You may recall my last blog about getting on the phone and making cold calls - with exceptional results.

Well, we actually held the seminar last week, which was also really the launch of our new business Pure Bookkeeping. The outcome we were looking for from the event was to sell licenses to the Pure Bookkeeping System at the reduced price for our launch of around $4k. We had 12 people along on the night. Of those 2 had already bought the system, 2 were partners and one was an employee of Deb's, so we had seven prospects. A good rule of thumb for these sort of nights is to convert one in four, so I said to Deb that two sales would be a good result. So how did we go?

A couple of days ago I got on the phone and did some cold calling for the first time in 10 years (cold calling is ringing up someone out of the phone book that doesn't know you from a bar of soap). The last time I cold called was when I was just starting out as a business coach - and the results back then were nothing to write home about. In fact I think over six months of fairly consistent cold calling I didn't get a single client. Since then I've been in the fortunate position of getting enough business coaching clients through referrals, so it's been a while (which is lucky really, because I if I was relying on my cold calling skills I think I'd be on the street by now).

You are probably thinking "what on earth prompted you do that again?"

 Last month I met with a client 2 days before the end of the month, and he
was three sales short of his quarterly target of 30 sales. We could have
been satisfied with that, but instead we decided to keeping going full out
for the target until the end of the quarter.

We came up with the great "Get my business coach off my back" sale. 

We ran The Money Workshop on the weekend. We ask for feedback at the end of the workshop, including what we can improve. We had a few comments like "nothing comes to mind. that's a first!" and simply "all good," as well as "open window was too cold" and "bring an espresso machine." I think if we've got it to the level where the only complaint someone can come up with is that we only have filter coffee and not an espresso machine, we must be doing a few things right!

Last week we ran the first ever Love Your Money Workshop - and it sold out. It was pretty amazing for the first one we'd ever done, especially given we only came up with the idea six and a half weeks earlier.

It was the first time I've ever had an event sell out, and at times we've struggled to get numbers to other LYB workshops, so it got me thinking. What was it that had this event sell out? Here's what I came up with.

Here is a story from my brother Ben:

The other day was running a training session in Sydney. This guy turned up late, and was basically a royal pain in the arse - think a high school student up the back who knows the teacher can't give him a detention. Continually interrupting, yawning loudly, wrapping his knuckles on the desk. After about 40 minutes I said to him that he's making it impossible to run the session and if he has any issues about the software that he needs to discuss we'll have a chat about it after the session. He really cracked it at that point, and said I was being paranoid etc.

I caught up with a couple of close friends last week, who have a very interesting business. They run a four wheel drive adventure race. People come from all over the world with their cars to participate in a race that runs over 10 days and multiple stages.

They are clearly passionate about what they do, as are the participants. Problem is they are not making much money. They cover their costs, pay themselves a modest salary ... and there's not a lot left over. Sound familiar? 

I have a coaching client who runs a web development business – let’s call him John.

At the start of the year his business had three major issues:

• Sales. John was effective at selling when he felt confident, but as soon as he felt a bit anxious or down, he wasn’t successful.
• Cash flow. Like many small business owners, John had cash flow challenges. This mainly stemmed from clients who were slow payers. Of course this added to his anxiety which in turn impacted his sales.
• Managing clients. To build a website John and his team need content from their clients at certain points in the development life cycle. Often he had to spend time chasing this content. Apart from not really enjoying this, it spread the projects out, made them less efficient and less profitable, and delayed when he finished the sites and got paid. Which also impacted cash flow.

So the challenge was thrown down last week, to write a blog that referred to penguins! So “what does business and penguins have in common?” I hear you say, well let me tell you a story about a little penguin who couldn’t sing but wow could he dance. Ok you got me, it’s already been done. Having two young stepchildren I’ve seen Happy Feet, oh a million times. So how does Happy Feet, and more importantly, the story of Mumble relate to business?