How to Declutter your Business to do list

How to Declutter your Business Growth To-Do List

by Sonya Shelton

Typically, as business owners, it feels like you have to work 10 times harder when the business is growing. And this applies even more in this current economic climate. Some business owners are working harder than ever just to get back to where they were before. It can be frustrating and overwhelming. Stress and overwhelm can cloud future-planning, and soon your to-do list seems endless. 

To help get you back on track, ELC has simplified the process to grow and scale your business with the Millions By Design system. Millions By Design is a 3-step system to give you Clarity, Focus, and Momentum – so you can quickly get out of stress and overwhelm. 

To get started today, here is a process we use with clients in our Millions By Design system to narrow your focus and optimize your growth.

What Is Your Growth Target?

Before we can create a business growth strategy, we have to know where we’re going. 

What is your target objective for business growth? 

You can start with the next year, what do you want your revenue and profit to be? How many hours do you want to be working?

What Is Your Current Situation?

In order to dig deep, you have to start at the surface. Therefore, our first goal in this activity is get a clear picture of your how your organization is currently performing. What are you currently doing, and how?

  1. To begin, answer these three questions:
  • What is your monthly average revenue?
  • What is your monthly average number of customers?
  • What is your average number of leads each month to get those customers?

Pro Tip: It’s one thing to conceptualize these questions, and it’s another to actually verify them. In this activity, challenge yourself to be completely honest, and if you’re not sure, validate your assumptions with facts and data.

  1. Now we want to know where this revenue and leads are coming from. To do this, list all the lead sources that drive sales. Here are some examples: 
    • Referrals
    • Online traffic (from a specific source/ad)
    • Specific advertisement(s)
    • Tradeshows
    • Social Media (specific platforms)
    • Email marketing
    • Google Adwords
    • Book/Publication
    • Foot traffic
  1. Next, to get a clear picture of your business’ current performance, write down your current sales process(es) in detail. Get as detailed as you can here. Doing so will identify exactly which business operations directly contribute to bringing in revenue and business growth.

Now you have a clearer picture of where you currently stand. You see the results you are currently getting and how you are getting them. Now look at how you can scale it – focus on what produces the best results and do more of it.

Eliminate the Roadblocks

The more you try to do, the less you actually accomplish. So, if you want to grow your business or even just recover in this current climate, you need to focus.

Now we know your current situation, your growth objective, and we’re going to build on what produces the best results. To build Momentum, we want to remove the roadblocks that get in your way.

  1. Identify your roadblocks: Write down the things getting in the way of reaching your goal. What is preventing you from reaching your objective?
  1. Identify the ROOT CAUSE of each roadblock. It’s important that you verify your assumptions about the root cause with facts/data. 
  1. Enlist your team to find a solution to remove it. Once you get to the root cause, the solution may be obvious or you may need to get ideas from the people on your team who are closer to the work.

To build momentum, you just keep repeating the process of focusing on what works best and eliminating the roadblocks that get in the way.

Case Study Example

Here is an example of how one of our clients was able to make a very small, simple change to make a huge impact. Since we have confidentiality agreements with our clients, we’ll call this client “Sheryl.”

Sheryl owns an e-commerce B2B business. She went through the steps to get clarity on her growth objective and the business’ current situation. In this activity, she identified that social media ads and email marketing brought in the most traffic and revenue. 

As she broke down her current sales process, Sheryl identified each activity that resulted in sales. Again, she saw that online advertising and email marketing offers were integral to their current performance.

At this point in the Millions By Design system, we’ve gone through the steps to clarify the business objectives and the gap that needs to be filled to get there. And we’ve also identified the sales process that has been working so far. Next, we want to identify the roadblocks.

Sheryl said her major roadblock was not having enough repeat customers. 

Initially, she thought the main cause of this roadblock came from customer service as the biggest source of repeat customers. But in verifying her assumptions with actual data, she realized that only 40% of repeat customers come from customer service calls and 60% come from email offers.

With this information, she decided to double the number of email offers they sent from once a month to twice a month, and just like that, the business nearly doubled their sales.

This is just one example, but in many cases, business owners are so overwhelmed dealing with day-to-day issues, they can’t see the forest through the trees. When you take the time to take a strategic, fact-based approach, you might find the solutions are actually very simple.

The big takeaway to remember is: When you have clarity and focus, you can simplify your path to growth. Just making one or two simple changes can have a huge ripple effect on your results.

If you are serious about growing your business with less stress and overwhelm, join our FREE on-demand master class and Millions By Design Assessment.

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