“If you want different results, change your activities”.

This powerful call to action from business mentor and executive coach Jack Daly has galvanized me to change tack on more than one occasion – with great success.  

With so many businesses hunkering down, cutting costs, bemoaning a sales shortage – and allowing their sales teams to let prices and margins plummet – it’s little wonder that their profits may be lagging.

Regardless of whether your business is up, down or flat, here’s how to start making things happen to generate more profits. While this can be done solo, doing this in a group produces better results:

1. Take a blank flip chart and outline what you/the company currently ‘looks like’.
2. The next step is to outline where you/the company are aspiring to be – what is the ideal? 
3. Now identify and challenge all the things you/the company are presently doing that are no longer worth doing. Are they adding to efficiency? Are they adding to profitability? Are they producing desired sales results? Why are they currently being done?
4. Next identify all the things you/the company should be doing and currently are not. New markets? New processes? New business developments? New products/services? Maybe something that competitors are doing successfully and you/the company are not?
5. On your next sheet pretend you are newly entering your market/business. What would the company/you look like to optimise that business? Describe and design the ‘winning company’ for your business.
6. Finally ask the team to identify what stands in the way of going from where you are to what you identified as the ideal. Recognise there may need to be some compromises and identify some action steps for the individual and the business to move forward and stop waiting for things to happen and start making things happen!

I’ve performed this activity on several occasions with clients over the years, and it has always paid big dividends. In fact, I’d recommend it be done twice a year, in good and bad times.

To find out more how I can help you to TAKE ACTION to achieve more sales and profits, you can email me at Richard.bosworth@whatifspecialist.com, follow @richardwhatif on Twitter or find me under Richard Bosworth at LinkedIn.

Remember: “if you want different results, change your activities”