4 keys to entrepreneurial success

Let’s look at what it takes to be a success.

1.    Assess your strengths

The third component to position yourself for success is to assess your strengths. Assessments are done online by answering a series of questions to reveal your competitiveness, sales drive, persistence, and other aspects of your personality.

When I started Max Impact in 2002, I decided to take three different assessments. To be honest, I took them because they are a product offering of my company. However, the information I learned was extremely valuable. For example, the assessments showed that I had a real challenge in cold calling. They indicated I would always be reluctant to make the first call, but once I made one call, I would find subsequent calls would be easy for me. As a result I force myself into the first call by making it a “soft-call”. By not allowing for interruptions, I can continue for dozens of additional calls.

Assessments are an inexpensive way to enhance your ability to negotiate, close a sale, make decisions and much more. They are a critical stop on the road to success.

2.    Find someone to hold you accountable

In corporate America workers always have a supervisor to whom they are accountable. On the other hand, many entrepreneurs feel they are their own boss and do not need a “supervisor”. This view overlooks the fact that even a corporation’s CEO is held accountable to the Board of Directors.

The reality is that entrepreneurs with a mentor, accountability partner, or one-on-one coach outperform their competitors. I gained some firsthand experience when I started to work with an entrepreneur in Colorado. We had a weekly telephone meeting to share each other’s goals and exchange ideas. Initially the calls were nothing more than justifications as to why we had not reached our goals from the prior week. Eventually we both tired of making excuses and began challenging each other. We developed a model that enabled us to be challenged to make real progress in our businesses. In a less than two months we had become so busy it was difficult to schedule our calls around our increased client appointments.

We both continue to use our process to help others focus on moving themselves closer to reaching their goals.

3.    Differentiate

Robert Middleton, the author of “Info Guru”, says you must “differentiate or die”. He could not be more correct. Let’s say you are one of the hundreds of realtors in any given area. In a game of numbers, you will get a certain amount of business regardless of what you do, but not enough to thrive. If you are patient you will pick up referrals from past customers, but still fall short of real success. Now imagine that you are able to differentiate yourself. Let’s assume you live in a transient area where people from another geography location, say Texans, were constantly moving. If you were able to establish yourself as someone who completely understood what a Texan was looking for in housing style, property amenities, and neighborhood assets, you would be able to shorten the time it took Texans to find the home of their desire. Now you are differentiated.

The Blasini’s low overhead allows them to work with smaller Hollywood Studios that cannot budget to work with the larger competitors. This is one of their success secrets.

You need to find a significant way you add more value than your competition. Something as simple as, “I provide personal service” is not good enough. This type of statement solicits the response, “Well I should hope so.” To make an impact your prospect needs to say, “Wow!”

The bottom-line: if you cannot make a compelling argument as to why someone should deal with you instead of your competitor, you are operating with a huge handicap.

4. Understand best-in-class customer service

Most entrepreneurs feel they already know enough about customer service based on their own experiences as a consumer. The shortcoming of this belief is that they only know the specific things they have conscientiously noticed. Best-in-class customer service is more like elevator music – you don’t notice it until it is missing.

Customer relations are vital to the success of a business. Every professional should personally understand how to deliver customer service that will not only retain their existing customers; it will create a customer base that is consistently telling others about what a great person or company you are to deal with.

Best-in-class customer service is not a one-time lesson to be learned, it is a continuous learning process taking advantage of personal ideas coupled with the experiences of others.

Putting it all together

Although it would be naive to suggest capital is not important in a business, having validated goals, as mentioned here, are much more important. These goals are bolstered if the business has a personal match to one’s interests and desires, if a qualified accountability partner is enlisted, strengths are understood and exploited, and the entrepreneur is continually looking to increase knowledge and skills – especially with regard to customer retention.

Any entrepreneur CAN succeed if they follow these six steps, whether or not they take them in order. The key is to admit to yourself that no matter how successful you have been in the past; the world of entrepreneurialism requires special knowledge and accountability. If you are entering into this very rewarding world, make sure you get the help you need.

About the author:

Rick Weaver is a franchise owner and Executive Search Consultant with Patrice & Associates, one of America’s largest Staffing Specialist companies with over 175 offices across the United States. With 30 years of experience successfully placing managers at all levels of an organization, Patrice & Associates sets the Gold Standard of recruiting. Rick has personally worked with thousands of managers and management teams to strengthen their results.