Gain Clarity In Your Business To Drive Revenue Growth – Part 1

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” – Sun Tzu

Sun Tzu was a general, military strategist and philosopher. Although he wrote these words in relation to men and war, they can easily be adapted to show the relationship between businesses and customers.

By using sales references, you get:

“If you know the customer and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred interactions. If you know yourself but not the customer, for every deal won you will also suffer a loss. If you know neither the customer nor yourself, you will succumb in every interaction.”

Over the next few posts, I’d like to explore the relationship between businesses and their customers and how Sun Tzu’s philosophy still applies today.

Know Yourself

As a business owner, you are responsible for the identity of your company – who you are, what you do, how you do it, and why you do it. When you’re just starting out, those things can be easier to define and manage. It could just be you in the company, or maybe you have a couple of employees, probably people you know or met through someone. Keeping messaging on point is much easier if your whole company can meet for a quick coffee and talk things over. But even when you only have a couple of employees, things can go astray if you are not clear in your messaging or fail to share it at all.

It is important to have clarity on your business and what you want to accomplish and be known for from the beginning!

Every interaction that you have with your employees, vendors, customers, and community builds to define how people see your business. These are some of the factors that make up your identity:

• Name and tag line
• Vision, mission, guiding principles
• Logo
• Branding (fonts, colors, images, marketing, etc.)
• Social media presence
• Community involvement
• Reputation
• Customer service
• On-time delivery
• Quality
• Legal actions
• Cash flow
• Products and services
• Employees and contractors
• Customers
• Vendors

What do you want to be known for? Why did you start your business and what do you hope to accomplish?

Everyone has a reason why – financial independence, flexibility, spending more time with family – but you don’t have to own your own business to get those things. Dig deeper. What value do you bring to the community? Are you providing services to a special group, offering higher quality products, promoting charity and volunteering, making life easier in some way? What really motivated you to open your own business? Craft your vision and mission statements to share this with everyone. Use your personal motivation to connect to your network and community. Do you have specific principles that you live by and use to manage your business? Share these as well. People will connect with you because they share your values. This is the start of building a relationship with the people you want in your business, no matter what their roles.

Does your branding support your vision, mission, and principles?

The tag line, logo, colors, fonts, images and marketing materials you use for for your business build the visual brand. Having gained clarity on your company’s vision, does your current branding match your message?

• Does your logo speak to your vision?
• Do the colors and images you use communicate the tone you want to have?
• Are you communicating your message effectively in your marketing materials?

If the answer to any of these questions is no, you should consider re-branding to communicate your message clearly to your audience. Be deliberate in your actions. Put together a branding plan first and ask for feedback from people you trust to see if they are receiving the same message you’re sending.

If you are changing your logo or your colors, do it at the same time and speak to why you are doing it so people are not confused. Show that you want to bring more value to them through the changes you are making in your company. Updating your message has immediate and long term tasks associated with it.

Immediate tasks could be publishing your updated vision, mission, and guiding principles on your website and adding them to marketing materials. Over time, your message will be crafted through press releases, blog content, social media outreach and new marketing materials.

In our next post, we will discuss social media presence, community involvement and reputation. See you soon!

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