There are a lot of things in our day that demands our time and attention. Some help moves our business forward and some, at the end of the day, have us wondering what we have accomplished. With the lingering pandemic more and more businesses is forced to ‘rethink’ on activities that produce income, engage their customers, and retain their employees.
There are four important areas to focus your activities to grow your business
1-Marketing
2-Serving clients
3-Administration
4-Professional development
Let’s start with marketing. If you are truly committed to having a successful business and your business is not yet where you want it to be, then you should be spending the majority of your time on marketing activities. The majority of that time should be spent on income-generating marketing activities.
There are two types of marketing activities – active and passive.
Active marketing activities give you the greatest exposure, establish credibility, and get you greater results more quickly. Examples of active marketing activities include:
Speaking
-Training events like workshops and teleseminars
-Networking at meetings, organizations, etc.
-Social networking with a purpose
-Creating joint venture and alliance partnerships
Passive activities are activities you should be performing in your business but are not AS DIRECT in generating income. Examples of passive marketing activities include:
Article marketing
-Blogging
-Maintaining your website
-Newsletter
-Search engine optimization
Keep in touch activities like sending cards, notes, and newsletters
Passive marketing is important and should not be neglected but passive will not grow your business as quickly or directly as active marketing activities.
Therefore, you want to spend the majority of your time on active marketing strategies.
If you are truly committed to having a successful business, until you have reached the level of success you desire, you SHOULD BE working full time in your business. If you only have 3 clients, then the rest of your workweek should be in the other 3 areas of business, MOST OF THEM MARKETING.
For those of you who have a job that you want to leave, and are really committed to building your own business, then I encourage you to put your head down, make the short term sacrifice and squeeze as many hours out of your day as you can marketing your business.
It is only temporary and the faster you get your business grown, the sooner you can leave your job.
Given that, I recommend that at least half your time should be spent doing marketing and business development activities. And the other half should be divided into the other three areas: serving the clients you have, admin for your business, and professional development.
If your business is where you want it to be and you have a steady stream of referrals and people contacting you, then you may be able to reduce your marketing activities, but you should never completely let up on the marketing pedal because clients will come and go.
In sales, it’s called the pipeline. You want to always be putting names in your pipeline and nurturing those relationships so that you always have a steady stream of clients coming in while others leave.
Serving Clients:
Obviously, this is an integral part of your business. Your bread and butter. Whether it be serving your clients through coaching or consulting, or through the other products and services you offer, you want to ensure that you “show up” and give them 100%. Always deliver more than you promise. And always deliver quality.
Administration:
The administrative side of the business is interesting. It is VERY important and has to be done in order for our business to operate smoothly and grow.
I notice that people seem to be in one of two camps.
The first camp is that they are great at it, and may err of the side of doing it too much and too well, and therefore the marketing gets neglected OR they are in the second camp and are not good at it and neglect it, and, as a result, their organization, and time management suffers as does their business.
I highly recommend that as soon as possible you delegate this part of your business. Even if you are good at it, this is not the most productive or profitable way to spend your time and if you do less of this you can spend more time marketing, serving others, and growing in your craft.
Education and Professional Development:
Interestingly this is another area where people can be out of balance with regard to how they spend their time. I see many business owners getting credentials after credentials but not getting out there and growing their business.
I do believe, however, that we should never neglect our own education and professional growth.
I categorize professional development into three categories:
a. The first is your craft.
Commit time to be learning new things about your craft, improving your skills, getting additional credentials, and staying on top of the latest trends. With the competitive nature of business today, having a specialty, being proficient and being known as an expert is a huge business advantage.
Always be perfecting your skills so that you can promote that you are an expert in your area of specialization.
b. The second is business.
Allocate time and budget to learning how to run a better business. This could be processes and systems to make you more efficient and it should include MARKETING. Take time to learn ways to better market your business. The more you know about marketing the less scary or overwhelming it is, and the more “doable” it becomes.
c. The third area of education is your own personal development.
Continuing to grow personally and professionally feeds us in many ways. It makes us better people and positively affects all areas of our lives. I like the old saying that goes “you’re either growing or you’re rotting.” Make sure you are always growing because the alternative isn’t a very good one at all.
In summary, there’s no doubt that there are many things vying for your attention throughout your business day.
The key is to choose to spend your time in such a way that grows your business, and for most of us, that means we spend the majority of our time marketing and spend the rest of our time on the other three areas.
Make this simple shift and you will notice a huge shift in your business growth.
If you found value in this article let me suggest that my lastest book will amplify your ability to focus your activities to grow your business
1-Marketing
2-Serving clients
3-Administration
4-Professional development
For more suggestions and a deeper dive into the tools that can help you with your Recession Revenue Recovery go to
jfa.tip/Amazon and join us each Tuesday and Thursday for our zoom.us calls. jfa.tips/TTwebinars
