David White Consulting

The one sure way to be successful is to help others - Let Me Help You

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Fail To Plan, Plan To Fail!

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Lime Street Station, Liverpool, 2010 (Wikipedia) It looks the same today

Just about to help out a team here in Bootle and I was reminded of a great quote from Mr Eisenhower and there’s another I often quote about how plans fall apart in the face of battle.


However, I think Dwight gets it right. That as and when a plan fails, another formulates.

I have been having a tough time formulating my strategy for Star Referrer recently especially as I was planning to have it ready before Christmas.

Admittedly time has been lost, yet the end product I feel, is going to be a lot better for it.

Initially I was planning to help you get more referrals from cold and as I started to consider how to warm people up I realised there are more crucial steps to the process. I am quite excited and raring to go.

Oddly enough testing my hypothesis is slowing me down, and it’s working rather well! All will be revealed…

Let’s Meet Up In February

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A few Star Referrers enjoying their 4-star breakfast at the Hilton Olympia, at 7:55 yesterday before it got busy! Our next event at the Hilton is set for the morning of Friday the 8th. Please be one of the first to register: https://www.meetup.com/meetup-group-WyUtSAWr/events/znzmpqyzdblb/

Private Dining!

The Hilton does not disappoint! They over deliver in their all you can eat buffet and tell me if more than twenty register they will give us our own Private Dining area too – and that would be great as I know from past experience, privacy is much appreciated.

Why Meet For Breakfast?

To meet like-minded people and have the rest of your day free. There are lots of issues that are not easy to discuss with families, friends, and clients. Impartial suggestions can be a real tonic. People from different backgrounds have different ideas. New collaborations can lead to great referrals.

Who Will You Meet?

At least me! Sometimes former customers and associates come along to catch up, many come along for the first time. I have met Lawyers, Accountants, Video producers, Speakers, Wealth and Investment specialists, Retailers, Home Services professionals, Designers, Writers, Digital gurus, Fitness and Exercise Trainers, Insurers… Business owners to sales managers, all are welcome. An eclectic business mix that ranges across a variety of professions.

Whether you are a window cleaner, builder or a seven figure banker, no one is turned away! If you are in business, or new to business then this is a breakfast for you.

I can’t wait to see you there. Please register so I can let you know more.

The Hilton, Olympia Star Referrers enjoy an all star breakfast before it gets busy

How to help good people become superstars

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The Good, The Bad and the Ugly!

The good news is you have a great new project to work on. The bad news is the state of the team you have inherited. To put it mildly they look like a bunch of losers, the left behinds, the people who would not leave.

They have their reasons…

For instance John is two years from retirement. Julie just loves complaining. Jack has headphones on all the time and does not talk or engage unless spoken to. Then there’s Janice who should by rights have your job and is well, superior to everyone in the room and the next room if not the whole floor.

Obvious problems!

As manager you have to take control and make this work. Clearly each has a different agenda and as long as this remains your job will be impossible. You need to start talking to them as a team as well as individually.

As a team you want to emphasise what they have in common, the sky above, the ground below, the overall mission and recognise publicly that each has their own special skills and talents and that is what they bring to the party. Then you need to ask for their help to work in support of the mission, collaboratively.

Chances are, without knowing what this really means your new team will agree to agree and to start to understand the focus and the mission. Next you need to ask them to explain to everyone else what they are passionate about and how this project will be part of achieving their passion. Draw out the challenges that might be holding them back so you can start to think about how these might be resolved.

At the end of this first step you will start to achieve the necessary bonds and build up some expectation and excitement. Soon however these new feelings will be forgotten and the issues they have with each other and work will resurface and take over once more.

Your task as manager

Is to talk with each person to find out some of the good things that they are doing and have already done. You want to engineer an opportunity when individual success can be celebrated both inside and outside the group by publicly thanking them for their achievements and focus. It will help the team realise they are needed and give them the recognition they deserve. Making them happy does not cost a thing and can go a long way.

In the case of John who is about to retire you need to recognise and tap into his experience about the way things are done around here and help him to show others how to make things happen.

In the case of Jack, the headphone guy, just having him attend meetings and asking open questions will get him talking and sharing.

Julie is obviously a detail person, you want to get her doing things for the team, so she can take pride in helping everyone. Recognition is big for her and if she continues to harp on, you need to pick her up on it and ask her to explain to you what she is talking about in order to get to the bottom of it, to turn those complaints into something more constructive.

You need to get Janice’s thoughts out and into the open. There’s a reason you got the job and she didn’t. You can explain that in the circumstances you are especially grateful for her contribution and that while some would be resentful, clearly she isn’t and as a result you are able to admire her for all she is doing and actually learn from her how things are done. The chances are that your gracious approach will defuse the situation and foster a better ongoing relationship.

About You!

Finally, you need to not worry about being new and even inexperienced. You are the manager and you are good. You must project confidence in what you are doing in order to inspire it. So assume you are the best and go out and prove it.

I once heard that members of a team tend to sit in silos. Silos are natural, usually to do with their domain of excellence,  each is different by design. You want to know are they grain silos or missile solos?

SEO OR PPC?

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Is SEO or PPC even the right question?

Or should it be Google or Facebook? Neither is the right question. The right question is where are your clients and what motivates them to buy. This has little to do with the medium and everything to do with your business. Really – is online marketing suitable at all?

Since I set standards for SEO when I chaired the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) Search Council (twice – once for the UK and secondly for Europe) I am often asked to advise of the SEO effectiveness of a website or asked about how to improve a Pay Per Click campaign.

As I have worked on thousands of campaigns over the years I can usually tell at a glance if the SEO is up to scratch, similarly with PPC. I am an expert in every sense in social media as well as Google.

The reality is that tuning SEO or PPC can make a huge difference for those who are already at the cutting edge – who already get a lot of business online – as they already know this is where the clients are – and they like to buy online – for everyone else we still need to establish what your clients really want.

Take a step back from SEO & PPC

I realise I may be putting you off search and some may click away in horror because I am not providing the service that is being asked of me.

Yet I have learned the hard truth to this many times over the years. I have been paid to optimise or to tune many a pay per click campaign – according to the clients wishes only to discover that the business that I have optimised cannot or will not make more sales as a result of being at the top of search.

So please, take a step back as there is preparation work to be done first and over the years I have devised a program that can get you there. It focuses on putting you at the heart of your clients world, to positioning you on the shoulders of giants and to ensuring that people in your market know you are the person to do business with. There is more to it, and you can read more about that here. Yet in essence that is the core of it, only then you might be ready to use search marketing.

What SEO really is.

Most people think that Search Engine Optimisation is all about adjusting meta tags and inserting keyword orientated content, that will help. However to be really on message you need to communicate with real clients not just search engines and in this you need to be both optimised and authentic.

It’s a tricky balance, yet it can be easily navigated and it can lead to a series of great benefits. The main benefit is to the benefit of your brand and to building your reputation. To get this right you need to follow a plan. I have outlined a simple, easy to follow plan you can follow here.

What PPC really is.

Pay per click is about the amplification of a campaign that already works. Not only that, it provides the ability to deliver on the changing nature of a sales campaign in minutes, at scale and to test and measure continuously, it is covered under a subject that I prefer to describe as Iterative Innovation TM.

Iterative Innovation TM is about testing, success and failure. You might find it odd to see failure from me, yet without failure we would have nothing to benchmark against and my idea of failure is when one test gets 5.2% compared to the another getting 4.5%, the first being the success, the second being the failure, but then is it? Is 4.5% in the specific circumstances the best we can get?

This relentless pursuit of success has led many of my clients to get great results. I even have a video of one client – who if you listen carefully, is casual and relaxed about admitting 500% Return On Investment (ROI), yet finds 1000% ROI a little too much and in the video explains why. Yet if you are in business, 1000% ROI and more really is the holy grail.

The Instant ‘Four Cornerstone Business Plan’

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Everyone I know wants more, more clients, more sales, more profit, more money, more happiness. Plus they want it all now! Is that unreasonable? Maybe, yet there is a way you can have it all and it is what I call the Four Cornerstone Business Plan.

This is simple – and fast, you can start this today – it costs largely nothing too. Yet it is not necessarily easy, it takes some work and you will want to put more and more time into it as you see it work out. I can assure you the only way you will succeed is if you do what most people fail to do: start and keep it up! This business plan is truly the Golden Gate to success!

The first cornerstone is all about learning to grow. 

By this I mean don’t just go and get new clients to grow. The fact is that most people are too busy doing what they are doing and satisfied with what they have, and that is the core reason why people don’t grow. There is more to this though.

Here’s what to do: You need to work out what to do, do it, and plan it so that you continue to do it and then keep it up – and for most this seems incredibly difficult to maintain. That is why the first cornerstone has to be: learn to grow. Growth is a skill you want to master. You learn it by doing it and then you keep on doing it!

The second cornerstone: create the scaffolding for growth.

Business needs support and you can’t expect anyone else to support your business but you. So your objective needs to build solid supports that will keep your business growing. Your solid support may be a system or a method for attracting and keeping new clients. Whatever it is whether it starts with facebook, linkedin or as a result of a referral network, you need to enshrine the process so that it becomes a machine. This is a subject I talk about often and have over the years created hundreds of machines.

The third cornerstone: your community.

As Sir Isaac Newton once said, “If I have seen further it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants” You want to sit amongst a community of giants whenever possible, there are lots of ways you can do this and it is a lot easier to do then you think.

You can connect with social media or linkedin etc and that is a great start, it’s not the end. So following and connecting is a good first base, yet it’s a long way from the end game. That’s not to say you can’t have some good relationships though social media. You can. It is to say that there is a lot more to really connecting with people than that which is afforded by Social Media alone.

Work out who the leaders in your community really are and work out what you can do to work alongside them. How can you be seen with them, how can you tie them into what you do. I have hundreds and hundreds of ideas and methods that you can apply in the real world and online that will massively elevate your status quickly in this area alone.

The fourth cornerstone: helping others.

I spent over twenty years putting people to the top of search engines, and still do. There are plenty I know who help their clients achieve the peak of fitness, have the best investments, have the best diet and go on the best holidays. We all have areas that we excel at and one way or another can demonstrate the truth of it, yet few really celebrate this which is especially odd when we think that there are so many ways you can demonstrate the facts. Below is a video shot recently, just a few years ago.

Each of these areas can be developed on and worked on ad infinitum. I have even trademarked a term for it: Iterative Innovation TM. The worst thing in business is: to be boring. So you do need to work on these four areas and you need to do so in an interesting way. Fortunately I know how to do that.

I have some clients I coach for one hour a month. Each hour we spend is always focussed on one of the four areas listed above.

Which of these four areas can I coach you on? You will get a great return on your investment. Click here to find out more for free. Answer a couple of simple questions and lets set up a time for a quick chat. Our fundamental objective should always be to create positive transformation that produces wealth, abundance and satisfaction. Let’s make sure this happens for you.

I may be able to help you with website Issues. Pay Per Click / SEO / Facebook etc. Sales strategy and direction. Project management. Software development – especially Node/Javascript. Also process, project, sales and if I haven’t mentioned it often enough already, strategic development, team building, systems integration and maximising overall performance – in a wide range of industries. See my Linkedin Profile for more.

Finally, for a limited time I have an offer where we can work together for 50% less than usual. To find out more, set up a time for a quick chat.

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