Newsletter Article Archive | Subscribe
New Year, New Organization — Learn How to Make It Work
Welcome to the new year! If you’ve been following our blog series, you can look back at January with relief because you’re already ahead of the game. You set goals for three years. You defined one-year goals. You clarified your Quarterly Rocks. You’re ready to go, right? Well, wait just a minute. Before you jump […]
Make Your Vision a Reality for All Employees
In 2014, Fortune reported that nine out of 10 startups fail, which is a cold and disheartening statistic when you think about it. The team at Gallup reported that about half of new U.S. companies fail in their first five years. So, what can an organization — and its leadership team — do to buck […]
8 Steps, 3 Rules: Set Up Your Quarterly Rocks
Your quarterly “Rocks” are the clear priorities that will govern where each employee puts his or her primary effort every day. Because these are the true action items for your team and all of your employees, it’s critical to follow set processes to establish your Rocks. In the book Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business, […]
Put Your Rocks In First
It’s December and almost time to close out the calendar year. Do you know what the next year will hold? How about the next quarter? If you’re following this blog series, you already have some of your essential goals in place. We’ve moved through setting our 1-year goals, and now it’s time to define the […]
Where the Rubber Meets the Road: Your 1-Year Plan
If you’ve been following our blog series, you have done a considerable amount of work developing a clear, long-term vision for your company. You’ve defined your: Core values Core focus 10-year target Ideal customer Unique value Guarantee Three-year picture With your long-term vision and planning completed, it’s time to start gaining some traction. When you […]
Your 21st-Century Business Requires a 3-Year Snapshot
A three-year plan is a critical component of the long-term planning for any business. Why a three-year plan, specifically? Why not really dig in and develop a traditional five-year plan? The answer is that, in just the last decade, the speed of business has increased to such a degree that tactical planning beyond three years […]
Build Customer Confidence: Guarantee Your Work
Today’s generation of social-savvy online buyers is plagued by fear and doubt, and nothing kills a sale more quickly than hesitation over a perceived risk. How do you get around their fear and doubt? Define your Proven Process. Guarantee your products and services. Your process, the way you provide your product or service to your […]
Cut Through the Clutter: Define Your 3 Uniques
If you stand your business up next to your competitors, what do you see? Do you see a row of companies all offering the same thing, using the same language, making the same claims? If you do, so do your current and prospective customers. How do you make your business pop out of that lineup […]
Do You Know Who Your Ideal Customers Are?
If you’re like many business owners, you started your business with a rather loose idea of what your target market is. After all, in the beginning, any paying customer looks an awful lot like your target market. Now that you’ve been at it a while, you should have started to notice some trends in the […]
Break It Down: Set Your 3- and 1-Year Goals
In our last post, What’s Your Long-Term Goal? Get Everyone On the Same Page, our most recent in our series from Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business by Gino Wickman, we discussed that having a long-term goal is essential for keeping your team moving in the same direction. However, once you know what you […]