The First 100 Days

In the past week we have witnessed the historic inauguration of Barack Obama as the nations 44th President. As he takes office we hear in the news much about what will happen in his first 100 days of office. He takes the helm in a tumultuous time with a suffering economy, two wars and the historical partisan politics. So how could that relate to your business?

I talk a lot about creating a laser focused game plan for your business to survive and thrive in these difficult times and as you look at the parallels of President Obama's first 100 days in office I find it an interesting comparison. He must move quickly and establish himself as the new commander-in-chief and in addition position himself and his administration as a new way of doing business. Like President Obama your business faces unique challenges right now, with the economy going south like snowbirds from Minnesota you need to decide what fast action you are going to take to keep your business moving forward. Have you developed an action plan for your next 100 days?  How will you make changes in your business and change the way you do business to set the tone for the next 100 days?  These are questions you must answer and answer quickly in order to survive and thrive in these times. 

I would suggest you sit down and work on 5 things you can do and control in the next 100 days that sends a clear message to your mind and to your team that you are not going to sit on the sidelines doing business as usual and wait for this to blow over. Think about what you can do from a marketing perspective, from a sales perspective and from a service perspective that rocks the boat over how you usually do things.  And once you have done that write down the specifics of how you will do it and assign timelines and communicate it to your team. Then execute and measure the execution so that it happens. 

Just as President Obama wants to get his administration off to a fast start in it's first 100 days you should think about getting you business off to a fast start in 2009 and take control of your business and focus on success, not worrying about those things you can't control!

Tis the Season of Self Help!

About the first of December through the first of February it seems that my email inbox gets loaded with every self help guru out there trying to convince me to lose weight, stop smoking, make more money, have a better sex life, be a better writer and on and on.  Of course they are all preying on the fact that we will be making our New Year's resolutions and we will need their help to make those resolutions happen.  By the first of February they stop bugging us because they figure everyone has already fallen off the band wagon.

In the spirit of those self help gurus I would like to offer some simple ideas to you for making your business successful this year no matter what the economic environment and you won't have to buy anything, go to any seminars or click through 50 page sales letters!  Although there have been thousands of business books written about making your business successful there still remains only 3 ways to grow your business; more customers, more sales from existing customers and larger sales from existing customers. As you look at how you will survive and thrive in these challenging times it is absolutely essential that you look at these three areas to make sure that you are doing everything in your sales and marketing efforts to grow all three of these areas. Top business consultant Jay Abraham calls this the "power parthenon strategy" and by focusing on growing each of these areas you geometrically you can grow your business exponentially. 

Of course in order to do that you need a game plan or script so that it happens each and every time the exact way you want it to happen. Your first step might be to analyze your existing customers to look at their buying trends and figuring out how you can get more and larger sales from them. When I work with my clients I am constantly encouraging them to analyze why people buy from them and what else could they be buying from them.  Once you have looked at your existing customers or clients then you need to determining what you need to do to bring in new customers or clients, as you have heard many times before it is much easier to get more business from existing customers than it is to find new ones however you need to make sure that you are using a variety of different marketing tools to get new clients. You should have at least 5 different methods or tools that you are implementing to find and get new clients. And make sure one of those is an active referral system that lets your existing customers bring new ones in the door. 

As you look toward surviving and thriving in a challenging 2009 focus on these three ways to grow your business and you will have success!  And if you want to lose weight, stop smoking or anything else the self help gurus are selling I wish you luck!