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Setting Business Priorities That Make Sense
If you have your finger on the pulse of your business and are working
towards creating demand or interest in your product, you will need to
start prioritizing which goals are more important than others. When you
are first starting a business, keep your eye on the bottom line.
Anything that brings in sales is going to have a high priority.
While it is nice to envision a site with a full discussion forum on it,
if you haven't the traffic and no interest, you shouldn't prioritize it
until later in the year when those factors increase. Otherwise, your
visitors will show up and see only a few posts and realize they are the
only people interested in your site.
Just like you have to set the priority of work hours being committed to
working, you have to pick those tasks that will grow your business at a
comfortable rate. You don't want to spend a lot of money on an ad
during the Super Bowl only to find out it doesn't translate into sales.
Prioritizing Keep Things Organized
A large and completely avoidable time waster is a lack of organization.
Prioritizing is part of organizing your business. You don't want to
spend time searching for valuable information that should be at your
fingertips when a client calls. You need to know who your clients are,
what their buying preferences are, and what future purchases they might
have an interest in. Make being able to have the information you need
quickly, easy to access quickly a priority.
Developing a mailing list is the keystone to great sales, and if you aren't organized, you won't be able to do this well.
Here is one way that technology can work for you. Include the automatic
option to allow a visitor to add him or herself to your email list to
receive a free newsletter. This builds your list quickly and also gives
you the right to contact them without spamming them. It also
automatically organizes it behind the scenes in your websites database.
Sign up for anti-spam filters to reduce the amount of garbage in your
electronic in-box. Have a separate post office box if you are receiving
snail mail for your business. This keeps out unwanted sales flyers and
circulars.
You should have an area to process all incoming mail and immediately
file it away for later, throw it out, or respond to it. Spend a few
minutes every day at the end of the day tidying up your work area for
the next day. This can help immensely to put you in a good frame of
mind in the morning as well as to keep things from piling up around
you.
Avoid clutter at all costs!
LEARN TO SAY "NO"
This one is obvious, but it's also the one that people have the hardest
time doing. If you want to run a successful business, you need to learn
to say "no" to other people who are robbing you of the precious time in
your day. You need to make it a priority to make sure potential time
wasting people understand you can't allow them to distract you from
your business schedule. You need to be aware of the types of people who
can innocently derail your boxcar in the middle of a successful
startup.
You will want to find ways to say "no" in a fashion that doesn't
alienate anyone as they may end up being potential clients in the
future. In this respect, you need to learn the art of politics while
keeping your time free for your own agenda and plans.
Don't let someone else hook you into projects that waste your energies
with the promise of a future payoff that never happens. You are in
business to make a profit for you, not for someone else. In that
respect, you have to learn to be stingy with your time with others who
want to steal your energy and drive and to focus all your attention on
getting your own tasks done.
Learning to say "no" can be difficult for some people, especially women
who have been conditioned to try to please others and put them first.
If you want to be a successful businessperson, you will have to stop
caring what other people think about you. If you really think that what
other people say about you matters, than you shouldn't be in business
because 95% of businesses fail, according to statistics. Learn to take
advice from people when it is constructive and to ignore it when it is
meant to manipulate you into doing things that zap your own drive and
ambition.
Is it really important that you be the one to bake 100 cupcakes for the
PTA's bake sale? Probably not. If they really want them, offer to
donate a portion of the cost and have someone else pick them up at a
discount at a warehouse club. If you have to make yourself look like a
complete failure in the kitchen to get out of some bake sale
graciously, do it. Just don't forget to do it with an apologetic smile
and a shrug for not being able to help.
Again, where will your priorities lie?
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