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Key Purpose
What
is the purpose of a business? Many people think that the purpose
of a business is to earn a profit, but they are wrong. The true
purpose of a business is to
create and
keep a customer. Fully 50 percent of your time, efforts, and
expenses should be focused on creating and keeping customers in
some way.
Key Measure
The key
measure of business success is
customer satisfaction. Your ability to satisfy
your customers
to such a degree that they buy from you rather than from someone
else, that they buy again, and that they bring their friends is
the key determinant of growth and
profitability.
Key Requirement
The key
requirement for wealth building and
business success
is for you to
add value
in some way. All wealth comes from adding value. All business
growth and profitability come from adding value. Every day, you
must be looking for ways to add more and more value to the
customer experience.
Key
Focus
The most important
person in the business is the
customer.
You must focus on the customer at all times. Customers are fickle, disloyal,
changeable, impatient, and demanding –
just like you. Nonetheless, the customer must be the central focus of
everything you do in business.
Key
Word
In life, work, and
business,
you will always be rewarded in direct proportion to the
value of your contribution to others, as they see it.
The focus on outward contribution, to your company, your customers, and your
community, is the central requirement for you to become an ever more
valuable person, in every area.
Key
Question
The most important
question you ask, to solve any problem, overcome any obstacle, or achieve
any business
goal
is "How?"
Top people
always ask the question "How?" and then act on the answers that
come to them.
Key
Strategy
In a world of rapid
change and continuing aggressive competition, you must practice
continuous improvement
in every area of your
business and personal
life. As
Pat Riley, the basketball coach, said, "If you're not getting better, you're
getting worse."
Key
Activity
The heartbeat of your
business is
sales.
Dun & Bradstreet analyzed thousands of companies that had gone broke over
the years and concluded that the number-one reason for business failure was
"low sales". When they researched further, they found that the number-one
reason for business success was "high sales." And all else was commentary.
Key
Number
The most important
number in business is
cash flow. Cash flow is to the business as blood and oxygen are to the
brain. You can have every activity working efficiently in your business, but
if your cash flow is cut off for any reason, the business can die, sometimes
overnight.
Key
Goal
Every
business must have a growth plan. Growth must be the goal of all
your business activities. You should have a goal to grow 10
percent, 20 percent, or even 30 percent each year. Some
companies grow 50 percent and 100 percent per year, and not by
accident. The only real growth is
profit growth. Profit growth is always measurable in what is
called "free cash flow." This is the actual amount of money that
the business throws off each month, each quarter, and each year,
above and beyond the total cost and expense of running a
business.
Action Exercise
You should have a
growth plan for the number of new leads you attract and for the number of
new customers you acquire from those leads. You should have a growth plan
for sales, revenues, and profitability. If you do not deliberately plan for
continuous growth, you will automatically stagnate and begin to fall behind.
Growth is not an accident; so you must plan and map out your growth plan if
you want your business to see a bright future.
Why Businesses Fail
And why is that? It's because they don't know how to succeed.
They haven't the slightest idea
how to make a business successful. They may have an idea for
a product or service, but they don't know all the things that
they need to know to run a successful business.
8 Key Entrepreneurial Questions
Why Businesses Succeed
However, surprisingly enough, 80% of businesses started
by experienced businesspeople succeed. Now why should this be
so? The reason is because experienced businesspeople know what
to do. They know how to purchase their products and their
services. They know
how to negotiate with their suppliers. They know how to
raise money. They know how to negotiate leases. They know
how to sell
and to market. They know how to manage their
finances. In other words, experience is the key. In order to
start your own business and succeed, you have to learn how. |
