ONE SIMPLE SECRET TO IMPROVE YOUR BUSINESS
Holy Cow! What a week! Over and over again I see examples of how we make life and business so much harder than it really needs to be. It’s amazing really. We all know someone who spends their life worrying and struggling and always “fighting fires” (problems and emergencies). And then, where there are no fires to fight, anxious and fearful that because they have no fires to fight/emergencies to handle that they’re doing something wrong, they then sabotage themselves by creating “fires” to fight simply so they have something to do and to complain about.
In my Business Coaching practice I work daily with executives and affluent business owners and I am constantly amazed as to how totally off track and out of align they can get by chasing rainbows and “silver bullet” solutions to improve their life and their business or both. Miracle cures seldom work in life or business. If you’ve been reading my posts for awhile you know that I practice and preach the gospel of basics. In almost all cases where I am working with a struggling executive or business person, the cause of the struggle is usually in the fact that the client has slipped away from applying many of the basic success principles that they already know. So it is usually my challenge to look for viable alternatives that revolve around time proven principles or foundational applications and strategies that must be in place before anything fancy can ever work. The alternative that is seldom chosen is to slow down and believe that there might be some very simple solution to the issue that makes sense immediately and is easy to implement.
There are a couple of very good examples that I personally use and encourage my business coaching clients to use that are in fact very simple and logical. The primary and the simplest secret of improving your business is to remember this one statement;
Not all consumers are business people…but all business people are consumers!
I have been privileged to have some great mentors in my life and one of them, a very wise business person, would drill into me…. “You will be a great businessman someday only if you remember that when you go home every night, you have to go out and buy groceries too!”
The truth in both statements is that business people everywhere need to train themselves to be able to analyze their business offers; advertising; marketing; selling proposals; displays; communication; every element of doing business with their “eye of the consumer”. Remember that as a consumer, we make value decisions all of the time on where we buy and why we buy. And those decisions are usually made based on what is said, the offer, the presentation or the look, taste or feel that the business creates and represents. So in turn why should we NOT take this same evaluation and apply it to every piece of our own business communication and simply ask ourselves, “If I was buying from this person/business…would I buy it?” Or, “Is this offer something that entices me to do business with this person?” Yes, you’re looking at your own offers, scripts and materials, but if your inner consumer answers the questions with a NO…then you better head back to the old drawing board.
It is a very powerful yet simple exercise that costs you nothing to do, but can save you money and make you money simply by learning the ability to honestly criticize your own business communication, but looking at it as an unbiased consumer.
The key is in how honest you can be in critiquing your own work. The answer to that will be the difference in consistent and ongoing improvement for your business, or not! If you need some help with your business, give me a call or write. This is what I do and I’m open for business!
As always, BE GREAT!
Coach Dan