March 2009 | Bigg Success

Monthly Archives: March 2009

3 Questions to Make Your Business Better

Written on March 19, 2009 by George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster in Business, Business Ownership, Entrepreneurship

question As business owners, we often hear that we have to work on our business, not just in it. It’s a concept that sounds simple when you say it, but how do you get started?

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Hear George & Mary-Lynn discuss today's topic on The Bigg Success Show! Click the purple player: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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A lot of entrepreneurs thrive on bending the rules so the starting point isn’t always obvious. You have to create the rules – the operating system – so you will have time to work on your business in the future.

So, early in your business, you work on your business by working in your business!

You begin to develop those systems that will make delegation to your future employees more effective. To do that, ask yourself three questions:

What is your vision of the perfect transaction?
Map out a transaction from beginning to end. Think about what you want your customers to experience during each step of the process. This will include: your advertising, the first interaction, and the closing of the transaction. But don’t forget to include what happens internally to support the transaction and follow-up with the customer.

What is your customers’ picture of the perfect transaction?
With your vision in mind, you begin discovering exactly what your customers are looking for. You’ll likely find that your customers focus on much smaller things than you do. For example, they may want to have their change counted back in a certain way as we talked about on a recent show.

But here’s the interesting thing when you bring your customers’ perspective in – every customer probably has one or two little things that they really like. If you can gear your organization to make that one customer happy on that one point, you’ll probably thrill the rest of your customers by doing it! They probably want it, too. They just haven’t vocalized it.

How can you improve one thing one percent?
Take your bigg picture and bring in all the things that your customers have told you and begin working on one at a time.

We have a confession to make … these three questions aren’t ours. They come straight out of Ken Blanchard’s Raving Fans. It highlights these three questions through a great story and we highly recommend that you read his great book.

So these three questions will improve your performance, help you develop your operating systems, and keep you focused on the most important people in your business – your customers.

Putting it to work

Now you want to improve one thing one percent. We saw a great example of this in action. A company had their entire process mapped out on the wall of their conference room.

They had all these sticky notes up on the wall. Each sticky note represented something they wanted to test – something that represented a potential one percent improvement. These suggestions had been made by customers and by employees.

That’s what makes this concept so useful. It’s a great tool to get employee buy-in.

They get on board because they can see that their suggestions are being considered. More than that, they may get tested. The test results may call for full implementation!

It makes your employees feel like they’re a significant part of something bigger. They are valued. That leads to bigg success with your employees.

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Thanks for checking in on us today. Join us next time as we make a special announcement – a new beginning for Bigg Success. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

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Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00354-031909.mp3

Related posts

One-Up Yourself for Bigg Success

How to Get Your Employees to Own Their Job, Not Just Do It

(Image in today's post by tulp)

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We Need It But Not Too Much of It

Written on March 18, 2009 by George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster in Confidence

number1 There’s this one thing that we have to have in order to succeed bigg.

If we don’t have enough of it, we’ll fail.

If we have too much of it, we’ll fail.

And with this one thing, the line between success and failure is very thin.

What is that one thing?

Ego.

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Listen while you read! Click on the purple player to hear George & Mary-Lynn discuss today's topic: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Enough of it so we don’t listen

Yes, we often think of ego as a bad thing but it takes a certain amount of ego to succeed bigg. Without some level of self-confidence, we will never start down the path to our bigg success because our fear of failure paralyzes us.

We have to believe, truly believe, we can do it or we won’t. It’s just that simple. With self-confidence, we are willing to go against the grain. To stick to our guns when people, even those people closest to us, are telling us we shouldn’t do it.

Their intentions are good, but they wouldn’t do it. The things we need to do to pursue our bigg dream takes most people out of their comfort zone. So they never start. But just because they wouldn’t do it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it.

Enough of it so we persevere

Self-confidence also helps us stick with it in spite of the obstacles. We will face hurdles on our path to bigg success. The difference between success and failure is often a fine line. And we step over that line with perseverance.

But if we lack the confidence in ourselves and our plan, we won’t persevere. We won’t keep on keeping on. We will stop each and every time we face adversity. We have to believe in ourselves and what we can do if we are to succeed bigg.

Not so much of it that we stop listening

If we don’t have enough ego, we will fail. But if we have too much, we will fail too.

We’ve probably all heard that “Pride goes before a fall.” This is the reason why ego often carries with it a bad name and it’s a good reason.

We may have reached some level of success. It goes to our heads. Our egos get too large and we may start to feel invincible. That the rules, the natural laws, don’t apply to us anymore. We have a gift. We have the Midas touch. We were born to succeed. It’s our destiny.

That over-confidence leads to our fall, our failure. We don’t take advice from the people around us. We think we know more than they do.

The fine line

Isn’t it interesting that listening to people when we’re not confident enough often leads to failure but not listening to people when we’re too confident also often leads to failure?

It emphasizes what a fine line there is in finding the right level of confidence. We want a certain amount of confidence, but we don’t want to get cocky. We need to approach that line – between confidence and cockiness – but not cross it.

Confidence with humility … that leads to bigg success!

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Get the tips and tools you need to be a BIGG success. Subscribe to the Bigg Success Weekly – it’s FREE!

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Thank you for reading our post today. Join us next time when discuss three questions that lead to thrilling your customers. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes.

Subscribe to the Bigg Success feed.

Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00353-031809.mp3

Related posts

The Confidence Game

Reject This Fear And Succeed

The Single Biggest Barrier To Your Success

(Image in today's post by raichinger)