Your Business's Stimulus Package

Don't Wait for the Government.

Which has a bigger effect on your success this year?

• The stimulus package the President and Congress end up passing?
• The stimulus package you put in place for your business?

Your success this year depends more on what you do -- and what you persuade your customers to do -- than it depends on what happens with the economy.

Clearly, none of you are waiting for the government stimulus package to be the answer to all of your problems. So... you need to put in place your own business stimulus package.

Don't wait for the government's stimulus package to affect your world. Change your world yourself.

How?

Let's break your personal business stimulus package into two parts:

1. What your customers do to impact your success
2. What you do to impact your success

The first part of your business stimulus package: Persuading your customers to do things that impact your success.

Here's the simple truth: You can only cut your costs so much. The biggest driver of your success is customer action:

In my recent 2009 Readiness Teleseminar I focused on Six Readiness Questions that will help you thrive in this economic meltdown. The first three questions focus on the connection between customer action and results:

1. Where is the latent profit in your business?
2. How can your current customers help you unleash that latent profit?
3. How does the economic situation help you focus your new customer acquisition efforts?

The first part of your business stimulus package needs to focus on the microeconomic decisions and actions that your customers can make to impact your success.

My observation: Most companies haven't fully thought through the connection between their customer's actions and the company's business results.

My call to action: Think this through!

Much more than any across the board cuts or belt-tightening, you will find that the biggest impact on your success in 2009 will happen when your customers act. So... make the identification of customer action and the encouragement of those actions your top priorities.

I have many resources to help you with this action step:

• Both of my books, Brand Harmony and We: The Ideal Customer Relationship focus on what it takes to encourage customers to act in ways that drive your results.

Here are some recent newsletters and blog posts that give you more information:

• The Apple Farmer
• Relationships - a key driver of your company's value
• It's Time to Invest
• The Relationship Threshold
• Turning Customer Loyalty Upside Down
• Relationships are like Cockroaches
• Either/Or? No. Both/And.

And... you can always get in touch with me to discuss this further. My number is 847 686 0400.

The second part of your business stimulus package: What you can do to to impact your success.

The second part of my 2009 Readiness Teleseminar discusses three additional questions that focus on what you can do to impact your success:

4. Is your brand strategy right for the times, i.e., what do you want your customers to think about you?
5. Are you communicating with customers optimally at all touchpoints?
6. How clear and compelling is your internal brand?

If customer action drives your success, you need to focus on encouraging customers to act. To encourage customer action, you should concentrate on two fundamental questions:

1. What do we want people to think about us?
2. How do we encourage them to think those things?

If you can help your customers create clear, compelling, motivating beliefs about your company, those customers will act in ways that unleash the latent profit in your business.

I also have several resources to help you with these questions:

• Again, both of my books, Brand Harmony and We: The Ideal Customer Relationship can help you focus on what thoughts (brand impressions) motivate your customers and how you lead customers to those thoughts.
• Download my free ebook, Encounters, to learn how to turn every conversation with your customer into a relationship-building encounter instead of a relationship-eroding transaction.

Here are some recent newsletters and blog posts that will give you more insight:

• Brand Essence (Part 1/3)
• Brand Harmomy (Part 2/3)
• Brand Story (Part 3/3)
• Moments with Presence
• Why I don't believe in the Elevator Pitch

Take Notice

Talk to your friends, customers, vendors, etc. Are their companies depending more on the government and the economy to take care of them than they are depending on their own personal business stimulus package?

How do you compare?

How does your company compare? Are you waiting for things to get better, or are you doing what it takes to create your own future. (Check out this blog post: The Stallion or the Hay Wagon)

Try this

If you haven't done so already, download my 2009 Readiness Teleseminar, including the audio recording and the Learning Guide. Block off two complete mornings – with cell phones turned off and no other outside distractions – and work through the six questions with a group of colleagues from your company

Need some help or encouragement? Call me for a pep talk: 847 686 0400.
 

yastrow.com
steve@yastrow.com
P 847-686-0688