1. 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.
2. 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?
3. 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.
4. 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.

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.

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.

- You have specific goals for next year that you’ve defined, quantified and are prepared to carry out a written plan of action.

- You have mental goals that you think are going to take you in the direction you want to go, but you have not been taking consistent action toward.

- You know you should set goals and be working toward them, but you’re not really clear about what you want to accomplish or even what’s realistic.

If either of the last two describes you, I predict you could be in for disappointment come the end of next year. What I’ve learned in coaching business owners is that goal achievement is something everyone knows about and wants, but frequently are at a loss about how to attain. Goal setting and achievement is a process with a beginning and end point with specific interim steps in between.

The game of football offers a good analogy; always seeking the end goal, but setting and achieving short term yardage goals that eventually add up to a touchdown.

Start with the most abstract aspect — the Vision you hold for your business. If you were to close your eyes and envision what your business would look like when it’s mature, what would you see? If you haven’t done this in a while, go ahead, close your eyes and take a look. Consider the scope of your business, what products or services would be included? Who would be your target market? What would your surroundings look like? Where might you be located? What revenues and profits would you be generating? What benchmarks would you consider appropriate to acknowledge you’d realized your Vision? These become your ultimate Long Term Goals.

Make as many observations as possible about what your mature business might look like. If you can’t get the picture to come into clear focus, this is the time to call upon your coach to help you clarify it. The clearer you can get, the easier it will be to stay focused on it once you have a plan of action.

The Vision for your business is the basis for everything else you do. Think about why your business exists – beyond providing you a job and an income. Whom does it serve? How is it different from competitors? How are customers or clients better for having or using what you sell? Your answer becomes your Mission.

Greg Kurzynski’s, mission for Air Messenger in Denver is to provide prompt, cost effective transport of people and time-sensitive products across the deserts and mountains of the Southwest. “When I get caught up in the daily grind of running my business, it helps to remember why I’m doing this”, he says.

Think about how long it might realistically take to realize your vision. Three years, five, eight, ten? With a ten year timeframe use your total revenue as a guide for milestones along the way. A $15 million business in ten years means you’ll need to be well along the way at five years, maybe $6 or 7 million. So what will it take to reach that in five years? And what about three years from now and then one year?

Mark Dimitri’s company provides professional video editing services and equipment. He serves a varied media base. After 13 years in business he has a Vision of financial freedom that will allow him to devote time to other business ventures, hobbies and community service. In 5 years Mark would like to be debt free and have a net worth of $5 million. He believes $5 million net worth will be adequate to provide him the level of financial freedom he “envisions”. So these can be called his Long Term Goals.

It’s best to quantify a goal whenever possible. Short Term Goals are really benchmarks designed to show where you are on the continuum toward your long term goal and offer a valuable opportunity to make adjustments based on results.

Mark’s assessment revealed he currently owes $120,000 and is worth about $500,000. The starting point and end point are the gap that must be filled over the allocated time (5 years). He believes he can reduce his debt to $60,000 in one year and can add another $500,000 to his net worth. In two years he believes he can be debt free and see his net worth at $2,000,000. He’s projecting interim targets of $3,000,000 and $4,000,000.

If we plotted this on an annual basis it would look like the following:

Current Debt                           $ 120,000

Current Net Worth                      500,000

One Year Debt                             60,000 (Short Term Goal)

One Year Net Worth                1,000.000 (Short Term Goal)

Two Year Debt                                     0 (Interim Goal)

Two Year Net Worth                2,000,000 (Interim Goal)

Three Year Net Worth            3,000,000 (Interim Goal)

Four Year Net Worth              4,000,000 (Interim Goal)

Five Year Net Worth             $ 5,000,000 (Long Term Goal)

Just as in football, the most active strategy and planning takes place in the immediate timeframe. Long Term Goals are achieved by meeting a series of Short Term Goals.

One to two years is a reasonable timeframe to consider total revenue, total profit, market share, market position, current challenges that need to be addressed, new products/services, location and facility. This is considered short term goal setting and planning.

Danielle McGivern, owner of Cream Puff Bakeries in San Diego, says, “This year’s goal is to become more financially educated in my business operations, which will enable me to make proactive, instead of reactive, business decisions. I’d like to reach a million in sales within the next 2 years and be able to afford better incentives, such as health benefits, for my employees.”

To accomplish this she’s delegating some of her work so she’ll have more time to spend on the financial aspect of the business. And she’s using her business coach to help her understand and use her financial information and stay focused on her goals.

An easy way to approach getting from goal setting to action is to break short term (annual) goals down into quarterly goals. Set your plans to achieve this quarter’s goals, take the actions planned and monitor results monthly. Adjust as needed to stay on course toward your quarterly goals.

Determine tasks that will lead to your goals. Transfer these tasks to your weekly and then daily planner. Most Important – Allocate time on your calendar to carry out these key tasks. Give them priority. Remember, these are the activities leading toward your goals – and eventually your Vision.

To the extent that you can achieve your Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly and Annual Goals, you’ll be able to realize your Vision. I’ve created a specific tool to help you stay on track toward your goals on a weekly basis. It’s called the Goal Tracking Worksheet, and you can download it now with complete instructions on how to use it. It’s a steal at $37, but use code GTW10 and it’s yours for $27 till the end of the month. My clients swear by it.

If you’re not happy with what you’re achieving, this can be a small investment with a huge ROI. Download it now.

I’m one of the 16 small business experts and I’ll be speaking on the topic, “The Leader Mindset: What is it and How do I get it?”. Some of the other topics are:

Build a Successful Referral Engine

Eight Insider Marketing Secrets

Client Retention Strategies

Top Selling Tips for a Challenging Economy

Organize With Confidence

Getting Started With Social Media

and much, much more.

You can access all 16 presentations during the week of Nov. 2 – 6 without charge. Click here to register.

It’s a virtual event, conducted over the web.  (no makeup, no shoes required) and it runs from Nov. 2 – 6th. My topic is “The Leader Mindset: What it is and How to Get it”, which will be aired on Monday, Nov. 2nd from 9 a.m. – 9 p.m. Once you register you’ll have access to the entire series. Click here for the full line-up and to register.

And, the best part…  there’s no cost to attend!

Although the content is directed to business women, they tell me no one will be checking ID’s at the (virtual) door, so the men out there can listen in on the strategies that will be shared.

If you have all the business you want, no need for you to register.  If you don’t, you’ll want to register to find better ways to market, sell and propel your business to where you’d like to be.

By attending this virtual tele-summit, you’ll get loads of innovative ideas and strategies for generating new business – all from the comfort of your home or office.

Check it out for yourself.  I know you’ll agree with me.

This is a not-to-miss event!

Register now!

See you there.