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Challenge How Your Business Operates

March 3, 2021/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Entrepreneur, Innovation, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Transform your business by completely rethinking how it works. Analyzing your business model, revenue, and costs can lead you to innovative solutions.

When you go to generate new ideas to run things better, you need to think critically about the way your business runs. I like to look at three things: a business model blowup, a revenue blowup, and a cost blowup.

On the business model blowup, fundamentally rethink how you go to market. And rethink what your market actually is. You’re going to challenge the entire business model for the way you deliver products and services. On the revenue blowup side, how do you dramatically expand the products, your pricing, the geography, and the reach of your business? And on the cost blowup, how do you fundamentally eliminate drag from the business to become more efficient?

Business Model Blowup: Skybus Airlines

How to Ask Good Discovery Questions While Maintaining Your Authenticity

March 1, 2021/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Communications, Guest Blogger, Sales, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Preserving authenticity is fundamental for generating a sale. Ask these simple discovery questions in your next client meeting.

Today’s post is by Jeff Kirchick, Vice President of Enterprise Sales at Next Caller, and author of Authentic Selling: How to Use the Principles of Sales in Everyday Life (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

In traditional sales programs, you are typically taught to ask certain questions. The problem with being taught to ask certain questions is that you are fundamentally changing your behavior when you ask them. Generally speaking, you are probably changing your behavior out of self-interest – to generate a sale – rather than asking in the interest of the customer. And the thing about sales is that you should always be focusing on the needs of the customer. Why? Because sales is not about you. Sales is about them. So what questions would you normally ask someone when you are trying to figure out what is best for them?

In my new book, Authentic Selling: How to Use the Principles of Sales in Everyday Life, I discuss the importance of authenticity relative to the usual tips and tricks you might learn in a formal sales training program. The rationale for this is two-fold: first, people just register authenticity easily. and authenticity is the key to building trust, which is fundamental for generating any sale; second – and perhaps more importantly – Read more

SMART Goals: How to Make Your Goals Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound

February 24, 2021/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Entrepreneur, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Part 2 of 2: Use the SMART acronym to set better goals. Learn how to make your future goals achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

When you go to set goals, I suggest you try to set smart goals. Smart is an acronym. It stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. These are the key characteristics of a good goal. Now there are multiple versions of smart out there, but they all get to the same thing: creating clear and actionable goals that matter.

This week, we’re talking about the last three SMART characteristics: achievable, relevant, and time-bound. If you missed the first two characteristics—specific and measurable—check out last week’s post here.

Achievable

Another characteristic of a good goal is that the goal is achievable. If a goal is too extreme, people won’t even try. You may have heard of the term “big, hairy, audacious goals.” That sounds great—let’s set a huge goal for the team and they’ll try really hard to achieve it. The thing is, those types of goals can be very demotivating. The team looks at it and they say, “We don’t even have a chance. We’re guaranteed to fail. So you know what, forget it. I’m not even going to try.”

And if a goal is too easy, people won’t care about it or see it as meaningful. “Oh, 1% improvement? No problem, I can do that in my sleep.” And then what happens? Read more

SMART Goals: How to Make Your Goals Specific and Measurable

February 17, 2021/1 Comment/in Business Toolkit, Entrepreneur, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Part 1 of 2: Use the SMART acronym to set better goals. Learn how to make your future goals specific and measurable.

When you go to set goals, I suggest you try to set smart goals. Smart is an acronym. It stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. These are the key characteristics of a good goal. Now there are multiple versions of smart out there, but they all get to the same thing: creating clear and actionable goals that matter.

This week, let’s focus on the first two smart characteristics: specific and measurable.

Specific

The first characteristic of a good goal that you should focus on is that the goal is specific. Make the goal Read more

The 4 Negotiation Styles: Which Should You Choose?

February 10, 2021/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Entrepreneur, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Your negotiation style should change depending on the situation. Learn four negotiation styles and when to use them.

You should be deliberate in choosing a specific style of negotiating. The way I encourage people to look at choosing a style is first, understand the importance of your relationship with the other party. The relationship can have low importance (somebody you’re just meeting for the first time and you won’t have an ongoing relationship with), or high importance (a strategic, long-term relationship).

The second thing you should consider is the importance of the outcome of that specific negotiation, from low importance (there’s not a lot of value on the table), to high importance (there is a lot of money for your organization or it’s a high-risk outcome). And what you end up with is a two-by-two matrix with four different negotiating strategies: Read more

Using The 80/20 Rule to Think Critically

February 3, 2021/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Entrepreneur, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Learn how an Italian gardener’s simple principle can make problem solving much easier.

Critical thinking doesn’t only apply to coming up with recommendations. You need to think critically about the way you’re going to spend your time and energy. Those things are limited. You have too many problems to solve and not enough time. I encourage people to follow the 80/20 rule, also known as the Pareto principle.

The Pareto Principle

The Pareto principle was coined by Vilfredo Pareto when he noticed that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. He was also a gardener, and he noticed 80% of the peas coming out of his garden came from 20% of the pods. He said, “That’s interesting. Two totally different realms demonstrating the same principle.” 20% led to 80% of the impact, and that’s the 80/20 rule. 20% of the drivers will drive 80% of the results. You need to think about your work the same way. You can’t focus on that 80% that only drives 20% of the results. Focus your efforts on the meaningful. Let me offer an example. Read more