The Single Biggest Mistake Of CEOs And Entrepreneurs

Although I mentor CEO’s and entrepreneurs from a vast array of industries, there’s one mistake that I constantly see, no matter what kind of business they run. Forbes reports.

This mistake is so prevalent, I’d estimate that at least 8 out of 10 business leaders make this error, often at great financial cost.

Here it is: They get caught up handling their current business and therefore don’t spend nearly enough time getting new business.

This usually means that every few months they run short of customers, then have to scramble desperately to get more income in.

Because they do not hunt new customers constantly, their revenue becomes sporadic, spluttering between feast and famine. (This can be incredibly stressful on the CEO or entrepreneur).

Although they often blame the economy, or increasing competition for their hardship, the real reason their business is suffering is because they are using their time incorrectly.

They are responding to immediate issues, like client requests, or staff complaints, instead of focusing on new sales. Of course client and staff issues have to be handled, but they should not be put in front of the real task at hand: growing the enterprise.

As the esteemed management guru Peter Drucker said, “The purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer.” If we spend all our time managing our customers that leaves no time to create new ones.

This is all very well in theory, you might be thinking, but day to day how can I do this?

The answer is you need to create a simple, not overly arduous diary structure, that builds in times of the week where you work on getting new business in the door. And stick to it.

One very elementary but highly effective way of doing this is to diarise the first hour of every work day as ‘Business Building Time’. Commit to devoting this hour each and every work day solely to sales and marketing efforts. (You can either spend the time brainstorming new ways to get customers or spend it working on already existing sales generating systems.)

Why I like to recommend this method to the entrepreneurs I mentor is that it’s easy to yield great results with it.

It takes hardly any time. It’s at the beginning of the day so you’re likely to get it done. And because it’s in the morning you can bring a fresh mind to it.

With just this one change to your day you can literally transform your business. After several months of using this system you will have dramatically improved your new business machine. New business leads will be coming in consistently, your confidence will skyrocket and your revenues will be greatly enhanced.

But if you don’t do this, or a simple, consistent system like it, then your business is likely to go on as it always has.

For most CEOs and entrepreneurs that means slow and occasional growth. Nothing disastrous happens to their profits, but not much exciting happens either.

So give my system a try. It’s ridiculously easy. Yet it may just revolutionize your company’s speed of growth.