“If you don’t know where you are going,
you’ll end up someplace else.”
― Yogi Berra
Yogi Berra makes sense. And yet, although we all know it is essential to make a plan for our business, we hesitate to do it. Or we do it haphazardly at best. So what is your plan for 2015? If that question seems a little too intimidating to you and you are frankly left speechless, let’s begin with an easier question.
What do you want to contribute to your clients in 2015? Surprised? It’s not the typical question about how much money do you want to make in 2015. That question is useless unless you think of your clients first. To enlarge on the question about contribution to your clients, first you have to trust that if you make a contribution to them, you will be fairly compensated for the contribution. This is not some airy-fairy “build a field and they will come” type of thinking. It is solid in that people are willing to pay for what they want. It is up to you as a business person to provide the answer to a problem that a client has. You already know how to make a contribution to clients, if you didn’t you wouldn’t be in business.
Doing some thinking about what problems clients have is a very valuable use of your time. It’s useful to brainstorm about what problems you solved for your clients this year. Write them down and then project into the future about, what is the next predictable problem the client will have upon solving the present problem? This is called “getting out ahead” of a problem. You are presenting a solution to the problem that the client doesn’t yet know he will have.
Of course, to solve the next, yet to be presented problem, will take planning on your part. You can’t solve all of their problems, and you can solve some of them. Pick 3 problems that are predictable for your clients. When you list 3 major problems that your client will have, and that you can solve, that will become the foundation of your plan for that client for next year.
In the comment section below, please tell me about 3 problems that your clients have that you plan to solve in 2015. As always, I look forward the hearing from you.
