The old adage is true. Rome was not built in one day. When it comes to running a business, success doesn’t happen overnight. So what separates a good business from a great one?
“It’s dangerous to study success,” says business expert and author of best-selling book Good to Great, Jim Collins. “Building a great company is not primarily a matter of circumstance, it’s a matter of choice and discipline.”
Rapid business growth is highly dependent on consistent improvements. It’s no just about doing it (everybody else already is) but doing it better than last time. From marketing approach to customer service, there is always something extra to be done, and sticking to this infinity mindset is what will keep you growing as a business.
Boosting your Sales in 2020
The simple answer to this question can easily be summarized as “Consistent Improvement”. But to break down a little further, we need to define these improvements.
Document your Success, not Mistakes
Any successful business will tell you that record keeping is a key factor in business growth. But what most entrepreneurs don’t tell you is that every record as equally important. Proper documentation of your business bids will allow you to see what has already been done and what other angles can be taken to improve on returns.
While good business operators document their mistakes, great operators document their success. This all narrows down to developing a positive mentality while running your business. Rather than concentrating on your mistakes, you should purpose on refining your success to its very core and find out what you can improve.
This, obviously, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t pay attention to your past mistakes. Rather, it’s about shifting your focus on what really matters for your business now. Think of it as the corporate version of saying “your mistakes don’t define you.”
Analyze the steps that lead to a successful outcome
Running your business will often involve a lot of trial and error tactics. And that’s ok. Before attaining complete market penetration, you will need to run many tests and campaigns to better understand your target audience and what they really want.
Once your audience is defined, you will need to come up with an effective marketing approach that best works for your prospective customers. While this may be an intensive process, it’s key to defining your overall position in terms of the market share. The important thing to always keep in mind is the objectives and what you are trying to achieve.
Obviously, your various marketing campaigns will yield different results. Rather than spending a lot of time (and money) trying to improve poorly-performing campaigns, you want to pay more attention to what’s really working for your business. Good companies analyze their mistakes, but great companies analyze their success.
Collect your business data using a centralized system such as a CRM, analyze the metrics, and put more effort in nurturing your strengths rather than overhauling your mistakes.
Nurture your Successful Outcomes through Refinement
Good companies are conscious of their mistakes. They have seen what these mistakes have cost them in the past, and they are careful not to let that happen again. The problem with this approach is that it limits your creativity as your business.
When you are always worried about making a mistake, you tend to get distracted from the real value of trying. So as invaluable as it might be to implement measures that help you catch up with mistakes before they happen again, it may hold you back as a business.
Instead, a great company will tend to focus more on the desirable outcome and steps to get them there. You want to implement measures to improve on your past successful outcomes and scale your business for a better market share and higher profits.
In the words of Mike Krzyzewski, “Imagination has a great deal to do with winning.” It’s just as important to recognize and remember your path to a WIN; as it is to document and iterate through your mistakes. The real magic happens when you make the things that work a repeatable behavior.
