I thought we would do a bit of a challenge this week. Do you find you often have some good ideas for actions to take to grow your business but then find you never do them? In my experience this is very common so I thought I’d share with you an exercise I love to do as a great way to focus my mind on straightforward actions to grow my business. It’s easy and all you need is a pen and a piece of paper.
Now start making a list of all those business growth actions you have thought of but never actually completed, or that have been on your things to do list forever! These could be everything from making phone calls to prospects, following-up on proposals, updating your website, marketing a new product, a LinkedIn campaign, focusing on building your list, gathering some more testimonials, touching base with referral partners, going to new networking events, and so on. The key to doing this meaningfully is to make the list of actions SMART. Most of you have probably come across SMART actions before but I’ll just refresh your memories.
There are several different versions of what SMART stands for but the best one I find is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound. That means that each of the actions you write down need to be:
- Specific = as detailed as possible. Don’t write big overarching actions as you probably won’t do them as they will feel like you’ll need some dedicated time to get them done. Try and write straightforward well defined ones. If you do need to cover some strategic type actions then I would break them down into their component parts.
- Measurable = make it quantifiable. You need to know when you have achieved it so make sure you state the measure. For example contact 3 potential strategic alliance partners by Friday 19th April.
- Achievable = can you really do it. You need to believe you can achieve your actions otherwise you just won’t do them, plus if they are too difficult then they could serve to demotivate you which is certainly not helpful!
- Relevant = is it appropriate. Is the completion of the action relevant to growing your business? For the purpose of this exercise if it isn’t relevant than don’t write it down.
- Time-bound = set a completion date. You need to be clear when the action has to occur by for it to positively affect your business growth, plus it’ll help to drive your behaviour to get it done.
It’s unlikely that fluffy, intangible vague actions will be completed so to increase your chances of achieving your actions please do break them down and make them as SMART as possible.
Using this approach your challenge is to write down 30-50 SMART actions you can take to growth your business. This doesn’t take much time to do so take action now and start writing the list down. Once you have the list you can prioritise the actions and get stuck in to the ones that are likely to lead to the highest return, in the shortest time and which are easiest to do – these are your quick wins.
You’ll be surprised how many you can come up with. Have fun!