Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

In business, it’s impossible to avoid making decisions!

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It’s impossible to avoid making decisions!

I regularly speak with small business owners, who have left important areas of their business suffering, rather than make a decision and take action. Their concern, is that they will make the wrong decision.  So, they do nothing at all, which often has serious implications for their business and their future.

What people who avoid making deliberate decisions fail to understand, is that by electing to do nothing, they have actually made a decision.  They have decided to sit on their hands again and hope things turn out OK.  That’s not much of a strategy.  Thing’s don’t just get better by themselves.

In my work, I hear from people all the time, who make the decision to call or email me, rather than continue to struggle with sales.  Conversely, I see people complaining about how slow business is, but electing to keep repeating the same marketing errors, rather than make the decision to do something about it.

One of the common traits behind every successful businessperson I know, is that they make good decisions in a timely manner.  They understand that if they avoid making decisions, they surrender control of their business and their future, to others. After all, the actions we take are what determine our success and these actions are governed by our decisions.

What works for you?

Do you have any tips or ideas, to help people make better decisions?  If you do, please share them!

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Examine all your options

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I’ve received quite a few emails recently, from people who want to market a new business venture, even though they have no budget.  Whilst it’s common for new projects to have limited budgets, having zero budget is still thankfully relatively rare.  Several of these emails closed with the statement that they had just 2 options; to do nothing or to launch their new project right now, with no budget.

Of course, in reality they had stacks of options.  They may, for instance, decide to get the funding in place, then go for the launch.  They may decide to find some partners, who will invest expertise and money in the project, then go for the launch.  They may decide to make the product or service better, whilst saving to get the funds in place, then go for the launch.  There are always options – providing you are prepared to look.

Examine all your options

I often hear people make similar polarised statements, where they say something is either this or it’s that.  They then make their decisions based on those 2 choices alone; without considering all the other viable options.  When you give yourself the option to either do nothing at all or do something wrong, you are asking yourself to answer the wrong question!

Good preparation and planning are cornerstones of a successful project.  Conversely, most of the failed projects I see, had failed long before they even started, through lack of preparation.  It’s great to see people putting their energy and effort into something positive, but without proper planning, all that energy and effort will only get them so far.

After all, if you are rowing your boat with all your strength in the WRONG direction, you will never get where you want to be!  In fact, the harder you row, the further in the wrong direction you will go.

It is possible these days, to successfully launch a small business or a new project with a shoestring budget.  You know what?  There are millions of people right now, trying to do just that!  They are seeking to grab the same people’s attention (and money) that you are too.

Yes, you can beat them, but it will require forward planning, solid preparation and the ability to consider all your options.

How to make great decisions when things go wrong!

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It’s a fact: The way we respond to challenges is a key factor in our commercial success.

This is why I want to share a simple piece of advice with you, which may help you make better decisions AND avoid making mistakes when you are next faced with a challenge (particularly, a BIG challenge!)

I have coached, mentored, trained and worked with thousands of businesspeople and have found that often, it’s their response to a problem that seals their fate and NOT the original challenge or problem itself.

This is because they go into a mindset, which I call scrambling mode.

Scrambling mode is the term I use to describe the wild and often illogical actions, which many entrepreneurs and business owners take, when they are suddenly faced with a big challenge.  Scrambling mode sees the person so desperate to do “something,” that they become more focused on movement than they do on progress.  Rather than develop a properly thought out plan of action, they panic.  This leads to poor decision making, which in turn creates more and more problems.  So, they start off with one, often easy to resolve issue and end up with a stack of far more serious challenges.

A common example I have heard of many, many times, is what business owners do, when they unexpectedly see a worrying drop in sales.  Faced with this situation, the logical thing to do is figure out what caused the drop in sales and either fix it or replace it with a more effective way to attract new business.  However, I have personally witnessed business owners decide instantly, to take seriously damaging action!

In one case I know of, the business owner immediately dropped her prices by 15%, without realising that her existing customers would expect a similar deal.  She eventually offered the 15% discount to everyone, unaware that she NOW needed to increase sales by over 40%, just to cover the cost of the 15% discount – never mind recovering the lost revenue!  She was broke within 4 months.

In short: Scrambling mode sees intelligent people looking for answers in all the wrong places and creating unnecessary additional problems.

How to avoid getting into scrambling mode

To learn how to avoid the damage caused by entering into scrambling mode, we need only observe how people that respond effectively to sudden, unexpected problems act.

In my experience, there are 2 steps, which these people take:

  1. They take time to identify exactly what the challenge actually is.  As soon as they know what’s wrong, they focus all their attention on getting the challenge solved.  I wrote about this last week in this post, focus on answers, not problems.  When we focus on answers, one of the by products is that we start to feel more in control, which lowers our stress and makes us more resourceful.
  2. They immediately seek qualified advice, so they make good decisions.  Typically, they will have already identified knowledgeable people in each key area of their business.  This means they know exactly who to speak with, when something goes wrong and don’t have to blindly go into the marketplace and find someone.

This means a good time to build YOUR team of advisors is now; not when you are working against the clock!