all those missed opportunities - wake up!

I spoke with a business owner in Wellington recently about how his business was going - he said it was a bit slow - slower than he expected, " I put a full page advert in the local paper to try and pick things up but didn't get any replies - It was a good advert though" Doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out the advert was probably crap. More importantly it didn't take long for me to figure out that the business owner was crap. He had his head firmly jammed in the sand - he would have been better off hiring a telemarketer with the money he spent on the advert or sitting down with his own staff and phoning his client database. His response to my question did offer me an opportunity though, so we will see what I can do with him over the next few months.

I spoke with another business owner in Dunedin who was, to put it bluntly, pissed off that so many people are phoning her to find out what there break cost would be to leave the bank and get their mortgag from some where else. I enquired as to how many people were doing this - "15 a day" she said, "why are you pissed off" I said. She replied "because it is stopping me from doing my own work". "What is your work?" I asked. "Mortgage broking, I am a mortgage broker". Shoot me now I thought to myself. 15 calls a day and she is bitching - it doesn't take a professor of mathematics to figure out the potential business just walking in the door. When I pointed this out she put her head in her hands and couldn't believe how stupid she had been.

This does highlight a point though -many people do not see what is right in front of their face. In a recessionary climate it's worthwhile looking at what is right in front of your face.

Try this as an exercise - Get people to SWITCH ON TO OPPORTUNITY. Have the people in your business find one opportunity throughout their day to either save money, create greater efficiency, get new business, develop a better ROI proposition on a project or any thing else they can come up with. Create a bloody big poster with SWITCH ON TO OPPORTUNITY on it - put it on their screensavers, tattoo it to your forehead so when ever they see you they can say to themselves "crazy bugger why did they tatoo it on their head and then they will immediately think of an opportunity - brilliant. OK so maybe a tatoo is a little extreme but you get the picture.

Why do we make innovation an event when it could be and should be an every day activity. Success is an every day activity and finding opportunity is part of your success process so make it an every day activity as well.