| |
| |
|
Small Business Information |
|
|
|
Small Business Stress Buster: Completion not Perfection
Completion not Perfection I frequently meet with business owners and executives who feel overworked and undervalued. Many of them are highly gifted and are in fact contributing a huge amount of work, energy and brilliance to the companies they own or work for. The problem is that many business owners and executives are contributing the wrong effort, energy and brilliance to their companies. These professionals are working hard, but their clients and employers are just not getting the value they truly want and need. They are: >>> The business owners who spend hours designing the perfect logo for their yellow pages ad, but do not write a simple, clear headline that lets their prospective clients know why they are different and better than the competition. >>> The dedicated administrative assistants who spend hours making spreadsheets to track the number of calls a new ad generates and where they are coming from when it turns out that the department that placed the ad is interested in the amount of revenue the ad generated, not the volume of calls. >>> They are also countless other gifted individuals who are working hard to offer value, before they are clear about what value they should be offering, how they can most easily offer that value and when they should be saying to themselves "job well done" and moving on. You cannot get completely around work-effort is simply part of the price of success. However, hard work is not always a sign of professional success. Sometimes hard work is just hard, and unnecessary. In fact for many business owners and upwardly mobile executives too much hard work can be a sign of starting to veer off track. In short, too much hard work is suspicious. It tells us we have lost sight of the true value we are offering. Ask yourself, though, if all your hard work is really paying off. Can you see clear evidence that the effort you are expending is getting you where you want to be? For many professionals, the answer is no. We work all the time, but often find we're spinning our wheels. Crafting a personal vision and making sure it's aligned with the goals of the company you work for can help, but often the answer is much simpler than that. Stop Moving the Goalpost Too often, the nearer we get to meeting our goals, the larger we make them. When you are about to achieve your aim, try to accept and celebrate it instead of asking yourself what else you can or should add on to the original goal. Instead of trying to do everything there is to do, and do it perfectly, take the time to discover what it is that gives your co-worker, boss or customer ultimate value. Then focus on that to the exclusion of all else. The point is not to eliminate all the items on your to-do list. It will never happen. The point is to provide exceptional value. When you have delivered the value, you are complete. This idea goes against the grain for many of us. After all, we want to be the best at what we do. Stop for a minute to consider what that means from your internal customer's point of view. Are you writing detailed reports nobody reads, or spending money and time developing systems and procedures that are never used? Are you busy trying to save your employees or coworkers from hassles or responsibilities it would be in their best professional interest to learn to deal with effectively on their own? To be the best, you need to focus your talent and energy on the things your internal customers value. You also need to trust yourself enough to move on to your next customer or project when the value is delivered. Continual communication is attractive. Continual customer placating or "fussing" about your work is not. Use The Five Keys to Greater Productivity and Profits: 1) Get clear about why the company pays you. What is the ultimate benefit of what you do and how does that help your company make a profit and deliver its ultimate benefit to its customer? Don't focus on everything you can do for your company, focus on where you can have the biggest impact on company goals and bottom line. When you look at your business from your internal customer's perspective, you may find that some details matter very much, while others do not. Why spend hours tracking the number of calls in response to an ad when the Marketing Department really cares about the dollar amount of sales generated by the ad? The key to "completion, not perfection" is knowing that you cannot be all things to all people, and then consciously deciding what you can and will be and to whom. How do you know when you have done exactly the job you have set out to do? How do you know that the company received what it paid you to provide? When you know those answers, you'll find you don't need to be a perfectionist. You simply need to deliver on the promises you make. 2) Stop trying to impress people and serve them instead. Businesswomen often expend energy and money to do things like "look professional" and "improve credibility." While these strategies may help your employer understand you can deliver what you promise, they are irrelevant if the benefit of what you do is unclear or unattractive, or if you are not delivering what others expect from you. Learn the difference between benefits, features and your "image" then keep 90% of your focus on the benefits you deliver. If you are a web designer, the graphics on your web page should be impressive. If you are an accountant, a clearly communicated specialty in a certain type of accounting and a fast return phone call when people inquire about your services might be more impressive (and less costly) than a fabulous web design. 3) Write out your top ten personal values. Ask yourself, "Where am I acting in ways contradictory to my values?" We often engage in unproductive work when we are covering for the fact that we have taken on the wrong work in the first place. Make sure your work truly reflects your talents and your values, and you will find that the quality speaks for itself. 4) Remind yourself why you chose this business or career. Write out a single sentence that describes the emotional, financial, lifestyle or intellectual rewards you want from your work. Read this every day. You cannot serve others and provide them with ultimate value unless you first serve and value yourself. 5) Delegate as often as possible and choose the projects that are most closely related to the core benefit you provide your employer. Your job is not to do every project or task in the organization. Your job is to be part of a team that gets it all done. Talk to your supervisor to find out how you can align your job so the company benefits the most from your unique talents. Reorganize workloads or reassess tasks when the company isn't getting the powerful results it needs. After leaving you with these five tips to ponder, I am tempted to come up with a zingy one-liner, or great client example to top off this article, but that might be moving the goalpost. I've said what I need to say. Now I challenge you to see if you can put it to use in your life. May you and your company profit from it! Mari Geasair is a speaker, writer, and business coach. She has owned several profitable businesses of her own, in addition to helping hundreds of individuals succeed professionally. Visit her web site at http://www.mycreativeprosperity.com/ for more resources for making your professional success easy. Also check out her small business training by telephone for the home business builder who wants to avoid the most common traps most enetreprenuers fall into. Small Business Smarts: http://www.mycreativeprosperity.com/Dream-Builders.html
MORE RESOURCES:
Small-Business - Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Is Your Business Legally Prepared? It is imperative to have your business legally prepared. How you ask? You need to have a business license, a home occupation license, if running your business from home, a city or county license, (depending on what State you live) plus you need to register your business as fictious if you are not using your name as a business. 7 Habits of Highly Successful Small Business Owners Do you spend every waking minute in your business? Do you find it difficult to take time out for you? Are you constantly working in a mess?Unfortunately there are far too many business owners working too long and too hard. They tend to be involved in every aspect of their business from being the bookkeeper, marketer, human resources manager, mediator, customer liaison officer and cleaner. Financial Fundamentals - What Every Small Business Owner Should Know! Business owners rarely go into business to deal with the financial aspects of running a business. It's easy to understand why! You are passionate about the products or services you provide and want to focus your time there. Top 10 Record Keeping Mistakes Business Owners Make (and How To Avoid Them) If you interviewed business owners of failed businesses, a majority will tell you that they didn't understand or feel comfortable dealing with the "book work". Your ability to understand and perform day to day accounting tasks in your small business is a critical success factor. Perfecting Your Pitch Why should you describe your business to others in 5 to 10 seconds?How long do you think you have to get anyone's attention? 5 minutes? 2 minutes? 30 seconds? It is actually 10 seconds. I know it does not seem like a long period of time but you will be amazed what you can say in 10 seconds. Do You Love Food? - Then Maybe Opening a Restaurant is Not Such a Crazy Idea The restaurant industry in the United States employs an estimated 12.2 million people, making it the nation's largest employer outside of government agencies. Contract Cleaners - A Guide for Business Part 2 In the first part of this article I put forward 7 questions that I believed were important to ask of your potential cleaning company. In this article I will explain the relevance of the first two questions and the answers you get to you as a business. Window Cleaning Business Start Up Should you buy a business opportunity or Franchise if you want to get into the window cleaning business? Or just start your own and work hard; grow the business into a full-time profession and expand from there? Let us talk briefly about window cleaning franchises is in general.One could argue without too much difficulty that buying a window cleaning franchise is simply a waste of money, after all you could simply go down to be 99 cents store and by a bucket 3 towels and a squeegee and hey, you are in business right? Well one could argue that, since to really be in business, you probably need to get a business license, insurance, buy some business cards and make a few flyers. Setting Prices - Pricing Your Consulting Services THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PRICINGIn case you hadn't noticed, people can react very differently when faced with the same price for a product or service. In fact in most cases, we'll never actually know what is in their minds when they consider a price and then decide to respond to it in certain way. 3 Ways To Make Certain Your Business Fails Most small businesses incorporated in 2005 will fail by the year 2007. No matter the industry or the economic times in which the company was initially conceived, the fact remains that businesses fail on a daily basis due to general lack of knowledge and know-how. The ABCs of Fundraising There are many little details that go into making sure your fundraising event is a successful event. The key is to have all your fundraising details laid out in front of you before you even start. How to Raise Your Fees and Thrill Your Customers Think the best way to get more customers is to have the lowest prices in town? Think again. Think the best way to create a successful business is to try to appeal to everyone? Wrong again. 11 Things Small Business Owners Can Learn From Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer 1. Everyone Makes A Difference - Despite not letting him play in their games, the other reindeer came to understand Rudolph's importance. The Truth About Government Grants for Your Business Free money! Receive up to $25,000 that never has to be paid back -- Guaranteed! Get a grant to start your own business today!If you're a small business owner, or you've always dreamed of starting your own business, you've probably run across ads like these. Companies that "guarantee" you'll get a grant to start your own business that never has to be paid back. Combating Over Regulation of Small Business Many small businesses do quite well due to the blood, sweat and tears of their proprietors. Unfortunately in doing to well often you find that the competition uses the government to attack you. Does Your Company Have a Business Image Manual Every business regardless of size needs a "Business Image Manual" to protect their band. Even the smallest companies with only a few employees is well served when there is a business image manual in place. Pressure Washing Aircraft Hangers at the Airport If you are looking for a way to own your own business using a pressure washer or expand your current pressure washing business you might consider cleaning Aircraft Hangers out at the airport. Why Wash Aircraft hangers? For one it can lead to much more work cleaning all sorts of things at airports which is an encapsulated market. 7 Essentinal Resources for Small Business So you want to start a business but you don't have a lot of money? Start your business online, and it won't be a problem.There are some pretty terrific resources you can use. SBIR vs STTR SBIR vs. STTR: If you are participating in the SBIR program you may also want to consider participating in the Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Program. The Triple A Way to Spark Your Companys Profits Winning small and home based businesses today must continually shake things up to stay in the game. Whether it's adding new marketing twists on existing products and services or anticipating customer wants with compatible new items you can add to your product mix, hatching new ideas and concepts is vital to a profitable company.
|
| home | site map |
| © 2006 |
