How to Deliver on Your Business Vision

by Dr. Vesna Grubacevic

Are you frustrated by your lack of business success or lack of direction? Does each year just seem more of the same? Would you like to achieve your business vision, goals and desired lifestyle even faster?

A Purposeful Direction

Without a powerful enough “what” (ie. knowing exactly what your life and your business will look like in the medium-long tem) and “why” (ie. compelling benefits to you and others of achieving the “what”), the day to day running of the business can seem meaningless, purposeless and unfulfilling. Challenges and obstacles can appear bigger and more difficult to overcome without a compelling sense of purpose and direction.

Ask yourself these questions and discover how driven and purposeful you really are in your business:

What is my 5-10 year life vision?
What is my 5-10 year business vision?
How will achieving my business vision assist me with creating my life vision and my desired lifestyle?
What do I need to do in 2010 to move towards my life and business vision?

Do you have clear answers to the above? Are you finding it easy or difficult to answer these questions?

If you are unclear about where you are heading in your business and how it fits in with your life vision, your business is like a ship without a rudder – directionless. You will then end up wherever you do, one day you may wonder how you got there and it may not be where you want to be!

The first step on delivering on your business vision is to get really clear about your life vision, and then your business vision which supports that life vision.

Act Strategically

The next step is to define your top few strategic objectives (i.e. your top priorities that will help you to move towards your business vision in 2010). Your top priorities could range from marketing initiatives, financial performance, operational improvement, minimising risk, staff initiatives, etc.

With this focus, it is a lot easier to allocate your resources (ie. time, money, staff, energy, ideas, etc) more strategically. Rather than having your resources being wasted, used inefficiently or scattered everywhere (remember that scattered focus = scattered results), focused use of your resources will maximise your results.

Engage and align your team

Treat your team to a vision session away from the office in an environment that will encourage ideas and creativity. It could be a fun picnic in a nearby park or at the local beach (or similar). Choose a quiet time during a pleasant day. Bring coloured markers, stick it notes, paper, etc. with you. Circulate the vision, mission and key strategic objectives prior to the session to get people focused and thinking. At the session, encourage brainstorming as to how best to achieve your vision and mission and key strategic objectives for the year. If you are the sole trader in the business, have the session with yourself in a similar creative environment. You may surprise yourself with the ideas you come up with.

Clarify your goals and targets

Once you and your team agree the best ways to achieve your vision, mission and key strategic objectives, ensure you and your team then have clear goals and targets that support the achievement of these. Remember once you and your team achieve a goal, reward yourselves, celebrate and then set more goals to keep yourself and your team focused and motivated. Without goals to motivate us, we become directionless, uncertain and can be more easily distracted by other people’s projects, negativity and demands.

Promote, promote, promote!

Regardless of the economic environment, lack of sufficient cash flow is the major reason for business failure. Lack of enough sales will result in poor cash flow, so enure that you and your team are comfortable with promoting your product or service. Promptly address any self doubts or fears relating to selling. Also ensure that you and your team have up to date self promotion skills that will save you time, assist you to turn more leads, enquires and prospects into customers, encourage more repeat business from existing customers … and without being pushy!

Keep a balance between looking after your existing customers and generating new business to keep your sales pipeline full. If your sales pipeline dries up, it will impact on your cash flow. Make sure that you generate enough income to fund both the running of your business day to day plus growth in your business.

Stop Sabotaging Your Success

By far the biggest obstacle that will prevent you from delivering on your vision is YOU! Stop blaming your team, the economy, your suppliers, your referrers, your business partners, your customers and prospects, etc. The only person ultimately responsible for your business success is you. It is your self doubts, fears, anxieties, etc that will prevent you from taking the above action, prevent you from leading and influencing your team to perform effectively, prevent you from attracting more customers, prevent you from stepping out of your comfort zone and doing things differently to really grow your business… and deliver on your business vision.

Just how much closer could you move towards achieving your business vision by implementing the above strategies? And how much sooner could you enjoy the lifestyle that you seek?

Are Your Self Promotion Skills Delivering on Your Vision?

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