‘…he, who fails to plan, plans to fail’.
And in yet another instance of life,
it’s a known fact that companies avoid huge amount of business risk when they
simply adhere to the 5P’s risk and failure amelioration Acronym
which states that:
Proper preparation prevents poor performance
In preparing to start-up a venture or
grow an early stage business for which you are passionate about or one for
which you’ve developed the needed skills and expertise required to make success
come to pass, those words of the above acronym captures what you must first embark
on doing as the key process towards preparing to succeed in any business. The
art of becoming successful financially in what you do or enjoy doing has gone
way beyond one great opportunity; it is a well prepared process.
You must learn the art of doing what
works again and again on schedule. Is like your high school subject timetable:
you have Algebra every Monday and Thursday of the week by 9:00am for the first
semester being, say, January to April. Come the second semester, May to August,
your school management sets Calculus for the same days of the week and time.
And that is how it goes on and on till graduation to another higher level of
education. Think about it for a moment, success in a particular field of study
comes to an individual when it’s delivered as a process. Would achieving
success in business come otherwise? Certainly not!
Plan
Your Success as ‘A Process’
Take Marketing Campaign for example,
you may have noticed like I did several times over, very successful companies
like Accenture Nigeria and Diamond Bank PLC schedule e-mail campaign monthly
and fortnightly respectively. Of course, there is but one major purpose for
doing such: advertise their products and services or promote the course of the
organization with a view to making more sales and increasing their customer
base. Have you also noticed that if a sales man or woman who sells classic
T-Shirts visits your place of work every Thursday in a given month, you may
have a record as this? The first and second Thursday, the T-Shirt may not
appear as something you need. By the third visit you may stop the seller and
inquire why he or she choose to frequent your place of work every week and if
he or she has got ’character’ you might care to know how much each T-Shirt goes
for in relation to the quality. Before the fourth Thursday, you’ve started
considering your need for a quality T-Shirt, when you should buy and how
fitting one will be on you. When the seller eventually shows up the fourth time
you most likely will buy one or book to buy in the subsequent week – seeing
you’ve given the idea of buying one a careful thought and probably secured a
fair bargain earlier. Tell me this doesn’t work in your case and I’ll reaffirm
that it’s a product or service you don’t want let alone have a need for!
Focus on Positive Cash-Flow
Achieving and sustaining success in
business is predominantly about selling and the art of effective selling is a
well prepared process. Blue chip companies now talk much about business systems
or structures. Just like two or more projects by a firm result to a program, so
also do two or more processes in a business make up a system.
Make the ACT of selling a well
tailored and consistent action plan in your business. Don’t forget to accord it
the prime priority for it’s the only way to keep any business or project alive
and well.
To your success!
