A Business Strategy For Making Decisions
There’s a lot of talk about ROI, especially if you’re in sales or marketing.
Managers, bosses and business coaches want to know what’s the Return On Investment for your activities and spending. Understanding ROI is crucial to your business success. And if you base every decision on ROI alone, you may be missing out on amazing opportunities. So what's a great business strategy for ROI? Read on to find out!
When’s the last time you did something for your business, and it didn’t have a tangible ROI? You went ahead and did it believing it would pay off in some way at some point.
In my business, many things I do don’t have an immediate ROI.
Instead, my business strategy is to switch my mindset from thinking of ROI to ROO (Return On Opportunity).
I believe in the long run, the time, effort and money spent will come back to me in the form of a new opportunity and eventually paying clients.
For instance, one activity I do quite often is speak for free with networking groups and non-profits. Of course, it’s a business building activity, and sometimes it’s hard to measure the overall impact of giving away training for free. Instead of getting caught up in the numbers, I approach speaking for free with the attitude of this activity is about ROO.
A few months ago, I was invited to speak to a group in another state. The group does not pay their speakers nor do they allow the speaker to “sell” their products/services from the front of the room. I spent over $700 of my own money to fly there. If you had asked me what the ROI was 30 days after the event, I would have said -$700.
However, taking into consideration the ROO, here’s what’s happened as a result in the last 6 months: Booked 4 additional speaking opportunities, 1 paid class, been interviewed on a podcast and a radio show, 3 new paying clients, added 75 people to my list to receive my newsletter, and made countless connections with amazing business people. The opportunities continue to come my way as a result of the initial investment of $700.
Your Savvy Sales Tip this week: When deciding how to spend your time and money in your business, consider ROO in addition to ROI as your business strategy.
Here are a few questions to help you determine the ROO:
- Do you want/need the experience?
- Are you willing to invest the time and effort to follow up with the people you meet? (Be honest with yourself, do you follow up with contacts?)
- Will you be discouraged if you don’t close immediate business?
- What will you be giving up to pursue this activity? (There’s always something at risk – what is it?)
- What steps can you take to minimize the risk you listed for the question above?
- What’s there to gain by doing this activity? (Make a list of possible best case scenarios.)
- What steps can you take to maximize achieving the best case scenarios listed above?
Taking the time to think through the questions above will help in your decision-making process – to do it or not to do it?
Wising you a successful selling week.
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