Tips to Boost Business Growth in a Slow Economy
What are the issues that your business is facing as growth has slowed or come to an end? Below are some examples of the issues that could be impacting your growth:
- Marketing in today’s economy – Be more aggressive in your marketing efforts, but also keep your authentic voice and personality in how you market your business.
- Client relations – you may already have a small or large group of loyal clients, but are you continually keeping them interested with loyalty perks? What you are doing now to attract new clients and referrals?
- Customer satisfaction – have you asked your customers or clients how well your service has been lately? If not, then it’s time to consider providing a client or customer survey to measure the results of your services.
- Productivity – are you satisfied with your productivity? Can you see where improvements can be made in the management of your operations?
Some viable solutions that could increase business growth are:
1. Expand your marketing tactics; consider social media marketing. Social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter make it easy to market your business online. Once you set up your company profile, then it’s a matter of being consistent with your marketing efforts. Having your business marketed this way is very inexpensive and you are reaching a far more expanded audience than just your local area.
2. Evaluate customer satisfaction. Consider distributing a customer or client survey to measure the results of your services. Think about it…a customer or client will not always tell you how their service experience was. By providing them a survey or questionnaire, they can express their ideas or concerns and you can work on improving the areas that need attention in your service offering or offerings.
3. Take steps to improve or increase productivity. A good way to evaluate productivity is to create a log or journal of your activities each day for a couple of weeks. What are the tasks that are a huge waste of time? Eliminate the time-wasters and focus on the priority tasks first and foremost. This makes for a productive day for you and your employees.
I’d love to hear your stories of how you are meeting the challenge of a slow economy.
The 9 C’s: Help for Achieving Your Goals
Humans seem to be naturally goal oriented. We look to the future as the place where we can have more of what we want in our business and our lives. Goals are what help us bring the future into focus. By knowing where we’re going, it makes decisions a lot easier and produces better results.
In addition to determining where we are now versus where we want to be at some specified time in the future, I find it’s helpful to understand the goal achievement process in terms of sequential conceptual stages. This offers another way to look at what might otherwise seem straightforward and colorless.
The 9 elements that support goal achievement are Courage, Commitment, Clarity, Communication, Consistency, Confidence, Credibility, Completion and Celebration.
When you first consider the goals you want to work toward, you may not have confidence in your ability to reach them. So how can you reach that state of confidence? I find the best point of departure is to establish a level of courage.
Acting from a feeling of courage and commitment is the foundation upon which confidence is built. Confidence begets confidence. Credibility is confidence returned. It comes when others believe in you and your message. Completion finishes the process and sets the stage for gathering courage for your next goal. And Celebration acknowledges and reinforces it all.
Courage
— Aware of who you are and what value you offer.
Courage comes from knowing yourself, your assets and limitations, and what you can and want to do that others will value. Courage provides a feeling of strength. Aligning all your assets makes you feel strong and courageous. Supporting your limitations adds more strength. Feeling courageous prepares you to take action.
Commitment
— Making a commitment to a goal is the first step toward achieving it.
Using the courage you’ve gained from defining and aligning your assets, you must look deep in your heart for what puts the fire in your belly, what motivates you to stick with it regardless of the challenges faced. Commitment is what makes you unstoppable.
Clarity
— Key words and phrases that define your market value will prepare you to communicate.
Once you’ve defined your “value” and learned the language that will attract what you want, you’re ready to plan how you’ll get your message out. It’s good for people to know “you’re looking for 10 new clients and here’s what they might look like”. That’s clarity.
Communication
— Prepared to communicate your message consistently.
You probably won’t be able to achieve your goals alone. So you’ll want to elicit the help of others. Communication, in all forms, is how you share your message with your “universe”. Once you’re ready to take action, communication is the next step in the process.
In business, the strong leader communicates goals to everyone in his working network. Asking for input from your “team” in developing goals is always a good first step. Communication is best when it goes both ways.
Consistency
– Consistency begets confidence.
This means you’ve considered and aligned all the ways you communicate. Having your verbal, written and visual communication conveying your key message creates a powerful force toward your goal. Consistent communication attracts those who relate to your message. Putting it out into your universe clearly and consistently is the action that produces results.
Confidence
— Experience
The first step in gaining confidence is to experience something that provides a successful outcome. Taking the risk to try something new is scary. We feel uncomfortable and unsure about our actions until we try and succeed. It’s that experience, however, that allows us to break through to confidence.
— Practice
Courage gets you ready; confidence puts you into action. By choosing to practice and repeat the experience of feeling confident, your confidence will gain strength. That’s when your message becomes second nature and your confidence level continues to improve.
Credibility
— Others have confidence in you
When your confidence is strong you encourage others to have confidence in you. As others perceive your integrity, they will come to trust in you and believe you can and will meet expectations. That’s when you gain credibility. People will want to do business with you. You’ll also be able to engage others to help you reach your goal.
Completion
— Reaching goals.
This is what it’s all about. Whether you’re selling and providing products, services or both, you’ve got goals. Looking at goal achievement from the perspective of the 8 C’s you can see how it is a cycle that builds on itself over time. The more goals you achieve, the easier it will become.
Understanding and applying these concepts is particularly helpful for business development goals. Your reputation, your brand image and your goal outcomes will benefit from your applying them.
Celebration
– Acknowledge your win.
Give credit where it’s due. Feel the joy, strength and freedom of taking the lead and plan to do it again. Reward yourself with a celebration; a party, an extra holiday, whatever makes you feel good about your accomplishment.
And there’s one more C that can help you accomplish your goals…and that’s Coach. As your coach I will help you integrate these elements into your actions and provide the structure and guidance to keep you on course toward your goals. I’ll also cheer you on and help you celebrate your successes.
The Secret Ingredient – YOU
Want to create a strong brand, add to the sustainability of your business, increase your confidence and really enjoy being an entrepreneur? Just add the secret ingredient. Billion dollar businesses have been built on the secret ingredient.
In your business the secret ingredient is “YOU” and your personal assets. It’s up to you to know who you are: your strengths, your motivators, your values, and to apply those liberally to how you conduct and present your business. A good part of what attracts customers and clients is you.
Early in life you may have been discouraged from using your personal assets by well-meaning family, friends, teachers and others. It is, however, these qualities that have the strongest potential to attract what will make you successful and happy in your business and your life.
Marcus Buckingham, noted author and speaker on the subject has shown that “people will be dramatically more effective, successful and fulfilled when they play to their strongest skills rather than attempting to improve their weaknesses”.
Think back to when you were a child. I’ll bet there are things you can remember having fun doing or that were important to you then that somehow got lost in the growing up process. Chances are they’re still there, but have been forced underground because you wanted to “fit in” and be accepted as one of the group – or there was no obvious way to use them at the time.
The wonderful thing is you have choices all the time. With every choice comes the resulting impact on your universe. Each option will bring a different set of results. If you are conscious of who you are – your strengths, passions, talents, etc., you can make choices that will allow you to benefit from these assets.
I believe we use only a small part of our brain power to a large extent because we are out of alignment with our innate nature and strengths. It’s an exercise in basic physics. We’re designed to receive our awareness energy from many sources. If our basic receptors are out of alignment, some of that energy will be deflected as it enters our multiple consciousness levels, thereby substantially reducing the energy we can use.
By realigning ourselves with our core strengths we receive the full force of that energy. This means we gain maximum awareness from our environment. We become stronger, more intuitive and express ourselves with more passion and confidence.
So how do we realign ourselves to benefit most from who we are?
It’s an exploratory process that can be accelerated through the use of an outside person; a friend, a family member or a coach – someone who can help sort out the truth from the fiction we’ve created about ourselves.
When I work with a new client, the first assignment focuses on identifying personal assets. This brings to the surface many personal facets that had previously been forgotten. A focused review of their lives gives major clues about their strengths, values, skills, passions and talents.
A rediscovered musical talent, a love of animals, the ability to create solitude and peace in a hectic environment are all part of the individual truths that have been used to redefine and redirect several of my clients’ lives and businesses.
Once you acknowledge and claim who you really are, you have the foundation upon which to build your relationships, your business and your personal satisfaction. You will more easily be able to attract what you need to realize the dreams you may have long ago forgotten.
When your own image is clearly implanted in your mind it becomes your personal brand and your secret ingredient for business success.
What’s your secret ingredient?
If you’d like to work on defining and refining your own secret ingredient, go to the Contact page and send me a note. We’ll schedule a time to talk.