Too many businesses get distracted and lose focus from what is important.
I am currently reading "Be The Best At What Matters Most" by Joe Calloway.
Great book. Well worth the read. Buy it.
But reading the book won't help you.
Applying the ideas to your business will help you immensely.
Manifast Your Dream Business
I started by asking two questions about our own Manifast brand:
- What matters most to our customers (what is a dream business)?
- What do we need to do well to deliver that to our customers?
Manifast is a combination of business coaching (and consulting) using an online tool to help entire business teams "work on the business".
What matters most to businesses and business owners?
- Get more clients and customers,
- Increase revenue,
- Increase profits, and
- Reduce overwhelm
What do we need to do well?
- Build the best online tool possible,
- Find and work with great business coaches, and
- Educate and train: internally, coaches and end-clients.
We hadn't truly embraced the last point until we went through this exercise.
We are a training company.
Embracing it.
What is interesting is that for almost every company out there, to become a great company that can grow and scale you have to become essentially a training company at least internally. Developing your people, reinforcing your culture… you can't afford to leave it all to chance and hope to become great.
And don't forget education based marketing, a well-trained sales force, etc.
How you train is up to you, but…
I bet you are a training company as well.
Custom Software Development
We've also been a custom software development company for over 12 years. Over 150,000 employees in some of the biggest and most known companies worldwide have used online software tools developed by our team.
When I look back at what matters most it comes down to the basics yet again:
- Build great software,
- Really understand the business the client is in so you can add value,
- Deliver it on time and on budget, and
- Make it as painless for the client as possible.
The key is not to build what the client wants but what the clients needs.
(Quite a bit like coaching actually.)
Your Situation
I challenge you to take this idea and apply them right away to your situation; your business.
What matters most to you and your customers? Keep the list small. Refine it.
Focus on that and do it really well.
