It's all in the hustle

I was going to post an upbeat article on Friday until I saw the latest figures on the UK economy. So I paused to take in the various reports, doom, gloom and I told you so stories.

Having read until thoroughly bored, my opinion remains unchanged. We’re the captains of our own ships and we’ve got to keep charting a course that enables us to succeed.

We may be heading into rougher water than we’d like but we’re only going to sink if we stand and watch as we take on water.

And with that, I shall end the nautical references.

The true victim of the Brexit result and the immediate fallout has been business confidence. I’m seeing this as especially true in the small business sector.

There is continued nervousness and the figures released on Friday will have done nothing to help with that. Even before the reports, I’d been speaking with a large number of small business leaders and it’s been a little disturbing that a high percentage of them are choosing to ‘see what happens’. Which is code for I’m doing nothing. This is no time for paralysis.

Those that are getting on with it are going to be the winners, with everyone else losing momentum, wasting time and missing opportunity.

You may never know just how much but one thing’s for sure and it’s that your pipeline is going to take a hit. How big a hit depends on how quickly you get back to business as usual, or maybe even better than usual.

The beauty of being a small business is in our agility and our ability to react to change. We’re the fleet of yachts compared to the lumbering tankers that are our enterprise counterparts. We shouldn’t waste this advantage as it’s one of the few upsides of being the little guy!

If you’re one of the many that are still contemplating your next move, I urge you to do something to drive your business forward. When I look at the businesses that I know that are growing the fastest, it can be directly attributed to the direction given by the leaders and the level of subsequent action that’s being taken.

Less talk, more doing. Hustle more. These guys are planning, executing, measuring, fine tuning and repeating.

And it’s working.

Take a look at this:

This is a real example of what an SME company in the technology sector achieved from a standing start in just 5 months of carefully planned and executed marketing which was closely aligned with the sales team.

And the numbers are accelerating.

You may be looking at this and thinking I’d like to be able to do this but I don’t know where to start. Or, that’s great but it wouldn’t work for me.

Fresh eyes and perspective could be just what you need. So if you’d like some advice on building a sales funnel like this one, let's talk about it as the first step in your new hustle.