This quick tip can help you get your business on track and stay there. It’s all about how to generate the ideas and answers, which your business needs!
Ideas are one of our most valuable resources. They allow us to make things better, no matter how bad they may be right now. When backed up with action, our ideas become the starting point of all change. The challenge, is to make sure that our ideas are taking us forward, so we make progress, rather than being yet another busy fool.
Ideas and direction
As a marketing and business development coach, I have noticed that people often start off on the wrong footing, when searching for ideas and answers.
For example, a business owner looking to increase sales may be thinking to herself: “How can I increase traffic into my website?”
A question like that will point her mind in the direction of answers, such as:
- I can hire an SEO provider.
- I can pay for traffic, via an Adwords campaign.
- I could invest in Pay Per Click (PPC.)
- I could promote my site on social networks.
- The list goes on…
Those are all designed to drive traffic into her site. The thing is, her problem is not a lack of traffic. What she actually needed was to increase the number of sales she made. Because she started off with a poorly directed question, the ideas she generated lacked the focus she needed.
Had she asked herself a question like: “How can I increase sales in next quarter?”, her answers would have been very different. They may have included ideas such as:
- I can get a professional copywriter, to increase the effectiveness of my marketing material, so I get more targeted leads.
- I can develop a great new service, which compliments what we already provide to our customers and market it to them.
- I can speak with Bob over at XYZ Company, about doing an endorsed relationship campaign with us.
- I could build an introducer network.
- I can speak with Barbara about doing a joint venture.
- I could hold a networking event, invite all my customers and ask them to bring a friend. If I target it right, this will give me a room full of customers and prospective customers.
- Etc, etc.
Fuzzy focus
A common example of starting off with the wrong question, are those people we see, frantically trying to build huge numbers of followers via social and business networks. In many cases, they seem more concerned with the numbers than with the actual reason they are networking online; which is to develop their business. I have had people with over 100,000 followers asking me for advice on how to monetize their following. They have no idea what to do, because they set off looking for numbers without an outcome (other than X number of followers.) Their followings are usually totally fragmented, because they didn’t start off with a clear idea of who they wanted to connect with or why.
Outcome focused
Regular readers know that I believe one of the best pieces of business advice you can give anyone, is contained in the following 6 words:
Start with the end in mind.
When we start with the end in mind, we ensure that we begin our thought process with our focus in the right direction. This helps us avoid wasting time on costly detours, allows our resources to be targeted correctly and helps us get the clarity we need.
IMPORTANT: If you want to make more sales, boost your profits and grow an amazing business, this will help you!