Systematize and Monetize in Your Business Planning
As financial markets continue to fluctuate, business owners are tasked with keeping up with the pace of accelerated change. As things continue to change, you’ll want to keep these tips in mind in your business planning:
• Pay Attention to Your Market
It is important to review market changes. Keep an eye on the Baby Boomer generation, one of the largest generations, which will be requiring additional and specific health care needs. If your business services this generation, you’ll want to keep an eye on their needs so you can adapt your products and services. Researching your market now helps you to anticipate their wants and design products, solutions or services to assist them later.
• Update Your Marketing Strategies
One of the key issues with both new and seasoned business owners is that they are applying push marketing strategies and avoiding pull marketing strategies and social online sites. Entrepreneurs using outdated techniques wonder why their results aren’t what they used to be. It is important to keep a pulse on the societal changes so that you can be more effective in using systems and these online communities to draw in your target market.
• Ask the Customer
To anticipate customer needs, ask your customers what is really important to them. It sounds simplistic but so many companies don’t ask what their customers really want. They then create a product they think their customers want, only to find the results lacking once they launch. There are many low-cost (and quick) ways to ask your customer what’s important to them: surveys, face-to-face, telephone, or as part of your system or process of collecting valuable information that shapes the way you do business.
It is important to not only develop products your customers want, but if it is in development too long before it hits the market, you could miss the timing. A careful balance must be reached between research and development through to launching the product or service. By looking at your systems and processes, you will find greater efficiencies in meeting customer demands.
• Systematize
Often the reason for inconsistent results is a lack of systems. A client had detailed business plans. It sounded great on paper yet she failed to systematize her business plan. Often times, she would respond to the pressure of the day and forget about the long-term. It wasn’t a matter of her responding to the market. The plan was solid. But she failed to bring the plan as far as her calendar – scheduling it to make it happen. Once, she systematized her time and began to schedule times on her calendar to execute her plan, she found the results happened very quickly. She also didn’t have a good system for bringing in clients consistently. She had an opt-in e-newsletter but didn’t have a Permission-Based Marketing System (that is, an automated system that consistently nurtured the relationship with the client.) Once she built her system, she consistently filled her practice with clients.
• Leverage in Monetizing
Among many solopreneurs and small business owners, there is this notion of “being the only one to do the job.” They are often stuck in trading hours-for-dollars and forget about leverage. There is leverage in the internet, leverage in delegation, leverage in working with many people (as opposed to one-on-one). There are many different ways to create passive income leading to increased financial results.
Savvy solopreneurs take advantage of systematizing and monetizing their business. The ones that take action on these solutions end up thriving even during financial market fluctuations because they are clear on who they serve, consistently market, and create systems that help monetize their business.
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Lisa Mininni is Best-Selling Author of Me, Myself, and Why? The Secrets to Navigating Change and President of Excellerate Associates, home of the sought-after Entrepreneurial Edge SystemTM that helps entrepreneurs systematize and monetize their business. To get your copy of her free eBook, Get Ready, Get Set, Go! and sign up for the free Teleseminar, request your information below: