Published:
07/23/2012 05:23pm
The Sweet Spot: 5 High Payoff Activities to Amplify Your Success
Knowing what to spend your time and money on is not always as easy as it sounds. With time being scarcer than money, it’s easy to put our focus on activities that will generate the wrong results. But what I do know is there are a few activities that highly successful entrepreneurs do consistently that are guaranteed to get you closer to your revenue and achievement goals.
timeandmoneyI’m sure you’ve heard of the Pareto Principle (80/20 rule). In success, you want to focus your time and energy on the sweet spot of activities. The ones that will propel you forward the fastest with the least amount of effort.
My five suggested activities are like the cream of “high payoff”. When you focus your time and energy on these types of activities you’ll be ecstatic with how quickly the results come in. Not just money but sanity and more time for what’s important too.
Here are a few of the high payoff activities to get you going the right direction again:
1. Strengthen Your Prospect Gateway
It’s not enough to generate a blizzard of new leads – you need the RIGHT ones who already know they need what you sell and have the money to pay for it. When you invest a little time into creating a system to strengthen your prospect gateway you will only let in the top 20% of the clients who willing pay you what you ask and are more fun to service too.
2. Get Consistent with Lead Generation
Many entrepreneurs suffer with the feast or famine approach to business – you are either marketing your butt off or you are working your butt off taking care of your clients. By automating and delegating your lead generation activities, you’ll have an on-going flow of new opportunities that can be converted as you need them.
3. Cultivate COIs
A COI (Center of Influence) is a contact who is highly influential in your industry. By cultivating and nurturing relationships with the right COI’s, you’ll be able to generate higher quality leads and marketing exposure without a huge price tag. How you cultivate these relationships is key though – you can’t keep them on the back burner till you need them! These relationships must be maintained over time, have been provided generous examples of how you will serve their clients well and know who you are when they have an opportunity to refer you business!
(Note: Many busy entrepreneurs completely forget this one because they think it’s too time intensive. It’s a huge mistake! If you don’t know how you’ll want to get into the MARS Training Program to implement this technique ASAP.)
4. Instigate Repeat Business
Loyal clients who stay longer will not only spend more but they will also refer more business in the process. Consider how your offerings are set up. Do you only have a one-time offer? Will they need to keep buying what you have? Do you have other accessories, programs or products that solve other problems they have?
Remember, repeat business if far more profitable than new business (5 times more profitable). Having repeat business is definitely a high payoff activity!
5. Lead More by Weeding Less
Every time you are working in your business you lose sight of the big picture (I call it getting lost in the weeds.) Decisions become more difficult as your perspective shrinks to the challenge you are in front of. A little known high payoff activity for any entrepreneur with dreams of six figures or greater is leading more (and doing less.)
For example, how much time do you spend planning for next year versus running around trying to collect payments from past-due clients? Are you steering your team’s plans or jumping in to fix their mistakes daily? When was the last time you reviewed your financial reports and monthly marketing statistics? Leader activities position you for growth while “doing” activities keep you stuck where you are.
If you want to grow (and I know you do) it’s time to get radically selective about where you invest your time, money and energy. Get into a higher level of mastery today by implementing just ONE ne
