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 My parents celebrated their Golden Wedding Anniversary last month, and the family treated them to a six-course dinner at one of the loveliest venues in the South of England – Tylney Hall Hotel. The staff at the hotel were simply wonderful, going above and beyond the call of duty to ensure that the evening was a highly memorable one. (See Front2Back2Front for more on that.)
If the proceedings impressed one thing on me it was that time can pass at a frightening rate without us noticing. Fifty years! That makes me – well, twenty-nine and some change, but it’s the amount of change that scares me! And as my dad joked on the night, he’s sure he would have gotten a lighter sentence for murder ... At least, we think he was joking!
The moral of the story is that we cannot afford to delay developing goals for ourselves and our business, and working toward achieving those goals. If we decide to wait for a better time, we may find that time becomes the one thing we don’t have! So make sure that your life story becomes one of success rather than of what might have been – and you can start by reading and applying the key points in today’s article.
PS: The video has gone live on our website! It hasn't led to any offers from Hollywood (yet), but we think it does the job nicely. Take a look and then tell us what you think.
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Two Essential Components
of Achievable Goals
Last month we talked about the importance of clear, specific, time-linked goals to your professional service business. I hope that many of our readers have taken some time to develop goals for their business following the guidelines in that article. However, we finished by acknowledging that some have become ‘scarred’ by previous experiences of setting goals and then being disappointed at not achieving them. The question we posed then was: Are the goals to blame?
I’m sure most of you didn’t need to wait for me to tell you that the answer is NO! Goals may be a key foundations step to achieving business success, but they are by no means the ONLY thing your business needs! Having goals is no guarantee of success, as those scarred ones found to their cost. Why is that?
Have you noticed that goals are somewhat similar in essence to dreams? My eldest brother puts it this way: "There’s a fine line between having a vision and hallucinating". Now if there’s one thing that characterises dreams and hallucinations, it’s that they most often do NOT become reality! (We’re glad of that when Pink Elephants come past on Unicycles!) If our goals are indistinguishable from our dreams, can it be any surprise that we don’t achieve them?
So how do we ensure that our goals become reality? There are two key requirements to which we must give attention:
Have a Roadmap to Your Goals
You will come across a school of thought in self-help literature that suggests you need do nothing to foster your goals. ‘Just dream it’ goes the logic, ‘and your marvelous brain will go to work while you sleep to move you closer to what you dream of’. Now, if your financial advisor told you that he was taking that type of approach to growing your investments, how happy would you be? Me either! And it won’t work for your business – taking my word for it will save you a ton of heartache.
Let’s go back to the scenario we used in the last article – we were driving on the M3 hoping to get to Heathrow Airport to catch a flight. Did we have to give some thought to how we would achieve that goal? Of course we did! If we had never made the journey before would we leave the route to chance? Or would we make sure that we had the map-book dog-eared at the right page and the route penciled-in? (Okay, okay – I’m showing my age! We’d have printed out the AA-recommended route and made sure that we understood it.) Then as we approached each intersection, wouldn’t we refer back to that map to check that we were about to make the correct turn?
Revenue and sales targets form your business roadmap. Do you have a revenue target for this quarter? Equally important, do you understand how many sales you need to close in order to achieve that revenue target? Any longer than three months, and your ‘map’ doesn’t show the key intersections. I don’t need to tell you how dangerous a map that doesn’t show the route in sufficient detail is, I’m sure!
To force our analogy just a little further, your ‘driving the route’ is accomplished by implementing marketing strategies which lead to sales, and each quarter the number of sales closed will be compared to your ‘business roadmap’ to measure progress. Not enough sales and you run the risk of reaching the airport late for your flight. If you realise that early enough you can decide to drive the next leg of the route a little faster to make up time, but if you’re not monitoring progress how would you know?
Your goals would be slowly, imperceptibly fading into dreams – leaving behind nothing but scars.
Have the Tools You Need
So let’s assume that we have the route to our goals mapped out. Is that it? Well, would a roadmap be much good to us if we had an empty fuel-tank? Or perhaps didn’t have a car? What if we didn’t know how to drive? Nope, the roadmap’s not the end of the story.
In broad terms we could say that the next step is to understand what resources we need to accomplish our purpose. Here’s where we entrepreneurs realise how different running a business is from working for someone! Suddenly we come face-to-face with how little we know about things like marketing, customer service, brand-building, business management and so on. How can we close the gap?
There are essentially three options when it comes to resourcing our business plans: Ignore it, outsource it or learn it.
Ignoring it is not usually recommended, but don’t forget that it is an option! Sometimes I come across well-meaning entrepreneurs who follow every trend in management slavishly, burning time and effort in pointless pursuits. If only they realised that they could just have ignored the trend! Focus on what is necessary to progress your business, and ignore the rest.
Outsourcing is vital, because each of us has only two hands. Remember, though, that outsourcing is not an excuse for abdication. You are responsible for the success of your business – and that can never be outsourced! We’ll explore the appropriateness and the value of outsourcing in a future article.
How sad that in a world awash with education, learning seems to be a sadly neglected skill. Entrepreneurs have (in my humble opinion) an obligation to be lifelong learners, and it’s made so easy for us! Each of us can get what I like to call a ‘Weekend MBA’ simply by reading a carefully-selected book written by an expert in the field – every weekend! Similarly, coaching and mentoring under the care of acknowledged industry leaders can unleash more power than a nuclear reactor – right in our own backyard!
In summary, take the time and effort to give your goals wings. Plan the route to success, then make sure you have what it takes to complete the journey. And don’t forget to have fun!
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©David Deakin and Zee2A Limited 2008. Would you like to reprint this article? You may do so as long as you include the copyright notice and the following paragraph: David Deakin, CEO of Zee2A, is a marketing guru who works with Professional services Executives yearning to take their business to the next level. Through one-on-one and group mentoring programmes he helps them to create sustainable marketing strategies that attract more clients at profitable rates. To learn more, sign up for his e-zine, or make an enquiry please visit www.zee2a.com
What are your marketing strategies? What are your goals and the challenges to achieving them? Would you like help in blowing away the cobwebs? David is offering Two complimentary 'Blast of Clarity' sessions, each valued at £250+VAT, to Marketing Edge subscribers who are stuck in a rut and not having the marketing success they dream of. Drop him an email asap with the top three reasons why you would value a session and he will call you for a brief chat within a day or two. First come, First Served!!
(If you're unfamiliar with the concept behind Front2Back 2Front please go here to read the explanation in our launch issue.)
Have you ever been in one of those hotels where the staff tries very hard to convince you that you aren’t really good enough to be there? They act like they only enjoy serving people somewhat higher up the food chain than you, so they do your bidding with some distaste. Generally speaking, I have found that attitude to be prevalent only in hotels that weren’t really as good as they thought they were. A couple of weeks ago we had an experience of one of the hotels that really are as good as they think they are – and boy, did they go out of their way to make us feel like they were very happy to have us there!
We had my folks’ fiftieth anniversary dinner at Tylney Hall Hotel, and we arrived in a large noisy group with two of our number towing balloons – a restaurateur’s nightmare if ever there was! Unfazed, the staff seated us in the lounge and participated in the merriment. They enquired as to whether we would prefer to be seated in a private room (Would we? Heck yes!) and would the happy couple appreciate a complimentary glass of bubbly? (Do frogs like water???) They waited on us hand and foot all evening, but the pièce de résistance arrived with the desserts:
Wasn't that lovely? Before you ask, yes they are expensive - but there wasn't a person in our group who didn't leave there convinced that we had had our money's worth and more. (At least seven of our number hark from Scottish ancestry, so that's not something to take lightly!)
And doesn't that prove - as if it needed proving again - that the little things, along with treating your customer as someone special, are all that are needed to turn customers into raving fans?
 Have you ever met someone at a networking event who won’t tell you what he does, who he works for, and doesn’t carry any business cards? Vanessa posed this question on LinkedIn after facing her nemesis for the fourth time in these very circumstances. Read her question and the interesting responses online. If you’d like to leave a comment you may do so at our blog.
On Friday 9th we are presenting Turbo Charge Your Networking Results with a Verbal Signature for The Women’s Networking Company in Brockenhurst. If you aren’t able to attend, you may download the related audio programme and accompanying workbook from the private subscriber’s area on our website.
On Monday 12th we are doing a special presentation for the Master Photographers Association.
We have a few places left at our complimentary Cracking the Code of Professional Services Marketing presentation next week – Tuesday 13th. There are a number of Accountants registered to attend, along with a Recruitment Consultant, Commercial Property Advisor, Author, and a number of other professionals in private practise. Please drop Vanessa a line if you’d like to attend.
Are you responsible for arranging speakers at industry conferences or seminars? Do you invite guest speakers to your networking club? David and Vanessa are sought after speakers who have delivered popular presentations at groups such as Wired Wessex, The North Hampshire Chamber Of Commerce, and Business Link. Either, or both, will happily talk at your next event. Please get in touch NOW to compare diaries and set a date!
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