/partners why they should keep your business on their acquisition radar.
* Networking Events – Whether at a conference, in business interactions or just in everyday conversation, the topic of your business is likely to come up and these interactions can be an ideal moment to describe what your business has accomplished.
* Pitching to Business Brokers– One of the things I’ve noticed about many brokers is that they’re very busy people who are constantly being pitched with mediocre or poor performing businesses. Having a thought through and effective ‘pitch’ can help you get noticed and give a broker a reason to get excited about your business.

Where else would you use a sales pitch?  Feel free to share other places you’ll be using yours.

Your Task for Today

Take some time out today to develop a sales pitch for your small business. If you’ve already got one take a few minutes to review and refine it.

How to Write a Sales Pitch for Your Business

I’m sure there has been much written on the topic but here’s some starting points that I use when doing this type of thing.

* Tell A Story- I’m a big believer in relationship building. Stories have a great way of conveying that you are a real person. The story need not be a long one (like War & Peace) but you should be attempt to create a connection. Communicate this in your investor sales pitch.
* Define Your Target Market- Who is your small restaurant for? Who are you attempting to attract? If your starting a small restaurant targeting a certain demographic or type of person – include this in your pitch. If your small restaurant is for corporate caterings jobs, don’t develop a pitch for full service diner — target the investor you want.
* Be Clear - As my father told me when I was young, “Don’t speak with mush-mouth.” Don’t leave people second guessing what you mean or interpreting jargon – your sales pitch should be like coated pain aids from Quick Trip… easy to swallow.
* Keep it Short – When was the last time you listened to a preacher speak for 3 hours?  Most people can’t watch 30 second commercials or read this entire article word-for-word.
* Community Counts – Be willing to use specific examples of how your business is involved with the local community.
* Show The Numbers – Your sales pitch is unlikely to ‘convert’ investors to buy your business all on its own – but it should entice them to learn more. You don’t need to say everything in it – but attempt to give a statistic or two that will make them drool from the aroma of hickory smoked profits.
* Be Ready to Expand Upon Your Pitch – Tell ‘em more! But only if they ask… See a sales pitch is a conversation opener – something designed to lead into further interaction with investors or private lenders. You don’t have to say it all in your initial pitch – but you should be ready to say more if people are interested.

These are just the thoughts that come to my mind on investor sales pitches (what would you add?). Not everyone will be able to incorporate all of the above points but I hope that some of it will help you to develop yours.

My Sales Pitch

I have a couple of sales pitches for my bbq restaurant in at Ms. Piggies’ Smokehouse & Catering Company in St. Louis. One’s short (just 2 sentences) and one’s a little longer (a minute or so). I use one or the other of them depending upon the circumstances and opportunity to share.

My short one is very simple –

‘During a recession, Ms. Piggies’ Smokehouse saw opportunity and  expanded from take-out only to adding a 50-seat dining room. The surrounding community has responded by happily giving us more cash to serve them even better’.

I’ve used others over the life of bbq restaurant in talking with potential investors and private lenders (and continue to evolve it) but have settled on this one for the time being because it is so simple, to the point and clear.

The longer version expands upon this and shares more detailed numbers of our growth and the ways that we have been able to improve our small business by talking through a few of the main topics I cover.

Let’s quickly analyze my short version:

• I explain that my business undertook an expansion during hard economic times. (Mrs. Investor here is action).
• The community had responded with an increase of patronage and cash flow. (Mrs. Investor this is the result. It is also a cliff hanger, because I don’t go into how much unless  she is interested and able to buy.)

Write Your Sales Pitch

Once you’ve got a sales pitch for your small restaurant write or print it out. Put it on the dashboard of your car. This way as you start you day before the sun rises, you’ll remember why your doing all this.

Once you’ve done that – feel free to share what you’ve come up with in comments below. I’m looking forward to reading yours.

Next on the 31 Days to Build a Better BBQ Business Challenge – The next task is a research task that will have you focused on actions to use on your restaurant business in the next few days.

Exceeding Expectations,

P.s. If you’re not already signed up for the 31 Days to Build a Better BBQ Restaurant challenge you can find more information here.

Tweet This Post 

When I asked on Twitter whether there were any small business owners interested in joining together for a month to work to improve their business I had some positive responses.

48 hours later 10 owners had already signed up and today as I write this over 50 are participating.

It’s not too late to join us.

Here’s what the project involves… Every few days  for I will send you a short email with a link to an post, 31 in all. The post will contain two things:

1. A task for the day
2. Some brief teaching to help you implement the task

The idea is simple.  In less than 8 weeks, you’ll have learned 31 aspects of starting a small restaurant and put them into practice. It is designed not only to fill your head with knowledge ABOUT how to promote restaurant offerings effectively but give you some concrete things to do to actually DO something with the knowledge. The project is 100% free and if you find that it’s not where you are at you’re more than welcome to unsubscribe at any point. We’ve actually already begun the project but it is not too late to join. In fact, if you add your email address and first name to the mini form below you’ll be signed up and start receiving the first days teaching and task within the next 48 hours. New business owners are joining every day, so there will be groups of small restaurant owners going through the project all of the time, each on different days.

Starting A Small Restaurant Here’s Some Things Your Going To Learn

1. How To Think like the Greatest Restaurant Owners
2. How To Secretly Persuade your Real Estate Agent to Find the Best Location
3. The Three Important Things You Must Know Before You Buy or Lease a building
4. LLC, PLC, S-Corp, C-Corp, LMAO, Which organizational structure is right for you?
5. Do This One Small Step and You’ll Be In Debt Forever
6. How To Creatively Raise Capital
7. AND MUCH MUCH MORE

Already Have A Restaurant Here’s Some Things Your Going To Learn

1. The Best Places To Buy and Sell Restaurant Equipment
2. How To Design Your Restaurant To Make Mounds of Cash
3. Five Restaurant Marketing Techniques No One Ever Told You
4. Labor Cost The Secret Killer
5. The Simple Art of Training & Firing Employees
6. How to Keep High Food Costs from Burning your Bottom Line Profits
7. Let Your Profit and Loss Statement Guiding Light

When you sign up you’ll soon gain access to a free membership site just for signed up members so that you not only get to interact with the content that I write – but with one another. If you want to join in – simply add your details below and we’ll get the process under way.

Once you’ve added your email – please check your inbox for an email asking you to confirm your participation. If you don’t see it – please check your spam folder as a few emails are getting filtered there. Once you’re confirmed I’m looking forward to seeing you over the next month or so!

Exceeding Expectations,

Note: if you have an ad blocker on your browser you may not be able to see the form to put your details above. Please either reload this page with the ad blocker off or in another browser. Thanks!

Tweet This Post 

Tweet This Post