An important lesson from the last 7 days

Today, I’d like to share a profoundly important marketing and business development idea with you, which is often ignored.




What makes it “profoundly important”? It’s literally (not figuratively) essential if you want to build a successful business and a very bright financial future! That’s why I am also going to show you how to get started.




I need to begin by asking you a question. How many of the marketing or business development tasks you worked on last week, were due last week?



Your answer to that question is important. It’s a great snapshot of how long-term or short-term your current horizon is.



The next 6 months, 12 months and 36+ months



It’s natural to focus on making your next sale or getting your next customer enquiry. It’s really important, too. However, it’s profoundly important to come up for air and look to your future. To work on the foundations of your marketing and business development, which will determine your success over the next 6 months, 12 months and 36+ months.



This might include answering key questions like.




How can you greatly increase the number of sales you make, in the next 6 months, 12 months and 36 months or more?



And how can you increase the profitability of those sales?



What could you be doing in order to significantly improve your customer retention rate and the number of customer referrals you receive?



What valuable, new product or service could you be working on, for your current and future customers?



Who are the useful people you need to introduce yourself to now, so you’ll have an existing relationship with them in your medium and longer term? There is a direct link between how well connected you are, and how successful your business will be. There’s more information on this here , (in the 3rd marketing tip).




Today’s important tasks absolutely need to be worked on. But the only way to build a spectacularly bright future, is to work today with our future in mind . We need to regularly make time to think, plan and work on our longer-term success.



This means resisting the temptation of being so wrapped up in today’s business challenges, that we have too few foundations in place, for the future success we are capable of achieving.



Plant a seed today



Make time today, even if it’s just 15 or 20 minutes, to advance a business idea you have. In doing this, you’ll be planting a seed for the future success of your business. Then tomorrow, plant, water or feed  another seed. And again the day after.



When harvest time comes, you’ll be very glad you did.



Photo by Stas Knop on Pexels.com
An important lesson from the last 7 days was written by Jim Connolly and originally published on Jim's Marketing Blog