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Photos above, left and right by Bill Hollingworth

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Whether you need help in starting or buying a business, or you are "stuck" in some phase of your business, or are thinking of exiting or selling your business, The Coach is ready to join your team and coach you through these critical moments and facilitate a solution for your business.

The Coach has
spurred my
business forward
with a better
understanding of
our customers,
helping us pick the
best advertising
program, and
through great sales
training. Coach,
you are the Best!
— Taos Retail Store Owner

Bill Swan, aka The Coach, has lived in Taos for almost 20 years while starting, owning and operating three businesses: A small historical Inn, a web-based art marketing and sales “dot-com,” and most recently a retail and optical store on the Plaza.

Coming to Taos with a technical and sales background, Bill also has a long tradition of volunteering to help the community and individual business owners with advice on various entrepreneurial endeavors. Finally, after selling his successful Taos Plaza retail store in the summer of 2009, Bill decided to concentrate full-time on coaching entrepreneurs one-on-one through each phase of their development, from start-up to exit.

The Coach brings a wealth of business experience, concentrated in sales and marketing. He earned a Masters in Arts from The George Washington University and a Bachelor of Science from the Air Force Academy.

Quote of
the Month:

Keep away
from people
who try to
belittle your
ambition. Small
people always
do that, but
the really great
make you feel
that You, too,
can become great.
— Mark Twain

Listen:

We are NOT going to come into your business and tell you what is wrong and what you should be doing. Good coaching doesn’t do that. Instead, coaching is about raising your awareness... setting goals, examining the reality of your business environment, and finally, instilling the best practices from the myriad of options that we discover together.

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This is about helping you see the trees from the forest. It is about asking you the hard questions, holding you accountable, and about the business that YOU envision, not our vision. We are helping northern New Mexican businesses with three coaching needs:

SALES COACHING
Do you know how to sell? Do you know what you are really selling? Since we know that people don’t buy commodities (they buy something else), what are your customer’s buying? Questions such as these are where The Coach will start. We will then examine your entire sales process, whether you own a small retail store or are an independent outside sales representatives working on commission.

We will design a sales course for you and/or your employees, or supplement your sales training with our sales courses that start in late summer 2011. If you are doing all the advertising and marketing you can afford and your sales are stagnant, let’s improve the quality of your sales interactions to give your sales a jolt. We know sales coaching and training works and that customer service coaching is effective. Bill did 8 hours of sales training at his retail store in December of 2008 and with a small amount of reinforcement sales coaching, proceeded to have the best first quarter they ever recorded, and that was in the middle of the Great Recession.

Even after owning my own award winning business for over 20 years, I have learned many helpful tips from Bill Swan’s sales coaching. After just a few weeks, it is already making a difference in our sales, and has really helped our sales team work together more effectively.

— Taos Salesperson

ENTREPRENEUR COACHING
Every entrepreneur gets bogged down at some point. Very few have all the skills that it takes to start a business and then herd all the cats to make it a successful business. Do you know the three roles that every entrepreneur and business owner must perform every day? Are you changing your business? If you aren’t, you are behind because your competition probably is.

Do you know the biggest myths about starting a business? The Coach can help you understand the roles you must be constantly playing, and how important filling those roles yourself or with your first employee. Whether you want to start a business or buy a business, or simply feel stuck in your business, entrepreneur coaching for a few months may be your key to success.

TRANSITION AND EXIT COACHING
Is it time for you to “exit” your business? Maybe you are thinking about selling it to your employees. The Coach has sold three businesses in Taos and can help you do the most important part, and that is prepare it to sell. We will help you see it as a buyer would. We will help you put a fair value on your assets and your brand. And, we will not take the standard broker fee of 10 to 12% of your business. Instead, we will expect a fair hourly wage and then defer half of this fee until you actually close the sale of your business. Sharing the risk with you, The Coach will guide you through the process and once we find a buyer, will act as your business intermediary to work through the emotional and critical negotiating stages.

The Coach
feels like a
teammate to me:
actively engaged in
moving my agenda
forward, because
it's his agenda too. Hearing his
perspective and
ideas help focus my
own, and they
motivate me. Our
weekly meetings are
a high point of
my week.
— Taos Retail Store Owner

This spring 2012, The Coach will offer sales courses again, aimed at the small retail store owner and their sales staff, including artists and art gallery owners, and outside sales representatives. ALL of these courses will again be offered FREE to current coaching clients.

The goals of the classes are simple: Improve sales productivity and decrease sales stress in a relaxed classroom setting with sophisticated and proven coaching techniques and subject matter.

The courses will be at affordable “small town” prices with discounts for Chamber members and students. We will be offering “volume” discounts to business owners who sign up more than one person from their shop. You won’t find these “how-to-sell” classes anywhere else in the Southwest. They are supported by the Taos Small Business Development Center and our Chamber of Commerce.

There will be NO homework, but our classes will be filled with sales coaching tips, discussions for honing various sales skills and plenty of in-depth evaluation of your sales models and systems, to immediately improve your sales numbers and how you approach your sales profession.

• SMALL RETAIL Sales Class
Spring 2012 (Location TBA)

We are going to turn sales clerks into sales pros, and owners into sales trainers. Breaking down the sales process into easily recognizable components, from the first “touch” to the value-adding steps, sales will become more enjoyable and more effective.

It doesn’t matter if you are selling Ford F-150s, furniture, or art and crafts, sales is sales…..you need to break the Customer-Sales Clerk mold, establish trust, allow the customer to hunt and gather, and then finally, create a “we” space to enrich their lives by helping to solve their problems or ‘pain.’ The Coach will break down these different processes and we will refine your sales skills to create more net profit no matter what you are selling.

• OUTSIDE SALES REP Class
Spring 2012 (Location TBA)

Jam-packed with how-to lessons from making the dreaded cold call, to not spilling your cookies and learning that the best presentation is not a presentation at all, this course is for the hard-core, commission-based sales rep who gets up every morning knowing their paycheck depends on how many sales they make. The Coach has been there, has studied it and we will discover what works best for you.

If you are selling media advertising, real estate, insurance or anything that you need to knock on doors and get invited back, this course will increase your productivity and lower your stress at the same time. Do you have a simple sales model or guide that keeps you on track? Less than 10% do, and if you aren’t using your system, you will be borrowing your prospect’s system which is usually not conducive to low stress and effective sales. We will help with your sales skills and refine your sales model to take your commissioned sales to the next level.

• CUSTOMER SERVICE Class
Spring 2012 (Location TBA)

Designed for every one of us who comes in contact with the public in their job each day, with a special emphasis for the hospitality industry, this course will be partly therapeutic, and partly sales training. Dealing with humans that are buying something and have certain expectations can be incredibly satisfying, but all too often, it is stressful. This course will help with practical tools we can all put to use immediately so we all enjoy the sales experience, customer and sales person.

We have helped several businesses in Taos determine a fair price and prepare short and simple “offering memorandums.” If you are thinking of exiting your business, but don’t know where to start, let us help you with a free consultation. If, on the other hand, you are interested in buying a business in Taos, The Coach can help you find the right one and act as the business intermediary should that service feel right for you.

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The Coach has been invaluable to me in a stressful situation of closing my store and preparing it for sale. He listens to me, gives me clear goals, and I'm never overwhelmed. Thank you, Coach, for helping me in this transitional time.

— Taos Businessperson