I’ll be honest, I dislike trendy words like “innovative.” Buzz words get us away from what we really do at our jobs.
However, sometimes we need new ideas for our business, american ingenuity to create a product, and creativity to market it. In the World Fair and the “World of Tomorrow” exhibits, business owners took pride in all of their ideas. Even though the Firebird from GM never hit the market as-is with its turbine engine, they still innovated.
Innovation is simply its taking the time to look at your resources and make your business more profitable. So here are 5 ways to have an innovative business:
5. Evaluate your expenses –
Your expenses are the direct costs of your business. Sometimes we get comfortable and just accept that our expenses cant be changed. I’ve heard of contractors lowering their insurance expenses by $1,000+/mo and others lowering their phone bills by $200/mo.
The point being, take a look at what you spend and see if you can lower it. Think of how much you could do with an extra $2,400-$12,000 a year net profit.
4. Evaluate your customers –
I am a firm believer in Perry Marshall’s 80/20 rule which states that, you will spend 80% of your time on your obnoxious customer base and only 20% on the customers that you actually like. Would’t you like to serve your friendly, always consistent and happy customer base more than the obnoxious ones that always cause you problems?
I’m not advocating dropping your non-preferred clients, but I do advocate finding ways to attract the target niche that you want. This is one of the marketing techniques we employ at Pullman Marketing to help business owners.
3. Evaluate your technology –
When it comes to technology, my stance is that technology is to make your life more efficient. Technology does not always achieve this which is why I wrote several blogs about the topic. So when we look at technology, its good to evaluate what is really working or if you need to make more of an effort to use the tools. My typical suggestion is to try using a technology for two weeks straight and see if it really helped that much.
Just because its a tablet, cell phone, says its faster or easier to use, it doesn’t matter. Really evaluate it for your lifestyle and see if it works. If it doesn’t work for your business, don’t use it 🙂
2. Evaluate your web presence –
Is your website up to snuff? Is it making you money? If it isn’t, it might just be time to update it and have it focus more on generating leads and helping your local search performance.
Feel free to contact us and we would love to talk about how we can help you.
1. Evaluate your time –
For the first time in our history, money is more valuable than time. We will drive across the street to save two bucks on detergent or a 12-pack of soda. We are willing to sacrifice our time for the value of money, but in honesty, our time is more valuable. Time is a valuable resource that we lose every second. We have to properly manage it to be successful in business.
One way to evaluate your time is to look at what you do. Look at what your spending your time on. Can you train someone else to do it so you can work on the things that really make your business money?
Freeing yourself from the minor tasks so that you have the proper time to focus and plan for your business, makes you the game-changer. Like Jane talked about in last week’s blog, Surviving to Thriving, not planning can be fatal for your business.
