3 Tips To End Overwhelm in Business

If you’re like most entrepreneurs I talk to,
one of your biggest challenges is having
a lack of focus and getting overwhelmed.

This usually happens because they (you) have not defined the critical few results that, when achieved, will allow your business to move forward more quickly.

My good friend Christine Comaford calls these results “Needle Movers” because when you realize the result, you’re able to “move the needle” on the speed of your biz.

Envision the accelerator needle on your car.

Today I want to help you identify those few critical RESULTS that will open the doors to a bigger and better business.

Tip 1 – Needle Movers Are *RESULTS*

Needle movers differ from goals in one very important and specific way — goals do not necessarily have a business result attached to them.

Here’s what I mean…

You might have a goal to complete a proposal by a certain date and get it to your advisory board for review prior to submission. It’s possible that you have a deadline for this goal and you might even have a series of steps in place to ensure you achieve it.

But what business *RESULT* will you get from completing the draft of your proposal?

None.

The result you’re aiming for is to land a new client and the proposal is simply one piece of the puzzle that will help make that happen. Make sense? Focus on the outcome, the end result, and then take the action steps to create your daily and weekly goals.

Tip 2 – Needle Movers Are *SPECIFIC*

Like S.M.A.R.T. goals, in order to be truly effective, your needle movers must be very specific.

“Increase sales” is not a specific needle moving result.

“Close 7 New Sales By August 31, 2009″ is most definitely a very specific outcome.

See the difference?

One is kind of vague.  Of course, you want to increase sales – who doesn’t?  But by how much, and by when?

Here’s another example:

“Generate more marketing leads” although very important for every business is just not quite specific enough.

I’d rewrite it like this:

“Generate 1000 new targeted leads in the next 30 days.”

That’s so much better!

Tip 3 – *PRIORITIZE* Your Needle Movers

In business, there are always so many things that need to get done that it’s all too easy to get overwhelmed. Unfortunately, overwhelm usually causes us to focus on the seemingly “urgent” tasks and lose sight of the truly “important” ones. Let’s say that one of the outcomes you want to achieve is to increase your online sales by some specific amount.

But your website is not currently set up to effectively support that outcome and needs a lot of work to get it ready.

Your first Needle Mover for this quarter might be to get the website revisions completed, tested and online. That result will allow you to focus the next quarter on driving traffic to the site so you can achieve the result of increasing your web sales by a specific amount.

Make sure that your Needle Movers are in the right order, otherwise you’ll find that it is even *MORE* difficult to achieve the results you’re looking for.

Whew!

I hope those tips help you understand how to set your needle movers so that they are truly supporting your business.

Using these tips will help you get more clarity and focus, which in turn helps you build your business more quickly and with less frustration.

Your Next Step

How you actually create your Needle Movers and determine the actions required to achieve them is a little more difficult. Below you will see the template Christine uses to create her Needle Movers so that you can apply these tips. But if you want to get started right away, she covers needle movers in great detail in module 1 of her “Results Now” Webinar.

Not only will you learn how to set your needle movers, you’ll get all of the supporting docs and resources Christine uses at Mighty Ventures
to help stay on track and focused on achieving her own Needle Movers!

Check it out here!

How To Create Needle Movers For Your Biz

Once you’ve determined the specific *RESULT* and determined which Needle Movers you need to focus on first…

– I recommend only working on 3 at a time –

…now it’s time to write them out and put specific *ACTIONS* behind them, so you know exactly what you need to do in order to accomplish your objective.

You’ve already determined your “Target” or the specific outcome you’d like to achieve, so now I want you to give yourself a REALLY big goal — and a little breathing room. You’ll do this by setting a “minimum” of your target as well as a “Mind Blower”!

The minimum is the result that is slightly less than your actual target, but which is not the end of the world. (That way, if you don’t hit your target, but still hit your minimum, you can still count it as a win.)

The Mind Blower is the really big target, that, if you hit it, will really ROCK your business! (Having a Mind Blower ensures you won’t get complacent when you realize that you’re on pace to hit your original target.)

So, for each Needle Mover you’ll have:

a) Target
b) Minimum
c) Mind Blower!

Moving right along…

On a sheet of paper, draw 4 vertical lines, splitting the page into 4 columns.

Label each column as follows:

1. Needle Moving Result
2. Actions
3. Owner
4. Resources

Once you’ve determined the result you’d like (including minimum & Mind Blower), write out all of the steps that need to happen in order for this result to come about.

These actions will drive your daily and weekly action list or “to do” list.

Next, for each action, determine who is the owner of that action. Sometimes it will be you, but whenever you can outsource or delegate an action to someone else, do so!

Finally, what resources will you need in order to accomplish each objective? Sometimes the resource will be a tool and in other cases it will be a person who is a subject matter expert.

Regardless, write out all of the resources you think you’ll need to accomplish that action. This helps you identify resources that may not yet be in place, so that you can gather them as they are needed, instead of that being an excuse for missing your target.

The final step is to get started completing the action items for each of your 3 Needle Movers. You and your team can then report on these actions weekly.

If you want to get even more in depth training on how to create your Needle Movers, including a “Monthly Planning Template” you’ll find that and more in Module 1 of Results Now Webinar.

Check it out here!

Plus, in subsequent modules of this powerful training, Christine reveals the exact system you can use to…

…generate 1000+ leads in just 30 days (and every 30 days thereafter)…

…to turn your knowledge and experience into a new stream of revenue…

…close 7 (or more) new sales in the next month using “High Probability Selling” and her unique “Quota Busting” approach…

…and much more.

Get the full story here:

Check it out here!