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Five things you should do right now to keep your small business growing

Guest post by: Kevin Kragenbrink

Article Overview: This has been one tough year for business. The economic storms have hit virtually every industry and every market and taken a heavy toll. But still, there are plenty of businesses who are doing well, and some are going strong. What is it that makes those businesses so successful in trying times like these? Certainly there are many factors, but here are five common factors that you are likely to find in every one of those standout businesses. Learn these five and your chances for success will go up.

Five things you should do right now to keep your small business growing

This has been one tough year for business. The economic storms have hit virtually every industry and every market and taken a heavy toll. But still, there are plenty of businesses who are doing well, and some are going strong. What is it that makes those businesses so successful in trying times like these?

Certainly there are many factors, but here are five common factors that you are likely to find in every one of those standout businesses. Learn these five and your chances for success will go up. 1. Focus on the future, not the past. Don Shula, one of the best football coaches of all time built much of his success on his focus on the future. Shula allowed his teams no more than twenty-four hours to celebrate a victory or to mourn a loss. He wanted them focus on the next challenge quickly. What a powerful idea for business.

Let's face it, business owners easily get trapped in yesterday. They bask in the glory of yesterday's success or wallow in the misery of yesterday's failure. None of this builds your business. Both can teach us valuable lessons, but you need to focus on the future.

Start right now. Write down your success stories and your struggles from yesterday. Now, identify what worked, what did not work. What did you do right, what went wrong? Apply the lessons learned to what you are doing right now and what you will do tomorrow. The past is done, be done with it.

2. Keep the main thing the main thing. When times are tough it is easy to get off track in the pursuit of the sale. We convert "can do" into "I'll do anything." When you give in to that pressure and start taking on projects or making promises outside your core business you open the door to all sorts of troubles. Your may cause a reduction in quality of product or service or find yourself doing things that don't fit your business model. You might even run out of time to build your core business because you have committed yourself to the delivery of something else. If you want to keep your business growing, stay focused on doing what you do.

3. Aim for the Bulls-eye Every Time. Set high standards for yourself and your team. Now is not the time to lower your aim. This is the perfect time to set your standards higher than ever before. You need to stand out in this market so people can see and hear you above the competition. I encourage people to strive for perfection and settle for nothing less. If perfection is out of reach at the moment, keep working for it. If you accept the idea that you can't get there, then you certainly never will. If you believe you can achieve perfection in your business, your efforts will always take you in that direction.

4. Be ready with your audibles. In football, the audible is a change in play or assignments introduced by the quarterback just before a play begins. The quarterback uses it as a way to adjust his team's activity based on what he sees in the current environment. As a business, you need to be ready to call an audible when the circumstances change.

Notice this, though, the audible is never something made up on the spot. The entire team is already aware of what the audible means and each person knows what they need to do. This happens because the team leaders have already scouted the competition and prepared their team for the kinds of adjustments they need to make. You can't just keep on shooting from the hip and hoping to hit something. You need to plan your strategy and your alternatives so that when the play starts you have a higher likelihood of success.

5. Build relationships through integrity. Simply put, people like to do business with people and businesses they can trust. When things are tight, this becomes even more critical. People want to know that they can rely on you to deliver a quality product or service every time. They want to know that their money is well spent and that they will get full value from every purchase. If people know you and trust you, when it comes time to make that tough buying decision, they will choose you.

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Article Tags: business coaching, business owners, focus, high standards, small business, success



Related Forum Posts
Re: Don't read this unless... you want to help me! - Hi Jamie. I am a business coach as well and I think I can offer some insight. I think there is a wide spectrum of things people are being challenged with. Some of the common ones are Twitter Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Copy writing and personal branding. If you want to build your business you will need to Invest in yourself by reading books, attending courses/seminars. With the type of business you are in you are going to want to make yourself valuable to a wide variety of people with a wide variety of problems. I make an excellent living what I am doing but I never stop growing myself as a person and an entrepreneur so keep growing yourself, and over time your business will grow with you.
Going after larger clients - Hi Rohan, It's tough to sell anything to small business owners and make a buck doing it - IT services included. The biggest challenge is that new businesses don't have a lot of startup capital (typically) therby making them very price sensitive. You want to go after the clients who can afford to pay you. How about specializing in growing companies and solving their IT needs? John, what is the typical sized business that your franchise goes after?
Re: What to do When You Have No Money - waoo its really a good post...i am also looking for such a forum...i am newly graduate and want to start my own business..i am interested in dairy farm and poultry business because as i researched there will be shortage of these things because population is growing at high rate. what you people say...and i don't have lot of finance
Do women limit their companies' growth? - It's an interesting discussion- I'm not sure if women limit their growth more than men but I'm sure if you went to that same class now and asked the girls what they wanted to be more and more would be saying "entrepreneurs!" Women entrepreneurship is one of the fastest growing segments of the small business market.
Question: What has been your biggest business challenge? - Regardless of the industry they may be in, it seems all small business owners and entrepreneurs face similar key challenges in growing their business and becoming as profitable as they would like. These can be grouped into the categories of "Time", "Team", "Money", and "Exit Strategy". What has been your most significant challenge, the one that seems to be your biggest hurdle to moving forward and achieving the level of business success (however you define that) that you would like to? If you could have one issue solved in your business, what would that be? Your insights are invaluable and I appreciate your honesty. Regards, Gavin


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