What’s the secret to building a successful business?
Steve Ball, The Process Guru, Founder and Managing Director of Think Quality Ltd, created this Secret to Successful Business model because so often he sees business owners focusing on the wrong things.
You want to do what you like to do, or what you are best at and this is fine to a certain extent. But if you want to have a highly successful business, you need to approach it systematically, and change focus according to which stage your business is at.
1. Focus on Trust. Focus doesn’t mean you only work on a certain area of your business or that you do it all by yourself. It means you concentrate your efforts on a particular area of your business at a particular time.
It also means that you learn more about that area. Of course, you can involve experts and you can delegate, as long as this area is where your mind is. Even if you do outsource, you inevitably acquire more knowledge in that area.
Focus on what you have to, in order to reach your objectives and fulfill your dreams!
So why do we need to think about Trust, simple really, you have a job that needs doing on your home and you need 2 quotes.
The first guy turns up in a beaten old white van, is wearing work gear and has no business card, no signage on his van, no logo on his overalls, looks at the job and gives you a quote on a piece of paper from a pad.
The second guy turns up in a smart vehicle with clear signage and their website address on the van. He has a business card, carries out the inspection and gives says that the quote will follow later today via email. Later that day the quote arrives as a PDF attached to an email professionally done.
Which one of these people would you get to do the work? Exactly this is why you should focus on building Trust a soon as you start the business. Invest in the things that build trust while you get your first sales in. Get testimonials too, they also build trust.
The idea is simple: your focus, as the owner of the business, moves from:
Trust to Sales
Sales allows you to buy Things
Things build trust will leads to more Sales
Sales enables you it invest time in ‘Thinking Systems’
Working on Process builds Trust and leads to more Sales
Then you can develop new Product and Service offerings.
As your company grows you invest in more Things these assets help you to add value to the customer experience. This is the best business growth strategy.
Focusing on one part of the business does not mean that you only deal with that part. It means that you allocate half of your time to it, while the other half is split between anything else you would normally deal with. Above all, you, as the business owner, must focus on what needs your focus, even if it is not necessarily what you like doing.
Let’s talk about the other areas of a business:
