12 Key Areas That Determines Your Business Growth

There are 10 critical areas where your ability to think largely determines the success or failure of your business. The greater clarity you have in each of these areas, the better decisions you will make and the better results you will achieve.

The number One is Key Purpose. What is the purpose of a business? Many people think the purpose of a business is to earn a profit, but they are wrong. The true purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer. Profits are the result of creating and keeping a sufficient number of customers cost-effectively. Fully 50 percent of your time efforts and expenses should be focused on creating and keeping customers in some way. And number one reason for business problems is the failure to attract and keep a sufficient number of customers at the prices that you need to charge to make a profit and grow your business.

The number Two principle is Key Measure. The key measure of business success is customer satisfaction. Your ability to satisfy your customers to such a degree that they buy from you, rather than from someone else that they buy again and that they bring their friends, is the key determinant of growth and profitability. What is the most important sale? It is the second sale you can acquire customers initially through discounts, special offers, and even deception. But it is only when the customer buys for the second time that he or she proves to you that you have delivered on your promises and satisfied his or her expectations. The second sale is the true measure of customer satisfaction.

The number Three and critical area is the Key Requirement in business. The key requirement for wealth building and business success is for you to add value in some way. All wealth comes from adding value. All business growth and profitability come from adding value. Every day, you must be looking for ways to add more and more value to the customer experience. You can add value in many ways increasing quality, lowering costs, accelerating delivery, improving customer satisfaction satisfying customer needs faster, better, or cheaper than your competitors. The ways you can add value are only limited by your imagination. The one thing that all customers buy, no matter what the product or service is an improvement. Your goal must be to improve the life or work of your customer in some way and continue doing so more and more. By adding value, you create enough value so that you can keep some for yourself. This is called profit.

The number Four critical area is your Key Focus. The most important person in the business is the customer. You must focus on the customer at all times. Customers are fickle, disloyal, changeable, impatient, and demanding. Just like you. Nonetheless, the customer must be the central focus of everything you do in business. “Sam Walton once said we have only one boss and that is the customer, and he can fire us at any time by simply buying from someone else”.

The two great rules for business success are rule number one. The customer is always right. And rule number two, if ever you are in doubt, refer back to rule number one.
The number Five critical area is the Key Word in life, work, and business, you will always be rewarded in direct proportion to the value of your contribution to others as they see it. The focus on outward contribution to your company, your customers and your community is the central requirement for you to become an even more valuable person in every area. Every day, you must be looking for ways to increase the value of your contribution. You must be looking for ways to do your job and satisfy your customers better, faster, or cheaper. Everything you learn that you can apply to increase the value of your contribution increases the value of your life and your rewards.

The number Six critical area for business success is the Key Question, the most important question you asked to solve any problem, overcome any obstacle or achieve any business goal is the question how most things that you try and business won\’t work at least the first few times. All of business life is a process of trial and error over and over. You must ask, how can we do this? How can we solve this problem? How can we achieve this level of sales and profitability? How can we overcome this obstacle? Top people ask the question how and then act on the answers that come to them.

The number Seven critical area is the Key Strategy in a world of rapid change and continuing aggressive competition, you must practice continuous improvement in every area of your business and personal life. “

As Pat Riley, the basketball coach, said, If you\’re not getting better, you\’re getting worse.” Never be satisfied. Dedicate yourself to Continuous And Never-ending Improvement (CANI) and I practice the Japanese method of Kaizen, which means continuous betterment.

(Kaizen is a Japanese term meaning \”change for the better\” or \”continuous improvement.\” It is a Japanese business philosophy regarding the processes that continuously improve operations and involve all employees. Kaizen sees improvement in productivity as a gradual and methodical process.).

NOTE: If you have a desire to learn more about this method, I recommend you purchase this eBook from the store on this website:

The Art & Practice of Kaizen
Take Continuous Improvement Actions Daily To Gain Massive Success, Forever!
Coach Deon Huff

If you wish to be successful in business you must continually seek faster, better, cheaper, easier, and more efficient ways to generate leads, make sales, produce products and services, deliver them satisfactorily and satisfy your customers so that they come back and buy again and again by continuously improving what you are doing in every area, you will eventually become one of the leading businesses in your industry.

The number Eight critical area is the Key Activity, the heartbeat of your business is sales. Dun Bradstreet analyzed thousands of companies that had gone broke over the years and concluded that the number one reason for business failure was low sales. When they researched further, they found that the number one reason for business success was high sales, and all else was commentary. Morning, noon, and night. The vast brains, talents, and energies of your business must be focused on generating more and better sales from more and better customers. My motto, whenever I have faced a business slowdown or financial problem, has always been when in doubt, sell your way out. This should be your guiding principle as well. All successful companies have well-organized sales systems, which they improve continuously every single day. From the time you start in the morning, you and your whole company must think about and work on sales all day long.

The number Nine critical factor is the Key Number. The most important number in business is cash flow. Cash flow is to the business as blood and oxygen are to the brain. You can have every activity working efficiently in your business, but if your cash flow is cut off for any reason, the business can die sometimes overnight. As a business owner, you must keep your eye on the cash at all times. Focus on cash flow. Think about cash flow. Ask questions about cash flow. Never allow yourself to run out of cash. No matter what hard decisions you have to make or sacrifices you have to engage in. Cash is king.

The number Ten critical factor is your Key Goal. Every business must have a growth plan. Growth must be the goal of all your business activities. You should have a goal to grow 10 percent, 20 percent, or even 30 percent each year. Some companies grow 50 percent and 100 percent per year and not by accident. The only real growth is profit growth. Profit growth is always measurable in what is called free cash flow. This is the actual amount of money that the business throws off each month, each quarter, and each year above and beyond the total cost and expense of running the business. You should have a growth plan for the number of new leads you attract and for the number of new customers you acquire from those leads. You should have a growth plan for sales, revenues, and profitability. If you do not deliberately plan for continuous growth, you will automatically stagnate and begin to fall behind. Growth is not an accident. It is something that is planned and pursued every single day.

The 11th critical factor is the Key Quality. The most important quality to ensure your success is your level of determination. Even though it takes a good deal of courage to start a new business, more than two million people make this leap each year. But initial courage is not enough. As soon as you start a new business, you immediately begin to experience unexpected problems, setbacks, reversals, obstacles, and even temporary failure. When you hit the wall in your business, it will be your level of determination that will see you through. One of the most important techniques I ever learned was the power of mentally programming yourself in advance of the problem or setback. Even when you do not know what it will be, the way you do this is to say to yourself, no matter what happens in my business, I will never, never give up. Repeat these words over and over again by programming your mind or reprogramming your mind with this command. When you unexpectedly hit the unavoidable speed bumps of life and business, you will be psychologically and emotionally prepared to bounce back and keep on going. But if you have not preprogrammed yourself, you will be in danger of hesitating in even giving up when the going gets rough.

The 12th critical factor is the Key Result. When you apply the first 11 keys to your business life. The result you will enjoy is the success and financial independence you set out for in the beginning. Your ultimate goal in business is to reach the point where you have enough money so that you never have to worry about money again. This is called the Number. How much will you need to acquire before you know that you have enough and that everything else you earn is icing on the cake for each person? The number will be different. What is yours? In planning for success, you always start with yourself and your personal goals. Remember, your work and business life are a means to an end. They are the things that you do so that you can enjoy the most important parts of your life, your family, and your relationships. Fully 85 percent of your happiness in life will come from your relationships with other people. The greater clarity you have about what is really important to you, the better decisions you will make in both your personal and business life.

Remember the great question what do I really want to do with my life? If you could wave a magic wand and be, do or have anything at all in life, what would you choose for yourself if you had all the time and money, all the friends and contacts, all the knowledge and experience, and no limitations at all? What would you really want to do with your life? This is the true beginning of personal strategic planning. Use the 20/10 exercise. Imagine that you received $20 million cash in the bank today, tax-free, but simultaneously you learned that you only had 10 years left to live. If these two events happen simultaneously, 20 million cash plus only 10 years to live:

• What would you choose to do with the rest of your life?
• Whom would you want to be with?
• Who would you no longer want to be with?
• What would you want to do?
• Where would you want to go?
• What would you like to accomplish?
• What sort of legacy would you want to leave?

These are some of the great questions of life that I ask my clients in my advanced coaching and mastery program. My coaches and I put our clients through a quick list exercise where we require them to write down three answers in less than 30 seconds to each of the following questions you might jot down answers to these questions for yourself.

1. Question one What are your three most important overall goals in life right now?
2. Question number two What are your three most important family or relationship goals right now?
3. Question number three What are your three most important business goals right now?
4. Question number four What are your three most important financial goals right now?
5. Question number five, what are your three most important health goals right now? And
6. Question six, what are your three most important community and social goals right now when you only have 30 seconds to write the answers to these questions?

Your answers will be as accurate as if you had 30-minutes or three hours. The answers that jump out at you with this 30-second exercise will usually be disturbingly accurate, and we\’ll tell you immediately what is really important to you in each key area of life.

Here\’s a great question. What one goal would you set for yourself if you knew you could not fail? Imagine that you could achieve any one goal small or large, short-term or long-term. Imagine that you were absolutely guaranteed success for that goal. Your only responsibility was to be absolutely clear about exactly what it is that you would want to be, have or do more than anything else in the world. What would it be? Once you become perfectly clear about who you are and what you want personally, you could then move on to set in your business and financial goals.

A business plan is both simple and powerful. It takes time and discipline to sit down and think through the ingredients of your business plan. But the payoff can be extraordinary, and it is not the plan itself, but the process of thinking through and preparing the plan that is most important.

After D-Day, General Dwight D. Eisenhower was asked about the year of planning that led up to the Normandy invasion. He said the plan itself became useless as soon as we hit the beach, but the process of planning was indispensable.

Business planning is quite simple. Initially, it consists of three levels of accounting.

Number one is the top line. These are sales and revenues both projected and actual.

Number two is the middle line. Where you deduct all costs necessary to achieve the top line.

Number three is the bottom line. Which is the profit or loss from business activities in business planning.

You must think through and strive for maximum accuracy at each of these three levels and continually review them against actual results.

• First Level. To plan intelligently, you must know the exact and total amount you receive for each product or service you sell. That\’s all costs for discount breakage, loss returns, shrinkage, service, and replacements. Many companies sell their products or services at a loss because they do not know exactly how much they actually receive. After all, expenses are deducted.
• Second Level. The second number you must know is the total cost of selling your product or service. This includes not only the direct costs or what is called the cost of goods sold but the cost of marketing, advertising, promotion, sales, commissions, and all other expenses related to the sale, including your hourly wage.
• Third Level. You must know the total and exact cost of your business operations. You must accurately calculate exactly how much it costs to run your business and to both acquire and support top-line sales.
• Fourth Level. You must know the exact profit or loss that you earn each month and cumulatively month by month throughout the year. Inaccuracies in calculating profits or losses can lead to serious problems and even the collapse of the enterprise. You should regularly conduct a profit analysis of every product or service that you sell. To do this, you calculate the exact net price that you receive from the sale of an individual product or service. You then deduct every single, direct and indirect cost attributable to the acquisition, fulfillment, delivery, and service of that product.
• Finally, you calculate the exact profit to the penny that you earn from the sale of each of your products and services. When you complete this profit analysis, you will find that all of your products and services can be organized along a scale or continuum, from the most profitable to the least profitable. When companies conduct this profit analysis for the first time, they are often astonished to find that certain products to which they paid little attention are the most profitable products that the company sells. They may not be high priced or high volume, but because they are so inexpensive to sell and deliver, each of them is highly profitable.

Many companies also find that some of their products that are high volume, which they advertise and promote in great quantity, are not making any money at all or even losing money on every sale. You know, you\’ve heard it said that we lose money on every sale, but we make it up on the volume. Sometimes this is too true whenever a company gets into trouble, which may. Said either sales or cash flow are down or declining. They bring in a turnaround specialist. The first thing these professionals do is to conduct a cold-blooded analysis of the profitability of every product, service, and activity in the business. They then move immediately to cut out all losses, making parts of the business, discontinuing an entire product or service lines, and even shutting down factories and stores. Surprise, surprise. As soon as the turnaround artist has ruthlessly cut out all loss, making parts of the business and stop the bleeding, the company surges back to profitability and everyone looks like a hero. You should be acting as your own turnaround specialist in your own company on a regular basis, especially if you have any problems or concerns about cash flow and profitability.