As a business owner, you already know that there are only 24 hours in the day, and in order to be sure you're truly making the most out of your day, it is very important to pick and choose your activities that are going to best help you reach your goals. It's very easy to work hard all day, but if you're working on the wrong things, you're not going to get anywhere. Running around in a circle is exhausting. :-) Remember . . . Doing the right things is: effectiveness Doing things right is: efficiency For example, you can efficiently send out 1,000 direct mail letters a month. However, this may not be the right thing to do to grow your business. It's vital for you to know exactly which things are the most effective for growing your business. Always strive for effectiveness first. Then, be sure you're doing those activities, in the most efficient way. Here are three things to keep in mind: 1. THINK MARKETING SYSTEM, RATHER THAN MARKETING TACTIC It is very easy to hear a few marketing tips and ideas, and then try to simulate them. However, your business can't grow with a few tips alone. It is not random ideas that you do every now and then that will grow your business. You need an effective and consistent system. An effective marketing system is comprised of a number of different components that must be worked on, tested, improved and fine-tuned. 2. CONTINUOUS EVALUATION Zig Ziglar, nationally renowned motivational speaker, once told a story that really hit home. A child stood and watched her mother prepare the annual holiday ham. The mother carefully cut each end off the ham before placing it in the pan. The child asked, "Mother, why do you always cut the ends off the ham?" The mother replied, "Well, that's the way my mother always did it." So, the child called her grandmother and asked, "Grandma, why do you always cut the ends off the ham?" The grandmother replied, "because that's the way my mother always did it." Finally, the child called her great-grandmother and asked, "Great-Grandma, why did you always cut the ends off the ham?" The great-grandmother replied, "Because the ham was way too big to fit in my small baking pan!!" So, what's the moral of this story? Obviously, the mother and the grandmother were performing a system (cutting the ends off the ham), just because that's the way they thought it had to be done. Whereas, the only reason the great-grandmother was doing it, was because the ham couldn't fit in her pan! Are you always running ads that generate no response? Stop. There's a better way. Have you been attending many networking parties, but have yet to find a prospect for your business. Again, stop. Something needs to be adjusted in your networking system. You get the idea. Continuously reevaluate your time and the results you're getting from that time. If it is not bringing in what you expect, that system needs to be improved or eliminated. 3. CONSUMABLE GOODS AND SERVICES Take a good look at your business. Let's say you do time management seminars. Once you do a seminar at a particular business, how often can you go back and do another? Or, if you organize homes, is that one organizing service the only item that customer can buy from you? Many businesses have consumable goods and services all figured out. For instance, a fast food restaurant generally doesn't make just one sale from any one customer. Just in the past month, my husband and I have eaten at Wendy's about 4 times. In the last year, we've probably visited almost 50 times! But there is a way to be sure you turn your business into a consumable goods business. For example, if you do organizing services, could you also sell books and organizers? If you do time management seminars, can you also do space management seminars? The main idea is that you come up with a variety of solutions to sell to each customer, over and over again. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright © 2000-2023 by Maria Gracia, All Rights Reserved. All content, graphics, and HTML code are protected by US and International Copyright Laws, and may not be copied, reprinted, published, translated, hosted, or otherwise distributed by any means without explicit written permission. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
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