The Business System That Never Fails
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x What problems do your products and/or services solve?
x Which groups of people have these problems? To identify target customer groups for your products and services, the following questions are useful:
Demographic questions
Age: What age range does your business serve? Kids? Teens? Adults? Seniors?
Gender: Do you serve men, women, or both?
Income: How much do they earn? Can they afford your products or services?
Occupation: What is their occupation?
Status: Are they married or single If your business model is serving other businesses, the following questions will help you narrow your target.
How many employees should the company have?
What type of products or services do they produce?
What is their approximate annual revenue?
How many years have they been in business? Psychographic Questions
x Lifestyle: Are your target customers more conservative or trendy?
x Motivation: What motivates them?
x Activities and interests: What do they do for fun? Knowing the demographic and psychographic characteristics of your target customers enables you to know how to communicate with them properly and develop a loyal relationship.
Ask Your Customers Questions The more questions you ask, the more you will know about your customer and the problems they are having. Then, you can produce more products and services to serve them. You can ask these questions at the point of purchase, after the purchase, or you can use surveys periodically.
Ask the customer before you develop a product or service. Your market research should be centered on asking your target market questions BEFORE developing a solution, instead of spending money to develop a solution that people will not buy.
x Ask your customers what frustrates them. Know their pain and provide a solution to eliminate their pain.
x Ask them about their goals. Frequent Communication
Communicate with your customers consistently. Establish a communication system to communicate with your customers on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. You can use different channels of communication, such as emails, teleconferences, webinars, direct mail, telephone and face-to-face. The key is to keep nourishing the relationship through frequent communication.
The Secret to Getting More Customers The secret to getting more customers is simple but powerful. God’s secrets are always simple but powerful. The secret to getting more customers is to take good care of the customers you already have.
In the book of Matthew 25:14-30, we read the powerful story of the master who gave his three servants portions of gold (money) to go and do business. Both the servant who received five portions of gold and the servant who received two portions each doubled their wealth. As a result, their master put them in charge of more responsibilities.
“His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!” – Matthew 25:23 NIV
If you are faithful with one customer, God will send more your way. He knows that you will take good care of them. Whether you have 1 customer or 10,000 customers, take good care of them and you will be put in charge of more.
Don’t say, “I have just one customer—why should I bother myself? When I have more customers, I will take this business more seriously.” That kind of attitude will not take you very far.
On the other hand, do not stop taking good care of your customers, just because you think your company has become “too big to fail.” If you stop taking care of your customers, it is just a matter of time before you will be out of business.
To nourish your relationship with God (the first pillar), yourself (the second pillar) and with your customer (the third pillar), you must learn how to use your time wisely.
Asset #2 - Time
The investment of time is the EVIDENCE of love
As much as material and financial gifts are useful to demonstrate love, the most powerful evidence of love is the investment of time. It is because God loves you so much that He wants to spend eternity (unending time) with you.
Do you know the consistent evidence of God's love for you is his presence? "God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble." - Psalms 46:1 NIV
God is always present. He is always there. I am sure that you love God. You can demonstrate your love with the quality time you invest with Him. Your offerings and other services for God are good, but the most powerful evidence of your love for God is the investment of quality time.
Give God your undivided attention when spending time with Him. Devote time to talk to God—He loves to hear your voice. Devote time to listen to God—He loves to speak to you.
I am sure that you love yourself, so demonstrate it by spending some quality time with yourself. Look at yourself in the mirror each day and have a conversation with yourself.
It is time to undo all the negative words spoken over you with your positive words. Did somebody tell you that you will not amount to anything good? Tell yourself, "God has deposited the seed of greatness in me, and I will do great things."
Spend quality time everyday speaking to yourself. Your mind believes your voice more than any other voice, except the voice of God of course.
I am sure that you love your customer as yourself, so spend some quality time serving your customer.
x Make room in your calendar to invest quality time with God.
x Make room in your calendar to invest quality time with yourself.
x Make room in your calendar to invest quality time to serve your customer. The wealthiest man on earth has 24 hours each day, and the poorest man on earth has 24 hours each day. Successful businesses have 24 hours each day, and businesses that are struggling to survive also have 24 hours each day. The BIG difference between the wealthy and successful and the poor and struggling is the way they use their time.
To establish The Business System That Never Fails, you must learn how to invest time wisely. Time is involved in every business transaction, so to successfully put the three pillars together; you must master the use of time.
To use time correctly, you must be able to prioritize your time. Otherwise, the unimportant will consume your time while the important things are neglected. What is important to you? The key to correct prioritization is the value you place on a relationship or activity. Correct prioritization will enable you to balance your life. Follow the sequence of the three pillars and prioritize your time accordingly:
x Time for God
x Time for yourself
x Time for your customers Some time ago, my relationship with God had suffered because I did not allocate time in my calendar for God. I used the “I am too busy” excuse so many times, until I realized that not spending time with God was not a wise idea.
How could I be too busy to invest time with God? Ridiculous! Well I learned the hard way, when I “hit my head against the wall” several times and I had to run to God for help. When I started budgeting my time, I soon realized that there is always enough time to invest in all important relationships and activities.
Have you been using the common “I am too busy” excuse? Is that excuse valid?
Budget Your Time “There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens.” – Ecclesiastes 3:1 NIV
It is difficult to manage money without a budget. The same is true for time. Budgeting my time and tracking how I use it has totally transformed my life.
It has not been easy to maintain the discipline, but I have been improving over time and I totally enjoy it. I did not realize how much time I had until I began to budget time on a weekly and daily basis.
I was working with an entrepreneur who was working a 9-to-5 job, but she had an idea and wanted to start her own business.
She kept complaining, “Benson, I really want to do this, but there is no time to do it.” Does that sound f
amiliar? I took her through the process of budgeting her time and she was amazed at how much time she had. Follow me through the simple process:
Me: So you really want to do this business on a part-time basis, but time is the issue? Entrepreneur: Yes
Me: How many hours do you have each week? Entrepreneur: Hmmm, I have never calculated. Me: How many hours do you have each day? Entrepreneur: 24 hours
Me: When you multiply 24 by 7, how many hours will you have?
Entrepreneur: Hmm, math is not my strength. Me: Ok, I am glad to help. 24 multiplied by 7 equal 168. Let us proceed. How many hours do you work each week on average?
Entrepreneur: 40 hours
Me: Let us add 10 hours for commuting and make it 50 hours. So 168 minus 50 is what?
Entrepreneur: Hmm, 168 minus 50 is.... Benson I just said math is not one of my strengths.
Me: Ok. Let us move along. 168 minus 50 equal 118. How many hours do you sleep a day? Entrepreneur: About 7 hours Me: 7x7= 49, so 118-49= 69. Now we have taken care of your day job and your sleep. You have 109 hours left. Let us move to God. How much time do you spend with God each day?
Entrepreneur: About 1 hour, so in a week, it will be 7 hours
Me: I am glad you are getting it. 69 – 7 = 62. What else do you do each week?
Entrepreneur: I spend time with family. Me: How many hours per day on average?
Entrepreneur: About 3 hours. That will be 21 hours per week. Me: Great. 62 - 21= 41. What about fun? How many hours per week do you spend having fun with friends, watching movies, etc?
Entrepreneur: About 10 hours. Me: We are getting there. So 41 - 10 = 31. How many hours approximately do you spend each day on things you do not usually anticipate will happen?
Entrepreneur: About 3 hours each day, so that will be 21 hours per week. 31 – 21 = 10 hours. Me: Great. I am glad you were able to handle the math on this one. (At this point, we were both laughing.)
Me: Is there any other thing we left out? Entrepreneur: Not that I can think of right now. If it comes up, I will let you know. Me: So, after everything you do each week—your job, your personal life and miscellaneous activities—you still have 10 hours each week. Do you realize that you have enough time to invest in developing your idea each week? Do you realize if you plan well, you can reduce miscellaneous activities and allocate more time to grow your business?
Entrepreneur: Wow! Wow! This is an eye opener. I did not know I had this much time. Whether you are trying to allocate time to start a business, or you are a business owner or a fortune 500 executive looking for more time to spend with your family, you need to do this to analyze your use of time.
Do this simple exercise and you will realize how much time you have available. After you do this exercise, budget the time you allocate on a calendar, and compare it with how you actually spent your time each week. To simplify this, let us consider the three pillars we have been using in this book:
There are 168 hours each week. Let us allocate them as follows;
Relationship with God
x Prayer, meditation, Bible reading, etc: about 21 hours per week
Relationship with yourself
x Sleep, exercise, eating and reading: about 70 hours per week
Relationship with your customer
x Commute and work: about 50 hours per week Results of allocating your time each week
21+70+50 = 141 hours already allocated per week
168 – 141 = 27 hours available for other projects
“Those who plan ahead are always ahead.”
If you allocated time as in our example above, you still have enough time each week to handle unexpected events. Track your actual time and
make adjustments along the way, depending on your lifestyle and responsibilities.
Time at Work How do you invest the time that you have allocated for work? Whether you have 6, 8 or 10 hours each day to work, you must know where your time is being invested, in order to build The Business System That Never Fails. After allocating time for work each week, it is always good to plan your day in advance.
“Measure what you treasure.”
Plan for Tuesday on Monday, and plan for Wednesday on Tuesday. Please do not overcrowd your calendar with too many activities. Aim to start and finish activities on the same day. It gives you a sense of joy and fulfillment. It is better to start one activity and finish it that same day, compared to starting 8 and finishing none at the end of the working day.
Even God focused on 1 or 2 things each day when He created the universe in Genesis chapter 1. If the all-wise God did not try to handle more than 2 major projects per day, why should you? Allow that to sink in.
Return on Time (ROT) As you track the time you have invested on each activity or with each client, measure your output or results in order to determine if you are having a good return on your time.
I know that you treasure time, so measure the results of your investment so that you can invest your most precious asset (time) wisely. Time is the only limited asset you have. Money is unlimited, but time is limited.
Calculate Cost in terms of time, not money The other day, I was consulting with one of my clients, and I realized that he was spending way too much time on activities he could hire another person to do. Some business owners think that if they do everything that needs to be done, they are saving money. Is that really true? Let us do the calculation using my client as an example.
Upon close examination of my client’s hourly rate, we realized his time was worth $300 per hour. To determine how much your time is worth, divide your annual income or projected income by the number of working hours in a year.
For example, if your annual salary is $150,000, you are worth about $80 per hour approximately assuming that you are productive the entire time that you are at work. Here is the detailed calculation:
Target annual income = $150,000 Working days in a year = 235 Working hours in a day = 8 Working hours in a year = 1880
Hourly worth = $150,000 / 1,880 = $80 per hour approximately
If you want to be a millionaire, your hourly worth is $1,000,000 / 1880 = $532 per hour approximately. Let us get back to my client’s story. When we realized that he was worth $300 per hour, he made a decision to hire people who were paid less than $300 to help him with certain activities.
“Calculate cost in terms of time, not money.”
If you calculate cost in terms of MONEY, you will hardly leverage your time and grow your business. However, if
you calculate your cost in terms of TIME (i.e. your hourly worth) and you make some decisions to leverage your time, you will make more revenue, spend less on expenses and increase your profits.
Your Time is Your Life “The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” – John 10:10 KJV
Your time is your life. Guard your time zealously. Anything that steals, kills, or destroys your time is actually stealing, killing and destroying your life. Please don’t go to work to kill time.
If that is your attitude, you are killing your life. The best way to discover activities or people who are killing your time is to thoughtfully budget your time, and then compare your actual activities with your budgeted activities.
Most of the time, there will be a variance. Whenever there is a variance, there could be four possible reasons to explain the variance:
1. You under-budgeted time for some activities.
2. You over-budgeted time for some activities. 3. You omitted an important activity from your budget.
4. You were distracted and you ended up doing an unimportant activity. If the variance is because of reasons 1 - 3, you can always make adjustments as you develop your next time budget. If the variance is because of possibility 4, something is stealing, killing or destroying your time. Identify that thing and stop it.
Be 100% Present When you have allocated time properly amongst the three pillars—time with God, t
ime with yourself and your family and time to serve your customer— the equation is balanced.
When you know that you have a balanced equation, you can devote yourself to that time budget 100%. When you are at your work, your focus is 100% on working. When you are at home with your family, your entire focus should be with your family. When you are praying, your focus should be 100% with God.
You should not be investing with God and checking your text messages at the same time. Also, when you are with your family, you should not be taking business calls. When you do the right thing at the wrong time, you throw your life off-balance.
King Solomon, one of the wisest men who ever lived, said in the book of Ecclesiastes chapter 3, “There is a time for everything.” It is just good practice, as a business owner or as an employee, to really look at your life and invest time in these various relationships. Try to draw boundaries around your life so that you will not be out-ofbalance and ineffective.
Action Plan
“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!” – Benjamin Franklin We have covered enough material to enable you to establish The Business System That Never Fails. For your business to experience continuous results, you need to implement the principles we have covered consistently. It is time to take action. The first action is to develop a plan of action.
"To humans belong the plans of the heart, but from the Lord comes the proper answer of the tongue.”Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and he will establish your plans." Proverbs 16:1, 3
It is your responsibility to develop a plan that will move your business from where you are now to where you want to be in the future. That future could be 12 months, 3 years or 5 years. Your plan enables you to get direction.
Once I discovered that God does NOT make decisions for me, then receiving direction for my life and business from Him was no longer a struggle. If God had to make DECISIONS for you, why did he give you a will (ability to choose)?