|
Welcome to the Momentum Business Coaching
Newsletter for Small Business
September 2004
The 6 Keys
to Business Success
Do you run a business that seems to run you? It does not have
to be this way.
There are 6 keys that can improve your business results
and help you achieve success with much less stress.
1. Know Where You Are Going
Without having specific goals, business owners often find working
in the business becomes an endless drudgery. If being in business
is not exciting, enjoyable and rewarding, then why be in it?
It is exciting and rewarding for the few who are really successful.
The difference is that they have a clear idea of where they
are going and each day they can see their business making progress
towards their clearly defined goals.
If our goals are not clearly defined it is easy to become like
the mouse on the treadmill. We can expend a lot of effort going
nowhere. All we can do is react to the pressures the business
creates. The second key is to decide where you are going. When
you know where you want your business to go, you can determine
what needs to be done to get there. Doing these things creates
excitement and enjoyment.
2. Spread The Word
You will never succeed by keeping your business a secret. You
need to spread the word to let people know about your unique
products or services. With many small businesses, there is a
tendency to be reactive. If sales slow down, you decide to advertise
to address the situation. When work picks up, advertising is
stopped. The result of this approach is haphazard advertising
which produces haphazard results. Rather than haphazard advertising,
a planned advertising and promotion strategy can be applied
to address specific goals.
Instead of one broad objective of "getting more sales",
strategies can be developed in three areas.
Firstly strategies should be developed to actively encourage
word of mouth and a system for generating referred leads.
Secondly, planned advertising approaches are needed to generate
a steady flow of new enquiries.
Thirdly, strategies can be developed to increase the value
and frequency of purchases from existing customers.
Marketing must not be left to chance. The third key is to spread
the word, by developing planned, consistent and effective advertising
and promotional systems and strategies.
3. Do what you do so well they'll Come Back and Bring Their
Friends
The difference between the truly successful business and
the average business is that successful business' leaders live,
breathe and preach quality, where the average business' leader
only pays lip service to it. There are many companies that
have built their reputation on the quality of the service they
provide as much as the product they sell. Delighted customers
come back with their friends.
4. Train Your People to Do It Better Than You
Many business owners wish they could clone themselves. They
are unable to find anyone who can work as well as they do. Usually
there has been some resistance to this move, but eventually
the need becomes obvious. Business growth is always stifled
by the owner hanging on to the work they enjoy. Having made
the choice to grow, the key to unlocking this potential is to
train the new people to be better than yourself.
5. Keep The Score
The greatest danger in a growing business is for the owner to
lose control. This fear causes many to choose to stay small
because they do not want the worries of growing too big.
WHAT YOU MEASURE YOU CAN IMPROVE!
A business' performance needs to be managed and controlled.
So many business owners worry about getting the work done, but
they don't measure results, they don't keep score. Keeping the
score indicates how well the business is going towards achieving
its goals. If performance is behind expectations, steps can
be taken to improve. If the score was not kept, no one would
ever know that performance was substandard, and the goals would
quite likely never be reached.
6. Celebrate Your Victories
Regeneration of our physical and emotional resources comes when
we celebrate victories. One of the problems we have in small
business is that we think we are too busy to take time off to
celebrate. Even if we just get away from the business and relax,
we come back rejuvenated and are usually able to tackle our
work with a renewed vigour. Imagine how inefficient it becomes,
using a battery powered machine, if we keep on working harder
and harder to get the work done and never stop to recharge the
batteries. If we don't stop at times to recharge our batteries
we keep working hard but become totally ineffective.
When we plan our future and set goals it is easy to determine
when to celebrate. Without goals to achieve, we can keep on
working until it becomes drudgery.
Celebrations put excitement into what we do.
For a free consultation, simply contact John Buckley of Momentum
Business Coaching at
045-881888 or e-mail jbuckley@momentumcoach.ie
or visit www.momentumcoach.ie
|
