What Do You Focus on First in Your Business?

Where do you start when you have all these great ideas buzzing around in your head? You probably feel that you don’t have the time to start something new. But you also don’t want to let the opportunities go by. The good news is that if you recognize that you have to do something to change that is already a step in the right direction. Now you just need to translate that into actions.

Getting out of the Starting Blocks

Often business owners have great new ideas that they want to implement but just don’t know how to start the project. It may be a new product you want to add, a new website that you want to create or it could be an entirely new business venture. It may be that you are working at capacity and don’t have the time to find and train up new team members.

A few years ago this was my experience. I knew I needed to start doing more online but I didn’t know where to start. It was in the days before facebook and twitter. I was wondering if I should be focusing on my newsletter. Should I be writing more on my blog? Should I be creating new programs to attract new customers or focus on reselling to my existing customer base?

The more I thought about it the longer the list became. I sat at my computer and did some research into different options. The more I read the more confusing it all became. Each person had a different opinion on what to do and how to do it. All I wanted was a clear answer, where was I supposed to start? I knew that all of these things were important and that they were all great ideas, but what was going to make the biggest difference in my business now?

Back to Business Basics

As I pondered on these various strategies I knew there must be a way to simplify things. So I went back to the basics. I remembered there are three primary ways to grow a business. You can attract more leads, you can improve your sales conversions, or you can increase the average value of each order. Suddenly I knew where to start. Here are a few of the steps I followed that you can apply to your business:

• Take the 3 ways of growing your business and see how you feature in each category. Using sales statistics is one of the best ways to measure your level of success in each area. For me I was strong on leads but weak on conversions.

• Look at the areas where you are strong and see if you can pinpoint reasons why you have success in those areas. You could use similar tactics to improve on other areas where you are weak.

• Your weakest rating is where you should focus your attention first. Use this category to formulate your goals and objectives. For example: If your conversion rate is only 10% then make it your goal that you want to increase your conversion rate to at least 20% in the next month.

• Once you have your objective in mind then you can start looking at the tools and tactics you have at your disposal. You can ask yourself: How is my newsletter going to help me convert more leads, how will my blog posts help me convert more leads?

• Focus on just one or two things that will help you improve in that area. Don’t try to do everything at once. Keep it simple and keep your objectives in the forefront of your mind.

With this approach you can be out of the starting blocks in no time. You start off with the big picture of what you want to achieve. When you have that in place then sorting through what will be useful or not becomes much easier. You are no longer bombarded with a whole bunch of random ideas. Rather you can place each one into a category where it will help you move one step closer to achieving your goals.

Bernadette Doyle created Client Magnets to help self-employed people solve one of their biggest business problems: attract a steady stream of clients http://www.clientmagnets.com