Last night I presented at National Speakers in Melbourne. I’d like to say it went really well and everyone in the audience rushed up to me afterwards to say how ‘brilliant’ it was. Not quite. To be honest, it was not one of my best presentations. I felt really lost, I stumbled for words (which is not like me at all) and I felt I didn’t even answer the audience questions clearly.
So, what happened? I’ve been thinking about this since and I’ve come up with an all-encompassing phrase that may apply to you in your business too. I called it ‘Fitness’. In my case I hadn’t presented to a live audience for a number of months. And, I thought I could just jump up and talk and it would all turn out. My lack of ‘presentation fitness’ showed.
Normally, when we think about fitness we think about exercise. And, most of us know that after a break from the gym, walking, running, playing (insert your sport here) then it takes a little bit of extra effort to get back up to our usual speed.
In this post I want to discuss eleven types of business fitness that may explain your current business performance:
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Here are some elements of financial fitness:
Are you getting things done? Implementation fitness is all about to-do lists, projects and checklists. It might be useful to think about implementation as a muscle. The more you do it, the better you get. You might like to consider:
Completion fitness is a specific part of implementation fitness. And, for me, it’s important enough to have it’s own heading. I’m a classic innovator – great at starting, not so great at finishing. I need to work extra hard to make sure I finish things before I move onto the next shiny object. Here are a couple of my completion strategies:
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This one equally applies to our personal lives! Are you creating, building and maintaining healthy business relationships? Consider these frontiers:
A while back I did some contracting work alongside the Yellow Pages sales team. And, I was fortunate enough to spend a few weeks attending every sales meeting with one of the top salesmen in the company. He was a big believer in sales fitness – working with your customers and potential customers to serve them every day. The critical reason was that he felt he had to be at the top of his game to make sales AND he felt he had to be available to his existing customers to continue to serve them. How’s your sales fitness? Are you making your targets? Or better yet, are your customer happily referring business to you?
The definition of marketing is the process from the conception through to the delivery of your product and service. This includes:
Presentation fitness is not just about standing up in front of people. It includes how you present yourself in person when meeting people plus all of your marketing materials. For instance:
I have a reputation for being a creative guy. My business is built on this. And whilst some part of this might be natural, a lot of it is to do with all the practice and thinking and design and creative work I’ve done over the years. I love being creative and I work hard at building my creative fitness? Do you?
I read a lot – a lot of books, a handful of blogs and I keep up with the news. I also listen to selected podcasts. There are two reasons for this: I’m driven by ideas and learning. Plus I want to keep up to date with what’s going on. I’d say my knowledge fitness is pretty damn good. How’s yours?
How much difference is this going to make to my life and others in the next 10 minutes, 10 months and 10 years?
When you are your business your personal fitness is also your business fitness. Do you have enough energy to make it through the day? Here are some personal fitness things to consider:
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The cost of a lack of personal fitness ultimately is a lack of health. The same applies to your business fitness. Is your business healthy?
QUESTION: How’s your fitness? Rate your business fitness across these 11 domains. Which ones are humming along and which ones need some work?
Now that you’ve spotted some business fitness gaps, here are five general strategies for boosting your business:
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