15 Keys to Growing Your Business

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?