In my last email I shared 10 Business Truths That Matter. Here is the complete article with expanded detail for each of the truths.  

1)  Plan, develop, and execute a realistic, prudent business plan; then, constantly monitor it. Today’s economic climate requires a focus on specifics. Goals determine action; therefore, you must know what you are striving to achieve. You can’t simply “go through the motions” and expect to achieve results. You must constantly know where you are so that shifts might be taken to keep you on the correct path. Planning allows you to be able to advance when one door of opportunity closes so that you are positioned to advance toward another door. It is also vital that everyone on your team know what they are to do and why it is important that they perform their roles well and achieve pertinent goals. Prudent plans that are monitored and acted upon will produce the potential for goals to be reached and success to be celebrated. 

2)  Examine, evaluate, and ensure that you have the right people in the right job and the right number of people at work in your business. Gone are the days when you could simply hire “a person” to fill a role. You must have the “right “person on board to fill a particular need. Further, it is important to evaluate your current team. Do you have the “right” people in the “right” roles? In other words, are you maximizing your return on investment from each member of the team? What are the shortfalls and what are you prepared to do in order to correct the shortfalls? How could you better associate strengths of each person on your team to address needed roles in your business? How are you “building” your team? One of your greatest expenses centers around people. The success or setback you encounter in your business will directly or indirectly result from the people you hire, how you utilize them, and how they are developed. Don’t simply “hire people” because they will come cheaply or you are in dire need. Hire the “right people” who will enable you to grow your business and achieve the results for a profitable future. 

3)  Know your market and where the potential exists. Understanding your market, its demographics, strengths, shortfalls, etc., is an important part of building an effective plan to achieve the results you need. It must be more than a passive acquaintance. It must be a knowledgeable insight that allows you to operate from a position of certainty. But a more critical avenue to explore is where the new potential lies. What avenue is being underserved? What new opportunities are your current products and services producing that you have not realized? Where is the growth? What might you do differently to gain greater penetration or encourage new options? Knowing your market and where you can go next will position you to gain the returns you desire. 

4)  Know your competition, what they are doing in the market, what strengths they are leveraging, and where they are vulnerable. Competition gives you a reason to live. It makes you find ways to respond to the market and forces you to become the very best “you” that is possible. In doing so, the market benefits as well as potential customers because products and services are most likely enhanced and real value is exposed. Understanding who your competition is and what they provide enables you to better leverage your strengths or make adjustments to meet or exceed expectations where an aspect of a product or service falls below the competition. Knowing where your competition is vulnerable to your product or services enables you, in the spirit of competition, to take advantage of that fact and validate your effectiveness in the market. The respect and understanding of competitors promotes friendly competition which is essential to lasting success. In doing so, you can strive to become the industry standard.  

5)  Effectively manage your advertising and marketing activities to maximize results. Creating interest in your products and services is essential to reaching goals. In doing so, you attract customers by showing how your business can satisfy their needs and wants. Your ability to fill that “void” is achieved when your product or service is remembered as the solution. You need a variety of avenues to explore so that you might evaluate what brings the greatest return of the “right” people to your company’s view. Once that is discovered, it is important to leverage the most effective process. You must also consider: a) What activities that have worked in the past, if reworked, would bring you even greater return? b) What are you spending time and money on currently that is simply not providing an acceptable return on investment? Finally, examine how you are currently conducting advertising and marketing. Do you perform these roles yourself or is a member of your team responsible? What would happen if you were to employ a specialty firm to handle all marketing and advertising for you? Reaping the greatest return on investment for advertising and marketing is invaluable in your business growth of day-to-day operations. Be wise in your efforts and gain the market share you desire. 

6)  Tell and demonstrate your value story: build your personal brand in the marketplace. What makes your business, or for that matter you, stand out in the market? Differentiation is a central factor that enables a good company or business practitioner to become great. What is being done or has been done to create or extend value will impact your business’ bottom line. Further, demonstrating your value story or personal brand in the market is a moving target. This simply means that competition is always driving you to better your best. You must understand what image you are trying to convey and then diligently direct your efforts to exposing that picture. Thus, you must ask, “What new actions will we undertake to entrench our brand more firmly in our market reality?” The end result must be that your client base is given the best possible service or product portfolio that clearly is the best choice to address their wants and needs. When this is accomplished, your value will be delivered and your brand awareness openly visible despite the competition or the economic posture. 

7)  Broaden your sales and leadership skills, the skills of your team; and, your product and service knowledge. School must never be out for you or your team if you are to better protect your professional expertise. Ask yourself these questions: 

1. Where do you stand in your sales proficiency?  Where does your team stand?
2. Do you find yourself leading or managing?  
3. How do you determine what product or service best fits your client’s needs or which client or prospect is best suited for your product or service?
4. What learning and development programs are available in the marketplace that might benefit yourself and/or your team with your sales and leadership skills? 
5. What type of internal developmental programs do you conduct? What is missing from your offerings?

It was once said that there is no substitute for knowledge. Legendary Communications Professor, Herb Dordick, was credited with stating, “Getting informed and keeping informed produces knowledge that, when applied, generates substantial payoffs.” Thus, we never stop learning by always searching for positive and influential lessons. When we broaden our skills, and the skills of those in our control, and when we also expand our product and service expertise, we put ourselves in a position to lead in our market and exceed our goals. 

8)  Build your business retention results by growing your client knowledge level. Retaining business can be an overlooked strength in today’s very competitive arena. Many business operations place a high value on attracting new business but often don’t put as much attention to retaining the current client base. It costs nearly 6 times more to get new business than to keep existing business. While new growth is critical for any business operation, it is also imperative that a business strive to retain as much of its current client base so that growth might have a compounded impact.  Business retention demands a focus on clearly discovering the continued expectations of clients and striving to transform an initial business association into a growing relationship.   

Here are some key questions to consider: 

1. What do your clients expect from you? How do you know?
2. How do you stay in touch with clients? What is not working? What is working?
3. What one action, if initiated today, would without doubt increase your retention results?
4. What were the top 3 reasons that you lost clients over the past 12 months? What have you done to correct this?
5. What processes are you utilizing to better solidify a relationship environment with your clients?

Walmart’s founder Sam Walton once said, “Exceed your customer’s expectations. If you do, they’ll come back over and over.  Give them what they want and a little more.” In essence, when you are able to fulfill Sam’s directive, you too should see your retention levels grow. 

9)  Develop a great work/life balance. All work and no play or all play and no work will surely deplete the energy from even the most positive and ambitious individual. Work/life balance is the dynamic relationship between achievement, fulfillment, and the factors that influence our choices and decisions in these two areas. It looks different for everyone. You must diligently strive to find that “balance” point. In doing so, you must decide what achievement and fulfillment look like in your life. If you do not make balance a priority in your life, negative influences will creep in and slowly dominate your life mission. Imbalance can have an adverse consequence on your health by its impact in such areas as stress, poor diet, and poor sleeping habits. It can also quickly dilute your personality and put you at odds with family, friends, and colleagues.   

In our fast-paced world, it is easy to shift priorities and take a more focused approach to grabbing the “golden rings” that work can provide. The sad part about this is that it may be great for your business, but it will be bad for you personally. Work/life balance demands effort and paying attention to your personal life. It may feel uncomfortable to attempt changes at first, especially if you are a Type A personality. However, you must look beyond what you want to achieve and how you perceive fulfillment and address the factors that are minimizing your ability to gain the balance you need. Once you gain awareness of the negative influences that impact your work/life balance stability, you are one step closer to gaining control of your life and career. 

Here are a few good questions to consider: 

1. What are you committed to do in order to better address your work/life balance situation?
2. How can you better manage your time to allow yourself the right to take time off but also meet the demands of your career?
3. What must I be prepared to battle in my desire to gain more balance in my life?
4. What is a good “first step” for me to take?

If work/life balance were easy, everyone would have it. It may seem elusive, but it is attainable. By understanding what is truly important in your life as well as the sequence it should follow, and by utilizing the proper allocation of time and energy to attain those important goals, you will find the balance you need to live the life and enjoy the career you desire. 

10)  Always maintain a positive attitude. Though many people might have adverse opinions, having a positive attitude is perhaps the most critical factor to positioning oneself for success. Filling your mind with only the negative simply pushes your response factor to expect only the worst in virtually any situation. Author Andy Andrews, in his great book The Travelers Gift, reflects the critical importance of positive thinking. His battle with homelessness and poverty enabled him to create the famous 7 Decisions for Personal Success: 

1. The buck stops here. I am responsible for my past and my future. 
2. I will seek wisdom. I will be servant to others. 
3. I am a person of action. I seize this moment.  I choose now. 
4. I have a decided heart. My destiny is assured. 
5. Today, I will choose to be happy. I am the possessor of a grateful spirit. 
6. I will greet this day with a forgiving spirit. I will forgive myself. 
7. I will persist without exception. I am a person of great faith. 

A positive attitude will not allow you to do everything, but it will allow you to do more than a negative attitude will. You most often get what you think about. Positive attitudes can work miracles. As English writer Samuel Johnson said, “The habit of looking on the best side of every event is worth more than a thousand pounds a year.”  

So how is your attitude? Do you see yourself winning or losing? Are you busy seeking solutions to your challenges or are you simply focusing on why the challenges happened to you? Is your attitude so positively contagious that even you are attracted to yourself? You have a choice. You can go through your life seeing the positives in every situation, or you can  

seek to become a proud member of the negative thinking circle of honor. It is all a matter of your perspective. As famed golfer Arnold Palmer’s father once told him, “90% of success is from the shoulders up.” 

Begin today to utilize the 10 Business Truths in your endeavors. They will enable you to better achieve the results you seek IF you will put their messages into action. In the final analysis, whether you do or not is simply a matter of choice. Choose wisely and gain the success and satisfaction you deserve, and you will never “work” another day in your life.