Prioritise Your Business Growth Tasks To GROW

We’re ALREADY three quarters of the way through 2014.

I don’t know about you, but the years seem to be getting quicker and quicker?

Our lives are getting busier. There are infinitely more interruptions to our working day than ever before. Mobile phones and e-mail have become massive ‘Time Vampires’ sucking the time out of your day.

Never before has it been so, so important to manage your time more effectively AND more efficiently.

So let me ask you a few simple questions…

From the beginning of 2014 to the end of September, what have you accomplished in your business? How far have you moved forward? What have you changed to ensure 2014 is your best year yet?

It pains me to say this, but arguably 99% of business owners have done very little to change their business’s fortunes in 2014. I sincerely hope you are NOT one of them.

Reviewing your Business Growth

Remember, if you keep doing what you’ve been doing, you’ll get what you always got. 

Adhering to the key principle of this post will ensure you don’t fall into the same trap as many of your competitors and other business owners: “Simply apply at least one strategy  every  month  from  this post and your business will be unrecognisable in 12 months’ time.”

If time or, more importantly, a lack of time is your problem, or excuse, you have to do something right now to make time.

If you don’t plan to implement at least one strategy a month, you’ll get to the end of each year and wonder why your business isn’t a step closer to where you want it to be. It’s not rocket science.

Yes, we all have many other tasks to do each and every day. But prioritising has to be your mantra.

Nothing is more important than growing and managing your business. Therefore, you have to prioritise the tasks that move it forward. Simple.

Yet I wonder how effective you are at doing this?

Time will tell! 

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How Important is Goal Setting for you and your business!

Nothing else can have the impact that setting goals can have on your business and on your life.

Goal-setting isn’t difficult. So why do so few people do it? Ultimately, it’s because people don’t think goal-setting is that important. But show me a highly successful business owner and I’ll show you his or her goals and the plan to achieve them. EVERY SUCCESSFUL CLIENT WE HAVE USES GOAL-SETTING. Think about that for a moment… there’s a big clue in there!

Quite frankly, if you’re not setting goals, you’re not that serious about building your business and achieving startling results. Just by thinking carefully about your goals, writing them down and then creating a plan to achieve them, takes you to a completely different world than the one you’re probably operating in at the moment.

Setting Goals for you and your Business!

Think about it…

If you don’t know where you’re going, how will you get there? It’s like sailing a ship without a rudder. But setting in place a number of goals gives you direction. Of course, rarely do you get there in a straight line, but knowing exactly where you want to get to gives you a focus that you won’t have experienced ever  before. As   Zig   Ziglar   said, You’ll never make it as a wandering generality.” Defining specific, precise and clearly set goals gives you purpose, gives you motivation and gives you a path to follow. If you’re just meandering—all that you need to get you back on track is a defined set of goals.  So decide what they are and write them down. Next, because you know what your goals are, you can then put in place a plan to achieve them. 

Make no mistake, this is of course a critical part of achieving your goals. The often unspoken benefit of setting goals is how easy it makes your daily decision-making when running your business. Think about it… the actions and decisions you take each day have an effect on the journey you take.

So when you know where you’re going, making even the smallest decision in line with your goals makes the whole process so much easier AND ensures you get there quicker and without having to take too many wrong turns or detours.

Why Are You Making It So Hard?

One of the things we like to explore with clients is an area of their business that rarely gets much attention—but IS ALWAYS CLOSELY SCRUTINISED BY CUSTOMERS — and that’s the buying process. In other words… how can you make it EASIER for customers to buy from you?

In their excellent book “WAYMISH: Why Are You Making It So Hard For Me To Give You My Money?” authors Ray Considine and Ted Cohn identify several areas where businesses actually make it more difficult than easy to deal with them. And like virtually everything else we recommend to clients and other business owners, it’s very easy to put this right.

Now, before we look more closely at this, I strongly advise you to walk through your own buying process.

Doing this will immediately identify ‘sticking points’ in your sales process that you’ve so far probably taken for granted.

So here are the four main elements of WAYMISH that you need to focus on to make doing business as easy as possible for your customers…

W.A.Y.M.I.S.H. #1: Making Customers Wait

Having to wait for service is one of the biggest complaints in any business. It sends a message to customers that their time doesn’t count... and neither do they.

Don’t just think in terms of making people wait for meetings and appointments – this covers a multitude of areas…

• Answering the phone
• Answering the office door
• People in waiting areas
• Delivery of product
• Meetings/appointments/estimates/consultations, etc.
• Management of queues
• Parking spaces available
• Engaged tones when ringing into  the office

All these things irritate people, so getting them right will give you a significant edge over your competition. A good example of this is the leading supermarkets, who put on extra cashiers if more than two people are waiting in a queue!

W.A.Y.M.I.S.H. #2: Accessibility

How accessible is the business? That doesn’t necessarily mean your location. Here are the things you need to consider…

· Opening times: It still amazes me that many legal firms close for lunch – stupid. Make it easy for your customers.

Ask them when they would prefer the business to open. Change opening and closing times.

Having opening and closing times to suit customers rather than staff is what you must strive to achieve.

Clearly you don’t want to pander to your customers, but maybe staying open late one evening a week will be a massive hit with existing and new customers?

· Days Of Business: How many days a week is your business open? Even open on Sunday if you have to. Again, the business needs to be open on days your customers are most likely to visit. By the same token, there’s no point in opening on days that customers don’t buy.

· 24/7: Having a website makes the business open 24/7.

· Easy Access To Products/Services: The good retail stores understand this completely. They know that product placement can make huge differences to the sales of certain items.

For example, manufacturers will pay a premium to the top supermarkets for their products to be placed at waist/eye level on certain aisles, because they know product placement can mean the difference between making some sales and making large volumes of sales.

W.A.Y.M.I.S.H. #3: Payment Options

Have as many payment options as possible available to customers.

You really are restricting sales if the business only offers one or two payment options.

Allow customers to pay by cash, cheque, credit cards, bank transfer, online payments, etc.

Then also look closely at structuring payments so customers can spread their payments.  In   the current  economic climate, if you can restructure payment terms so customers pay in instalments, this can have an immediate  effect on your business and, of course, your cash flow.

The point is this—what can you do to make it easier?

Remember, it doesn’t matter what business you’re in—you can use these tactics. It also lends itself to monthly billing. For example, a restaurant can create a ‘Members Club’ whereby customers pay a monthly membership fee that entitles them to dine twice a month. And so on.

I urge you to look carefully at how you can incorporate this into your business. The easier you make it for your customers to buy from you – the more sales you’ll generate!

W.A.Y.M.I.S.H. #4: Making It Difficult To Contact The Business

Since the advent of the internet, this has risen to almost epidemic proportions.

How often do you find a product or service online and, before buying, you want to ask a few questions? Then, to your frustration and later disgust, you can’t find any way to get in contact with the supplier. It’s like they’ve hidden their phone number and they don’t want you to contact them.

This is a prime example of losing huge volumes of sales by not making it easy for people to get in contact with the business. Showcase your phone number and e-mail address on all your marketing pieces.

Don’t make it hard.

Make it unbelievably easy for people to reach the business.

Furthermore, I advise you to scrutinise your signage.

I visit a lot of businesses, especially our clients’ offices, retail outlets and restaurants.

I’ve often noticed, especially when visiting for the first time, how either insufficient signage or none at all makes it frustratingly hard to find them.

You must NEVER take this for granted.  Having clear signage not only makes it easy for people to find you, but also showcases and promotes your business. It’s the cheapest form of advertising and you should make maximum use of it.

I like to term all these elements as your ‘slippery slope’. Once someone is interested in your business and, figuratively speaking, they step onto your slope, you make it so slippery, so easy for them to travel down it, that they can’t get off – until they buy, that is! That’s what W.A.Y.M.I.S.H. is all about.

Now it’s your turn. Look at your own business and apply W.A.Y.M.I.S.H. to it. Do that and you’ll increase your sales significantly (without spending a penny)!  

To learn more about building your business better, Arrange Your FREE No-Obligation Meeting Phone us on 020 89310165

5 Simple Time Management Strategies To Increase Productivity & Accelerate Your Growth

One thing that constantly amazes me is how quickly each year passes. The days, weeks and months seem to roll into one, and before you know it 6 months has passed. You’re left wondering ‘where did the time go?’

Now that’s okay as long as you plan your year out. However, most people spend more time planning their holidays than planning THEIR YEAR AHEAD.

If you plan  -  you get more done, much more done. If you fail to plan and set goals it’s surprising how little you’ll accomplish.

All the high achievers and successful people in this world identify planning and goal-setting as a major contributor to their success.

Why? Because in addition to giving them a clear roadmap, it also helps them plan their daily/weekly/monthly schedules and with effective management of time it enables them to get a huge amount of work done.

For example, many people who have observed me will say ‘how does Steve get so much done?’ It’s true, I get more done in a day than most do in a week. It takes discipline, but there are some proven tricks and strategies I use to achieve very high levels of productivity and that’s what I want to talk to you about today.

Effective time management is something that isn’t often associated with growing a business, but effective management of your time is a very potent weapon (and conversely poor management of time can be a real business growth inhibitor).

The good news is that it’s not that difficult to massively improve your output if you follow my simple ‘5 Key Time Management Tips For High Performers’. Like everything I will discuss with you in this newsletter, none of these things are difficult or even earth-shattering, but they do make a significant difference as long as you start using them! So here are my key Time Management Tips…

 

Proven Strategies To Help You Build A Better Business

 

Implement these Time Management strategies & create more time to get stuff done!

1. Planning: 

Plan each month and then each week and then each day based on your goals. The key here is to establish what you need to do each month to accomplish your goals. Then break these tasks down to weekly and then daily tasks. You must always prioritise these ‘goal orientated tasks’ above ‘general tasks’. You’re probably thinking—this will take a lot of thought and time to plan out. You’re right. It does. That’s why so few people do it. That’s why so few people succeed in life. Do not underestimate the power of carrying out this first step—it is the key to your success.

 

2. Work During Your High Performance Times: 

You’ll get much more done in times when your body is alert and active. For many this time is 6am-1pm and 8pm-11pm (but you’ll know when you’re at your best). The worst times are generally after eating! It’s during these high performance times you should carry out your ‘Goal Orientated Tasks’. This one step alone will improve your output significantly—so make sure you only allocate this time to the important tasks! Use the less productive times for ‘general tasks’ and meetings. Here’s why…
 

(1) Since our minds are more active and fresh we can get more done.
(2) Concentrating on the task at hand is much easier.
(3) Our creative juices are flowing when our minds are more active and alert.

 

3. Block Out Your High Performance Times: 

Next make sure you block out your high performance times and under no circumstances let other things get in the way. Again this is key to your success. Treat your high performance times as compulsory appointments (in other words, you can’t cancel them). If you have a secretary or P.A. make sure they understand these ‘appointments’ are never to be broken and replaced with anything else.

 

4. Resist All Distractions:

During your high performance times turn off your mobile, take your office phone off the hook and don’t open your e-mail programme. Even one interruption can set you back an extra 15-30 minutes not including the time of the interruption. This does take a high level of discipline. In the early days you will find the temptation of leaving your phone or email programme on hard to resist, but I promise you, this will slash your effectiveness by at least 50%. Once you force yourself to reduce your distractions to zero, you’ll find it very liberating!

 

5. Tell Staff (and family):

You must explain to staff and family that unless it’s an emergency you are not to be disturbed during your high performance times. 

By adhering to these 5 key time management tips I guarantee you’ll get so much more done. This translates to greater income and more success—worthy outcomes don’t you think?

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