How To Grow Your Own Money Tree

Last week, I wrote about the first three of the seven key components to building a successful business.

Here are all seven again:

1. Primary Aim
2. Strategic Objectives
3. Organizational Strategy
4. Management Strategy
5. People Strategy
6. Marketing Strategy
7. Systems Strategy

Mastering these seven areas will lead your business to the ultimate level of success, and help you live the life of your dreams. Today I’ll cover the last four…

Think of constructing your business model like planting a tree. At first, it’s small and weak, and you wonder if it will even make it through the night. But you still keep watering, fertilizing and nurturing it.

Your ideas will grow the trunk, then each of these seven strategies will extend out as the branches of your now-strong tree. Finding the perfect support staff, employees, vendors, suppliers and other people to help your business grow will make your tree flourish with leaves and flowers.

Management Strategy

The way you structure your management team is not only essential to your growth, but the happiness of your employees and, ultimately, your customers, clients or patients. This strategy is results-oriented and depends on the actual system you put into place – not the particular people.

A management strategy is, in short, a set of standards that include goals, rules, a mission statement and other concrete things that tell your employees how to act, your management how to grow your business and your customers, clients or patients what to expect.

These should all be in perfect alignment with your business goals.

People Strategy

You need to put together an employee appreciation strategy that shows your employees that you appreciate their job performance and dedication to your business. They also need to understand “why” they are doing specific tasks. This helps them to personally connect to their jobs, which in turn leads to better production and a happier workplace.

There are a number of strategies you can use to keep it interesting at “the office”:

• Performance Incentive Programs
• Contests that reward high performance
• Employee of the Month
• Performance/Holiday Bonuses

These are just a few of the ideas you can use. One of the best ways to appreciate your employees is simply by asking them how they would like to be rewarded. Think about it for awhile and put the best strategy into play. Keep it fresh and change up the strategy you use from time to time to keep your employees from getting bored and complacent. Once they get used to the prize, it’s time for you to use a whole new approach.

You need to build a community within your company, with support, appreciation and respect. The more “at home” your employees feel, the better they will perform and the higher their level of loyalty.

Marketing Strategy

I could write an entire book about this subject, and in fact I have. Several, actually. I’ve taught it to thousands of small business owners, and my entire www.SSSMarketingUniversity.com website is dedicated to teaching it.

Marketing is, of course, essential to the success of any business, and it must work together with the other strategies you’re using. There are two major pillars of a successful marketing strategy: the demographic and psychographic profiles of your customers.

The psychographic profile tells you what your customers are most likely to buy, and the demographic tells you who they are, which you will use to learn why they buy specific items. Without this information, it simply doesn’t matter how well your business itself is structured.

Systems Strategy

There are three types of systems in every business:

• Hard Systems
• Soft Systems
• Information Systems

Hard Systems are inanimate systems that have no “life,” Soft Systems are those that could be living and Information Systems are everything else, including customer data, product information, financial… anything with data and numbers.

The most important of these three systems are your Soft Systems, which include the sales systems your business uses. In your sales system the two keys to success are structure and substance. By “structure” I mean what you sell, and by “substance” I mean how you sell it.

All three of these systems are essential to the success of your business, and while they all have their own very specific roles, they all must work together to get the job done.

This also goes for your entire business development program.

And when you have that in place and fully working, you’ll feel like money DOES grow on trees!

I can help you work through all of these areas and give your business a jumpstart that puts you ahead of your competition right from the start. Get your FREE test drive at SSSMarketingUniversity.com to work with one of my outstanding business development coaches, plus gain access to a wealth of tools and resources.