Your business is doing okay—but it’s not the raving success you were hoping
for. There’s no time like the present to look at new ways to bring it back to
life.
Below are some tips to help re-ignite your business, and your own
enthusiasm.
Try the Zappos way
Zappos infuses customer service into everything they do. In a sea of
online competition, CEO Tony Hsieh is driven to “deliver happiness” to both
customers and employees.
Tony understands at a deep level that people want to do more than buy—they
want to connect. He knows that if he can create a real sense of connection for
his customers in every sales experience, he’ll have a customer for life.
He also knows how important a happy work environment is to keep employees
committed to the Zappos mission. Tony believes that happiness is part of a
“higher purpose” that allows people to become bigger than themselves.
Think about your own business. Are you creating an environment where you’re
passionate about every single thing you do? If you have employees, are they
passionate about every customer interaction? Have you found ways to connect
with customers on more than a transactional level?
Find a partner
Certainly, there are risks associated with this. We’ve all heard the horror
stories of partners who freeload, or even embezzle. But the great partnership
stories far outweigh the bad ones. If you pick the right partner, your business
could seriously skyrocket. The right partner will have a skill set that
compliments yours; they should be able to do the things that you’re not so good
at.
Perhaps you’re amazing at customer relations, but not so good at
accounting. Find a partner who loves curling up with a ledger.
Perhaps you have a technical expertise in a breakthrough product, but
you’re shy about telling the world about it. Find a partner who has the gift of
gab and flourishes in networking meetings, spreading the word about your
amazing product.
Behind almost every great company is a partnership. At Apple, Steve
Jobs had Steve Wozniak. At Nike, Phil Knight had Bill Bowerman. At Google,
Larry Page had Sergey Brin. The right partnership could make your business a
real force to be reckoned with.
Write a book
Ugh. What a colossal project to take on. But is it really? Think about
brochures you’ve written, emails you’ve sent, talks you’ve delivered, blogs
you’ve posted. Odds are you’ve got a lot of content lying around.
Pick a theme—something you know you’re really good at. Now break that theme
into ten sections, and ta-da! You’ve got your chapters.
In the old days, finding a publisher could make or break your book-writing
quest. But now self-publishing options abound. A book suddenly makes you an
expert, and builds your credibility as a thought leader on a given subject. You
can share it with customers. You can send it to prospects.
Chip Conley was the CEO of Joie de Vivre Hotels, one of the world’s largest
boutique hotel chains. But times weren’t always so great for Chip. He radically
over-expanded right before the first dot.com bust, and he faced economic ruin
for himself and his hotel chain.
What did he do? He wrote his first book. In “Peak,” Chip wrote
about the power of applying Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to business principles.
He took a deep dive into his own business triumphs and mistakes to talk about
the “relationship truths” with employees, customers, and investors.
Not only did this book help save the Joie de Vivre hotel chain, it
catapulted Chip into the thought leader stratosphere. As the current Head of
Global Hospitality and Strategy at Airbnb, Chip is one of the most sought-after
business experts in the world.
Turn your service into a product
You do great work. Your clients appreciate you. But you’re caught in a
cycle. You can only make as much money as hours in the day permit. You’ve been
on the bill-by-the-hour treadmill for a while. Maybe it’s time to put that
expertise into a product. Something that could actually make you money while
you sleep.
In this era of user-friendly technology, it’s not so hard to take those
hard-earned skills you’ve honed over the years and turn them into a product
that will resonate with the marketplace.
If you’re a wellness consultant, you could create a deck of cards that give
daily wellness tips, and sell them on an eCommerce site. If you’re a mechanic,
you could create an online course that shows how to change your oil and other basic
mechanics.
If you look at the big winners in the internet marketplace, a lot of them
have applied hourly expertise to technology to earn a very pretty penny.
Take Salesforce: Their product is based on a keen understanding of customer
sales and how to track all of the interactions that lead to a sale. This
understanding all stemmed from CEO Marc Benioff’s 13 years of selling products
for Oracle.
In other words, he bundled his hourly experience into a product to launch a
multi-billion dollar company.
Explore some blue ocean
In 2005, Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne published a book called “Blue
Ocean Strategy.” In this book, the authors show how real winners in the
marketplace get out of the “red ocean,” where competitors are battling it out
selling the same products and services and trying to do it better, faster,
cheaper.
According to the authors, the real winners explore “blue oceans,”
outputting entirely new products and services. To get into blue oceans, a
business needs to stop doing something that’s expected and start doing
something entirely unexpected.
Getting into a blue ocean is easier than it sounds. If you run a coffee
shop, you could do away with the standard coffee tables scattered across the
shop and create a large community table. Perhaps you could serve something
radically different—like bourbon Old-Fashioned at happy hour.
So if you’re feeling stuck in a rut, be daring. Try something bold. The
path to business success is never easy, but it can sure be exhilarating if you
embrace your adventurous side. Strap on your entrepreneurial seat belt, and get
ready for greatness!
Source: bplans.com
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