Focused on new ideas and actions, this
principle usually holds the most promise for additional opportunity no
matter the age, position, or size of the company. However, the
principle is listed after Drop What Isn't Working Like a Bad Habit and What Works Right Now? Do Loads More of That!
for one important reason: as a company, if you don’t get the first two
steps right, all of the new initiatives you try to implement will not
be built upon the strongest culture of candor and thirst for
improvement. A culture forged by multiplying on your best practices and
shooting your worst ones in the head. Taking a clear, objective view of
the business is often the most difficult step, and the one that makes a
leader most uncomfortable. Many new business ventures end up failing
because somebody talked the owner or leader into spending more money on
marketing, hiring more sales people, or developing a better website
without really having a clue what is and is not working for the company
already.
Open your mind and let ideas go in and come out.
If
the platform for open and honest review of your business, your people,
and all your initiatives is not there, then you have no way to judge
how successful all those new and cool ideas are going to be before you
invest your time, people, and financial resources in them. Take the
time to build a culture of open and honest recognition, where each
player in the organization, including you, can improve. Take the time
to build a culture and a communication style in your business that
recognizes and rewards excellence so you can do more and more of what
has always proven to work. Similarly, the gains made through the
identification and aggressive improvement of every definable weakness
need to be recognized and rewarded as well.
Candid Culture. Mind Open.
Now ask yourself:
“Am I spending any time creatively exploring with a very open mind all
of the things my company could be doing so I can intelligently
determine which ideas show real promise for growing the business and
can best capitalize on the resources we have available?”
By
pouring on the gas of new ideas and actions to a well-lit fire, you
have the momentum to fuel every new idea that should see the light of
day. You allow for the ideas to be openly, not defensively, discussed
and considered. You will have every member of your team doing
everything within their power to help every new idea succeed.
You
can effectively deploy the ideas that make the most sense, use your
resources most wisely, and expand all of your sales and marketing
efforts with the success you derive from the first steps you take. That
positive momentum breeds more success, which accelerates your drive and
creates a self-feeding cycle that quickly and decisively brings your
company to its next level of performance.
Learn as You Go. Improve. Repeat.
Follow up those new initiatives with simple and smart analysis that
allows you to constantly evaluate the results of every new activity.
Refine the ideas and execution with every new bit of insight you learn
from your experiences. There is a bottomless well of new opportunities
available just by introducing yourself to new customers, new revenue
streams from existing customers, and new markets to offer your products
and services.
What Are Some of the Things You Could Be Doing?
-
Develop a proactive referral program that engages everyone in your network.
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Launch a low-cost educational e-mail marketing newsletter that demonstrates your firm’s expertise and provides value to the reader.
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Implement a customer loyalty program that encourages repeat business and long-term relationships.
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Celebrate generating new ideas as a practice, and celebrate the hell out of ones that succeed.
-
Ask yourself, your clients, and your team, “What else could we be doing?”
-
Listen to them when they respond.
Content Builds Interest, Interest Builds Community, Community Builds Revenue
TradingEducation.com plans to be the best site on the web for traders
of all levels to come learn about the financial markets and how to
trade them most successfully. They are an ad and sponsor driven site
focusing a significant amount of resources on bringing together free
content, creating a social networking platform, and offering the
education traders need that will spawn traffic of its own, through
members helping other members.
One smart way to generate that
traffic is their recently launched TraderEducation.com Today
newsletter. The newsletter allows them to actively promote their market
commentary in an easy to distribute manner. Their philosophy is based
on educational content which builds credibility with traders. They have
invested in strong content that has been developed for the website.
Giving
the readers the lead for a number of articles draws them to the site.
This generates ad impressions to sell, and most often introduces the
reader to additional content and to a worldwide network of traders like
themselves, generating more traffic, more loyalty, and more
advertisers, who are often also potential content contributors.
Advertisers are smart knowing their own contributions can drive
exposure for themselves, which compliments their ad program and
generates an intense circle of positive impact for the reader,
advertiser, contributor, and website community. This also allows for
easy viral marketing as people forward the newsletter or site link to
their friends and colleagues resulting in more people becoming
available to contribute. The contributors are then likely to refer to
their own content both on your site and theirs. This all generates
improved search rankings and can lead to more sales. An opportunity is
then created as people may want paid subscriptions to that contributor
or to get even more of their analysis and a greater use of their
services.
It’s the Network!
What
we are talking about here are just simple business principles designed
to help expand not only your company’s client base, but its network of
contacts, which can act as an extended sales force. As an entrepreneur,
by nature, you may be bustling with ideas, but may be having a hard
time executing them because of the day-to-day challenges behind running
a business. Just recognize that every day, week, month, and year you
can be making countless small, positive, new moves that can
collectively steamroll you to great success. It is just a matter of
finding time to work on your business, not just in your business -- sort of like you thought you would when you started.