THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS WILL HELP GROW YOUR COMPANY'S REVENUE POTENTIALS

The biggest growth moment for any entrepreneur is understanding that some things are more important than others when it comes to growing your business. One of the simplest, yet hardest things to do is to keep your focus on what your real priorities are.


With all of the known demands and constantly emerging challenges and opportunities on you and your time, how can you ensure everyone is optimising their time and getting the right tasks achieved every day?


Below are three questions that we used every day when our company, was a young startup being operated right out of our basement.

These questions challenged each and every one of us to focus and prioritise to achieve our goals. To this day, I am convinced that these three questions played a pivotal role in growing our company.


1. What problem are we solving for our
customers?


Put the focus on what your business is all about: the people and companies you want to help.

Can you articulate the problem you want to solve?  Do you know enough about your customers’ problems?  Is what you’re doing helping to solve their problem and adding value and benefits to them and their customers?  



2. Where’s the leverage?


Leverage means building upon what you’ve already achieved and taking it to a new level.  Another way to look at this is to ask how does the daily business demands relate to every other objective and activity your company does?  How does it intersect with other priorities?  How does this connect and advance the core goals of the company?  How can it be used in alignment with internal and external partners?


Each team member should ask: Is what I’m doing right now supporting and leveraging what other team members are doing?  Or am I down my own rabbit trail?


Another helpful way to answer this question is to ask:


How many customers have this problem?

Where are the intersections with our current customers or partners?

Does this activity move us forward toward achieving our objectives, or is it a diversion?



3. How do we measure this priority?


What gets measured, gets done.  When you are thinking about how to prioritise your day, week, and month, setting quantifiable goals of your priorities gives you incredible focus and clarity.


 Having quantifiable goals gives you freedom and clarity in making yes or no decisions more quickly. It takes you from the theoretical to practical application.


Can you break down the idea and quantify what it means in terms of achieving your objectives now or in the future?


It matters to quantify -- your investors, employees and stakeholders need to have information about your company in this context.  And it helps you and your team to see how far you’ve come, how far you need to go, and if you need to recalibrate. Just about any business activity can be measured to help track against your quantifiable goals.


Asking these three simple questions throughout your day, week, month, and quarter brings you clarity -- whether you are deciding on a new initiative, pivoting on a current project, managing an unforeseen emergency, or taking advantage of a killer opportunity.  Most especially, it works in determining how you spend your time every day.



Credit: Caren M.

WAYS ENTREPRNEURS SHOULD FOLLOW IN ACHIVING SET GOALS

Highly productive entrepreneurs aren’t necessarily special, but they are usually very driven and have unlocked the secrets to achieving their goals. When you know how to attack any objective with the right approach, you too can become unstoppable.



I’ve learned over my successful entrepreneurial experiences that good goal setting is easy to hypothesise about, but challenging to execute.


As I figured out over the years how to go from making lists of goals to actually getting them accomplished, I learned a few steps that made the process of goal setting transformation.



Here are simple steps for every entrepreneur to achieve any goal.



1. Make it smaller.


The vision of the goal has to start out big, and

 even a little vague, but then you have to turn that into several of what I call “something smaller” goals. This transforms a big lofty ambition into tent-pole moments along the path that you can achieve in smaller steps.


For example, wanting to improve your diet and increase physical activity are among the most common goals out there. I wouldn’t recommend suddenly going cold turkey on all your usual foods and going to the gym every day, but rather setting milestones along the road.


Break the goals down into smaller lifestyle benchmarks, such as eliminating certain foods over the course of a month, then adding in more movement over the course of the following weeks.


By making small goal benchmarks to work toward, the goal becomes achievable overall because you made it actionable in smaller steps.



2. Make it reasonable.


I always say a good goal is one that stretches you to the edge of your comfort zone, but not one that crosses over into fantasy. Everyone would love to make a million dollars this year, but if that’s not a number you can truly wrap your brain around, start with a number that stretches you but is believable.


If you are making $2,500 consistently a month, then could bumping the year-end goal to $10,000 a month actually be something you could believe? It doesn’t get you to a million this year, but it bumps your goal to something that’s believable for you and thus, feels more achievable.


Once you get to year’s end and $10,000 a month feels comfortable and realistic, you can bump it again.

These smaller, realistic goals feed into the first step of breaking big ideas into smaller actions, too.



3. Make it known.


A great way to achieve any goal is to get the right support for your journey. You want to tell people who will be supportive and involved in your success. That has the benefit of bolstering you during times of challenge, but also when you verbalize your goals you tend to follow through better.


You hold yourself more accountable to goals you’ve shared with others and that can help you reach them.



4. Make it traceable.


Breaking goals into smaller benchmarks helps to create action plans to smaller events that will eventually have a cumulative effect toward the big picture. This is a great tactic in terms of actions, but also a good tactic to help you put some metrics and measurement into the task.


If the goal is weight loss, then how much will you lose by each benchmark goal deadline you set?

 If it’s increasing your earnings, how can you track what you spend, what money is coming in and how you will generate more income through reducing your customer acquisition costs?


Furthermore, how can you track your progress along the way to see how your overall goal is progressing against your small milestones?



5. Make it fun.


As you meet your benchmarks, set up ways to celebrate or enjoy your victories. Make tracking the progress fun and meaningful. The more fun you can have along the way with your goals, the more successful you’ll be at achieving them.


The purpose of any goal isn’t just to achieve it, but often it’s to integrate it into your daily lifestyle, so learn to enjoy not just the destination but also the process of getting there.



Credit: Adam T. and Mgbeahurike T. Dillion.