I’ve been a consultant or owned a business for almost over 30 years. When you’ve been in business or worked with as many business owners/entrepreneurs as I have you start to see trends. I thought I’d try to capture some thoughts I’ve learned so far in this journey. What follows has no order or sequence it’s just general truisms I’ve discovered working with some amazing people throughout the years…
- There are things in your business you should be doing, and you know you should be doing but you put them off last. Do these first.
- More unproductive time is spent doing the things you should outsource. Find opportunities to outsource things you really shouldn’t be doing and if you can’t outsource then find ways to put these into a system where you are more proficient.
- Marketing hasn’t changed all that much, only the tools and the way you communicate with your target market has. Learn the foundations of marketing, branding, and positioning.
- Start the day with the most important thing you need to do and end the day with asking what you accomplished. If those 2 things don’t match up make a change immediately.
- The phone is still one of the best networking tools on the planet and beats social media hands down.
- Follow up and consistency are the cornerstone of a strong and growing business.
- Your target market is more educated on your product, service, or idea than they have ever been. This gives you an opportunity to really solve solutions; the challenge is solving the right solutions.
- People make decisions both emotionally and logically. If these are out of sync in your offering or process people will run for the hills. Your offers have to make emotional and logical sense.
- People have made up their mind before they talk to you. It’s your job to help them come to the conclusion that you, your product, or idea is what they have been seeking.
- Rely on experts. It is said that you don’t know what you don’t know. Don’t allow this to happen in your business. Find the things that are critical to know to give you a competitive advantage and work with experts to help you understand how to capitalize on these things.
- Instill a dedication to being the best for yourself and your team. This will take you farther than any marketing strategy.
- Test your reasoning and thoughts. Design tests in your business and marketing so that you can prove yourself right or wrong. Then iterate these.
- All businesses need systems, what are yours and have you developed them.
- Understand your markets buying signals and buying timeframe. In certain markets there are trigger events that cause your market to be aware of a problem or seek a solution. The birth of a child is a good trigger event that spurs a whole host of purchase decisions. What is your target market buying signals, timeframe, and trigger events?
- Attention is becoming one of the scarcest resources. If you get someone’s attentionrespect it and give them what they want or seek.
- If you’re just getting started or rebooting, start with your big idea, a strong website, and find unique ways to reach people who want what you have. Spend zero amount of time in social media until you have this figured out.
- You have hidden revenue in your business; the trick is finding where it’s at with as little amount of effort as possible.
- Act. More people fail by not acting than they do by getting their idea in motion. When you act you get feedback, when you get feedback you improve, and when you improve you ultimately get to something that works in the marketplace.
- Trust yourself. You know deep down inside that your idea will work now prove the world wrong.
- Quantity rarely trumps quality. This is even truer when you look at the amount of effort and time you put into your business. Make sure it’s quality and not quantity that you are measuring.
- No clear metrics. Write down and track the key metrics that drive your sales, prospecting, and efficiency of your business.
- Focus on what you can control and let go of the things you cannot. Or better yet find ways to flip the things you can’t control in your mind in a way that you can control them within yourself.
- Learn to look at a situation in 3 ways, your way, their way, and as an observer looking at both.
- Most sales can be defined by a straight line, and this straight line happens even before you talk to your prospect. The better you get at managing that line the more sales and business you will create.
- Seek a yes or no, if it’s a maybe you should run. A yes or no is a decision, maybe will always have lingering questions.
- Your success is your own. No one cares more about your success than you. Don’t rely on someone else to be your driver in success.
- Find a way to banish need from your negotiations. The other side can sense this. Even if you do need that deal or that project operating from this mindset will make it harder to close.
- Know your why.
digital frisbee 