10 Powerful Bussiens
Practice Uniq Idea Self .
It’s Lonely at the Top.
🅳🅴🅲🅸🆂🅸🅾🅽 🅼🅰🅺🅸🅽🅶 🅰🅽🅳 🆃🅷🅴 🅿🅰🆁🅰🅳🅾🆇 🅾🅵 🅲🅷🅾🅸🅲🅴.
Are You Ready ?
If you hate your job,but don’t know how to replace the income you will
find plenty of ideas practice��• - for many different genres and skill sets.
Start by writing out what your goals are:
- What level of income are you looking for ?
- Part-time/full-time ?
- How much time can you invest each week ?
- What skills do you need to learn ?
- How will you learn them ? And how long will it take you ?
- Is a financial investment required ?
- If so how much and how will you
generate that start-up fund ?
- Lay out a time line.
Don’t worry if you aren’t sure,just try your best and
put something on paper. You can always adjust along the way.
🅻🅸🅵🅴🆂🆃🆈🅻🅴 🅱🆁🅰🅽🅳🆂.
In practice
• Provide sponsorship deals, to show you are aligned with the culture you wish your brand to embody.
• Placement of marketing is vital. Make your brand’s presence known at appropri ate festivals, tournaments meetings,parties,and cultur- al hotspots.
• Sell a range of products involved with the culture this will broaden your appe al and increase credibility.
• Subcultures are a good target for lifestyle brands,as they often feel a strong need to assert their group identity.
• Elite cultures are also suited to lifestyle brands.
• One factor is often overlooked when creating a lifestyle brand:
ensure your product offer ing is compatible with the lifestyle you are promoting.
If you want to market your organization as an elite sporting brand,remember to actually sell quality sporting equipment that matches the needs and perceptions of the target market.
🅱🆄🆂🅸🅽🅴🆂🆁🅴🅳🅴🆂🅿🆁🅾🅲🅴🆂.
• Be clear about what is core and what is context.
• Recognize that some of these activities might be dynamic,moving between categories.
• Be prepared to overcome possible resistance to out sourcing initiatives and the rearranging of managerial responsibility.
• Delegate core activities from top management to middle management,as they will have a better view of market trends.
By delegating responsibility to different parties,you can ensure that no level within the organization becomes overwhelmed.
• Encourage top-level support to outsourcing and managing context activities.
Selfyr.
I’ve also included some thought-provoking ideas on deal-ing at a higher, less stressful level, and why it’s so important to tell the truth and have more fun,despite the incredible demands on your time.
🅲🆁🅾🆂🆂🆄🅿-🆂🅴🅻🅻🅸🅽🅶
In practice.
• Ensure the profi t from the extra items covers the cost of the time spent selling them.
• Educate sales staff 2ensure they have a full under standing of the products they are offering.
• Plan which products to offer to which customers.
• As with any sale,integrity and honesty (even straight forward openness) usually work best.
• Only attempt to sell products that are clearly linked to a specific purchase the customer has made.
This ensures the marketing pitch is more appropriate and less opportunistic.
Learn from the Best way.
If you want to greatly speed up the process,learn from an entrepreneur in your field w ho has been very successful. That’s the short cut! Rather than re- inventing the wheel, trying things that won’t work and spending months and years finding a way that does works,simply follow the lead of someone who has already figured it all out.
Branding.
The planning and research phase also includes finding a profitable sub niche and narrowing down your specific audience.
You will have much greater success in a very specialized sub niche that you master.
Where you eventually be come the go-to person for that niche -rather than being a jack of all trades.
People love to hire specialists-and buy specialty products-so spend time on researching that part thoroughly.
It will be one of the most important decisions in your business and will have great influence over.
🅱🆄🆂🅸🅽🅴🆂🆂🆃🅾🅱🆄🆂🅸 🅽🅴🆂.
In practice.
To achieve success in busine ss marketing, it is useful to understand how its methods differ from those of traditio nal consumer marketing:
• With b2b marketing,you are likely to be much more effective at every stage of the sale if you understand, in detail,yourcustomers’priorities,strategy, and business.
• Whereas consumer market ing favors mass media to appeal to large target demo graphics,business marketing relies on smaller,more direct channels of distribution to reach a specific audience.
• A higher level of specialist industry knowledge is required when orchestrating a business marketing campaign, to target and appeal to the individual needs of a niche market.
• Personal and long-term client relationships are of particular signifi cance when seeking to maintain lucrative supplier contracts—ongoing customer service should be emphasized.
Yes or No ?
The secret to setting dead lines is to do it in a very calm, professio nal, and nonconfrontational manner.
Be very clear.
Tell them that you truly want their business,but you believe a “no”is as important as a “yes.” Try it.
I guarantee it will change your life, and you’ll never go back to waiting endlessly in limbo for an answer.
DEVELOPING EMPLOYEE
ENGAGEMENT-
In practice
To succeed,it is best to work with a business that posses ses experience of administ ering and delivering Gallup’s Q12 and can advise on the key issues. The questions below will help you focus on the challen ge of increasing engagement .
Consider them either for you or for your team, and rate your response to each question on a scale of 1 (low) to 5 (high).
BRANDING-
In practice.
• Understand how the brand will be used.
• Is it to provide reassuran ce,to enable a premium price,or to create a desire to buy ? Understand what benefi ts the brand offers customers, and how reliable and trustworthy it is.
• Know what the brand means to customers, then deepen this appeal.
Ensure the tone of marketing is commensurate with the brand values and target market.
• Identify how the brand differentiates a product from competitors,to decide which attributes to emphasize.
• Conduct an audit of the brand to determine how strong it appears 2 customers. This will reveal how the brand can be used in new markets.
• Ensure there is suffi cient investment in the brand,and
discover how the brand can be strengthened.
This active brand managem ent will build customer value and loyalty.
EMPOWERMENT-
In practice.
• Understand what you mean by empowerment and what you want to achieve.
• Identify barriers to empowerment and how they can be overcome.
• Communicate your ideas and win support.
• Establish and agree the boundaries,and be prepared to have these boundaries tested.
• Ensure that your people have the necessary skills,resources,and attitudes to take control.
• Agree objectives and performance measures.
Empowerment is not about dumping work on people and leaving them:it requires support and agreement.
• Provide support,monitor developments,and iron out any diffi culties, particularly in the early days, but make sure that you do not undermine the process.
• Try to secure early wins and successes that highlight the value of the process.
Run a Referral Business.
For freelancing, you could also outsource most of the work and run a referral service,instead of being the hamster in the wheel.
You land the gigs,then pass them on to other freelancers at a slightly lesser rate and every body wins.
You still supervise and approve the final results,and you are the main contact for the client, but you don’t actually do the work.
Instead,you focus on marketing and landing ever more gigs,constantly increa sing your earnings while working less.
Just a thought…..
DIRECT SELLING-
In practice.
Adopt a singular focus on the customer by following four principles.
1.Finding the most effi cient path to the customer.
This means avoid inginter mediaries that add confusio n and cost. Also organize your business around customers who share similar needs...!
2.Making things easy-and being accountable.
Customers want fast, streamlined access to your products: give them this, and give them someone who will take responsibility for helping them.
3.Building to order—this means understanding what your customers want,and delivering exactly this.
The result is less cost for you,and potentially more business from your client.
4.Being a low-cost leader. By focusing on what customers want,your business is able to reduce expensive inventory costs and to streamline your supply chain. The result is improved customer service,a better price for the custom er,and higher margins for you.
SUPPORT CHALLENGE GROUPS-
In practice.
• Gather together a group of colleagues, explain the concept (to provide support and challenge each other’s thinking),and arrange to meet regularly.
• One person keeps time—a speaker should take no more than ten minutes to explain their challenge.
• Ensure that the speaker is heard in silence, without interruption.
• Take it in turns to ask questions and comment.
A questioning approach is particularly effective.
• Move on to the next individual and repeat the process.
BUILDING BUSINESS
RELATIONSHIPS-
In practice.
How can you develop trusted business relationships? Most of us are taught the answer when we are children; we just seem to forget the essentials as we grow older.
Several simple rules can help you get started Display genuine warmth.
Be supportive,open,positive empathic,constructive, and engaging—not simply friendly.
• Be confident. Be challenging,in control,confi dent,strong,authoritative,and direct.
• Display assertive behavior. Combine appropriate levels of challenge and support.
• Listen. Be open and genuine, and listen in a way that seeks mutual benefi t.
• Build trust. Be diligent and consistent, acting with integrity and sincerity:
– Deliver what you say you will and treat others as you would wish to be treated.
– Understand who you are dealing with; take time to fi nd out how others work and what motivates them.
– Understand and trust yourself. Self-trust is essential to creating positive relationships.
– Show commitment and value reciprocal relation ships. Trust requires commitment, personal responsibility, and vigilance.
– Consider why people should (or do) respect you.
Understand your own motivation and objectives.
– Remember that trust is time-sensitive and fragile—it takes time and attention to develop.
– Be clear and honest—without hidden agendas.
– Show your passion.
Knowledge is Power.
This eternal truth very much applies to entrepreneurship and starting a business.
It’s about working smart vs. working endless hours fighting windmills and getting nowhere.
RESOURCE BUILDING-
In practice.
Three basic issues need to be addressed: why performance is following its current path,where current policies and strategy will lead,and how the future can be altered for the better.
Several steps .will help address these issues:
1.Identify resources and understand how they behave.
You do not have to possess a resource for it to be useful.
Consider the following questions:
– What are the most signifi cant resources in your organization ?
– How many of these resources do you have ?
– How do they interact and affect each other ?
In particular, how do they affect the quantity and quality of other resources ?
2.Consider the impact that people have on this system:
– Do you use people to build, develop, retain, and use resources ?
– Do you ensure that people enhance the quality of your resources ?
3.Understand how resources affect performance.
4.Develop new resources in your business.
In this way, larger corporat ions gain the benefi t of smaller groups that are often closer,more energetic,entrep reneurial,supportive, and better.
Researching an incubator.
BEFORE YOU MOVE into an incubator, use this checklist to collect important in formation.
Be sure to visit the incuba-tor a few times to speak with current tenants.
Ask them to speak candidly and call them back if the director or staff person refuses to let you speak with them privately.
Don’t move in until you get thorough answers to the following questions:
◆ How long has the in cubator been in operation ?
◆ What kinds of businesses have occupied space in the incu-bator ?
◆ How long do most busin esses stay ?
◆ What are some of the incubator’s success stories ?
◆ What specific services and support does the incubator offer tenants ?
◆ Does the incubator intend to take equity in the busines ses it houses ?
◆ What financial resources are available to tenants?
Access to loans ?
Introductions to private in vestors?
◆ Are there any hidden fees or charges?
◆ How long do you have to stay ?
The Seven New Realities Specifically,there are seven new realities, or facts,that you must incorporate into your thinking and your actions to achieve the kind of sales results and income that are truly possible for you.
Today, more than ever before:
1. There are more sellers than buyers in every field.
2. Selling is more complex.
3. Selling requires greater focus and clarity.
4. Selling requires greater preparation.
5. Customers are more dema nding.
6. Sales success requires multiple calls.
7. Closing the sale is harder.
Selling in the Markets of Today and Tomorrow.
The first step is to under stand the most important factors that determine sales success or failure in today’s market. It seems that in every market,selling every product and service,in every indus-try,there are sales people who continue to grow and prosper in sales,earning a wonderful living for them selves and providing wellfor their families.
It’s Lonely at the Top
As a business owner, you often make decisions in a vacuum. Most of the time you won’t have immediate peers who understand your business and can also offer you good, dispassionate advice. Probably you have to go it alone, and that can be pretty tough.
You and your business become targets for an army of job-seekers, government regulators,charities,competitors, consul-tants,salespeople, insurance brokers,and so forth. All these people have their own goals and objec tives,which may or may not coincide with yours.
As a matter of survival,you must become skeptical about what people claim they can do for you or your business.
This isn’t necessarily either
bad or good,it’s just the way things are.
You are the only one who can decide what is good for your business.
You also have to manage relations with your three primary sources of business success: customers, supplie rs,and employees.
Again,each person in these groups has her own set of goals and objectives.
Your job is to reconcile all those competing interests so that your business prospers.
Incidentally,I hope this doesn’t read like a night mare to you,because it isn’t a night-mare.
In fact,I think it’s one of the best parts about being in business for yourself.
As a business owner,you decide the goals and the steps to reach them.
The compar-ison is similar to the difference between
riding in the back seat of a car and driving the car.
If you’re like me,you’re a lot. more comfortable when.
you’re driving the car.
@$elfyr.
0 Comments