Improve Your Small Biz: 6 Tips from Jim Collins

One of the most dynamic speakers at the recent World Business Forum was legendary business thinker and author Jim Collins. His presentation was wide ranging and offered many lessons that would be easily applicable for any small business owner. Here are some of the most interesting of his points that you would use to improve your small business:

1. Run a pocket greatness. Too many business owners try to expand and do too many things well. If you know that you are the best at something, then focus on that and make it into what Collins called a "pocket of greatness". When you have this, you have something that you can build from. Without it, you can lose focus.
2. Double your questions to statements ratio. This is a slightly mathematical way of making the point that you need to ask more questions about your business and where you want to go instead of creating vast vision statements or bold declarations for your business without the right amount of thinking. When you ask more questions, you force yourself into the mindset of thinking about how you will actually do something and what the barriers might be. It's an essential step towards achieving anything.
3. Spend less time trying to be interesting and more trying to be interested. Conventional marketing wisdom and most books focus on trying to help you find more ways to be interesting. I too write about this topic here and on my own marketing blog. The problem with focusing too much on this, however, is that you may be missing out on learning opportunities or leads or even just highly useful conversations if you aren't listening for them. So try to spend more time being interested in the people that you meet and ask them questions instead of focusing on yourself. You may be surprised with what you will find.
4. Turn off your gadgets and create white space. As Collins talked about turning off your gadgets, you could see the people in the audience shifting uncomfortably and the ones who had been checking their Blackberrys or iPhones look up. Putting away your gadgets and being disconnected is hard, but if you can do it then you create essential time on your calendar every week just to think about your business and what else you could be doing. This is the time where the great thoughts stuck in your mind can find their way out - and it may become the most important time of your week.
5. Create a STOP doing list. Most of us have a to do list, but how many of us have a list of things that we should STOP doing? This is exactly what Collins suggested: prioritize by clearly thinking about the things that may be wasting your time right now which you will stop doing.
6. Read beyond your field. One of the Collin's most surprising habits was that he says he reads 100 books unrelated to business every year. This helps him to expand his vision beyond the world of business and think about other areas. It gives him an essential sense of the world and what is happening, as well as ideas that he can apply to his business and for the organization with which he works. The same principle can work for you and your business.

Is Life Balance a Myth?

Career, spouse, children, sleep, social life, faith...Are you trying to juggle too many priorities in the air? Relationship experts and SUCCESS guest bloggers Richard and Linda Eyre say life balance is an elusive thing. It's hard to balance everything. Instead, the key to doing it all is to categorize correctly so it doesn't feel like you're stretching to do it all. Instead, sort your priorities into three primary categories: family, work and self.

"The deepest and truest priotities of life all fit somewhere within these three categories," the Eyres write in their classic Life Balance (1997, Fireside). Work and family are perhaps the easiest to categorize, but many question self as a point of priority. Doesn't that imply a certain selfishness? What about service to others or religious commitments?

"If viewed correctly, prioritizing self does not mean eliminating these things; it includes them," Richard and Linda write. Faith, community service, social engagements, reading, meditation, sleep, even shopping are each important components of the self category. So, evaluate your days with thse three categories in mind. What categories do your daily activities fall into? Are you performing too many activities in one category and not the others? Use this worksheet to track and categorize your priorities.

Family
Grocery shopping
Attending PTA meetings
Date time w/spouse
Playing with your children

Work
Checking email
Continuing education
Project management
Developing work friendships

Self
Sleep
Exercise
Social engagements
Church obligations

(Taken from success.com)

Winning in Sales is not all Home Runs

Now that the baseball playoffs have started, let's use a baseball analogy to help increase sales! Although we hit the occasional 'home run' in our sales efforts, just as in baseball, the game of sales is not usually won with all 'big hits'. Normally, many strikeouts, fly outs and getting on base without scoring a run. Your hard work in selling your product or service is very similar.

In baseball, the more times you can get up to bat, the more hits you will get. If you can increase your batting average, you get on base more often. So, increase the numbers of "at bat" sales opportunities you have so that you can afford to lose a few and still meet your financial commitments. Also, improve your 'batting average' (number of new customers per visit). Here's how:

Put together a list of prospect (at least 200 for most businesses) that fit your ideal customer profile. Great! You've already done that in your business plan.

Set goals for the number of prospects you visit each week.

Schedule time for your sales activities in your weekly plan. Then, most importantly, DO the activities; work your plan.

Begin with the end in mind. For example, for an initial contact, the goal is NOT to make a sale. It is simply to obtain the opportunity to set up a meeting to discuss how you may be able to help the prospect. If you create more opportunities to get the plate, you will also generate more occasions to get on base and eventually move around all four bases.

Track your progress. Baseball players and fans are notorious for keeping statistics. You may not have to be that extreme but find a way to 'keep score', to know how you are doing. Use the S.M.A.R.T. principle. After you gain some experience, start working on your 'batting average'. In other words, analyze the results of each sales call and then challenge yourself to increase the number of closed deals in relation to the number of sales visits.

When you follow these steps, you will get more sales, period. So, get in the game - get off the bench and step up to the plate!

It takes consistent training, practice and effort. It's up to you to 'show up' for optional training sessions. Professional athletes attend all the training they can get to. BERN offers a number of professional education sessions to help you with your sales efforts. After attending, PRACTICE! PRACTICE! PRACTICE! Discuss and 'role play' your approach with family members, trusted friends, mentors and SEA colleagues.