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With increasing customer expectations and direct competition, succeeding in today’s business environment is no simple task. It takes dedication, continual pursuit of improvement, and for the businessman to know himself and his customers exceptionally well.
Below are several tips for today’s business world to improve your odds of reaching your goals.
Focus on What You Really Want
Even if a business professional is not yet at the point of achieving what he truly desires, it’s important not to lose focus. Forget about any past failures and stay positive. A laser-sharp focus on goals is especially critical with so many distractions vying for the time of today’s busy business professional.
With every action taken during the business day, consider whether it gets you as a businessperson closer to your goals or further away from them. If the answer is the latter, then stop, acknowledge the mistake, and redirect towards more purposeful activities.
Take the Time to Truly Know Customers
Today’s consumer has no time for an impersonal sales experience. They expect brands pitching or selling to them to understand their pain points and motivations to buy. Knowing customers goes beyond delivering what they want, when they want it, and on their preferred channel of email, social media, or voice. As Stephanie Buscemi, Chief Marketing Officer for Salesforce recently wrote:
“Every CEO I talk to or hear speaking today is recognizing that the customer experience is critical to the longevity of their business. But you can’t get there if you don’t know your customer and understand what is important to them. Bits of information and cuts of data sprawled across an organization aren’t enough. If you invest in building out a 360-degree view, the answers are there. Your customers will tell you what they need and what they want.”
It involves building profiles from past interactions and using that data to interact with customers in more meaningful ways. Rather than use more data collection tools, the solution may be as simple as condensing them into one powerful tool and using those real-time observations to reach customers more effectively.
Create Value for Customers and Themselves
In a busy and sometimes overcrowded marketplace, businesses must create products and services that offer greater value to customers than those of their competitors.
On the flip side, as a businessman, you also need to identify what has real value in your own life. Whether it’s earning a certain amount of money, having the ability to take extended time off at short notice, or simply the joy of creating a new product, recognizing what has the most personal value to you helps to identify priorities.
Because everyone defines value differently, taking the time to consider what brings life satisfaction and balance can go a long way towards achieving business success.
Provide Employees with Flexibility and Opportunity for Growth
Just as it’s critical to determine what adds value to your own life, it’s also a good idea to allow employees the same type of freedom. For example, giving employees the chance to take on duties outside of their main realm of responsibility may enable them to discover additional opportunities for fulfillment.
This benefits everyone as employees will look for ways to take on new and varied duties as well as advancing their own careers. Feeling like an integral part of the company and knowing they have earned the trust to make independent decisions are both critical factors in job satisfaction as well.
Another consideration is the fact that today’s business environment looks far different than it did only a generation ago. More people than ever work remotely at least part of the time, something that helps them balance their own responsibilities while also cutting travel expenses.
Being location-dependent can also mean limiting sales and the opportunity to reach the widest range of customers. With 50 percent of the workforce expected to engage in some type of remote work by next year, ignoring the possibility of equipping employees to do the same is no longer an option.
Practice Self-Care and Support Worthwhile Causes
No one is at their best when they’ve spent 12 hours in front of a computer, getting up only to eat unhealthy meals and use the restroom. The importance of achieving balance as discussed above also extends to businesspeople taking good care of themselves physically and emotionally.
Daily exercise, consuming healthy food, and having an outlet of connections to vent to when necessary all help to improve physical and mental health. While drive is important for business success, lack of balance can ultimately cause you to miss goals rather than achieve them.
Although the desire to succeed is basic of human nature, so is the need to make a difference. As a business professional, whether just launching a small start-up company or working as the CEO of a well-known corporation, you can start doing this it any time. Choose a cause that’s important to you as well as to your customers. The best way to find out what customers value in terms of philanthropic support is simply to ask them. Email or onsite surveys and speaking to customers about their passions directly can help to yield this information.
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This content is sponsored by Andrew Armstrong.
Photo: Shutterstock