I believe these principles apply to a small business owner, an organizational leader, or even an employee. Just read this through your personal lens.
- Inconsistent, little or no business development. In every category above there is a risk of resting on our laurels. As a business owner or organizational leader it is simply easier once established for you or your sales people to become pure relationship managers. There must be consistent effort put towards acquisition because attrition is a certainty as well. As an employee, consistently creating “dashboard” opportunities to make sure your boss or team are clearly seeing your contribution leads to better bonuses, pay raises and career advancement.
- Unrealistic Goals. If your strategic goal for revenue is unrealistic, there is not likely an intelligent tactical plan to achieve it, which means you are flinging things against the wall to see what sticks. Wrong-o. Make a realistic but stretching plan, and then implement. As Yogi Bera puts it, if you aim at nothing you will hit it every time; to this I add, if you aim for the stars you are either a romantic or a fool, and neither will help your cause.
- Lack of Belief. We all hit a place where functionally there are only so many hours in the day, only so many things we can try. It is ok to say, “enough is enough” when it comes to revenue or income. But if you’re reading this, you are likely not there. For the fourth point of this post to work you need to believe it is possible.
- You need a different playground. You can say this many ways: a new structure, a new model, or a bigger market. If you are a freelancer, it might mean developing a service that is scalable or simply hiring more staff. In larger organizations, it might mean streamlining product lines to increase overall profit (even if top-line revenue comes down). The bottom line is if we have hit a wall we have to avoid Einstein’s definition of insanity: “doing the same thing(s) over and over again and expecting different results.”
Exhaustive, no; but helpful? I hope so. The reality is I am sharing the things I am fighting through in my business and with my clients. Perseverance and resoluteness are so important on the journey.