Keeping Your Business Fit

I don’t get to the gym as often as I should. Life seems to throw too many other time-zapping needs at me. It’s easy to make excuses and before I know, it’s been a month since I last picked up a weight or stepped on a treadmill.

When that happens, I can see and feel the difference almost immediately. As soon as I get back to regular workouts, I also see and feel a positive difference almost immediately.

It’s the same with your business. Keeping your business fit and in shape is vital if you want it to have a long and healthy life. Let it get out of shape and you’ll have a flabby, soft and lethargic work culture that can’t respond quickly and efficiently to a changing marketplace.

Here’s my fitness program to help you build business muscle and get your company or organization into top shape.

Exercise 1 – Shopping.

Have your business mystery shopped. The results will show you exactly where you are out of shape. You’ll find out what it feels like to be your customer. Learn how your employees interact with customers, and what they say about your goods, services, and you! What happens when someone cold calls into your office or store? How do people react to your Website? Feedback from just 10 mystery shoppers will cut to the bottom line of where you need to make changes and improvements.

Your employees and your Website are the most productive marketing resources you have for increasing and developing business. Chances are you are much too close to both to be objective about their effectiveness. But it takes just seven seconds to make an impression on a potential customer. Mystery shopping will tell you exactly what that impression is. Be sure it’s a good one.

You are sure to find small, inexpensive changes you can make that will deliver big financial benefits.

Exercise 2 – Competitive Brainstorming.

Changes are happening at a lightening pace today. You need to be competitive in many ways. Product, service, value, price, timeliness, quality, and reputation all are part of what gives you market prominence and brand acceptance. How do you measure up to your competition?

Assign each of your employees, or if that’s too many people, assign your management team or a random group of employees, to do this exercise. Create a document for each person where they name who they think is your biggest competitor. Then have them answer this question: “If I worked for (name of biggest competitor), what would I do to beat us?” Get all the answers and you’ll have the beginning of a strategic plan that will guide you to a more powerful place in your market.

Not only that, you may be surprised at just who your employees think is your competition!

Exercise 3 – Attitude Adjustment.

Set up a new policy for your company. The new policy is that anyone who works there, including you, may no longer use the phrase “We/I can’t do that.” Anytime anyone uses that phrase make it mandatory for them to change it to “If we did that, how will it affect our customers or our business?”

Too often businesses make decisions that benefit them, but actually make it harder for customers to do business with them. When you make changes that are good for the customers, they will also be good for you. You’ll increase customer loyalty, you’ll provide new reasons for customers to do business with you and you’ll have a customer-driven business model.

Without customers you’re out of business. Putting the customer first is always a good strategy.

Exercise 4 – Build a Pyramid.

You won’t have to haul rocks for this project, but you will need to dig. Go through your customer data banks and files to pull together the building blocks for a market pyramid.

Form the base of your pyramid with the number of potential customers you have never sold. These are people you’ve attempted to sell, by an unsuccessful sales call or they are walkouts from your place of business. On top of that put the group of customers you have sold once, but for whom you have no repeat business. Then sort the remaining customers into three layers – occasional customers, frequent customers and best customers.

Use the five layers of your pyramid to define your best opportunities. Analyze the geographic, demographic, psychographic and sociographic information about your best tier. What do they have in common?

Then start down the pyramid. Pull the frequent customers. What is missing from their profile that prevents them from being in your best category? Continue this analysis through every layer of your pyramid and you will prepare a blueprint for how to grow your business by improving sales volume and frequency with the customers you already have.

If your pyramid has too broad a base of potential customers, it is a sign that you need to put your energy and resources into sales conversions instead of attracting more potential customers.

Exercise 5 – Jump Those Hurdles.

Every business has hurdles they never jump over because it is easier to continue with the status quo. These hurdles prevent them from doing the things they know are right. The hurdles are finances (capital and cash flow), time, scheduling, employees and costs.

Allow yourself and your executive team to proceed with planning as if none of those hurdles exist. Mentally make them not a factor. Now, move forward with a strategic planning session to address major questions for your business. These could be:

• How many customers will you lose this year? What can you do to prevent that?
• How much will it cost to replace a customer you lose?
• What new service or product can you offer that will get your existing customers excited about you?
• How many of your customers purchase only a small portion of what you sell? How can you get them to purchase more?
• How much more profitable would you be if every customer you have spent just 10% more with you this year?
• What is your vision for your company five years from now? What was your vision when you started the company? Are you still on course with your vision?

When you look at what you can do if you eliminate the hurdles, you’ll know what you need to keep your business in top shape. You’ll define and prioritize the goals for your business or organization. And that’s your fitness program.

Jay Abraham, the prolific business author and entrepreneur, sums it up this way: “You are surrounded by simple, obvious solutions that can dramatically increase your income, power, influence and success. The problem is, you just don’t see them.” Implement my business fitness program and you’ll be amazed at how much better you can see.

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