The Business Owner’s Greatest Responsibility
April 9th, 2020 // 1:00 pm @ Scott Manning
Picking up from last week on mitigation, a term thrown around by the CDC related to the spread of the virus. Anything ‘negative’ that happens to your business, you want to mitigate the damage but most people do it to the detriment of the health of their business because they are focused on the source of the problem instead of focusing on the relevance to their business.
Mitigation is important at the onset of a crisis – but you can’t stop there – it is only designed so that you can get your bearings and have a clear vision about what to really do. It’s exactly what is happening right now in the country… capture data, ready drugs, build up medical supplies all while working to mitigate the virus.
But. You can’t stop there. This is only a small fraction of your responsibility; the greatest of which is maximization.
As with everything in life, what you focus on you get more of. So, specific to this situation, most businesses are focused on curtailing every possible expense and surviving on fumes instead of focusing on how the virus – or any negative thing – can be leveraged for gain.
Case in point: my smartest doctors are focusing on educating their patients, teaching about health and immunity, and reconnecting and strengthening relationships.
People are using this as a time to develop their team members, to solidify systems, to expand not contract marketing, to expand market share not give it up.
Maximization means you are future focused. It means you are opportunistic. There is nothing wrong with this, of course. It is actually the ultimate key to how you come out of a crisis, how fast you rebound, and how quickly you recoup your profits.
And by the way, that’s another point, you don’t need to recoup your “revenue,” that is irrelevant. The only thing that has to be made up are your profits. Therefore, if you come back from this aggressive with bigger months than they had going in, you can dramatically increas profits.
That means the Virus impact on the financial health of your business is gone, lived through, you made it, recovered. Enough said.
This will only be possible if you are thinking RIGHT NOW about the offensive actions and taking steps to build the pipeline of customers, patients, clients. Of course, most everyone still has an ability to engage your customers. My Doctors have been unjustly restricted from physically caring for their patients – but most can still find ways to be resourceful.
Doctors are using virtual consultations, some using for engaging patients and setting them up for face to face experiences in the future, some using it to actually bill for visits, other people are putting in place more thorough reactivation measures of past patients. Others are building sales systems that most practices never get around to where they can educate groups of patients at a time and have A patients ready to go when the doors open, all pre-screened, credit card in hand, anxious to get healthy.
It is amazing what necessity does to people’s minds if they just get out of crisis mode and move past mitigation into maximization.
Imagine, my Doctors watch webinars and do online CE courses all the time, but do you know how many Doctors create a webinar for their patients, or host online question and answer sessions with patients and their friends and families.
More make-up, weight loss stuff, clothes and insert all the other direct sales and online shopping things that are pushed all over facebook and yet why can’t any and every other business use these methods to build their customer, client, patient followings too.
They can. They should.
I’m curious what list you are working on, what you are doing to maximize.
Last week, we talked about mitigating damage to your customers and your people – not just your pocketbook (very short-term thinking). The thinking of people who haven’t made it through many hard times to have the confidence to know that it all works out as long as you keep moving forward through it and not staying stuck in it.
Mitigation has short term implications and is important.
Maximization has long term implications and is critical.
Think about it this way…
How can you maximize the conversations with your customers right now, based on your industry, your message, and mission? What are your customers are thinking and going through right now?
How can you maximize virtual interactions and adapt, even if only temporarily, to the mode that this situation has provided in order to engage with your customers and team members?
How can you create selling environments and at the very least maximize the opportunity to stock up opportunities for when the water facet (economy) gets turned back on?
How can you maximize your time to develop your business and establish more reliable systems and create greater depth of material, content, outreach, education, etc?
Last but not least (and the list could go on), how can you use this to maximize and strengthen your leadership in your life, business, marketplace, to your sphere of influence and beyond to build better relationships and garner more loyalty than ever before?
You can just be someone who survives the virus and your business will continue to suffer and take a long time to return to its pre-virus levels; or you can choose to maximize – be a responsible business owner – and come out of it thriving like never before.
You might be quarantining yourself physically to help stop the spread but you don’t have to quarantine your thinking or your actions by staying stuck in mitigation and crisis mentality. You can choose to fight back, to go on offense, and maximize the time you have.
The faster you take back control and the more you do now, the greater shot you’ve got at this moving from crisis to opportunity – and that’s just the responsible thing to do.
Category : Blog
