5 Simple Steps to Stay Up to Date on Your Business - Are you and your business staying up to date—with technology, with customers, with the market? If you are not keeping pace with all the changes that impact your business, you could be left in your competitors’ dust.
5 Simple Steps to Stay Up to Date on Your Business
By Irving Katz
Oct 20, 2010 - 3:58:26 PM
Are you and your business staying up to date—with technology, with customers, with the market? Change is the one constant in today’s business world, and change seems to be accelerating. If you are not keeping pace with all the changes that impact your business, you could be left in your competitors’ dust.
Here are five ways to jump the tracks of habit and get new energy, business, and profits:
1. Host an event.
Open your office for a networking opportunity, a business briefing or breakfast. Get clients and prospects through the door with a program that will be beneficial to them. If your budget is lean, partner with a complementary business to pool your resources. For example, if you are a real estate broker hosting first-time home buyers, allow a mortgage company to provide catered food and coffee.
2. Meet with your advisors in person.
Ask your “A-Team” (think your lawyer, CPA, benefits consultant) to meet face-to-face. Discuss changes in your operations, ask for discounted fees or propose performance-based billing in exchange for a renewed commitment to do business together.
3. Conduct informational interviews.
Some genuine stars, the best and brightest managers, salespeople, financial planners and artistic professionals are seeking work right now. So, too, are high-energy college graduates. Meet with them—even if you do not have a job opening. Fifteen minutes may inspire a job seeker to share industry insights. It also may inspire you to bring on a consultant until a full-time position is available.
4. Sharpen your sword.
If you have sold widgets for 15 years by doing X, Y and Z for five hours a day, and you are still doing X, Y and Z but your sales are down by 50 percent, shake things up. Stay sharp. Take classes online, listen to training experts and shed old habits that no longer yield results. A new economy requires fresh tactics in every industry. Moreover, what worked during a growth phase may not guarantee success in today’s conditions.
5. Target international clients.
Our city is on the map, so think globally. Equip your office with web conferencing technology, attend seminars on international outreach and etiquette, discuss foreign currency billing with your A-Team advisors and track headlines. Create a customized approach for non-U.S. markets seeking a presence here. If you do not, someone else will.
Though it will certainly help to pursue these strategies once or twice, you will achieve much more by adopting them permanently. Incorporate one or more into your standard operating procedures and you will be better able to stay in tune and competitive in your market.
Irving R. Katz, President of Katz Financial LLC, is a Family Business Coach. Irving specializes working with Business Owners who are looking for solutions to growing and maintaining their businesses so that it remains and sustains the family. He is an expert in Retirement Planning, Wealth Creation, Wealth Retention, The Blueprints For Tomorrow ProgramTM, and Estate planning for his Business Owner clients. Find out more about Irving by visiting http://familybusinesssecrets.com/
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