Are You Ready to Improve Your ‘A’ Game to Achieve Business Growth? – Part 2
In the previous post: Are You Ready to Improve Your ‘A’ Game to Achieve Business Growth? – Part 1, I discussed the first 2 primary steps every business owner must do to get on their ‘A’ game in order to grow their business and expand their footprint in the marketplace.
Here are the next 3 primary steps to improve your ‘A’ game and achieve business growth.
Remember, once you improve your ‘A’ game it will make your ventures ‘up the growth ladder’ even more sure and successful.
3. Listen to the Market
Very often a business leader has a passion for a product, a service or market segment. Yet, if you do the 80/20 analysis of your business, you may find the main profits and growth is coming from something other than what you think.
You have two choices. Continue to swim against the current — or swim with the current. I think you can guess which is going to help grow your business the fastest.
Just because you have a passion, an idea, or a focus doesn’t mean the market is going to buy it. Sell them what they are willing to buy!
4. Test, Test, and Test
When I help companies innovate their sales and marketing systems, it’s not unusual to see their sales double or triple. That growth doesn’t come from working harder, it comes from working smarter.
But often you cannot predict in advance what ad, what sales process or what product or service is going to be the big winner. So you have to conduct a very careful ‘test’. When you test, you will have uncovered the path to fast, low-risk growth and more profits.
5. Follow the Right Sequence of Growth Steps
Below are 5 sequences for the growth your business.
A) You can focus on intense market penetration and sell more of the same product to more of the same people.
B) You can sell different products or services to your existing customers (same people).
C) You can take your existing offerings out to new markets.
D) You can create new products and services for new markets and new customers.
E) You can create new products for your existing customers.
The highest probability, lowest risk strategy is “A”. The second lowest risk, fastest payback is “B”. The third lowest risk, not as fast of a payback is “E”. Yet, time and again I see business leaders’ bypass these three steps and leap right into higher risk “C” and “D” strategies.
I strongly encourage you to find ways to increase your effectiveness and productivity in sequence “A” before moving on. Many businesses mistakenly think they are doing all they can in sequence “A” but too many times after receiving coaching from me, I have seen them apply some of my new ideas and strategies to existing sales and marketing efforts and then they double their sales.
And if you improve your ‘A’ game it will make your ventures ‘up the growth ladder’ even more sure and successful.
Are you willing to work on your ‘A’ game?
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Are You Ready to Improve Your ‘A’ Game to Achieve Business Growth? – Part 1
Every business owner must discover their ‘A’ game in order to grow their business and expand their marketplace presence. Below are the 5 primary steps to improving your ‘A’ game and achieving business growth.
1. Business Growth is a Mindset
Yes, your growth may be influenced by factors like the economy or the market sector you have chosen; however, your growth is not fixed by fate. It’s driven by a growth mindset.
Right now, there are growth sectors that have failing businesses in them and then there are also sectors that have reached maturity which have growth stars rising in them. So remember, once you decide to grow, you commit to growth and then growth follows the ‘will’ to grow.
What’s the difference between someone who has a successful local spa and someone who has a chain of successful spas? You guessed it… ‘mindset’. One wants to expand, the other is content with the current state of success.
There is nothing wrong with being content with your current level of business growth; but don’t deceive yourself in believing that you cannot find ways to grow your business even in a state of contentment.
Consider this: The minute you see the economy or the market as the reason you can’t grow, you have surrendered control of your business to outside forces beyond your control.
The only way to regain control is to decide to grow (engage your growth mindset) in spite of what others in your industry have decided to do. Isn’t it time to jump start your business growth mindset!
2. Grow Faster by Doing Less
When I am speaking before a group of business owners, I often ask the business leaders to make a list of all the ways they can think of to grow their business.
Guess what… I’ve never seen anyone put on their list things they are going to STOP doing. There is something instinctive in our nature that makes us think of ‘adding’ when we think of ‘growth’.
Yet, numerous times over the years I have helped clients grow by stopping certain products, marketing channels, or sales processes.
Imagine you have a bucket of water and seven beautiful gardenia plants to water. Your water supply must be equally divided among those seven beautiful gardenias. Now imagine that instead of watering all seven of those gardenias, you only watered two gardenias. Which scenario would create the largest, most beautiful gardenias?
While working with one of my clients, I discovered that most of her successful high-paying clients all came from one type of lead generation source. She decided to stop spending time and effort on all of the other sources and only focus her efforts on that one channel. Guest what… sales doubled in one month.
After working with another client, we discovered that one type of customer was far more valuable (they spent more money) than all the others customers. She chose to narrow her business focus to that one customer type and believe it or not grew her revenue from one hundred thousand a year to three hundred thousand a year.
Stop thinking of all the things you might do. Do an 80/20 analysis on your business and focus your efforts on the best opportunities (it is usually the 20 percent).
In part 2 of Are You Ready to Improve Your ‘A’ Game to Achieve Business Growth? — I will discuss the next 3 primary steps. Once you learn the next 3 primary steps for improving your ‘A’ game it will make your ventures ‘up the growth ladder’ even more sure and successful. Stay Tuned!
Don’t forget to opt in for your monthly copy of Elevations™, the newsletter that is “Helping High-Achieving Women Soar to Be the Best and Beyond™”.
