Last week I gave reasons why written goals are so much more effective than no goals or unwritten goals. This week I’d like to introduce you to ‘WHY SMART” goals. Apply these parameters to your goals and you’ll be much more likely to achieve them.. W – write your goals H – harmonious with your [...]
The Hedgehog Concept’ comes from Jim Collins’ book Good to Great. After analyzing companies that had met his criteria for explosive and sustained growth, he discovered that they had achieved an understanding of their sweet spot of impenetrable strength and great success (like a hedgehog). You can find this for your business also. It is [...]
Last week we started understanding concepts from Jim Collins’ book Good to Great. After analyzing companies that had met his criteria for explosive and sustained growth, he discovered that each had what he calls “Level 5 Executives”. While levels 1-4 include competent people, Level 5 Executives distinguish themselves by a “paradoxical mix of personal humility [...]
Here are some numbers dealing with customer loyalty. It has been proven that organizations with high levels of loyal customers typically grow sales at 2X the rate of their competition. It costs 5 times as much to get a new customer than to keep an existing customer. The most effective and least expensive form of [...]
In the last issue we gave some metrics that indicated how focusing on customer loyalty can save you money and grow your sales. Start thinking about your customers in terms of their lifetime value. If each sale is $1,000 and a customer may buy something twice a year, that’s only $2,000 per year. But multiply [...]
1. Determine Your Goals – are you there to find prospects (how many, be specific), partners, centers of influence, resources or suppliers, check out the organization, etc. 2. Network for Life – everyone you meet now has the potential to be a great contact in your next career and for others in your growing sphere [...]
So your company is doing OK (or maybe not so OK). But you’d really like it to take off.You have your eye set on 500% growth in the next year or two, maybe a little more, maybe a little less. That’s an aggressive goal but highly doable if you really want it. You have to be [...]
We’re getting to the time of the year when businesses are starting to think about their business plans and budgets for next year. It’s a good time to establish the difference between ‘strategy’ and ‘next year’s budget’. Strategic thinking is all about how to change your business to take advantage of changes in the marketplace [...]
If you knew your thinking style and the thinking style of your boss, your kids or your spouse, could you avoid some of those miscommunications and misperceptions? What if you could know the thinking styles of the people in your organization, would you be able to balance a project team? If you better understood your prospect’s [...]
Are you aware of self-fulfilling prophecies? We all have them. We get trapped in our comfort zones and we don’t know what we don’t know. The old adage goes, “if you always think what you’ve always thought, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.” Or, in other words, “insanity is doing the same thing over [...]
