7 steps to a fresh business approach

In order to take a fresh business approach, leaders must be connected to the creativity of their youth. Fresh thinking means clearing your head of all the business rules you have learned. Here are the steps you'll need for a fresh business approach.

1.     Form a small focus group.

Find five or six friends and invite them to a quaint get together. They should be as diverse as possible, representing the ethnic, age, economic, or other cultures with whom you want to do business.

2.     Brainstorm.

Ask your participants to answer questions such as, “What one thing would it take to get you to drive past my competitor and do business with me?” Another good question is, “What do you wish someone in my business would do for you?”

3.     Forget everything you know about doing business.

In short, keep your mouth shut. Let the ideas flow from your focus group.

4.     Rate the top suggestions.

Many people make a serious error when the rank suggestions from a brainstorming exercise. The top suggestion is not always the one that gets the most votes. 

I once did a brainstorming suggestion with a crisis-oriented charity. They needed their “help line” number publicized. Someone suggested bumper stickers and the group was ecstatic about the idea. Thousands of bumper stickers were ordered, but the phones didn’t start ringing. 

One night I was late for the meeting. I couldn’t help but notice there was only one bumper sticker in the parking lot – the one on my car. I asked the group why they did not use the bumper stickers. They unanimously said they don’t like bumper stickers but thought others did. 

This would have been great information before the bumper sticker vote was taken. Now they had thousands of adhesive advertisements sitting in a closet.

5.     Ask “Why?”

Forest Gump once said that before you take down a fence you should look to see why it was put up in the first place. Before embarking on a new policy or procedure that is revolutionarily different from others look to see why it hasn’t been done before. Potential valid “fences” could be legal or ethical issues. 

6.     Ask “Why not?” 

In the last step you may have weeded out a couple of ideas. Make sure you looked only at valid legal or ethical “fences”. 

“It’s never been tried before” may seem like a valid fence, but that statement normally leads to ingenuity. Why hasn’t it been tried before? Perhaps nobody thought of it or maybe nobody was willing to take the risk. Why not? 

No phone company offered unlimited long distance phone calling before MCI introduced the Friends and Family program. Now unlimited calling offers are common. 

7.     Execute. 

Executing your new business concept requires you set benchmarks for viewing success. Be conservative and realistic. When Walmart went to everyday low prices, eliminating their weekly newspaper inserts, sales dropped. Sam Walton took a tremendous amount of criticism as Wall Street thought the program would destroy the company. Sam really believed in it. He had a one-year plan that called for a potential variance from Walmart’s historic double digit growth rate. The result, the program he tried created a company synonymous with low prices – leading it to the world’s highest sales and profits.

Everyone could attract new business by being creative. Now start brainstorming and build your business!

This is an excerpt from “Life’s Leadership Lessons” a collection of 53 anecdotal leadership lessons, each with an anecdote and the application of the topic in your everyday life. It is designed for use in weekly staff meetings or for personal development.

About the author:

Rick Weaver has half a century’s experience in leadership development in retailing. He founded Max Impact Corporation, a leadership and business development consultancy company in 2002. His major accomplishments include working himself from stock clerk to director at a Fortune 50 retail chain and building a $40MM+ construction company in under 5 years. Today Max Impact offers staffing services as a franchisee of Patrice & Associates providing Executive Search, Management Recruiting, and Contract Staffing services.