It's only after the fact, after you've accomplished something, that you can call it a success. Before the fact it's a hope, or if you do it right, a goal. Setting goals is actually defining success before it happens. Goals give you something to aim for, something to direct your efforts, something to motivate you, and something to keep you on course.

The first point about defining success is the simple act of doing it. The mere fact that you define success before leaping into an activity goes a long way toward insuring that you will, in fact, be successful. So look ahead and consciously decide what success means to you and to your business.

Stripped to the essentials, success is nothing more than setting a goal and achieving it.

There's a deeper experience of success. Each of us has an inner drive that motivates us. It's something that was shaped in our earliest days, that's so basic to us it seems inborn, part of our characters that operates mostly at an unconscious level. It needs to become a part of our conscious awareness so we can factor it into our decision making, and use it to tap into our passion and motivation.

We call it "Core Purpose" because it is core to your personality and it shapes your sense of purpose in your life.

Core Purpose 

The main point about Core Purpose is that the goals you set for yourself and your business can't conflict with your Core Purpose or you're setting yourself up for failure or an unfulfilling life and career.

What is success for your business? Again, success is what you say it is. And again, it's not quite that simple. Defining success for your business should be done in a way that actually launches you toward that success.

Goal-setting is an important part of that, so are setting a vision and mission for the future of the business and deciding on how it will operate and how the people in the business should behave. In our Full Spectrum program, we ask you to define something called "Strategic Intent."

Strategic Intent 

Strategic Intent is a clear statement of what the business will become in the future when it is successful. Strategic Intent sets the stage for success and puts your business on the right path to succeed.

So, success is what you define it to be - both for yourself and your business. If you don't define success, how will you know whether you have achieved it, or not?  Part of the business development work you do on your business is setting goals.  Don't limit those goals to just financial goals - look at your business as a whole and set goals in non-financial terms also.

Have you ever wondered how people make decisions about what they do and how to do it? Maybe you've noticed that some people seem to be very intuitive in what they do, but others are very analytical.  What kind of person are you, and how do you make decisions about your life and your business?

Human beings come fully equipped with both logical and intuitive thinking abilities, and somehow, over the years, most of us learn to rely on one more than the other. Neither is better than the other and neither is more reliable.

People who intuitively "trust my gut" are just as likely to be right or wrong as people who "figure it out" logically. The people who learn to use both logical and intuitive thinking get the best results. It's as if they had two brains, and everyone knows "two heads are better than one." 

If you tend to be a logical thinker, wouldn't it be better if you could double-check your logic with your intuition?

If you tend to be intuitive, wouldn't it be better if you could build a logical case for what your intuition tells you? Of course, the answer to both questions is yes.

This principle of using your whole-mind will make your decision making and business management far more effective than relying primarily on one thinking mode or the other.

An understanding of the importance of conscious and unconscious thinking and logical and intuitive decision making will dramatically increase your effectiveness as a business person and leader. It's a theme that should run throughout your business development process.

We have all heard "rules of thumb" about how to improve the way we do business. In some circumstances these seem to work quite well, but not always.  A rule of thumb is really a formula someone has worked out for their business that seems to deliver results for them, most of the time.  We hear them from acquaintances, from golfing partners, and sometimes from business consultants who offer them as a panacea or cure for business ills.

When we say "formula" we include rules, templates, best practices, and other "cookie cutter" methods, which are simply attempts to transplant methods that worked in one business into other businesses. 

Formulas make sense, don't they? Only if your business is exactly the same as the one where the formula was developed. The problem with formulas is not that they don't work. The problem arises because your business isn't the same as any other business, not even other businesses offering the same products and services to the same markets. 

You're not like other leaders. You have your own strengths and weaknesses, and they're not like anyone else's strengths and weaknesses. And your specific situation isn't exactly like the situation for any other business. 

A business principle is an underlying business reality. Principles are fundamental laws.  You cannot change them.  However by knowing and understanding them you can build these principles into the design of your business.  You get to have them powerfully working for you rather than against you. 

A business principle is deeper, more fundamental than a formula. A formula is a generalized attempt to solve a general business problem. But your problems - and opportunities - aren't general. They're specific. What you need are specific solutions to your specific problems and opportunities. 

You don't want "approximately" or "good enough." You want "exactly right" for your business, and "outstanding" for your customers, investors, employees, and others.

The previous four posts to this blog highlight a number of key principles that you can use in your business. In case you missed them they are:

1. The customer must be paramount

2. Systems are the solution to business frustrations

3. Deliver Full Spectrum value

4. The 80/20 Rule

The next few posts will bring some additional principles for you to consider. Using them as a basis for you business development thinking, you will begin to develop some ideas about how your business might become different.  Now that's a thought!

Value is one of those words that means what you think it means, depending on your point of view. In business, value is anything you provide that someone wants. If you provide it and they don't want it, it's valueless. If they want it and don't get it, it's valueless. If they want it and get all of it, that's full spectrum value.

What might this mean to the people your business touches?

To the owner, value is wealth, profits, satisfaction, making a contribution, status ... and much more.

To customers, value is a good price for the products and services they buy, a good experience of the product and the provider they get it from, status, emotional satisfaction ... and much more.

To an employee, value is a paycheque, job satisfaction, a good working environment, respectful treatment... and much more.

To the community, value is a business that pays its taxes, provides jobs for its citizens, contributes to the positive energy and the economics of the community ... and much more.

The bottom line is this: 

Value is whatever satisfies the needs of anyone having anything to do with the business.

Unless your business can deliver full spectrum value that can be recognised by everyone that it touches then there is nothing that will differentiate it from all the other businesses in the community that are its competitors.  The less it is undifferentiated, the less reason there will be for prospective customers to visit and existing customers to stay, employees to remain loyal, suppliers to offer special deals, lenders to lend, and investors to continue their investment.  The choice is yours.

Your customers are by far the most important people interested in your business. They are more important than yourself, your investors and your employees.

Unless you serve your customers and fully satisfy their needs, your investors, employees, and even yourself, will not be served, because your business will be nothing without its customers.

Customers vote with their feet and their wallets. The primary goal of your business is to deliver an experience every time your customers visit so that they have no reason to move their affections elsewhere. The experience must be relevant, timely, suitably personal, of value to the customer, and meet or exceed expectations.

And that must be the number one goal of your business, or it wont survive and no-one will be satisfied.

So you want to grow sales in your business?

You have two main choices, sell more to the customers you already have, or find new customers to whom you can sell, or both.

Let's have a look at the second option. For the sake of this discussion we will assume for the moment that you have exhausted the possibilities for selling more to existing customers.

If you want more customers, where do you start? Let's start by looking at the customers you already have and ask the question, "how can I find more customers who are like my best customers?"

If your sales or accounting systems are able to provide you with the information, sort your list of "sales by customer" for the last year (say) in decending order from greatest to least sales.  You need to be careful here that the results are not skewed by a few large sales which are outside the norm of how you do business. 

Now look at the list and segment it into five equal groups by number of customers. This divides the number of customers into 20% segments. Total the value of sales for each 20% segment and analyse the results.  You may be surprised to learn that a sizeable proportion of you sales, maybe 70%-80% are delivered to your business by customers in the top 20% segment.

What about the next 20% segment? How are these customers different from the top 20%?  And the segment after that?

If you are able to segment your customers by trade or business type and sort sales by this type of segment, what can you discover here?  What about by type of product or service purchased? For people who are smart with spreadsheet software, sorting customer data with pivot tables can reveal some very interesting results, especially in a customer type/product type matrix. But let's not get too complicated.

Now it's time to ask some probing questions. Who are your best customers? What do you know about them? Where can they be found?  What similarities do they have? What do you know about their buying preferences?  How do I treat them that is different from how other customers are treated? What is it that makes them "best" customers for my business? Who else sells to customers like these?

There are many questions you can ask, and you need to ask them if you wish to discover the best approach to attracting them to your business. Some of those questions relate to demographic characteristics and other to psychographic charcteristics. Demographic characteristics are those that you can generally count, measure or observe such as genda, age, income, lifestyle choices etc. Psychographic characteristics are generally about behavoural observations such as emotions, likes and dislikes, choices and preferences, comfort and discomfort, and so on.

Using your new found knowledge about who your best customers are, you can now develop strategies to target other similar prospective customers in your trading area knowing more about what and how they buy, and what is important to them and the business relationship they want with you.

Its time to do some analysis and thinking now!

If you don't have the knowledge or resources to do this yourself, seek help from someone who does. "Cloning your Best Customers" is a foundational marketing topic in Full Spectrum Business Development coaching.

This posting by Carmine Coyote of the Slow Leadership Blog caught my attention. It neatly sums up attitudes to risk, which is very topical in light of the current credit squeeze resulting from the US sub-prime mortgage problems.

In her opening paragraphs Carmine says:

"Risk is one of the most misunderstood ideas in the world today—especially the business world. Despite all the time and effort devoted to risk evaluation and risk management, corporations constantly find themselves subject to far greater risks than they imagined.

The reason for this is rather simple: they confuse risk with probability and try to deal with it primarily by statistical or mathematical means.

Probability is, indeed, numerical. It’s the study of the likelihood that some event or outcome will happen—an attempt to understand the inner workings of chance.

Risk is something quite different. The easiest way to describe it is to say that risk is simply a substitute for knowledge."

Carmine argues that while risk can be assessed mathematically, the best way to minimise risk is to make business decisions based on knowledge - the more knowledge, the better the decision.

Risk can be assessed and amelierated as follows:

• knowledge - the more the better - that gives you as full a picture of facts, events, personalities, economics, politics, etc relating to the business decisions you make; supported by;
• mathematical risk probability calculations that attempt to rationalise the facts (knowlege) into numbers.

Relying on the numbers alone is not a safe option.

You can read the full article at http://slowleadership.org/blog/?p=186.

Quantification is a key process in Full Spectrum Business Development. Quantification includes both observation and calculation of key strategic and operational indicators.

One of the great experiences of my life happened when a friend who owned a café created an Opera night.  This night was made memorable by not only the food, wine and ambience that was created, but also the absolutely spine tingling magnificence of the singing.

One of the Opera singers that night was Simon O’Neill.  At that time he was waiting tables to pay for his singing lessons.  Today he is understudy to Placido Domingo at New York’s Metropolitan Opera.  Simon is due to perform for one night in Auckland and todays New Zealand Herald features an article on him http://www.nzherald.co.nz/topic/story.cfm?c_id=274&objectid=10456588.

In the article Simon talks about his conductor for his latest production Wagner’s Ring.  Simon talks of his relationship with the conductor for this production, Antonio Pappano.

An excerpt from todays New Zealand Herald:

“It was Pappano's baton which guided O'Neill as Florestan two months ago.”

"He's terrifying," is the answer when asked what the high-flying conductor is like to work with, "but he is also so kind. He wants more than you feel you can give, which is a good thing ultimately. He wants more legato, more tone, more piano, more dolce, more depth, more declamation.

"He is with you all the time."

What is the relevance of this? 

Well as coaches we aspire to be like Pappano, where we are a stand for our client’s success, and we are asking more of our clients than they believe they have to give. 

We want more insights, more systemic thinking, more inspiration, more excellent execution, more learning and growth.  Our role as coach is to set high standards and continue to demand that of our clients so that often they surprise themselves by producing results that they never thought possible.  Our role is to “be with you all the time”.

It takes something to set the standards of Pappano.  It is much easier to go with the “good enough” which is comfortable. To get to the highest level however, requires you to get out of your comfort zone and to push the boundaries.

Hi everyone, we have a new website and blog!

Enterprise Leadership New Zealand Limited is finally "on the air" with a new website and blog.

The journey to this stage has involved a lot of reorganisation.  Enterprise Leadership New Zealand Limited previously traded as Business Development Academy Limited.  In those days we represented Michael Gerber's E-Myth Worldwide organisation in New Zealand as Certified E-Myth Coaches.  However, as a result of changes at E-Myth Worldwide we had to find a new content provider so we could continue to offer quality business coaching service to the New Zealand small business community.

We have been fortunate to become members of the Alliance for Enterprise Leadership Inc.(AEL), a growing worldwide group of former E-Myth coaches who are determined to continue to offer a world class coaching system to small business owners wherever they be.  As foundation members of AEL we are closely connected to the production of the programs we use with clients and are able to contibute to the development of our own Full Spectrum Business Development program, lead by Alex Alexander who was lead author of the highly regarded E-Myth Mastery Program.

In our website we bring the essense of the Full Spectrum Business Development Program to your attention so that you can decide whether or not to take the next steps to finding out whether it can work for you.

This blog will be used to bring items of interest to you in a less formal way.  It will include observations on everyday business practices, comments on useful business books we have read, and links to useful tips and resources found in other blogs and on the net. It will also contain announcements that we think may be of interest to small business owners in New Zealand and Australia in particular, and the wider small business community in general.  All in the spirit of sharing tips and topics to make all of our businesses better.

We are looking forward to leading the way.