How can you not only survive in business but thrive? That’s the topic of our conversation today and it starts with your mindset. If you’re not making as much money as you want to be making, and if you keep hitting the same roadblocks, then it’s time to adopt a growth mindset. This means actively seeking to gain know-how and expand your skills in those specific areas that will help to grow your business.In this article, we’ll evaluate a few areas of your business where you may want to fine-tune your skills so you can get to that next level that you’re looking for in business. First, you’ll need to understand two concepts: the traffic light system and sprints.
Traffic Light System
Growing your business requires skills in a handful of practices, which we will cover. But first, you need to be clear about the areas that may be keeping you stuck. The traffic light system will help you to determine which levers to pull to grow your business.
Red Light – Areas of business where you feel unclear, blocked, or that you may avoid as “red” on the traffic light system. These are areas where you’ll need to gain the most understanding and skills in order to see business growth.
Yellow Light – Any area of business where you have some skills and understanding, but can be improved for better results, could be considered yellow.
Green Light – Business activities that you have a process for and are working well are considered green.
Sprints
After you’ve color-coded the areas of business where you can grow, you’ll move on to working in sprints to gain the knowledge and skills needed to grow your business. A sprint can be either 4 weeks or 2 weeks in duration. If you enjoy diving deep into topics, consider doing four-week sprints. If you prefer skimming topics, a two-week sprint might be ideal for you.
Now let’s imagine that you don’t enjoy working on messaging. This is an area where you might choose to focus for a couple of weeks, move on to the next area of focus, and then return to messaging for another two weeks. As you can see, sprints are a rotating schedule that you can use to continuously grow your skills and know-how. Now let’s review the areas of business growth that you will evaluate using the traffic light system.
To gain clarity and skills in business, you may choose to watch YouTube videos, enroll in courses at Udemy.com, or work with a consultant like myself who takes you through every one of these business growth areas to help scale your business.
Finally, during your sprints, be sure to make time on your calendar for learning and implementation. I would recommend time blocking on your calendar so you have two to five hours each week to learn and take action on your new knowledge.
Business Growth Areas of Focus
Offers
Offers are the service packages that you provide. If you’re not selling many services, if people have a million and one questions, and they seem to always be on the fence about working with you, then offers may be an area where you want to brush up on your skill set. You want to be able to tell someone about your offer and hear them say, “That sounds like it’s perfect for me. I would love to work with you on that.” If you’re starting to hear that more and more, then you’re on the right track with your offers!
Messaging
The next skill set of focus is messaging, which is telling the world about your offers in a way that attracts interest. What they’re getting? Why is it useful? And, why should they work with you over someone else who’s offering a similar solution?
Website
Having an effective, lead-generating website involves many skill sets. You may choose to hire a marketing-knowledgable web designer. However, it is still helpful to be clear about how to craft messaging and branding that differentiates you, as well as understand the purpose of each page, and how page layouts can lead to higher conversions – including booked calls and email opt-ins.
Lead Generation
Without leads, you don’t have sales calls. Without sales calls, you don’t have clients or a business! Since you need to be making sales, you need the know-how and a working process to draw in leads. The more leads you have, the more selective you can be about who you work with and the projects you take on. This will result in being more excited about your work, which naturally creates better outcomes and word-of-mouth, and great case studies. In turn, these help to build your business. There are many avenues for lead generation, so you can select the one that’s of interest to you right now and then do a deep dive on a sprint all about that specific type of lead generation.
Marketing
We sometimes conflate lead generation with marketing, but there is a distinction. Some of your marketing might include a lead generation component. However, while lead generation is about direct response, marketing is about expanding your reach online and in your community. It’s about getting the word out about who you help and what you do.
When it comes to marketing, I recommend learning about content marketing. This is an umbrella topic with smaller components that include email marketing, blogging, YouTube videos and more. For each sprint you do on marketing, select one sub-topic of marketing that you want to get stronger in.
Sales
Arguably, one of the most important skills to improve upon is sales. An improvement in this area can increase your income – without the addition of a working marketing strategy. For example, you might have clients or business contacts who often refer potential clients to you. If you can go from converting a low percentage of referrals to a much higher sales conversion rate, your business can skyrocket.
Takeaways
As you can see, growing your business is directly tied to your level of skills and know-how in a variety of business applications. By improving your skills in these various areas, you can sell more of your services, make a bigger impact in the world and have a thriving business. If you like this concept, and you want to quickly get to the next level in your business, then I want to invite you to join me on a Brand Navigator call. This is a complimentary call where you and I will uncover the roadblocks that are happening in your business and I’ll give you three key areas to focus on so you can start to get momentum towards that next level of growth. Grab a spot on my calendar now, and I look forward to speaking with you.
Monica
