 Do
More with What You've Got:
Six Things You Can Do to Start Right Now
By:
Sam Geist
No one needs to remind you that today’s marketplace
is a challenging place to be—you’re all too well aware of it.
However it is what it is, so instead of taking a “head in the sand”
approach, use the resources you already have to push through the
difficulties—and you’ll end up at the forefront on the other side
when the economy picks up again—and it will.
Here are six ways you can start to do more with what
you’ve got— right now:
1. Specialize
Become a specialist. Identify your core business and
stick to it. Remember Pareto’s 20/80 Rule (80% of your business
comes from 20% of your products/services). Don’t waste your precious
and limited resources, time, and money outside your core. A recently
published article by Stanford Graduate School of Business found that
product creators and sellers whose offerings or expertise are
connected with only one or two categories have better sales than
those whose goods or services are more generalized. The more
singularly focused entrepreneurs exude the impression that they are
experts—that they know their stuff a little better, and this adds to
the comfort level and willingness of customers to buy their products
or use their services.
An added bonus to doing more with what you’ve got.
When you concentrate on your top 20% of products and services,
making sure that they are “never out,” always relevant and sought
after, you are ensuring that certainly 80% of your business is
moving along profitably.
2. Prioritize
Ask yourself, what do I want to accomplish? What will
move me closer to my goals? Prioritize your list. Develop a system
to execute each step toward achieving your goals. Keep it simple!
Prioritizing ensures that your essential work gets
done—your time isn’t wasted on unnecessary tasks— your mind isn’t
cluttered with irrelevant distractions— you are doing more with what
you’ve got. Next step. Make certain that the goals (and the vision)
you have for your organization is the same one that your employees
have. How can priorities be established if everyone in the
organization has different goals? Last spring a survey of more than
11,000 workers found that there was a huge disparity between the
goals of leaders and the workload of their employees. Nearly
one-third of survey respondents said their activities that demanded
immediate attention were irrelevant to organizational goals.
Don’t assume frontline workers are prioritizing their
day according to your goals—ensure they are by formulating work
plans together. It’s not necessarily “first things first,” its
“priorities first.” Assist employees to think about their priorities
each morning. Build a work plan that works—one that will result in
making the greatest progress toward top goals, and stick with the
plan throughout the day. Prioritizing guarantees that you are doing
more with what you’ve got.
3. Spend Your Money—in the Right Places
You can’t save your way to prosperity, but you can
spend your way to prosperity, if you (and your employees) spend
wisely. Determine which of your resources are required to enable you
to do more with what you’ve got. Use them! For example, use today’s
conferencing tools (instead of flying every time) to ensure everyone
has the information they need. Search for operational savings,
utility and energy savings. Search for savings in every area of your
business.
Spend your money well by getting the right people on
board. Hire well. Communicate well. Train well. Spend your money
building a pragmatic but flexible execution plan. Inform your
employees about your plan. Train them on its methodology, on its
intricacies, on its objectives. Supply them with the right tools to
make them more efficient at executing your plan. Discuss with those
directly involved in the plan where to spend—where not to spend.
This also requires knowing where to cut and where not to cut. Enable
your employees to also do more with what they’ve got. The results of
spending your money (effectively) will truly amaze you.
4. Collaborate Externally
Get by giving. Especially during challenging times
you are able to do more—much more with what you’ve got, by sharing,
sharing, sharing. Look for ways to share your support personnel,
your delivery service, your answering service. Find ways to share a
network, technologies, equipment. Discover ways to share a
relationship with vendors in order to get better pricing.
A caveat. Choose your collaborators carefully and
wisely. Choose ones who will enhance your public image just as they
enable you to do more. Watch out for collaborators who may blemish
your sterling reputation or your proud service record.
Collaborate with third party resources to maximize
your capabilities. Business consultants for example, not only offer
up objective and innovative perspectives on the issues at hand, they
also give you an expert’s focus, a viewpoint your organization may
not have considered previously.
Other external resources that enable you to extend
your knowledge base quickly and efficiently are chambers of
commerce, boards of trade and associations. Get involved. Meet
members with capabilities and interests that enlarge your own. Much
collaboration now takes place on the Internet. Information is
readily available. Chat groups are ready to share. Check out
previously unexplored avenues to find new ways to collaborate
successfully— ways that will enable you to do more with your
existing resources.
5. Communicate
Instead of communicating as we’ve always done—with
our employees, with our colleagues, with our suppliers and with our
customers, now is the perfect time to alter our own communication
habits and those of our customers. In an interesting article, Neale
Martin explained that customers often switch to autopilot when they
buy. A purchase decision repeated again and again often becomes a
habit (and we know how hard habits are to break.) However it seems
that today’s marketplace instability can disrupt even the most
entrenched buying habits. There is substantial evidence that
suggests customers are altering their buying habits. In such a
situation it becomes our responsibility as marketers to re-establish
those buying habits that were favorable to us.
In order to do this we must really get to know our
customers anew, determine what products/services they are willing to
buy now and communicate our solutions advantageously. Keep in mind
that the communication avenues you have always used to talk to your
customers may no longer be the most appropriate. Communicate via the
media that ensures that information is favorably received and
accepted by your customers. Even if they make small regular
purchases, it will get your customers back in the habit—the habit of
buying from you.
Now is also an opportune time to communicate with
your competitors’ customers as well, since they too are ripe to
alter their purchasing decisions. Greet these new customers and make
them your own.
The Internet has become a powerful tool to
communicate to an increasingly wide group of customers. Create a
website and/or a blog that does more than just feature your
products/services. Create one that offers real content that your
customers and potential customers will appreciate and use.
MeetUp.com, a site I recently found offers ideas and networking
possibilities. (It’s tagline is: Do Something. Learn Something.
Share Something. Change Something.) The MeetUp site allows you to
find a wide variety of groups of interest or start up a group of
your own. Many local business and professional groups have been
formed there.
Another ready audience for your business can be found
simply by looking out at your community. Community involvement is an
excellent way to build awareness. Participating in community events,
teaching a class, sponsoring a sports team, joining a chamber of
commerce says volumes about you, while at the same time helps to
build your business. Communicate as you’ve never communicated before
to get more than you’ve ever gotten before.
6. Be Accountable. Be Responsible.
Be accountable in order to get accountability from
your employees. Use the “who does what by when” formula. This
ensures that everyone is accounted for and knows the timeframe and
parameters of their responsibility. Consider the project in its
totality to make certain there are no gaps and/or overlaps in
assigned tasks. Getting accountability from everyone in the ranks
enables both you and your employees to do more, efficiently and
profitably.
Being responsible for the well being of your
organization and your employees enables you to do more during
challenging times—and during prosperous times as well. By
encouraging managers to act more like owners, you create a legion of
assistants to help you execute your responsibility as leader.
Become a company of leaders. There are many
advantages in working with “managers-owners.” They have the good of
the company foremost in mind. They are interested in getting and
keeping customers. They are motivated to do their job well—because
they have pride in themselves and “their” company.
The bottomline is that just as you do, they realize
that “getting it done,” executing day in and day out is the way to
do more with what they’ve got.
In today’s marketplace with its financial challenges
on the one hand and its incredible opportunities on the other hand,
you have the chance to be innovative, be creative in what you do.
Take a different approach to change your business
situation. Find one new idea you haven’t used before to solve a
problem. Find one new way to make it easier to do business with you.
Find one new means to use your resources (including your people)
better. Innovation and creativity don’t cost. Just the opposite,
they save. Use the six ideas outlined to propel you and your company
forward—doing more with what you’ve got. Let it be your strategy for
tough times— your strategy for all times.
Sam Geist
lectures, facilitates workshops and conducts training seminars on
sales & marketing, the changing marketplace, differentiation,
customer service and staff motivation.
Copyright © 2010 Sam Geist. All Rights Reserved.
To learn more of how Sam Geist can
help your organization,
click
here.
|
