When it’s time to invest to grow your company, wasting time and money is the opposite of what you need. That’s especially true when your company needs to evolve. From micro-businesses to enterprises, it can be lonely at the top.
You need an objective outsider to guide your progress. When it’s time to take the next step, who are you going to hire?
- There’s a time and place for business coaching.
- There’s a time and place for hiring specialists.
- And there’s a time and place for sitting quietly to figure out your own answers.
All three can add tremendous value to grow your company. But all three can also be the absolute wrong choice.
I should know – I wasted WAY too much money over the years.
Here’s What I Learned
There are plenty of people who are happy to separate you from your money. If you’re not clear about what you need to grow your business – and why – then it’s easy to be swayed by a good sales person.
You can’t build your business successfully unless you know what you want to achieve.
To be clear, you can (and likely will) pivot. Pivots are important and necessary elements of business evolution. But there, too, a pivot should be a thoughtful reassessment. Not an act of desperation.
The people you hire can guide your thinking, but you have to do the work.
Those professionals – no matter how great they are at their jobs – can’t save you. I say this from first-hand knowledge.
In 2010, I founded a company providing bra fitting expertise to lingerie professionals. It grew to international prominence, with clients on six continents. Business was good. I saw an opportunity to help those lingerie companies grow and thrive by focusing on customer retention.
At first, I wasn’t sure how to make the transition. I hadn’t yet articulated the methodology they needed. I wasn’t even sure how to talk about the opportunity for customer loyalty and retention.
In my confusion, I hired poorly and listened to some really bad advice. Created pushy, manipulative marketing that makes me cringe when I see it today, because it wasn’t focused on serving my customers – it was about making the sale at any cost.
I wasted a lot of time and money.
Fortunately, I clarified my vision and my voice. Once I knew what I wanted to achieve, decision making clicked into place. Growth became simple.
One of the biggest differences was creating a Bullseye to guide my business.
The Bullseye
A Bullseye is a clear objective for customer engagement – like a mission statement, but directed at the customer experience.
My Bullseye taps into an emotional connection that inspires me (and my clients). It also engages strategies and clear processes for consistent customer interaction.
Using a Bullseye means every decision is customer driven. It’s easy to differentiate between good opportunities and those that take me off my path – and I never look back. A Bullseye means knowing who you need to hire and how to lead those hires to success.
An active Bullseye empowers a business. It ties vision to action on behalf of customers. It gives employees and hired team members a clear target to guide their work. It drives revenue and boosts profitability. You grow your company.