If you’re like most business owners (or people for that matter), you’d like to make more money, work fewer hours and enjoy what you do – that combination is the updated version of the American dream. However for most of us, reaching that kind of outcome requires significant changes to what we’re doing now.
And successful change requires several things – I’m sure you’ve heard the following:
"A vision without a plan is just a dream. A plan without a vision is just drudgery. But a vision with a plan can change the world." ~ An Old Proverb
As a quick sound bite, that’s very inspirational, but it leaves a few things out. I’m more partial to Gleicher’s Formula for Change – developed almost 40 years ago by David Gleicher and Richard Beckhard (who apparently got shortchanged in the recognition category). Their formula was developed as a way to look at the relative ingredients required for success in organizational change, but I think it works well for change initiatives overall.
If you’re not familiar with it, here’s Gleicher’s Formula for Change:
You (and your business) are really good at something.
Maybe it’s a tangible skill related to how you create or deliver your product or service. Maybe it’s an intangible soft skill like active listening or customer follow-up.
Whatever it is, it’s one of only a few things that really makes you different than your competition…but if you’re like a lot of business owners, you don’t play up that strength when you tell people what you do.
Southwest Airlines is a great example of a business that plays up their strengths. They’ve built their business and gone to great lengths to tell people they are the Low Cost airline and the On Time airline – in fact these are key drivers that they consistently use to manage their business.
They’re so effective at being the low cost airline, that I rarely even check alternatives if I’m looking for a flight – wouldn’t you like to put your business into a category without real competition! That’s what playing to your strengths can do.
The world is truly an amazing place and what’s really made that clear is the enormous change we’re seeing with the transparency and the availability to see things.
In the past, if a major news organization or television show didn’t make a topic, an event or a person a priority story – more than likely you wouldn’t know anything about it.
Today, for virtually no cost, almost anyone in the modern world can put a story into the reach of millions of viewers…immediately. Sometimes that has shocking implications if it’s a video of a terrible shooting in Oakland or a miraculous plane landing in the Hudson.
But not everything on YouTube is shocking or horrifying. It also allows a platform for truly inspirational stories that many people might not have seen a couple of years ago (or seen at all 20 years ago).
Attached below is one of those stories – this is a 5:00 minute video that will move you and whenever you’re feeling defeated, I would suggest firing this back up as a reminder that you can get back up and the important thing isn’t how you started or if you struggled, it’s how you finish!
If the video above doesn’t work, use this link – Get Back Up
Buy low, sell high! Use a consistent look and feel for marketing!
Sell benefits not features! Keep in touch with existing customers!
It costs 6x as much to get new customers as it does to keep old ones!
Know your target market! Include a clear ‘Call To Action’!
People generally buy from people that they Know, Like and Trust!
Most business owners I know are really smart people – they’ve read a lot of books, they’re likely to have a business degree or even an MBA. In general, people know what they’re supposed to do when it comes to marketing their business. There aren’t a whole lot of new ‘silver bullets’ that they haven’t heard about.
But when push comes to shove and it’s been another long day and you’re not selling nearly as much stuff as you think you should be selling, it can be hard to shake things up and leverage all of the stuff you know. Sometimes you need a different perspective!
We’re hearing a lot about the incoming government’s plan for job creation. From a macro economic perspective, jobs are the foundation that has to be in place for all the other stuff to matter. (And small businesses account for the lion’s share of jobs, so small business relief should be front and center). Unfortunately, it’s a really complex issue and there aren’t any easy answers.
Along those lines, it’s always good to learn a new perspective – I was having a discussion last night and picked up on a couple of issues with some of the job creation ideas that are being proposed that I hadn’t considered, especially around the idea of tax credits to the business owner for new hires.
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