“There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.”
Morpheus
A business strategy is knowing what path to take. Business operations is walking your talk.
Now is a perfect time to step back and take a bird’s eye view of your how your business operates; its personality, challenges and vibe.
The absolute essential part is to create and maintain a flow between these two foundational business elements which are your strategy and how you operate. Without integration, you either spend your time primarily in your strategy, or primarily in execution with no clear direction. With all the good will in the world, you cannot reach success using this hamster wheel process.
The momentum your actions produce in your business creates the energy you are surrounded by for most of the day, week and year. Say you spend 10 hours per day thinking or doing in your business, 5 days a week, and take 5 weeks holiday a year. That’s 50 hours per week, 214 hours per month and 2,350 hours per year. It’s more time than you spend with your loved ones. Make it count, make it powerful and create the impact you are striving for.
The laws of cause and affect tell us that each action has a reaction, and often an affect that is felt long after. The absolute essence of smart working is knowing what that domino effect is within your matrix, your operations and your business.
There are 3 key elements that work in conjunction to integrate your strategies with your actions: Revenue, Time and People.
Revenue: Maximise your marketing efforts
Photo by Stephen Dawson on Unsplash
Marketing, in itself, is a complex matrix within the matrix. Without a clearly defined process the majority of leads at the top of your funnel vanish; literally. I’ve seen companies loose huge segments of their databases, because they went into invisibility mode through existing operational strategies.
Collecting the essential data for your marketing and sales teams is the centre of your revenue. It’s the centre of your Matrix. Companies can l lose 15% + in passive income streams through bad data practices. If you have no data strategy, this increases significantly.
While action is necessary to learn and build better, building smarter is where you see 2x and above on your marketing efforts and generate solid and consistent positive return on investment.
Here are 3 tips on where to strengthen your marketing operations to generate more revenue:
- Data collection: This is key. Are you working in a deficit of data and information? Know what data you need on a daily, weekly and monthly basis to make the right decisions and set up your processes to match it. Be honest about what the data story is and what it’s showing you. Look for the worst stats and find your gap, not just the nice vanity metrics that keep you repeating the same bad process.
- Relevancy saves time and money: Is your messaging and proposition in alignment with your ideal target customer? Knowing your audience produces targeted, relevant work quicker and closes your lead to sale timeline. You speak to the right people, at the right time, in the right way.
- Cross department knowledge share: Aligning sales, customer service and marketing teams regularly gets more effective work done. Sales teams are set with the tools they need to make sales happen quicker. Marketing teams gets the most valuable feedback there is: From your customers. What they want, how they think and why they buy.
Time: Your most valuable asset
A lot of what I’m hearing right now from business owners is the perception and effect of time. There is a paradox happening; a perception of more time and less time, simultaneously. This is very common through any change, as we are less concerned with time and more involved in the details of new and unfamiliar actions.
Here are 3 questions to ask yourself at the start of your day:
- What is my intention for today, what am I going to focus on?
- What is the most direct way to reach my goal today?
- Will I experience effective progress for my business today?
People: Build genuine relationships
Photo by Perry Grone on Unsplash
Building relationships is a phrase that (in my humble opinion) is over-used but the sentiment is under-used. In essence, it’s about how you want to contribute to the world around you.
Even in times of recession and challenge, people don’t remember all of the businesses that gave them discounts. Sometimes they don’t even remember how much they paid for something. But they remember how ‘something’ made them feel.
Here are 3 ways to connect with others on a deeper level:
- Be human: We may live in a world that is more digital that human some days, but remember that at the core of all technology is a human. Someone created it, someone had intentions for it, and people utilise it. Leverage your personality and connecting with others through technology as yourself.
- Continue to support your tribe: This is everyone your actions touch – your team, customers, partners, suppliers.
- Be honest: The most refreshing and impactful conversations I have experienced with business leaders have been when “How are you” is not followed by an obligitory “Good, thank you, and you?”, but by authentic, honest answers. “I’m having a bad day today”, “I’m feeling exhausted right now”, “I don’t know where to focus today”. There is immense power in the vulnerability of being honest with yourself and your people.
The Matrix of your business is held by you and your people, and produces the intentions you all give it. When leveraging tools, frameworks and tech that supports you, you can produce your best work and bring out the best in each other.
Have you reviewed your operational structure to optimise your strategies and resources? I’m offering a FREE 60 minute Discovery Session to help you strengthen your business and produce quality working methods.
Main Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash