You can plan an amazing business and an amazing life in just five steps.
1. Create a dynamic vision. A fantasy. A big dream. A big, hairy audacious goal. You are within an hour drive of $250 million to a couple billion dollars in business (promotional products, printing and packaging). Let me encourage you to develop a vision for your business and your life that may even be beyond your understanding of exactly how to accomplish it. Dreams are free. Why not dream big?
2. Know why you want to accomplish your vision. Most of us know how to grow our sales. Most of us know how to make more money. What I find most people lack is not knowing “how.” They lack knowing “why.” Only when you know why you want to achieve your big dream will you really fully engage in the pursuit.
3. Identify which combination of business growth activities you want to focus on to grow your business. There are only four activities that will grow your business:
- Earn new customers.
- Sell more to your current customers.
- Hire and manage salespeople or account managers. (For business owners only.)
- Buy your competition. (For business owners only.)
4. Create goals. Activity and pipeline goals. Understand that the only two things that matter in growing sales are activity and pipeline. That’s it. Activity and pipeline. Here are the five sections of activity goals:
- Goals for earning new customers.
- Goals for selling more to your current customers.
- Goals for hiring and managing sales reps or account managers. (For business owners only.)
- Goals for buying your competition. (For business owners only.)
- Goals for delegating everything else that isn’t one of the above four activities.
The specific goals for each of the first four above activities are very similar.
- Identify prospects.
- Warm them up.
- Schedule a first appointment.
- Conduct a great first appointment.
- Learn about opportunities.
- Follow up.
5. Create strategies to accomplish each of the above goals. For example, how will you identify prospects? What marketing tools will you use to warm them up? How will you schedule appointments? What do you need to conduct a great first appointment? What methods and timing will you use to continue to follow up?
That’s it. It’s that simple to have a plan. Of course, there can be as much detail as you want to add. Perhaps, more details about the size or types of customers, reps or acquisitions you want to pursue, or different methods for identifying prospects and warming them up. Of course, you also want to create a simple pipeline tool to measure the results of your activities.
Keep it simple. Remember, only activity and pipeline matter. You’re on your way. Good luck and enjoy your journey.
