Thursday, March 27th, 2008
“The purpose of a business is to create a customer.” - Peter Drucker
“I skate to where the puck is going to be.” - Wayne Gretzky
“Getting fit is about nutrition and exercise.” - Everyone
People, and especially us Internet businesspeople, seem to forget fundamental concerns of the things they care about. They get so wrapped up in these complex ideas, and want to do these complex things, simply because they can.
The interesting thing is that when you look at what works and what succeeds, it’s when everything you do relates directly back to the fundamental concern of your objective.
I see this happening all over the place, and especially with social media marketing. The problem is that people get lost in the gliss (that’s not even a word, but it sounds like it should be and it sounds like the kind of word I’d like to use. So I’m keeping it) and forget why they’re on Twitter, Facebook, or even have the business that they have.
What fundamental concerns does your business address for your customers? Do you reach out to them in ways that resonate in those areas 100%, or are you farting around, exploring new opportunities without the fundamental concerns of your business at the top of your mind?
This applies to everything. For example, in rock climbing, everyone who has climbed more than once knows it’s about your finger strength and shoulder strength. Everyone who has climbed more than twice knows that climbing is all about your footwork and balance. But few people focus solely on these things. Ultimately, the ones that practice yoga to improve their footwork and balance, that exercise their grip to improve their finger strength, and practice pull-ups until their shoulders are burning, succeed much more quickly than others.
If you’re trying to succeed at something that is seeming overwhelming, take a step back. Outline the fundamental concerns of the action (hint: it’s usually 3 things), decide which practices will most quickly develop your skill in those areas, and start practicing them more than anything else.
Monday, March 17th, 2008
Tonight, I spent about 20 minutes putting together a script to automate a task that I’ve spent 3 hours on in the past two days. Now, I’ll get 5 times as much done…in my sleep tonight.
When I first started working at KeywordRanking/WebSourced/MarketSmart Interactive, I watched 20+ salespeople run Keyword/Search Engine Ranking Reports reports for 2-3 hours before making cold calls…Every…Single…Day. They would get a lead in from the website, enter in the URL and keywords, and send it to the prospect before making the call, waiting while it ran, etc.
It was completely stupid.
Once I realized what was happening, I spent my free time one week, and a few hours over the weekend, putting together an automated script that integrated a few programs and completely eliminated all of this work.
On Monday, I came in and ran the script.
Immediately, it started churning through the weekend’s leads one-by-one, pulling information out of Outlook, putting it into the ranking report software, copy the report into an e-mail, and send it to the VP of Sales.
Overnight, the entire sales team had just gained 25%+ more productivity. At 20 salespeople, this was like hiring 5 new people. And it didn’t cost a dime.
Due to the 1,200+ clients we had at the peak of the KeywordRanking/WebSourced heyday, we put together a lot of automation practices and infrastructure that was pretty rad.
Today, I still use automation practices as much as possible. It’s smart, it’s efficient, it’s effective, and it saves boatloads of cash…If you know what you’re doing and how to do it.
The problem is that most people don’t even know what’s possible to automate. The answer is: Everything.
Maximizing these three things below can turn your operations from a headache to the easiest part of your business to manage. Plus, seeing all of this work get done while you’re focusing on maximizing your knowledge and strategies? It’s just smart business.
1: AutoMate. This is the piece of Windows software that can make every other piece of software talk to each other. You can make it send keystrokes, run programs, open new windows, copy/paste, whatever you need it to do. I “know a guy” who even uses it to automate parts of his marketing. Online data mining with specialized software a pain? Not once you get the hang of AutoMate.
2: Outsourced Assistants. Tim Ferriss brought this idea to light for me. I’d say the learning curve here is a bit steeper, and a bit more costly, but once you get through that, you can have all of your weekly reporting, analysis, bills, whatever, all taken care of while you sleep. And you don’t have the responsibility of an employee…just an hourly bill.
3: Automation tools with your current services. Google AdWords reports. Automated bill-pay. RSS aggregators. Outsourced transcription services. (Writing a book? Ramble for a while and get someone else to type it for $30/hr…that’s a lot of words.) So many people don’t maximize the value of these tools, and it’s simply a matter of sitting down with them and tinkering around to see what they can do. And heck, that’s fun. Make the stuff you already pay for do even more work.
Aside from these three things, you also have things like Excel macros and learning the basics of PHP/MySQL to create and run tasks from your own computer. There’s nothing like having your own customized tools for those secret data mining and analysis projects you work on.
Go work less.
Subscribe in a reader