SMART New Year’s Resolutions

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According to Statistic Brain’s New Year’s Resolution Statistics page, more than 40% of people make at least one resolution as a New Year begins. The site also notes that less than 10% are successful in reaching their goal while more than 42% seem to utterly fail at them year after year. Now it’s time for a moment of truth: Did you make any New Year’s resolutions? If you did, how are you doing on them? If they’re already long forgotten, it may be time to give your resolutions a major boost by making them SMART.

Most people have heard about the SMART framework for goals and objectives. It was a simple little article back in the November 1981 issue of Management Review titled “There’s a S.M.A.R.T. Way to Write Management’s Goals and Objectives” by George T. Doran. His idea was to make sure each business goal or objective had the following characteristics:

  • S = Specific
  • M = Measurable
  • A = Assignable (who will do it)
  • R = Realistic
  • T = Time-related (when it will be achieved) 

Going back to Statistic Brain’s page about resolutions, it lists some of the most common ones people make. Not surprisingly, at the top of the list is to lose weight. Writing a goal like that is about as far from SMART as you can get. It’s not specific. You could make it specific by putting a number to it: Lose 80 pounds. Now you immediately have something specific to work towards. But it’s still not SMART. Obviously it’s easily measurable with a scale. Since losing weight is your own personal goal rather than a business goal, it’s kind of automatically assignable, but you should still own it by writing it out as I will lose 80 pounds. It’s getting better but it’s still not SMART. Ask yourself if it’s realistic. You may really want or need to lose 80 pounds, but it might be better to break it up into smaller goals so you get the momentum of early multiple victories. Maybe go for something more realistic like I will lose 15 pounds. That’s better, but it’s still not SMART. The final step of the original framework would to make it time-related (or time-bound). You might write it as I will lose 15 pounds in five weeks. That would mean losing three pounds a week. Seems doable, right? And you’ll be much more likely to reach your goal if it’s SMART because it immediately shows you how achievable it is.

With that as an example, now try applying it to one of your business goals. As I said, most people have at least heard of the SMART framework, but surprisingly few people bother to actually use it, and they’re missing out on the benefits it can bring. Maybe as the New Year rolled in you were thinking to yourself how you’d really like to improve business performance. Well, you can see right away how that doesn’t meet any of the criteria. It’s not specific or measureable at all and there’s no time-frame specified. A SMART goal might look like this: Team X will increase the company’s gross revenues from product A by 10% within the next 10 months. Now that’s a goal you can sink your teeth into! 

Do yourself a big favor and review each of your business goals for 2017 and make sure they’re SMART if you want to greatly increase your chances of success this year.

How to Measure Customer Loyalty

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Entrepreneurs are in the business of selling something, whether it’s a product or service, which means you can’t afford to ignore customer satisfaction. In order to understand how customer satisfaction impacts your business, you have to measure it, and this is where most companies begin wandering off into unhelpful territory. If you want a real (and perhaps very sobering) view of customer satisfaction, read on.

Frederick F. Reichheld is a customer loyalty guru and a Fellow at global management consulting firm Bain & Company who cracked this difficult nut in his Harvard Business Review article, The One Number You Need to Grow. What he lays out is a very compelling case for what question you should be asking your customers, the scale you use to measure it, and the way you interpret the results. 

Every company wants to see great customer satisfaction scores, which inevitably leads them to include people who are only barely satisfied in their count of those who are satisfied. This simply isn’t helpful because those barely satisfied customers are highly likely to switch to a competitor and aren’t serving as brand ambassadors. Reichheld argues you have to begin by asking the right question, which is this: “How likely is it that you would recommend [company X] to a friend or colleague?” That’s it – that’s the only question you need to ask because it gets at the key customer-related driver of growth and profitability, which is customer loyalty, not satisfaction per se. Your most loyal customers are those who are willing to recommend your company to others.

Now comes the response categories, and the recommendation here is to use an eleven-point scale numbered zero to ten, where zero is the negative end of the scale (not at all likely to recommend) and ten is the positive end of the scale (extremely likely to recommend). People intuitively understand this kind of scale. The zero is obvious, and then respondents are left with a ten-point scale, and people rank things out of ten all the time. It’s easy and intuitive. 

Then comes the part where you interpret the results. Keep in mind there are two goals here: To identify the people who are your most enthusiastic, loyal brand ambassadors and to avoid the grade-inflation that makes most measurement attempts worthless. Reichheld argues for grouping respondents into three categories. Those who give answers of nine or ten are the gold standard. They are your active promoters. You want all your customers in this category. Those who give a seven or eight are passively satisfied, so while you benefit from them purchasing your product or service, they aren’t actively engaged in promoting your brand. Everyone who gives a six or lower are interpreted as detractors. They are not only likely to switch to competitors but might even be angry and actively working against your company.

The one number you need to grow is your net-promoters score – the percentage of your customers who are promoters minus the percentage of customers who are detractors. When you find ways to increase your net-promoter by simultaneously reducing the number of detractors and increasing the number promoters, your company will grow. 

If you’d like a more detailed treatment of this topic beyond the HBR article mentioned above, you might be interested in Reichholds related book, The Ultimate Question 2.0.

7 Productivity Hacks for Entrepreneurs

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When I recently wrote about 5 Time Management Hacks for Entrepreneurs, it immediately became clear to me that people were hungry for more, so I’ve put together a more extensive list of productivity hacks for entrepreneurs. These are all tactics, strategies, and tips that have been used by successful entrepreneurs to significantly boost their productivity. Which ones sound like they could work for you?

1. Plan in Smaller Increments

When every minute counts, organizing your day by hour or even half-hour increments simply isn’t good enough. Try using 15-minute or even 10-minute increments to plan your day – it will quickly reveal where and how you might tend to waste precious time. And yes, nearly all the productivity hacks listed here have to do with making the most of your time. 

2. Make Meetings Shorter

The dreaded hour-long default in many calendars mentioned above has resulted in the assumption that most meetings are going to run for at least an hour, but many successful entrepreneurs have found that most of their meetings can accomplish their agendas in far less, often as little as 30 or even 15 minutes.

3. Leverage Your Calendar

Most people live under the dictates of some kind of to-do list. You need one to know what you have to do, and prioritizing it can be something of an art, but if you stop at the list you’re missing out on operationalizing it. That’s where the calendar comes in. You have to figure out exactly when and where you’re going to actually do the prioritized tasks by putting them on your calendar. This will immediately show you what’s realistic in terms of getting things done each day and transform your to-do list from a pie-in-the-sky dream to concrete action plan. 

4. Establish a Consistent Morning Routine

Highly successful entrepreneurs tend to follow a strict morning routine. They get up at the same time every morning, and it’s usually pretty early. These morning routines often includes both exercise, which gets the blood flowing to your brain for increased focus, and checking in on various information sources in the form of blogs or social media feeds related to their business.

5. Disciplined Email

Constantly checking your email becomes a time-sink that can be hard to overcome. Successful entrepreneurs figure out how to tame the email beast. They ignore it completely when focusing on an especially important task. They also limit how often they check it – establishing three or four small blocks of time in day rather than being constantly dialed into it. 

6. The Art of Delegation and Saying No

Part of being a successful entrepreneur is putting together a great team of people – let them step and share the load. Anything that can be delegated should be delegated so you can focus on the most important work. Your ability to say “No” is also key – taking on more than is possible for you to do will hurt all your work.

7. Figure Out What Helps You Focus

Experiment with all sorts of different things to find out what sorts tactics help you focus when you need to. For some it’s listening to music. For others it’s being completely isolated away from distractions. Some need to be in a peaceful setting with lots of natural light and nature in view. Figure out what works for you and stick with it when you need to focus. 

These are some of the best productivity hacks you’ll find among successful entrepreneurs. None of them are rocket science, but they do take a consistent commitment to realize their full benefits. Do this and you’ll be on a solid path to success in 2017.

5 Signs Your Resume Screams ‘Entrepreneur’

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Finding a career you’re truly passionate about can be challenging.

If you’re like most people, you were brought up to believe there was only one way to succeed in life: to get an education, get a steady job working for a respected company, and live happily ever after.

As we all know, this isn’t often the case – especially not today.

Most people don’t realize they’re not meant to work for others

 

Whether you’re a mid-career professional making a career change, a veteran transitioning to civilian life, or a college graduate, sending out resume after resume to jobs you may never enjoy can be a draining experience.

(And that’s before you even begin working one of these jobs.)

For most people, they don’t see that they’re meant to work for themselves – though what they subconsciously write about themselves in their resume, and where their past has taken them, can reveal a lot about where they’re destined to go.

Here are 5 Signs Your Resume Screams ‘Entrepreneur’:

1. Leadership Experience. You led teams that succeeded, whether in the workplace, military, sports teams, or elsewhere. Others looked up to you to guide them to success. Entrepreneurs are natural-born leaders – they make everyone else around them better, as they work towards a greater goal.

 

2. You Got Fired or Quit Jobs. Many entrepreneurs struggle to hold jobs working for others, because it goes against their inner grain. Instead of listening to the commands of others, entrepreneurs want to forge their own course of success. This can often lead to getting fired or quitting jobs easily.

3. Unique Design/Layout. Entrepreneurs love to be different, because that’s what makes the best businesses so successful. Sometimes without knowing it, their resumes will have a unique design/layout that almost gives them their own personal brand to stand out from the pack.

4. Creative-Thinking, Problem-Solving Skills. Do you highlight your creative-thinking and problem-solving skills? That means you thrive at finding solutions under pressure – something entrepreneurs need to have to survive in business.

5. Wide-Ranging Areas of Expertise. You’re not knowledgeable in one or two areas – it seems you’re an expert in many. For entrepreneurs, they need to wear many different hats to keep their business running smoothly. This could be a sign for you to take an exit route on applying for jobs, and to become an entrepreneur.

To learn more about entrepreneurship through franchising, attend our free monthly webinar, Franchise Ownership as a More Stable Career Path. The webinar is free, but you need to pre-register, which you can do online by clicking on the linked seminar title.

You may also register by calling 866-246-2884.