Business Article: Seven keys business success at the Next Level

Take charge

Most people accept mediocrity in their lives and their businesses and would rather complain about their circumstances than take charge and doing something about it. In this way, we operate as victims.

Most people's businesses are a reflection of themselves. Our attitudes will manifest in reality. Have you seen someone going around complaining, "My useless employees are a bunch of losers. They're never happy, always complaining." Take a look in the mirror!

We get what we project. We also get what we are content to accommodate. If you want your business to change, the first change must be in your own mind.

It won't get better by complaint. It will start to change when you start to change.

Change your mind about what you will tolerate in yourself first, then you can expect more from your people and your business. If you don't like something, stop framing it in negative terms.

Here's the law of attraction for you. If you go around always thinking of what you don't want, guess what you get?

On the other hand, if you start framing your thinking positively, you will soon start saying what you do want your business to be like. You never know, that might inspire some of your people to think, "Yeah. That's what I want this business to be like too." Decide you are not a victim, decide what you want your business to be like, and then take charge and instigate change.

Know where you are going

Here's a quote from the seminar. "You either succeed by design or you fail by default." That's another way of saying that unless you decide what you want your business to be and plan how to get it there, you will simply drift into mediocrity.

That's what happens to 90% of businesses - the ones that don't plan their future. Most people want the resources to be there before they move forward.

Successful people don't wait for the resources to become available. Instead, they become resourceful and change their situation. Most business owners are trapped in what they know and don't take time to think about what they don't know they don't know.

Take a quick check and see if that's you. Don't be content to sit around and think that you are stuck with the problems that plague your business and your industry. If you are stuck in what you know, you will never come up with a solution. However, if you get resourceful, you will either get creative or use someone else's creativity to discover a way to do things that could never be done - in the normal thinking, anyway.

Part of the planning process involves stopping to assess the current limitations and issues that hold you and your business back. This is not negative thinking. It's called a reality check.

Taking the time to identify and write down the issues and to put these in perspective of where you want your business to go allows you to become resourceful and creative in solving the problems. However, most business owners never do this. They just wish things were better and then get stuck at the same level. That's negativity. Don't be like that. Be positive.

Decide where you want to go and then make a plan to get there.

Spread the word

I'm still surprised that most business owners know next to nothing about marketing and don't do anything to learn more.

I wish you'd all been to the seminar I went to. When you realise what marketing can achieve you start to think about your business at the next level. Most businesses do nothing to present themselves as any different to any other business in their industry.

Just look in the Yellow Pages. You will see all the businesses in each category saying almost the same things. And that's virtually all about what their name is, what they do and where to contact them. There is nothing about most businesses that jumps out and says, "Pick Me!"

Even when businesses have unique products and better quality or superiority over their competitors, they rarely spread the word and tell any one. Then they get disappointed that their customers are only interested in getting the lowest price.

Think about what you have done or are currently doing to tell your customers why your business is the only one they should think about when it comes to getting your products or service and what they would be missing out on by going somewhere else

Is your message so compelling they are forced to take action to find out more? What's your story? Stories are the most persuasive communication mechanism known to man.

If you want to convince your customers and your competitors' customers to come to you and keep coming back, make sure you develop a compelling story that persuades people that your offering is the only real option and that any other choice is a far distant compromise sure to leave them dissatisfied.

Then make sure you get out there and spread the word.

Do what you do so well they'll come back and bring their friends

Another quote I heard recently. "Satisfied customers buy from you. Delighted customers sell for you."

If you want your customers raving positively about how great you are - be great!

Most companies are complacent when it comes to delighting their customers. They try to get it right and tend to be happy if they get close to having good quality products and services most of the time. This attitude will keep you in mediocrity.

Do you spend enough time talking to customers to really understand what they want and what it would take to continuously delight them. Do you think it might be worth the effort to find out and do it?

Most businesses try to make sales instead of trying to build relationships with loyal customers. It's crazy to spend all that time and effort to seduce customers and convince them to spend their money with you, just to do it once.

Some people get a kick out of living that way, but most successful people understand that you need to spend time nurturing someone, treating them as if they are your one-and-only and developing increasing intimacy, to have a really committed, successful, mutually rewarding relationship.

Do your customers deserve any less? It up to you, but the difference will show up in your bank account.

You create trust, an important component of keeping your customers, through consistency and frequency. Consistency in businesss comes through systemisation.

When things are done systematically you get the same result time after time. That builds trust. Doing that with repetition and frequency builds delight and strengthens the bonds of loyalty.

Don't experiment on your customers by letting your people do things that haven't been tested and systemised. Make sure you create systems in your business that give a constistent result. You can't affort the damage created in a relationship by broken promises and inconsistency and you can't afford it in your business.

Train your people to do it better than you

Successful companies drive the achievement of excellence with relentless compulsion and pig-headed discipline.

Most companies are strictly in amateur territory when it comes to striving for excellence. Like the weekend golf hacker, they might hit a few balls off the practice tees before going out to play a round.

What makes Tiger Woods different? When he gets to the tees to play the big tournaments, he has been in practice and hit a few thousand practice shots. How well do you think that relentless pursuit of excellence trains the muscles and develops the hand-eye coordination? That's professionalism. Think about it.

Are you playing at your business like a professional or an amateur? Do want your people to approach their work each day as if they were playing at the majors, or like a weekend hacker?

It's up to you, but if you want to consistently delight customers, you need to ensure your people are trained to be the best. Instead of training people enough to be adequate, how much difference would it make if they excelled in every way? And don't suggest to me that I haven't seen the people that you have working for you.

Go back to point one above. Don't demand that your people excel. You will create resistance. But when you demand excellence from yourself, then expect excellence from others, you will create motivation and inspiration.

Keep the score

How can you get to the next level if you don't care about the score? Have you ever played a computer game, trying to get your name on the high score table? It may just be meaningless fun, but it motivates you to keep improving your score.

How would it be if you created that environment in your business? If you measure the performance of your people and your business units, products, teams, etc. you can determine your own high score table and create a motivational environment where everyone is trying to beat their old score every time they go to work.

What's it like at your place? Do your people approach their daily tasks trying to get their best score, or are they just happy to turn up and get through the day, without too much concern about their results? What sort of difference would it make to your business results if they operated like the first category? And what sort of fun work environment would that create?

Celebrate your victories

Celebrations are a result of creating the business you want and achieving the results you want.

For most small and medium business owners, those goals are typically around creating a business that delivers the income and lifestyle opportunities that wealth and self-employment can achieve.

How is it then that so many business owners feel like slaves to their business, even if they achieve a reasonable income from it?

Many don't even get this far. The reasons are lack of attention to what I have said about the first 6 keys. If you get those right, the 7th key is automatically received.

Without the first 6 elements falling into place however, number 7 is always out of reach.

Conclusion

For many business owners, taking their business to the next level is a pipe dream.

They don't really give it much thought, because they are frequently just battling to survive at the current level.

But getting to the next level is not that difficult if you get the formula right. The process starts first in your own mind; in your attitudes and your thinking. When you think right, you can then take appropriate action to make the changes. You may feel trapped in your business, seemingly locked into the current level.

If you aren't willing to put up with staying in that place, we have shown you the keys break you free of the constraints that keep you there and the methods to take your business to the next level.

Yes, it can be difficult to break through the sound barrier in your business, but once you do, the stress comes off and your business becomes supersonic.

© 2007 Greg Roworth - Progressive Business Solutions Limited