- By Charles Miller
Pandemic, war, and persistent inflation have made the last four years the most challenging that any of us have experienced. Yet, as the old saying goes, “never waste a good recession”.
Now’s the time to play to our strengths, to filter out the negative, and emerge stronger.
The best way your business can achieve this is a single-minded focus on lifting revenue. There are two possible mindsets one can adopt in this situation, a growth mindset or a fixed one.
A growth mindset is about understanding that the future can be shaped through innovation, effort and perseverance, contrasting sharply with a fixed mindset which views life as a static zero-sum game.
Which you choose sets the stage for how you will overcome challenges and exploit opportunities.
To cultivate and develop a growth mindset deploy the following five strategies.
- Curiosity – be eager to learn more and understand deeper
- Resilience – bounce back from setbacks with renewed effort
- Take feedback – view criticism as a tool for learning, be grateful not defensive
- Persistence – keep going dig deep and finish well
- Flexibility – adapt, change and pivot when faced with new information or conditions
In addition to these strategies research has shown there are three personal behaviours that separate leaders from the “also-ran”.
These are discipline, process orientation and relationship-building. Together they embody energy, task focus, completion, structure, and engagement.
Process is always data-driven and methodical. The best way to develop discipline and process is to break down your sales process into a set of methodical steps and a customer journey. Then follow these rigorously.
At the end of every period, you should have a thorough understanding of the result for that period, by transaction and grouped in logical categories. Both nominally and compared to target.
So, to boost your top line – energetically build your networks, build and follow strong robust processes throughout your business, measure your progress and foster continuous innovation and change.
If you are not in control of your own system, you are part of someone else’s!
