"Keep your eye on the ball", shouted the coach to the young tennis player. "You can't hit what you don't focus on".
Simple and critical advice to anyone learning to play a ball sport. You simply won't be successful if you take your eye off the ball.
So if we know this intuitively when playing, why do we so often forget it when in business?
In the last month I've had tales of woe from two business owners who've done just this.
The first wanted to expand his business by merging with another. And during the six months of negotiations, he took his eye off servicing his current clientele while busy with other stuff. And thinking he was going to merge, stopped new client acquisition as well.
Three disastrous things happened. About a quarter of his revenue disappeared as clients, feeling neglected, left him. The merger didn't go ahead and he had no new clients to fill the void.
So he's left scrambling for new business, while having to let go a number of staff members.
The second owner gets most of his business through ranking on page one in Google. Over about six months he'd taken his eye off the ball and not noticed his rankings had slipped. Right out of the index entirely.
In his own words, his business "nearly tanked".
Both got a serious wake up call and fortunately are in a position to recover before it's too late.
The first is working with us to put marketing strategies in place to get more clients FAST and consistently.
The second took action and is now back on page one of Google. However, all this should have highlighted a big risk for his business. Relying on only one source of leads is very dangerous. You have to spread your risk.
So where could you be taking your eye off the ball?
Marketing? Not having a consistent set of marketing activities that brings in a constant stream of quality prospects?
Sales? Not noticing that conversion rates have dropped or that you're getting lots of leads but very little follow up and conversion?
Customer Service? Not realising that you customers want to "feel loved". It's so easy to take customers for granted. Not appreciating them and telling them so is a cardinal sin which will inevitably lead to them going elsewhere.
And finally, for those of you who think you're doing well with your current business - lots of customer activity, beware the feast or famine syndrome that many small businesses fall victim to.
You may have all the business you need today - and be very busy servicing it. But what about tomorrow or three, six, nine months down the track?
If you don't have a well defined marketing, sales and customer service system in place, you run the risk of suddenly finding yourself with lots of time and very few customers on your hands.
Then you'll need to scramble and it may well be too late.
Rashid.
P.S. We'll be running our next "How to Acquire and Keep Good Clients" workshop on the 19th June. Look out for more details.
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