Many leadership teams spend thousands of dollars each year on unfocused sales and marketing efforts that end up not being effective because they never really established a clear strategy and goals when they first began the process. One of the most important parts of defining a marketing strategy for a small business is to determine what are your “Three Uniques”. Known in the marketing world as the differentiators of a business or its value proposition, the Three Uniques for a business are what makes your business different. They also determine what makes your business stand out from the rest and who your competition is. If you were to line yourself up against your competition, you may share some of the same characteristics in terms of services and focus, but no one else should have the same Three Unique that your business does. When you’ve defined your Three Uniques, it means that you’ve defined what makes you unique and special to your ideal customer.
Start Every Meeting Right – The Segue
If in less than five minutes at the beginning of every meeting you could do a simple discipline that would
5 Tips to Help You Get More With Less
Doing more doesn’t necessarily help you get more from your business. Instead of trying to do more, focus on doing less. Here are five practical, real-world tips from my clients that have helped them get better traction:
Double Your Productivity by Buffering Your Vacations
Have you ever noticed that when you return from vacation, there’s so much waiting for you that you feel like it wasn’t even worth going on vacation? Or, at least, the relaxation you were feeling from the vacation all goes away the day you return as a result of the pile of work waiting for you?
Are We Going to Abilene?
The Abilene Paradox is a paradox in which a group of people collectively decide on a course of action that is counter to the preferences of any of the individuals in the group. The Abilene paradox was introduced by management expert Jerry B. Harvey in his article The Abilene Paradox: The Management of Agreement. The name of the phenomenon comes from an anecdote in the article which Harvey uses to elucidate the paradox.
Do You Need a Clarity Break™?
Most leadership teams are overwhelmed, tired and too busy just keeping up with their day to day routines to think about the future. Leaders who don’t take time to think about the business outside of busy work and meetings have a difficult time solving problems and aren’t able to lead as well as others who take a “time out” on a regular basis. As business coaches, or EOS Implementers™ teach, if you aren’t taking a regular Clarity Break™, you’ll have difficult envisioning the future and your leadership skills will be limited.