The Fifteen Keys to
Growing Your Business
in an Uncertain
Economy
Tim Connor, CSP
Far too many businesses
have unnecessarily failed during the past few years and many more will follow
in their footsteps. Will your business
be one of them? It doesn’t matter if you are a start-up or have been in
business for over thirty years. It
doesn’t matter if you have sales under one million or over five hundred
million. And it doesn’t matter whether
you own your market or have more competitors than you can count. None of these will determine your
sustainability during the coming years.
Regardless of your current or
past positive or negative circumstances or business environment you can fail or
prosper in the future and there are fifteen areas you should consider that will
have the greatest impact on your future success. I believe that how organizations address the
following areas will determine whether they become a casualty or a continued
market winner and influencer. Why not consider your organization’s approach,
attitudes, philosophy or mindsets when it comes to the following. (They are in
no order when it comes to their importance.)
Please keep in mind that even if you are successfully doing several of
the following that only one can have a dramatic negative impact on your long
term success.
Back to the basics
approach – One of the major
drawbacks of technology is that it can tend to take our eye of the ball or what
works as we attempt to stay current with the latest fads and approaches. There is nothing wrong with embracing what is
new and ever changing but to abandon the fundaments or basics in the process
can be a recipe for disappointment at best and failure at worst.
Ask any winning coach and
they will tell you that the basics are an essential strategy for sustained
success. Ask any artist, musician or
successful business leader and they will all tell you that they experiment with
the new or unknown but they never lose sight of what they know works.
To maintain success
requires a careful blending of what is new with what is timeless and
proven. It doesn’t matter if it’s a
marketing approach, distribution method, sales strategy, accounting premise or
any other business process I will guarantee that if you stick with the basics
or fundamentals as you experiment with what is new you will always achieve
predicable results and outcomes. The
action – ask yourself two simple questions – what are you doing that’s working
and what are you doing that’s not working?
Learn from the past – The past
can be a wonderful teacher. It’s
unfortunate however how many people fail to take the lessons from the past into
new activities, decisions and actions.
Yes, there may have been failures in the past and yes, there may have
been successes but in the end we tend to only learn from mistakes or failures
if we are open and receptive to the lessons.
Few people learn anything from success other than to just keep doing
what seems to be working. The problem
occurs when you are riding high on the success bandwagon that you will fail to
pay close attention to future challenges, problems or just adversity waiting
around the next corner. Tell me that
three or four years ago when your
business was in high gear with success after success that you were not
blindsided in some way with the economic derailment that hit us all a few years
back.
Tell me you were totally
prepared for the adversity waiting in the wings. Tell me that you saw it coming and how it
would impact your business. If you did –
congratulations. If you didn’t you were
like most business leaders basking in the sunlight of success assuming that the
good times would just keep on coming. The
action – pay attention to all of the hidden and subtle signals from the past
and carefully evaluate the contributors, causes and symptoms to those decisions
or actions that failed to produce the desired or expected results. Don’t just walk on by but dig into the
details and use the lessons to prepare for the unknown future.
Invest in employee
development – You would be amazed
at how many organizations hold back on employee development during challenging
times. This is a serious mistake
whatever your rationales or excuses. The
single greatest asset you have in your organization during challenging times is
the motivation, effort, creativity and passion of your employees. If they are focused on fear, uncertainty or
any other negative mindset during difficult times it is doubtful they will
bring more creative energy or solutions or the issues you face. What you need to weather these conditions and
to emerge healthy, successful and prosperous are employees who embrace what can
be not what has been or is. The action – don’t put off investing in your
employee’s skills, attitudes or motivation using a wait and see attitude. You will find this is one of the best
investments you can make until things turn around for the better. In fact doing this will tend to help you turn
around more quickly.
Just keep sowing – It’s simple – if you don’t sew you can’t reap.
Just thought I would keep this one short in case you are running out of time
and rushing through this article. Action
– Stop sowing and guess what? Nothing to
reap in the future.
Connect with reality – What is reality and does it change? Reality is nothing more than what is really
going on not what you; want, hope is, need or would like to be happening. When you come at life from what you believe
or want rather than from what is, it is certain that you will make poor
decisions and have behaviors that will tend to sabotage your outcomes. The more you deal in facts or truth the
better your chances for staying the course in a productive and effective way. The
action – Stay in touch with your employees at every level of the
organization. Keep asking customers the
critical questions – why do you buy from us, what could we doing better, what
factors would cause us to lose your business and others like this. Pay attention to the answers and act
accordingly.
Validate employees – You would be amazed at how often people
invalidate others in so many ways often on an unconscious level. How do we
invalidate people? Interrupt them, don’t
listen to them or send subtle negative messages. Be late for meetings or
appointments. These and so many others
send the clear message that I am more important than you, smarter than you and
better than you. Whenever you invalidate an employee, customer or even a total
stranger you will tend to lower their self-esteem in some way and this will
have a definite negative impact on their actions, decisions and productivity. The
action – spend time validating employees and customers with appreciation,
recognition, and respect and watch the relationships get better and better over
time.
Pull the tooth – If you have ever had a toothache I’m sure you
didn’t live with it for weeks or months.
You went to your dentist and if they said the tooth couldn’t be saved
and they needed to pull it that you would go along with their recommendation.
What pains are you or your business dealing with now and have for weeks or
months and you have failed to pull the tooth.
Yes, fix it if you can, but if it needs to be pulled, failure to do so
will only guarantee that the pain will continue. Is it an employee that needs
to be let go? Is it a customer that you
need to send on their way? Is it a
policy that is anti-productive? I could
go on. The action – Pull
the tooth or live with the pain.
Act like a bird – This past summer I was watching as a bird was
building a nest in my garage. The
thought occurred to me that the bird had never been to architectural school,
didn’t have a blueprint or written plan to create the finished product. The bird just kept bringing in one leaf and
one stick at a time. He didn’t get upset
if the nest wasn’t being completed fast enough.
He didn’t get stressed if it wasn’t looking like he thought it should
and he wasn’t deterred by the weather or other circumstances. He just kept bringing in one stick and one
leaf at a time and one day the nest was complete and ready for the eggs.
What does this have to do
with growing your business? Quite simple
really. Just act like a bird and don’t get wrapped up in what you want or think
something should look like and when.
Just keep moving forward one step at a time and before you know it the
results will be there. Caution, don’t
get too attached to what you want it to look like, however as everything is a
work in progress and subject to change. The
action – just keep taking one step at a time and don’t become obsessed with
pre-conceived notions on what or how, just keep focusing on the why and let
things flow. This doesn’t mean sitting
at your desk and wishing and hoping, but like the bird, one step at a time.
Maintain a healthy
corporate culture – Corporate
culture is a predominant contributor to employee performance. If your culture is negative, invalidating, and
insecure or has any other negative influencing factors, employees will adjust
accordingly. For example – if your culture has – a we vs. they - as one of its characteristics,
employees will tend to be more concerned with their own survival or personal
success than the survival or success at the overall organization. You can
imagine how their actions, decisions and behavior will impact other department’s
even customers. A healthy culture encourages creativity, responsibility,
recognition and appreciation as a routine element of how people treat each
other. A healthy culture permits people
to speak freely and always share integrity based information and feedback. The action – culture is created top-down and
lived bottom-up. Find ways to ensure
that the culture you are creating is positive and validating and that there is
no disconnect between what you think is happening and what is really happening.
Creativity – When creativity is stifled for any reason new and
innovative ideas and approaches will never surface or be realized. Everyone has a creative spirit and capability
regardless of their age, gender, race or history. The problem arises when for whatever reason
this creativity is not encouraged and embraced.
Organizations that continue
to thrive in spite of economic or market circumstances do so because they
create an environment where creativity is appreciated, valued and often
rewarded. Organizations that are stuck
are generally in this malaise because the creative potential of its employees
is not seen as a major part of their roles or responsibilities.
If you want new or better
solutions or approaches – they exist in potential. The question is simply are you willing to
allow these creative instincts to flourish. The
action – ask yourself simple question – are you creating an environment that
encourages and validates creative thinking and doing?
Focus on your strengths – When you ignore your core business and attempt
new ventures, products or services that are not in line with your strengths and
previous successes you will tend to fail to bring the same level of passion and
commitment to these new activities. This
is especially true when you feel you need to expand your business, customer
base or market share in some way during challenging times. The best route for leaving the slow growth
and poor performance of the past is to focus on what you do best – what works. Yes, improve it, modify it, change it in some
way if necessary, but stick with what you know works and has worked. However, if what you do best is failing to
deliver the results you expect and need, it might be time for renewal or
modifications to improve your outcomes. The action – ask yourself a simple question
– are you and your team focusing on your strengths or weaknesses?
A blending philosophy - Why people buy has not changed a great deal in
the past 50 years, but how they can and do buy has been significantly affected
by technology i.e. websites, blogs, I Phones, Email marketing etc. To have a current effective sales and
marketing strategy requires that these must be added to the mix, but the
real question is – what’s next or what waits
around the next corner in terms of marketing and sales opportunities and how to
best anticipate them, prepare for them, deal with them and take advantage of
them. Yes, you need to use social media
with all its complexity, competition and opportunity, but consider for a moment
how many millions of people are using this and what is the potential for
awareness or even results.
I am a believer in adapting
and adopting to change, but I am also a strong believer in continuing to use
and embrace the basics or fundamentals.
In many ways technology improves our ability to keep in touch with
others, but the way we use these approaches to keep in touch is most often void
of the human touch. We are losing human
connectedness. Yes, I know what you had
for dinner last night and where you are going on vacation and thousands of
other useless pieces of information on many social media sites, but when was
the last time you met face to face, had a live dialog or just hung out with a
client, friend or even your kids?
I have written numerous
articles the past few years relative to the loss of human connectedness in the
area of sales, customer service and management and the general philosophy I
teach is - use technology as a tool not a crutch. When it comes to positive and
consistent results in sales and marketing it is vital that you embrace a blending
process when it comes to wide exposure, reputation building, positive word of
mouth and overall success. The action – ask yourself a simple question
– are you relying too heavily on a single strategy or are using a blending
process in various areas of your business?
Continually re-invent
yourself and your business -
It’s time to let go of what is no longer
working - no matter how long you have
done it or how entrenched it is in your organization’s history or philosophy. Re-invent simply means to – let go,
re-charge, re-ignite, re-vitalize and take the lessons from the past, but not
the processes or approaches into the future.
Re-invent is simply a – “throw-away-the-box mentality” and not just a -
“think-out-of-the-box” one. It means
holding on to what you believe in, but not necessarilly how you deal with it. The action - It requires surrender to the
new-normal and how that is influencing your overall business approaches and
their ultimate success. Are you routinely re-inventing yourself or your
business?
Embrace
change - There are a number of
national and international organizations that are still being run by out of
date managers and executives. These individuals, many of them are locked in a
style of doing business that may have worked in the past. But times are
changing. Many of these executives and managers are going to find themselves left
behind wondering how did it happen, when did it happen or why did it happen to
me or us.
Everyday you will have your
attitudes, values, expectations and perceptions challenged. You must keep aware
as you grow your organization, department or division into the next decade.
There will be lot’s of new obstacles, challenges and problems to test your
resolve. So relax and enjoy the ride into the future. The action – ask yourself a
simple question – is change your friend or enemy?
Let me summarize with a few
basic thoughts.
1) Your successful history will not guarantee a
successful future.
2) Your employees are the critical factor that will
determine how you sustain and improve your business.
3) If you have a problem in your organization look up
the ladder for the cause and down the ladder for the solution.
4) Change is constant and is increasing its pace faster
than ever before in history. Embrace it
or get left behind.
5) Relevance is not about sacred cows or conventional
wisdom but on staying ahead of the curves ahead.
The future is in your hands – what will it look like?
