You don't have to be sick to get better

Last week, I spoke with two different leaders from two different organizations. Both leaders have the intrinsic motivation to continuously improve. Their website literally states: “We also invest a lot of time and energy in knowledge sharing, with the aim of continuously getting better.” This fits with a high-performance culture. Continuously wanting to improve. That sounds much stronger than continuously wanting to change. People don’t want to be changed; they want to change themselves. In a high-performance culture, people strive for improvement.

James Clear writes in his book Atomic Habits that small, incremental changes or improvements can lead to significant and noticeable results or achievements. If you become 1 percent better every day for a year, by the end of that year, you’ll be thirty-seven times better than when you started. Conversely, if you get 1 percent worse every day for a year, by the end of that year, you’re almost back to zero. What begins as a small win or a small setback compounds into something much larger. The image above illustrates this concept.

With this knowledge, small improvements have a huge impact on an organization’s performance. But what exactly are small improvements? Below are three sets of three examples for marketing, sales, and managers.

Small improvements for a marketing expert:

1. Create high-quality content to increase audience engagement and drive more conversions.
2. Use marketing automation to manage your marketing activities more efficiently, such as automated emails.
3. Measure and analyze the performance of your marketing campaigns to gain insight into what works and what doesn’t, and optimize your strategy based on this data.

Small improvements for sales:

1. Increase the number of follow-up emails and calls with prospects and customers to boost engagement and conversion.
2. Learn from customer and prospect feedback to improve sales methods and approaches, ensuring you continue to meet expectations.
3. Leverage your network to generate new leads and maintain relationships with existing customers and prospects. Ask for an introduction to a prospect from someone in your network.

Small improvements for managers:

1. Hold regular check-ins with your team members to discuss their progress and any challenges, and provide support.
2. Ask for feedback from your team members to foster engagement and communication, and to identify potential areas for improvement.
3. Look for opportunities to identify and implement efficiency and process improvements within the organization to achieve better results with fewer resources and efforts.

The magic word is ACTION. That’s what makes the difference. And because it’s about small 1% improvements, taking that step becomes less complex.

The same applies to the account management strategy of companies. If you don’t know what the strategy is and how to execute it, it won’t sufficiently contribute to the desired results of the organization. The tip I want to give is to start by organizing an annual cycle. If you’d like to receive an example, comment with TIP on this post, and I’ll send it to you personally.