Posts Tagged ‘ Improvement ’

Money motivates.

But once you pay enough to get money off the table, money doesn’t matter that much.

Once you do that, what really motivates is being autonomous, the satisfaction of skill and mastery, and making a contribution to the world around them.

Check out Daniel Pink’s book: Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.

Have a watch. This is well worth 11 minutes of your life:

How much do you spend to bring a customer in the door?

The ideal amount will be determined by the industry you are in.  If you sell athletic shoes or beverages of any kind, you have to compete with Nike or Coca-Cola to find retail shelf space.  If you are in the construction industry, you have estimating departments for hard bids and sales to handle design-build.

If you sell widgets to a larger manufacturer you might respond to a request for proposal or seek out new customers.  If you sell online you have to make it easy for customers to find you which means pay-per-click advertising, social networking, or search engine optimization.

Inherent in any example you can think of is that there are two main costs to consider.

There are many not-for-profit businesses out there.  The problem is most don’t intend to be.

Here’s what it might look like: Employees lack focus.  Management tries to motivate them, but nobody knows how their specific tasks relate to profitability.

It’s time to trim the fat.  Get rid of the tasks that don’t make you money.  Add tasks that make you more money.  I know it sounds elementary, but not enough businesses do it.

These three rules will help you make business development decisions:

Does your business plan have an effective dashboard to measure results?  If you can’t measure your results and compare them to your goals, your business will fail!

Here are three rules that will help you make an effective business plan dashboard.

Rule #1: Test and Track.

Start with your goals or you’ll never get there. These could be referrals, cost per lead, lead conversions, limiting waste, increasing quality, more sales, or whatever.  More below the fold about what your goals should be.

What are the core fundamentals for a business plan?

The first priority in making a great business plan is to understand the purpose it serves.

Who is your audience?

There are several groups that the business plan needs to serve.  First is you: the management team.  A great plan can help you know if you are going the right direction.  A few things you need to know are what the business actually is, who you compete with and how, what financial milestones measure success, and how you will operate.

So you are thinking about starting a business.  Congratulations!  Now what?

Where do you start?  How do you know what kind of business to create?

Rule #1 is, don’t go do something you don’t know anything about! That seems obvious, but people break this rule all the time.  The internet is full of people who will sell you their system that is “guaranteed” to make you money.  Buying their system is only guaranteed only to make THEM money.  Admittedly, some of those people have a pretty good product to offer, but if you buy some system, be SURE you will use it.