Have you ever heard the phrase, “all hat and no cattle?”
It’s a colorful description for someone who looks the part, dresses the part, but who actually has no substance.
If you spend all of your time on sales, marketing, PR, website, meetings, and accounting, you’re short-changing something extremely important: your actual product.
You will only achieve true business success when you maximize the time you spend improving your product or service.
All the rest is cowboy hat. Yes, it keeps the sun off your face, but it’s not the THING.
The THING is your service and the customers who buy it. (I’m not saying your customers are cattle…it’s just an analogy, folks!)
So prioritize, and focus on:
- Customer ideation, getting actionable feedback
- Adding features or services, actively innovating
- Talking directly to your customers one-on-one
- Re-looking at your offerings with fresh eyes, staying on top of market developments
Put these things in the back seat until the stuff above is done:
- Reading Facebook posts
- Coffee meetings (unless it’s with a customer)
- Webinars on how to use Periscope
- Fiddling with a new accounting software every week
If you keep your customer as your guiding star, it becomes simple to focus, and prioritize how you spend your day.
Another way to look at priorities is something I heard Becky McCray (of Small Biz Survival) say during a GeniusShared conference: “Do the things that generate actual revenue first.”
If you do that consistently, you are always building your business.
So stop worrying whether you need to get a SnapChat account, and go take a look at your product. Go get on the phone with one of your customers.
Featured image via Flickr CC: Dave Young