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2015 Business Goals – How to Accelerate Through the Finish Line

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You’re at a track and field event. The leading runner anticipates the finish line, slows down, and allows the would-be second place finisher to blow past.

That’s all of us in November.

Are you already pulling out your post-Thanksgiving fat pants and planning a holiday getaway?

It’s definitely not too late to accomplish those important business goals you set up last January.

So re-tie your sneakers, step away from the pumpkin pie recipes, and let’s soar through the finish line tape of 2015 with our arms spread, victorious.

Step One: Look at the Goals

First of all, you should know exactly where your goals are, and where you stand on them, if you’ve been doing quarterly check-ins, right?

If any of your 2015 goals were “overtaken by events” or don’t make sense anymore, just strike a line through and forget about them.

Did you set any goals that were out of your own control to accomplish? Gather up the team and review those goals together.

Step Two: Celebrate the Victories

There’s no point in having goals if you don’t give yourself the joy of celebrating when they are achieved.

For any of the goals on your 2015 list that you’ve already accomplished, set aside some time to bask in the glow. Take your team out for lunch, high five, and savor a job well done.

If any specific colleague deserves credit for the accomplishment, be sure to recognize him/her with a thank you.

Step Three: Focus on the One Big Goal

For any 2015 business goals that are still in play, winnow it down to the one big one. Which project will make the biggest difference to your business if you were to buckle down over the next two months and get it done?

Take that one big goal and make it your total focus through the end of the year. Do you need to break it down into smaller bite-sized steps in order to get moving? What’s in your way? Has something stopped you from moving forward with it? Do you need to enlist additional resources? Gather the team and rally around your One Big Goal.

Make sure you have metrics in place for the “big goal.” Know when you will have achieved it!

Use your lessons-learned from this year’s goals as you think about your 2016 goals. Were you overly ambitious? Were you not ambitious enough? Do you need to tweak your work habits or methods to get a different outcome next year?

 

Let’s all work together to avoid coasting into December 31. Let’s accelerate together and go into January with momentum!

I’d love to hear about your 2015 goals…how did it go?

 

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for Social Strata — makers of the Hoop.la community platform. Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

 

Five ideas to supercharge Q4 for your business

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Ah, Q4.

This is when you told that vendor you’d get back to her.

This is when you were going to have saved enough to give out raises to your staff.

This is when you were going to have published that e-book.

Remember January and all of its promises?

In the early part of the year, “we’ll take care of that in Q4” is an easy answer.

Now those IOU’s are coming due. It’s September.

Don’t sit back and cry into your pumpkin spice latte. Roll up your sleeves and fly through the finish line like a sprinter at full speed.

sprinters lined up

Five Ideas for Finishing the Year Strong

1. Re-read and update your annual goals document

Hopefully at the beginning of the year you started executing on a plan, working toward goals for the year. Have you been checking in on those goals and updating your progress? If not, now is the time to do a checkup. Depending on the type of goal, use analytics, sales reports, financial statements, or whatever will help you measure.

For goals that are on-track, high five yourself and your team. For goals that are languishing, huddle with your colleagues and figure out what’s happened. Ask these questions:

  • Is the goal still important? (perhaps something has shifted in your strategy that makes the goal unimportant
  • If it’s still important, do you need to adjust the metric? Consider whether your original goal may have been unrealistic.
  • If the original goal was realistic, and it’s still important, have the difficult meeting. Gather the team and ask hard questions about why things went off track. Is there a process that must be changed? Did you not align the right resources? Do you have a staff problem? Was the goal unclear? Work through these and come up with solutions that will get you moving toward achieving the goal with renewed energy.

2. Find the thing you’ve procrastinated all year and do it

If you have that sinking feeling that you’re ending the year with a whimper, ask yourself why. Is there something you really hoped to do, but failed to commit to as a priority?

Take that one thing, break it down into a few steps, and put one foot in front of the other.

Tell a trusted colleague about the task and why you’ve found it daunting. Getting input from an outside perspective may be enough to get you unstuck. There’s a really great app called Unstuck that can help too.

3. Start a project

This one sounds really counterintuitive, but it works.

Pretend it’s January first and tackle a new project. Breathe energy into your business by starting something that will take your business to the next level. Don’t fall into the trap of saying, “we’ll start that next year.”

4. Talk to all of your clients/customers before the end of the year

Talk about paying huge dividends. Challenge yourself to see every one of your customers or clients before the end of the year. It may not be feasible to travel to all of them, but it’s so easy to set up Google Hangouts or Skype conversations.

Taking this one step will build your relationships, strengthen your business, and end the year on a fantastic note. Reach out to your customers with no agenda other than saying hello and asking how they’re doing. Then listen.

5. Use the budgeting process to speak to prospects at the right time

The other magical thing about Q4 is that many companies go through their budgeting process for the upcoming year.

This is an excellent time to reach out to prospects or people who have expressed an interest in your services. Get the cost of your services built into their budget right now, and you’re ready to hit the ground running next year.

You also have an opportunity to act as a coach for a prospect at this time of year, helping them solve problems and end their 2014 on a high note. Make them look like a hero by providing advice at the moment they’re looking for it.

What steps are you taking to make sure you’re building momentum through the end of the year?

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Photo Credit: Lim CK via Compfight cc

What is Missing? Are you Working Smarter – Not Harder?

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By Deb Bixler

Entrepreneurs are a determined group of people. A home based business owner will work to the point of exhaustion to make her business successful.

The thing is that entrepreneurs who learn to work smart are the ones that find much more success than the ones who just work hard. When you know how to add what your home based business is missing to make it successful, you can spend more time growing that business and less time worrying about how much money you are losing.

Word of Mouth

The fastest way to make your business successful is to get other people talking about it.

The best way to do that is to talk about your business every chance you get without being pushy. If you do it right, you will get people to ask you about what you do and open the door for you to discuss your business.

For example, if when someone asks you what you did over the weekend, you tell them that you had a blast, made some money and met some wonderful new people at your direct sales event, then you may create curiosity.

Curiosity is what gets them to ask you how you did it. After that the door is opened for you to talk about your business.

The goal is to sprinkle one liners in your conversation all the time that are generating interest so that people ask you to tell them more. That is smart!

Create Your Business Internet Presence

Is your small business missing the complete internet presence it needs to make it successful? A complete Internet marketing program for your company should include your own website, a page on each of the top social networking websites and a blog.

Once you have all of these in place, you need to add new content and work on these sites every day. The more work you put into your internet presence, the more return you will get in the form of new customers and more revenue.

Even if you are affiliated with a direct sales company that is well branded on the web, you should be consistently putting time into using the internet to connect the web for YOU!

When an independent home business consultant connects the web they become more powerful.

Business Urgency With Seasonal Products

home business urgencyThere are a lot of ways to keep people interested in your business all year round, but the most effective way is to offer full lines of seasonal products that people need and want.

Everyone loves Christmas decorations during the holidays, so you need to carry them. During the summer, people want to cool off and things they can put in their yard or garden to make them unique.

There are many ways to establish your business urgency that you can tap into:

  • Do your specials reflect the seasonal urgency?
  • Do you have expiring products?
  • Is a new catalog coming out?
  • Is there a different business theme each month?
  • Or can you create a new theme each month?

Your Passion and Enthusiasm

Nothing spreads word of mouth advertising faster than a business owner who is enthusiastic about what she does. If you are in the home sales industry, then you need to be enthusiastic about each of your events.

It is true that enthusiasm is contagious and that people will talk about you and your business in a positive way to others if you make them feel good about what you do, but think about what sets you apart and how you can convey that passionately to everyone you meet.

Sometimes it can be the smallest details that make your business attractive to customers. If you want your business to be successful, then you need to analyze it to find out what is missing and then fill in the empty spaces. The more smart work you put into your business, the greater the financial returns will be.

Author’s Bio:
Deb Bixler retired from the corporate world using the proven business systems that made her a success working for others by incorporating them into her home business. In only 9 months Deb replaced her full time income with the sales and commissions from her home party plan business. Find her on Twitter at: http://www.Twitter.com/debbixler

Talk About Your Goals: Goal Setting Success

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Andy Crestodina

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Talk About Your Goals

Research shows that writing down a goal increases the chance of achieving that goal. The same research shows that talking about your goals makes success even more likely.

When Dr. Gail Matthews conducted a study of 149 participants, she found that committing to your goals in writing has a positive impact on your chance of success.

Here’s how the study worked

149 subjects were divided into several groups and each subject was asked to select a goal. Some were asked to simply think about their goal. Other groups were asked to write their goal. A final group committed to their goals in writing and shared that commitment and progress reports with a supportive friend. At the end of four weeks, each subject reported the extent of their goal setting success. (see the research summary here)

Sharing with friends makes goal setting successful

When goals are written and the commitment and progress updates are shared with a supportive friend, the likelihood of achieving the goal was the highest. Why? It may be fear of disappointing them. It may be a fear of embarrassment. Or it might be that encouraging boost of confidence that only a friend can give.

“There was support for the role of public commitment: those who sent their commitments to a friend accomplished significantly more than those who wrote action commitments
or did not write their goals.”
– Dr. Gail Matthews

Find an Accountabili-Buddy

Find someone supportive whom you respect. Someone you don’t want to disappoint. Schedule a regular time to meet or talk on the phone. Tell them your goals and ask them to hold you accountable. Or make it mutual and work on goal setting and success together.

Personally, I hope to one day be an author, so I found a friend who has published books. I meet him twice a month at 8am. We drink coffee and share progress. He holds me accountable and I hate to disappoint him!

What are your goals?

You are moments away from leveraging this simple but powerful principle. Right now, you can state your goals to the world. Just tell us your goals with a comment below. But be careful! We may hold you to it…

Author’s Bio:
Andy Crestodina is the Strategic Director of Orbit Media Studios, a web design company in Chicago. You can tell Andy your goals on Google+ and on Twitter.