How’s business?
Did you make any New Year resolutions about improving your business? If so, how are you doing with achieving your business goals? On target? Ahead or behind?
For many CEOs, presidents and business owners, last year wasn’t a great business year. And even if it was a great business year in revenue, there were many challenges and hurdles throughout the year. The current business atmosphere is likely to continue and include glimpses of optimism; but the economy still has a long recovery road.
So how can you turnaround your business for more profit and success? How can you turn a bad, even a mediocre, business year into a good business year?
Ask yourself these questions:
1) What made you successful in the past?
2) What has kept you from reaching the success that you’ve enjoyed over the years?
3) What’s holding you back?
4) Are you open to doing what’s necessary to turn your business around?
Everyone will tell you how everything has changed over the past few years. Much has changed. What worked in the past doesn’t necessarily work now.
But changes in business shouldn’t keep you from success and having a good business year.
Your clients or customers still have the same basic needs they always did.
Here’s the next question:
5) What do your customers or clients need from you and your company?
There is always a lot of talk about building relationships in business. Relationships are important. But when it comes down to it people buy from you because you have convinced them that you’re going to do something that will help them further their business, make more profits, reduce stress and a host of other reasons.
So to make this year the best year ever takes a lot of thinking about how you are going to plan your strategy to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative in your business. This applies to every aspect of your business. Such as your product or service, how well your employees are trained, your marketing materials and anything else that affects your business on a daily basis.
Next question:
6) How you are going to improve your leadership skills to lead your business to greater profit and success?
You may ask me: My business was mediocre, at best, last year, what do I do about it?
Let’s take for example the subject of sales. So you say, business was off because sales were off.
Then I’ll ask you: Why? You may say: I don’t know. Then I’ll ask you: Why don’t you know?
Saying ‘I don’t know’ is not the answer.
The economy has had an effect on all of us. But there are still 130 million employed people so there is an economy.
Next question:
7) Why aren’t you doing business?
Dig deeper to find the answer.
Is it the prospecting? Is it the product? Is it the sales approach? Is it not qualifying prospects? Is it not knowing how to ask for the sale or contract? Is it something else?
The question is: Why? – Why? – Why?
If you keep asking yourself the why question, you’ll discover where your weakness is. You will know where in your company to make your business stronger.
If you can’t find the answer, talk with other business people or find the expert that will help you determine what steps you need to take to turn things around.
Determine the priorities of what you need to take care of. You may be in a position of focusing on one or you may have to focus on all at the same time.
It’s hard to know where the most logical place to start is. Every business is different. One could say it’s sales, but is it really? Your sales could be fine but maybe it’s your prospecting. Your prospecting could be fine but maybe you have terrible customer service and your company is not delivering what your sales people are promising. Or maybe it’s your product line or pricing.
That’s why you need to keep asking: Why? – Why? – Why? until you find the solutions you need.
Things are not always as they seem to be.
You need to keep questioning till you get to the root of the problem. Most business people fail because they never understood what their real problem was.
Until you understand what the real business problem is, you can’t really solve it.
There is a 1-2-3 step to take but you need to determine what that 1-2-3 step is.s not going to be the same for every company.
There is a saying in the computer world “garbage in, garbage out”. That means that if you are not entering the right information into your computer, smart phone or IPad, then what you’ll get out of it is the wrong information.
Same in business. If you haven’t analyzed the problem and you’re just taking a stab in the dark at it you won’t find the right business solution.
Clear thinking along with a well thought out action plan is what makes business people succeed. It’s what can turnaround your business for success and having a good business year.
Howard Lewinter talks about business success every Wednesday at 11 AM/EST on Blog Talk Radio – Talk Business With Howard. This week Howard discusses, Turnaround Your Business For Success. Click here for link to show page and to listen to show.
If you like today’s blog post, you may also like Howard’s blog post with 5 Tips To Turn A Bad Business Day Into A Good Business Day. Click here to read the post.