A Little Mistake That Cost $100,000 A Year

A Little Mistake That Cost $100,000 A Year - Don’t Fall Into The Same Trap!
By Michael Griffiths
www.thebusinessleader.blogspot.com
www.michael-griffiths.blogspot.com

What an amazing time December is, summer begins, the days are longer with sunlight, the hot days turn into mild nights, people are out and about having fun letting down their hair after a hard year with Christmas parties, lunches and dinners while catching up with old friends.

In business December, if not November, becomes a very important time. In fact without this time you and your business would not continue past March or April the following year without it becoming a struggle.

I was reading over the weekend that small to medium business owners that fail to set up their goals, plans and outcomes for the following year make $100,000 less than those that do spend the time, set goals, make Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) and know the direction they should be heading.

I’ve always believed that any small to medium business needs to do nothing other than FOLLOW WHAT THE BIG DOGS DO! Take a look at what the corporate sector does, how do they set goals, how do they plan, how do they market, how do they network, how do they sell, how do they follow up; I think you get the picture. The only difference between a corporate big dog and everyone else is they have more employees and bigger budgets, BUT they can all teach us some valuable lessons to follow and model.

The majority of people have heard the saying “Failing To Plan is Planning to Fail” however all the words in the world are fine until YOU TAKE ACTION. We are now half way through December, do you have a 2010 dairy, wall planner, do you have a plan for January and February, if not for the first six months or even better the whole year. Have you set out some KPI’s to measure your business by, to measure the direction you are heading. Do you have a 5yr, 3yr and 1 yr plan in place? Can you break that down into a 90/60/30 day plan and even further do you know your weekly and daily activities to make it happen for you.

Goal setting and planning is all about knowing what you need to be focused on over that period of time. Through many sources we have learnt that “What we focus on is what we get, to the exclusion of everything else.”

Does this start to make some sense on how you could be missing out on an extra $100,000 in 2010? If your plans and goals aren’t in place then how do you know what to focus on, who are you marketing to, who are you selling to, who do you need to speak to, who are you building relationships with, how many clients can you be working with at any given time? Planning and setting goals allows the answers to all of those questions.

A great friend of mine even goes a step further with his business; he and his wife go away on a 5 day planning retreat. Now, I don’t think they plan for the whole 5 days; however they put aside TIME EVERY year time to reflect, monitor and adjust from the previous year and set out their plans, goals, outcome, KPI’s for the following year. This then allows them to focus on what they need to be successful.

So what are you going to do for the rest of December, Planning to Succeed or Planning to Fail?
I realise that you might have all the right intentions in the world BUT just don’t know where to start.

We’ll here’s what I’m going to do. Send me an email at support@michaelgriffiths.com.au with the subject heading ‘Goal Template Help’ and I will send to you the templates that I use with my business clients.

Remember - Keep Dreaming
Michael Griffiths

Why Don’t We Listen To Others

Question - Who is the most important person in the wolrd?

I’m sure you’ll come up with some different names, but deep down we all know the right answer. Don’t We! We all know who is #1, the best person around, the number one topic all the time, and YES it is ourself.

This is the case with EVERY single person, HOWEVER not everyone acts the same way or feels a need to justify their self worth through either talking over others, adding their own story or feeling a need to comment about their own experience in conversations.

When you are in a conversation with somone, what is your conscious telling you, where is your mind really at? Are you really paying attention, or thinking about what will be for dinner, or thinking about what comment or story you could tell to make the conversation about you.

How do you feel when a person listens to you 100%, when there actually interested asking questions and showing an interest in you. It’s a pretty awsome feeling.

I did a great exercise a week back with a group of leaders on listening. The task was to be in pairs and one member had to speak for 5 minutes non stop while their partner had to listen completely; no distractions, not taking their eyes of their partners eyes, no body langauage changes and at the end they swapped over.

The comments made after the task went generally along these lines;

The talker – It was amazing to have someones full attention for that period of time, to know that they were interested in my conversation.

The listener – That was the hardest thing that I have done. There were so many distractions that I wanted to look at.

So, if it feels so good when someone really listens to us, WHY do we not return the favour and ensure that we give 100% listening ability when others speak to us. Are we really that disinterested or have we formed such a bad habit that our time and self importance is worth more to us than listening to someone else?

I was speaking with a collegue last week and shared a story, I knew before I had finished, that as soon as I finished they were going to tell me a similar story that happened to them. This occurs probably 70% of the time. Why is my question? Are we really so insecure that we need to make ourself feel more important, by talking about our #1 topic.

The next time you’re in a conversation try this, look at the person in the eyes, the whole time that their speaking, ask some questions that shows that you have been listening, get curious about what they’re talking about and at the end say nothing about yourself and acknowledge them. It want be easy but trust me IT WILL BE A GREAT FEELING!

Until next time, take care and happy listening!
Michael Griffiths