Category: Letters from Lisa

Consumers are a confident bunch. If a business doesn’t know what a customer’s likes or dislikes, he or she will be more than willing to jump ship to another option to gain a sense of personalized connection. Therefore, the importance of building relationships in growing a successful business cannot be overlooked. No matter how obvious this seems, we need to stay focused on what it really means day in and day out. Some ways are easy and some not so much, but in any case, they are all worth considering when it comes to finding new customers.

1. Don’t blow off your current customers in search of new customers.

You always want to stay true to the people who have helped you get to where you are. And, those people can help you get even further. Your current customers have a lot of clout. Their engagement and loyalty can make or break your ability to attract prospective customers.

2. Build a solid foundation with your current customers to get free publicity.

That’s right, reviews and referrals will flow freely if you treat your customers well. Positive reviews can attract new customers to your business. One survey found that 92% of consumers read reviews. That means that the majority of prospects are judging your business based on your current customers’ opinions. If your current customers have good things to say about your business, they can bring in a number of referrals.

3. To add to your customer base, work on your first impressions.

If a potential customer contacts you with questions, make a good impression. Otherwise, you might be sending him or her in the opposite direction. Provide value and establish yourself as having an in-depth understanding of the problems they are looking to solve.

4. Build partnerships that have value to current and new customers.

Teaming up with businesses that offer complementary services offers you the opportunity to take advantage of synergy, which can be very effective in building a business. For instance, if you have a company that specializes in search engine optimization, consider teaming up with a business that builds websites.

When all is said and done, nurturing relationships, either with other business owners or customers, helps you expand your customer base. Focus on building human relationships. The stronger your relationships are, the more likely your customers will be to tell their friends about you. And, the more likely they’ll be to become repeat customers.

Last month we talked about working on your business instead of in it. We are going to continue that discussion by focusing on some thought processes that might help you stay focused on just that.

The ways we think about past experiences can help or hinder the development of insight that makes working on the business more difficult than it is just by its nature. When we make decisions based on habits of the past, we lose out on some of the great changes possible in our lives. Working on the business means not forgetting the past but leaving it in the kitchen while sitting at the dining room table.

Working on the business should allow one to achieve performance breakthroughs, or in other words, create impact in the areas that drive the improvement we all desire. I like to use the term A to the 4th power (A4) to help me stay true to working on instead of in business. The four terms come from Scott Snell and Ken Carrig’s forthcoming book, “Strategic Execution: Driving Breakthrough Performance in Business”, and are Alignment, Ability, Architecture and Agility.

ALIGNMENT

Alignment conveys the deceptively simple notion that execution depends on everyone working together toward the same goal. Alignment is the “sine qua non” of execution; without it, nothing else much matters.

It provides clarity of purpose and direction, momentum to overcome inertia, a focus for decisions and actions, and resilience in the face of change or disruption.

Today, misalignment has become the norm, not the exception. There’s often a substantial gap between understanding the requirements of strategy and each person’s work. Disengagement can create this misalignment, which unfortunately leads right into working all day in the business instead of on it.

It is, therefore, a constant challenge to emphasize the mission-critical elements that unite the organization toward its strategic purpose and work to achieve those outcomes. An important part of alignment is clarifying with others how work that they are accountable for leads to those strategic outcomes, or in other words, how overall success is attributable to them.

ABILITY

In any endeavor, whether it’s business or sports, great execution requires great skill.

Usually, what begins with a discussion of alignment often evolves to a deeper discussion of ability. This isn’t just a focus on productivity, but on attracting and developing; raising skill levels; all while keeping aligned accountability.

ARCHITECTURE

The design of your organization, as well as its underlying infrastructure, processes, technologies and controls constitutes the domain of organizational architecture. Your organization’s design makes a big difference in terms of reliability, alignment and continuity of performance.

In terms of working on the business, ensuring a valid organizational architecture is critical for resource flows, information availability, decision-making and processes that propel the organization forward.

Try to focus on ways to streamline your organization’s architecture, simplify structures, improve processes, and clarify roles, responsibilities, accountability and communication flow. This includes building connections and opportunities (meetings AND one-on-one conversations) to improve joint decision-making.

AGILITY

The ability to respond and adapt is critical for achieving organizational goals. Ironically, one of the most common inhibitors of agility is our approach to execution. In an attempt to drive better performance and maximize efficiency, many organizations create a situation in which change is difficult. The harder they work in the business instead of on it, the more challenging it is for them to see the need for change, or to flex, adapt and adjust appropriately. People hate change, but in reality, if you are not constantly changing you are not working on your business but in it.

There’s a great book (see picture) that summarizes these concepts way better than I have. Take the time to read it and then get to work ON your business at the dining room table, not in the kitchen.

Balance: How to spend time on your business, not just in your business

Balance is defined as “a condition in which different elements are equal or in the correct proportions.” To be honest, having all the elements of life in balance has never been easy for me, because I love to work. I am always thinking up a new, amazing change to implement with all sorts of “positive” ramifications, and I just don’t take much time for balance.

I don’t think I will be able to change that about myself, and to be quite honest, I do not desire to change. However, what I also do not do very well, but do desire to change, is the time I spend working on the business versus in the business.

In entrepreneurial circles, there’s a well-known book called “The E-Myth Revisited,” by Michael Gerber. He popularized this concept of working on the business as opposed to in the business. Easily put, working in your business achieves results for your customers, while working on your business achieves results for the company and your customers.

If you want to achieve sustainable long-term results for your business, you’ll need to do both. For me, staying focused on working on the business is hard. I know it is the right way, but before I know it another month is gone, and all I have done is work in the business. One way to check yourself on this is to start a journal and record everything you do for a week and then categorize everything into either an “in” or “on” column. Your time must be weighted to “on” if you want the financial results of the company to continue to grow. Here are some lists to help you choose the right column in your journal and keep you honest.

I know from experience how easy it is to just work IN your business for weeks and weeks and even months without doing anything to work ON your business. Every day stuff happens so you deal with that stuff, and if you aren’t very careful, the day will end without achieving much at all to help your business move forward.

So, give the journal a try. It doesn’t take much to get started, even 30 minutes a day to begin with to get into the habit. The great thing about working ON your business is that very quickly it will make working IN your business a lot easier and more rewarding.

Strategy has been studied for years by business leaders and theorists. Yet, there is no definitive answer about what strategy really is. One reason is because people think about strategy in different ways.

For instance, some people believe that you must analyze the present carefully, anticipate changes in the market or industry, and, from this, plan how to succeed in the future. Meanwhile, others think that the future is just too difficult to predict, and they prefer to evolve their strategies from just looking inside their own walls.

A simple definition of strategy can be: “Determining how we are going to win in the period ahead.” The biggest problem with the way organizations think about strategy is they confuse strategy with plans. They aren’t the same thing.

A strategic framework must establish what the business will do to deliver value for which customers are willing to pay and how it expects to hit target revenues and profits. The strategy doesn’t answer all the questions required for implementation — that’s planning, but it clearly establishes the game you are playing and how you expect to win. It also identifies the games you aren’t playing — the things you have no intention of delivering, even if your best customer begs you.

This framework helps us make decisions about how we will play the game of business. These decisions, which occur daily throughout the organization, include everything from capital investments to operational priorities to marketing, to hiring, to sales approaches, to branding efforts, to how each individual shuffles his or her “To Do” list every single morning. Without a strategic framework to guide these decisions, the organization will run in too many different directions, accomplish little, and suffer enormous confusion that ultimately stifles any plans or goals, good or bad.

Let’s pause a minute and look at this from the reverse. When should one not build a strategic framework:

• No time
• No resources
• No commitment from leadership
• In an acute crisis or transition

Or in other words just before the doors close. If you are reading this VISION article, your doors are not closing, so it’s time you choose to build a strategic framework and then use it every day as your guide in the planning and execution of tactics.

The companies that achieve the most growth, that create the best products, and that are consistently thought of as industry leaders, are also the companies that are the most excited about all facets of the future. They allow that excitement to permeate through everything they do, as well as share and showcase that excitement every chance they get.

So how does a company foster that excitement? Interestingly enough, as I googled the topic, I found a bunch of articles with titles that included this same phrase, “how to get excitement back into your business.” That pretty much stopped me in my tracks, as to me the words “get back” means something has been lost. Lost excitement is deadly to business. However, keeping the excitement flame alive can be difficult. There are a number of ways you can work to boost excitement inside your business. All of these ways focus on your team. People are the face of excitement and must be where all of your efforts are focused.

Rid the Rotten

To create excitement today, you might have to get rid of what was. Getting rid of old ideas and behaviors is harder than changing to new ones. Eliminate any “rotten” ideas and behaviors that may be dragging your team down, so you clear the way for a new, exciting approach. It’s hard, but doing it builds excitement. I don’t like to share my “rotten” things so I will leave this one to each of you to “just do it.”

Build Belief in Tomorrow

Explore your team’s belief in itself and discover ways to build and sustain the belief in a strong future. What are you working on today that might not pay off until years from now? Whatever it is, share it in a simplistic, passionate way. At BioZyme®, we are working with 6,000 fruit flies in Germany to teach us the precise challenges that our AO broth impacts. These fruit flies are primarily used in human research, so getting to use them for animal applications is exciting and certainly builds belief in tomorrow.

Do Something Unexpected

Doing something unexpected can boost your team’s confidence in your willingness to take the risks that are necessary for an exciting future. It’s easy to do these types of things, but for some reason most of us do not. Sending a short, hand-written note of appreciation, staying late to help the team finish a project, giving an unexpected day off or coming to work as a leprechaun (yes, I did this) creates “crazy” excitement.

Get Rid of Secrecy

Nothing is more destructive than keeping information from team members—except telling them that you’re keeping information from them. Sure, there is sensitive information in any organization that must be handled appropriately; however, think twice about what “secrecy” really does to excitement. Employees are more likely to grow a company’s productivity when they have access to the knowledge they need.

Embrace Conflict as a Good Thing

Conflict is a by-product of creating excitement – it needs to be acknowledged and dealt with to keep excitement alive. I recently read a great book by Patrick Lencioni, called The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. It does a great job of teaching how to embrace conflict as the positive it really is.

When a person is excited, their emotions become more powerful, which can affect their decision-making abilities. Excited people are more likely to make decisions. Use this to your advantage as you implement these strategies in ways that cause great enthusiasm and eagerness.

Education is Part of Care that Comes Full Circle.

At the risk of singing to the choir, I am going to attempt to share how all of us can educate others about our industry and the importance of what we do using “care that comes full circle” as our guide.

According to a study conducted by The Center for Food Integrity, 56% of consumers say they know just a little bit about the farming practices that produce their food, but 80% want to know more. More than half are interested in affordable, healthy food and are confident in its safety. Unfortunately, that means half are not. Stats specific to livestock found that 38% desire meat that is derived from humanely treated animals, while 48% are unsure if that is important to them or not. In addition, 54% are concerned about antibiotic residues in their food.

The study also found that trust is the key to consumers when it comes to sharing information (educating). What drives this trust? Shared values.

A good example of doing this is found in a response by a veterinarian mother.

“Hello, I’m Dr. Dorman! As the mother of three children, it is vitally important to me to ensure that antibiotics are effective when I need them most: when one of my kids is sick. As a veterinarian, I also recognize the importance of antibiotics to the welfare of animals. I took an oath to protect animal health, prevent animal suffering, and to promote human health. Remaining true to this oath is very important to me.”

With these stats and insight, the question is how do each of us educate and then advocate for our industry? I believe the three thoughts below uses a “care that comes full circle” approach. In other words, it is based on the idea that if we take care in our approach to educate; the other party will care enough to listen back with an open mind due to shared values.

• Listen without judgment to their values to find out what is important to them.
• Ask questions to acknowledge their perspective and then dig deeper to show you want to understand things more, while trying hard not to comment back or use a defensive tone in any way.
• Share your perspective through your values and then use resources that have supporting information to that perspective.

If you are interested in seeing this approach in action, you can watch a helpful video that AFIA produced at https://vimeo.com/219907731/df206803cd.

Interestingly enough, this approach is just as useful with things around your business. That might be a great place to practice this approach.

Whether training employees or teaching consumers about agriculture, I think you will find this three-step approach helpful. Listen, ask and share. If we listen before we share, we’ll seem genuinely interested and that is the first step in “care that comes full circle.”