Here’s where my discussions have been heading for the past couple months. It’s okay not to grow. You’re probably thinking, “Holy moly, what is she thinking? It’s okay not to grow?”
[bctt tweet=”Sometimes, your business, market, or a product line can’t grow in a particular year. ” username=”EngageColleen”]
One year, for example, I was coaching a top performer for a large organization. She had a target of three or four million dollars at the time, and that particular year, she actually closed eleven million dollars in business. This was simply because there was a huge project that happened to come out during the year that she was working with a particular client.
Now that project wasn’t going to exist in the next year, so her business was tied up with that one particular client. There was no market space for her to move up from eleven million to twelve million. So in that year, we had to counsel her to say, “You were supposed to do three million, so can we build from three million and do four or five million next year?”
Other clients of mine have markets where the state controls their spending power and in one year, maybe the state of Georgia decides to invest in a particular infrastructure that my clients can provide. The state does all their spending in one year, and then there’s nothing to do the next year. In that case, they may have huge spending costs in one month that drop a few months later.
So it’s okay to look at your markets very specifically and decide which product lines will be able to grow, which states, provinces, or countries can grow, and which individuals might be able to grow.
P.S. Are you a speaker, trainer, consultant or small business owner? Don’t miss my upcoming limited-attendance event on creating never-ending value client relationships, presented along with Alan Weiss in Miami Beach! Learn more at: www.EngageSelling.com/grow