Tag: business

I was recently contemplating, what are the most important aspects of running a business. Here in order of importance, is what I have come up with..

1. Add value

Provide something of value that people are willing to pay you for, after all, if you’ve nothing that people want, regardless of how much you might like your offering, it’s a non-starter. Find a solution to a problem, something that scratches an inch, so to speak. Find a need, find a want, and work out a solution to solve it.

Become a good deal maker. Middle men leverage their resources to help both creators and customers. They bridge the gap in such a way as to provide value to other parties.

Win-win situations are the best for sustainability, for customers, suppliers and partners. If you’re not providing some benefit to any of these parties, you’ve got a limited shelf life.

Find gaps in markets. Where are existing solutions falling short?

Use and combine existing solutions to create even more value. My photography business brings together makeup artist and photographer to provide makeover photoshoots. It adds value to the existing propositions of both services.

An effective business person, successfully executes the promised value proposition from sourcing through to production/service to final output.

2. Have the right mindset

Be Motivated

Find and maintain motivation so that you take action and follow through.

Believe in what you’re doing or trying to achieve. But always keep number one in this list in mind.

Become self aware. Understand why you do what you do and don’t do what you don’t do.

Initiate momentum. Progress from a standing start into something meaningful. Once you make a start inertia will build and make things easier.

Take responsibility for actions and outcomes. No blaming others and complaining that this or that isn’t working out for you. Develop a can-do attitude.

Be resourcefulness, make use of yours and other people’s resources and make it happen!

Learn to be able to shift perspective. Re-framing how you think about something can often change  your performance, because thoughts  lead actions. Most of our  beliefs are built on shaky ground, built from assumptions and inferences, rather  than facts and evidence. I love to use quote graphics as a way of looking at something from fresh perspective.

Be committed to what you’re doing. Burning bridges, means you’re  forced to give full commitment to a particular course of action. I’m not particularly advocating this extreme approach, but if you’re forced down one path, you’re likely to find a way, even if the road ahead is a bumpy one.

Develop a strong work ethic. You’ve got to be prepared to put the work in if you’re going to succeed. Sure you can look to make things easier, by working smarter, but the more you’re prepared to put into something, the more you’re likely to get from it.

Embrace change and uncertainty. Change and uncertainty presents uncomfortable risk for many, particularly if they live from hand to mouth or with little margin for error, in terms of indebtedness. From an evolutionary standpoint we’re hard wired to resist situations that present uncertainty, because our ancestors may have mistakenly wandered into the path of a dangerous predator in years gone by, possibly resulting in loss of life. These days, we don’t live with such life threatening consequences if we get things wrong, but we still fear any threat to the status quo, in much the same way.

Always try to overcome fear and inner conflict, because these feelings will inevitably hold us back from making progress. Often the fear is greater than the reality.

Pay attention to your coping strategies. Coping strategies are designed to prevent cognitive dissonance, but often we use them as excuses not to follow through. I call them coping excuses, because we justify to ourselves why we do or don’t do something, even if it’s not really the right thing.

Replace bad habits with good ones. Bad habits are hard to break, and often it’s easier to replace them with good habits.

Be Productivity

Stay focused. It’s so easy to get distracted by the new shiny thing, but staying focused and maintaining progress is so important. Know where you’re going and measure progress against this. Be a meaningful specific rather than a wandering generality as Zig Ziglar used to say.

Be organised and work against a plan of action. Having a system to work within makes daily activities routine and habitual, and as a result much more likely to be done efficiently. The more you do things the better you get at them. This advice comes with a caveat though, don’t stifle creativity. Routine and organisation, is a left brain activity, creativity is a right brain activity, and it’s hard to keep switching between the two.

Improve problem solving and decision making. All life is about solving problems and making decisions and the better you can get at these, the more successful you will be.

Utilise IQ, EQ, talent and skill. Play to your strengths, improve and work at making them better, and use them to your advantage. You are uniquely you, so make the most of what you’ve got. We all have something.

Find the best way things can be done, not just the best way you can do them. Be a master of what you know, and an apprentice of what you don’t know. The moment you think you know it all, is the moment you stop listening and learning. Take the scientific approach and look to disprove your hypothesis, rather than falling into the trap of confirmation bias, where you look to confirm what you believe, while ignoring or rejecting anything that runs counter to them.

Knowledge acquisition

Find reliable sources of accurate information. Don’t be embarrassed to admit you are still learning. Life has something to teach us every day, even if it’s how not to do something. Always be learning.

Employ experts to help you. Don’t expect to do everything yourself, use the expertise and passions of other people to help your business. Get skilled employees, partners and suppliers to grow your business. Get others to do the things you don’t like to do, this underlines the point I previously highlighted about the importance of improving self awareness.

3. Master the art and science of Marketing and sales

Always be marketing and building your brand.

Think long term over short term.

Build your reputation, and influence what people say about you when you’re not there.

4. Understand your Financials

Financial literacy is essential to business success.

Turnover is vanity, profit is sanity.

Understand the importance of cash flow and the difference between it and profit and why you can go out of business even if you’re making a profit.

Study your profit and loss figures.

Use financial info for decision making.

Remember there are only 2 ways to make more profit, either by selling more goods and services (volume) or by making more profit per £ of sales.

There are only 3 ways to get more sales; by getting more customers, increasing transaction volume or by increase transaction frequency.

Keep costs down. They only rise if more is being spent per £ of sales or sales  are increasing therefore increasing costs (volume).

Know lifetime value of customers and use this knowledge to work out your marketing budget.

5. Have direction

Be a meaningful specific rather than a wandering generality as Zig Ziglar used to say.

Have a clear vision and goal to give you a strong sense of direction, otherwise you’ll by like a rudderless boat, being dragged around by the tides of circumstance.

Develop a definite plan of action and strategy, but build in room for flexibility, because sometimes things come along we could never have anticipated, and we shouldn’t reject them because they don’t fall perfectly in line with what we were intending to do. Just be wary we’re not being pulled unnecessarily and unproductively off course with no benefit.

Work on the business not in it. Don’t lose yourself in the day to day stuff, you’ve got to keep one eye on the big picture at all times.

Be ahead of the demand curve not behind it. Otherwise you’ll have to work harder to maintain income, because of the downward pressure on prices later in products life cycle.

6. Future-proof yourself

Disrupt your own business model before  others do. Technological advancement is so rapid these days, you’ve got to keep an eye out for major shifts in your industry. The music and film industries have endured major industry shifts over recent years, and they won’t be the last to do so.

Innovate. Always be look to be better, faster, be more convenient, provide better quality, and add more functionality to the value  you provide.

Demand continuous improvement, from yourself and your team.

Consider multiple income streams to hedge and spread risk. Having your eggs in one basket is a dangerous game to play in such a fast moving and changing  environment.

If you’re not progressing you’re falling behind, so drop the idea of maintaining the non-existent status quo.

Always be doing SWOT analysis. SWOT which stands for strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats is a great tool for analysing your business. If you pay particular attention to the threats your business faces, you have a chance to turn these into opportunities, and disrupt your competitors.

Use cost benefit analysis to weigh options.

Use Decision matrix when considering options, so that you fully analyse all the variables and attributes in play.

7. Be a good Leader

Lead your team.

Inspire employees.

Use a carrot over stick approach.

Sell your vision to your employees. Get them enthused by your passion.

Encourage contributions from employees. Two minds or more are often better than one. They give you an opportunity to see things from a different perspective, from someone with different life and work experiences than yourself, and this can only be a good thing to tap into.

So there you have it, hope you get some value from this post, please share with anyone you think will benefit from reading it.

Check out our business guide for more information.

Check out more business related posts here.

Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person, by putting yourself mentally and emotionally in their situation. You might not associate this trait with entrepreneurs, salespeople and marketers, but it is one of the most important skills these professionals should possess. Why? Because if they can mentally and emotionally understand  how their  prospective customer is feeling and what they are thinking, they can align their sales message in such a way as to connect with them.

Empathising shouldn’t be about manipulating, or taking advantage of your prospects, which are self serving descriptions of the process, it should be about putting yourself in the best position to help them solve their problem, answer their questions, squash their fears, and objections and add value to their lives in some way.

The empathises moves from what’s best for you, to what’s best for them. It’s about serving your customers, not taking advantage and disrespecting them. If your intent to serve and add value is pure, your results will inevitably reflect this positive approach.

Obviously you’re in business to make a profit, you’re not doing it for nothing, but that doesn’t mean you should be gaming the system, looking for short term gains at the expense of your long term, brand equity.

Don’t fake sincerity

People will see through fake, insincere people and will be less likely to want to do business with you now and in the future, they will be unlikely to recommend you to their friends or colleagues. It will make future business more challenging.

Being empathetic also helps you understand what’s driving behaviour, you will be more inclined to see future trends before none empathetic competitors.

Be Curious

An important part of empathy is curiosity, wanting to find out more about customers, their likes, dislikes, where they hang out, and why. The “why” is the most important part of the jigsaw. It allows you to better predict future behaviour if you know your customers “why”.

It’s a good idea to think about your own habits and behaviours, why you do what you do, and why you don’t do what you don’t do. I would recommend improving your own self awareness before trying to understand other people. It will provide insight and experience for you, developing your empathetic side is like exercising a muscle, the more you do it, the stronger it will become. When you do it enough, you will find it becomes habit and your default disposition, and you won’t have to force yourself to think that way.

Reasearch

When you’re being curious about prospects you’re going to have to do some research, find out where they hang out and try to engage with them in social spaces, join groups they are part of, get involved in online groups and discussion boards where they are likely to be found. You’re looking for any opportunity where you can engage in conversation with them.

Ask intelligent questions

When you get involved in discussions, make sure you ask intelligent questions that illicit responses that provide some insight that can used to help you better understand their point of view and perspective.

Listen, really listen

Another vital ingredient of being empathetic, is being a good listener. Be curious in the first instance by finding as much out about your customers, and asking questions, but then you have to listen, really listen to what they tell you or to what they’re saying to other people.  If you’re busy talking about you and your product, you’re not learning anything about them. Great salespeople are great listeners.

Don’t overstep the mark

Now it’s important to go about this in a socially acceptable way, don’t just start interrogating prospects, like they’re under investigation. You wouldn’t want people creeped out by your line of enquiry, would you.  So be smart and be patient. It takes time to do proper research. What you’re looking to do is immerse yourself in their world and understand over time, where they are coming from and their point of view and perspective. Engaging and interacting with them, also helps you build relationships. Remember you’re there to add value to their situation, not exploit and manipulate them. You want to equip yourself with the knowledge to make your solution the best it can be, for them.

Use Empathy in all aspects of life

Empathy is not just a trait you should develop for your business, it’s a really important life skill, that will improve all of your personal relationships. Understanding other people will help unlock the door to why people act the way they do, and offer you some insight into how to best deal with them for the benefit of all.

It’s a skill that needs developing over time, but an essential one if you’re to enjoy deeper personal relationships. Always try to think about what you say and how you act towards other people and how that impacts them. A careless word can really cause upset if said in an abrupt manner. Every interaction you have with other people has an effect on them, try to make it a good one.

One of the first things I learned about, when starting my own business was the principle of adding value. It’s especially important if you’re selling a product as an affiliate. Affiliates don’t actually own the product, someone else does, and it is these creators that are providing the initial value, because the product they’ve created, serves some good, or is of some use to the end user.

As an affiliate marketer you are a middle man, you add value to the creator, whose product you’re selling, by putting it in-front or your audience, an audience the creator might never have been able to reach. The creator than rewards you by paying you a commission.

You also add value to your audience, who you hope will buy from you. You add value for them by making them aware of the product, as they may never have heard of it had it not been for you. However you might be one of many affiliates selling the same product, and who are all offering the same value added aspect. These other affiliates are your competitors, along with the creator of the product. You’re prospective customers can buy the product from any number of sources and get the same result, if they are contacted by them.

So it’s necessary to add as much extra value to the transaction as you can. You should try to stand out from all the other affiliates and even the actual creator of the product in some way.  How do you do this? Well it’s about giving something extra that no one else is giving.

The image above illustrates some of the ways you can add value for your audience/ prospective customers. You can tie the value-added-bit into the transaction. So they only get the benefit of it, if they buy the product from you first. You can take a chance and offer something for free with no strings attached prior to the purchase and hope they feel a need to repay you and buy using your affiliate link after the fact. The choice is yours. Testing the two options is a worthwhile consideration.

Think of adding value in a bigger sense

Adding value can be something you do in all aspects of your life, not just business. It can come from simply smiling at someone who is walking past you on the street, or a thoughtful gesture towards a loved one. It can become a “state of being” that you live your life by. I recently tried to adopt this way of living, a value added life. It feels nice to be nice. I’m not saying I was a bad person before, far from it, I’ve always been pleasant and polite to other people, always. I’ve always been happy to go out of my way to help people. But I’ve never thought of such interactions as adding value, but they are.

Now I like to think adding value is also a way of making people feel better. To change their state in some positive way.

• If they’re sad, making them feel a little better,
• if they’ve lost something, helping them to find it,
• if they’re fearful, helping them feel safe,
• if they’re worrying, help them feel some peace of mind,
• if they’re frustrated, help them feel relief or a sense of accomplishment,
• if they’re feeling despair giving them a sense of hope.

Adding value in this way can be done one interaction at a time, on an individual basis, it’s small but it’s important, it’s important to someone..

Helping people over and over again

Adding value as affiliate marketers, with the tools at our disposal means we can help our visitors over and over again with one video tutorial, one insightful article, one honest review and recommendation. Once it’s done it’s there to help people over and over again. So next time you’re writing that review, scribing that case study, crafting that white paper, remember you’re doing it to add value to people’s lives.

Hopefully I’ve made you think a little bit more deeply about the concept of adding value. Let’s make the internet and the wider world a better place to be, by focusing on adding value to every part of it, one bit at a time.