Is Your Company Underachieving Because You Set Goals Before Mapping Opportunities?

During your annual planning ritual - do you study and analyze the current situation in your market and then move on straight to setting your goals? Thought so. Common practice but a big mistake! Chances are that your goals are far less ambitious than they should have been and consequently, so are your financial results and growth rate.

Am I sure? YES. The flaw lies in the limiting process. Instead - try this: Identify and map your opportunities BEFORE setting goals. From my experience this changeover usually results in a quite dramatic upgrade of goals and plans! It leads you to a much fuller understanding of your potential achievements, before you limit yourself to defined goals.

Did you answer that with a "We've been doing our SWOT analyses for years, and the 'O' stands for Opportunities"? Get real please! I'm sure you realize all too well that this "search for opportunities" is nothing more than a listing of options that spring to mind, and is far from being a methodical process of scanning for opportunities that has the proven power to lead you to unforeseeable and surprising new paths of success.

Whether we have the courage to admit it and whether we don't, the major challenge of management is changing. In the past it used to be wishful planning and uncompromising implementation. Nowadays, most business successes result from early identification of market opportunities and a rapid and creative move to capitalize on them, maximizing profits.

What exactly is an opportunity? An opportunity is a potential success realized by taking advantage of a situation, often transitory. For example, the opportunity and fertile ground for the huge and sweeping success of Rhonda Byrne's "The Secret", that New-Age and pseudo spiritual conjuration theory project, was the wish and willingness of people in western developed countries today to believe that anything is within reach if you only desire it strongly enough.

So, you see, to succeed in today's dynamic and hyper competitive markets, the 'O' from the popular ?back of the napkin? SWOT sketches needs to evolve, and to develop into a more elaborate and systematic process of opportunity spotting. I would like to introduce to you my new and effective proprietary version of such a process, called Opportunity Scan, or in short: O-Scan.

Before introducing you to some of the principles and tools of the O-Scan methodology, first let us ask: opportunities for what? The O-Scan, used by companies at least once a year prior to their strategy revision and annual planning, scans comprehensively for all types of marketing success and organic growth opportunities; strategic and tactical, short term and long term.

Strategic opportunities include opportunities to:

* Create and apply a value innovation and a new business model

* Move further up in the value chain

* Create and implement an innovative concept of service

* Expand to new markets (territories, categories) and market segments

* Segment the market in a new, revolutionary and more profitable manner.

Tactical opportunities include opportunities to:

* Develop and launch certain new products and services (including short term meteoric successes)

* Encourage new usages and new buying and consuming contexts

* Use new distribution channels and create innovative retail formats

* Create new brands or re-brand existing ones

* Apply innovative marketing tactics.

The O-Scan methodology provides a comprehensive toolkit specifically designed for identifying and sometimes expertly creating opportunities. With this toolkit we perform the scan for opportunities. The battery includes specialized information gathering tools and procedures, proprietary consumer research methods, innovative analytical processes, structured work marathons and a host of generative thinking methods, imagination exercises and games. The methodology is designed to produce innovations to meet a demand that consumers might not even realize exists, but will react to it when provided.

Just to illustrate, here are two of the many of tools in the O-Scan methodology:

* The Contextual Segmentation method for segmenting the market into buying and consumption contexts (rather than groups of consumers) in which most consumers may find themselves from time to time.

* ForeSearch - a qualitative (psychological) research method used to "X-ray" the unconscious mental and emotional structures that motivate and guide consumer behavior as well as to predict future and potential desires.

The O-Scan process has two stages:

1. What's Now? - Research and analysis providing knowledge of and insights into the current market situation

2. What's Possible? - A systematic exploration of opportunities.

Three types of questions lead us from the "What's Now?" to the "What's Possible?" stage:

* What shouldn't be? For example: what are the inconveniences, inaptnesses, frustrations, waste of time and/or money, or concomitant damages, which the consumer must put up with?

* What could/should change or be done differently? For example, what are the outdated or plainly dumb unwritten rules of the game that the players in this market stick by?

* What could be? Meaning, what can we do and succeed that our competitors are not doing and are unlikely to do?

Finally, where do we look for opportunities? The O-Scan methodology uses the concept of five concentric circles representing from the largest inwards to ascertain that every possible source of opportunities is covered (we use the acronym CCMCU):

1. The Context in which your market exists and the external factors that influence it (climatic, political, regulatory, economic, technological, etc).

2. The Consumers - who they are, what they buy and why, and how they are segmented.

3. The Market, its definition and boundaries, its structure, its suppliers and distribution channels, its rules of the game, success factors and barriers to entry/exit.

4. The Competition (as well as marketers of substitutes), who they are, what are their market positions and status, how are they differentiated.

5. Us - our strengths, weaknesses, capabilities and core competencies, hidden assets and so on.

With the insatiable growth imperative in ever more competitive markets driving executives today, companies must develop the ability to identify, create and rapidly act upon market opportunities. Regular implementation of breakthrough methodologies such as the O-Scan, is sure to become a must managerial best practice.

In conclusion, from what I see around me, my word of advice to you is: get early on this race car, and leave all the rest to breathe your dust, while you count your achievements.

About the Author

Dr. Dan Herman, a globally renowned strategy consultant, an author and a lecturer, is the author of "Outsmart the MBA Clones: The Alternative Guide to Competitive Strategy, Marketing, and Branding"
( http://www.outsmart-mba-clones.com ).

Related posts:

• The Importance of Marketing Mix and the 4 Key Mix Elements
• What Makes You Different? Hone Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) or Perish
• Lucky Door Prizes - Tips To Make Them Legal And Work For Your Business
• How to Create a Trade Show Promotional Plan
• Website Marketing Fundamentals and Your Look and Feel Upgrade

Network Marketing Income- Generating Your Prospects 4 Different Ways

Money.We all start a home business to create that extra cash flow that is going to lead us to our dreams and goals.There are several ways to get prospects to increase your network marketing income.Which are you using and are you open to other ideas?Below are 4 of the ways to gain prospects for your opportunity.

1) Traditional Networking.

While some say this is dead in the water others would not build their networking business any other way.Traditional networking includes things such as talking to your circle of influence and the "three foot rule".

Your circle of influence- the list of 200 people you know.

Newer network marketers look down on this way of building your business as the phrase "NFL club" or "No Friends Left" club echo in their mind, paralyzing them to speak with the people they know.What many marketers don't realize is that you are not really looking to recruit these people into your business but you are looking for the people that they know, and the people that they know- networking in the true sense of the word.

Talking to people that know you intimately assists you in honing your question answering skills, lets you work on work presentation, and ultimately builds your business and therefore your network marketing income.

At several Dani Johnson seminars that I attended she asked everyone in the room who had made a list to stand up- several hundred did.She then asked those who had contacted every person on that list to stay standing- about half of the people sat down.Next came who had made money from contacting their whole list- EVERY person remained standing.Finally, who had made six figures in the last 12 months- over 50% of these people stayed standing.This was an exercise that really opened your mind to the possibilities if you just got over your hang ups.

The three foot rule.

Again, newer network marketers tend to frown on the three foot rule as they prefer to let the prospects come to them.But for every person who thinks it doesn't work there is someone who is making money using this method.

The three foot rule is where you are constantly on the look out for people to prospect.Whether it be in the grocery store, in line at the movies, or sitting next to someone on the plane, you are finding ways to draw the person closest to you into a conversation to see if they have a desire to create an extra income for themselves.

This is a difficult skill to really hone as you must be really on your prospecting game.A major part of the reason that so many people shy away from doing this is because they do not have the right people teaching them.They approach people and put their networking marketing business first, instead connecting with the person and finding out thier hot buttons and needs.

2) Lead generation companies

The second way of creating your network marketing income is through purchasing leads.

Many people decide to do this as a way of talking to people who have shown an interest in having their own at home business.

When you purchase leads you can get many different types of leads at lots of different prices from $.10 per lead all the way up to $25.00 a lead.The difference depends on how qualified you want your prospect to be and whether you want your lead to be exclusive to you or not.

Usually you will get information such as name, phone number, email address and additionally may find out a little bit about how much prospects want to spend to start their business and how much network marketing income they would like to make per month.

Proponents of purchasing leads like the fact that they can have an immediate supply of leads to call at any given time without any extra effort of advertising.By having the phone number and email address you can not only call them but also can put them into your auto-responder to stay connected with them over time.

The downside to using lead generation companies is that it can become costly- especially in the beginning when working on your prospecting skills.You also have to be aware of the fact that although people may have requested information they are not always really looking for a home business.You can get go through a lot of people before you really find ones who are not tire kickers.

3) Using a Lead capture Page

Many successful marketers really promote using a lead capture page to create prospects for the following reasons:

A)lead exclusivity, B)interest in your business is peaked, C)better chance of name recognition, D)list building

Lead exclusivity is just as it sounds- being the only one to have that lead.

When purchasing leads, unless you are paying top dollar, most of the time you are sharing the lead with several other people.This means that just as you are contacting them other people are too.Many people don't like the competition of this and would rather use the lead capture page knowing that when a prospect fills out their information they are the only people receiving it.

As your squeeze page is directly related to you and your business, when someone opts in to your information you know that you have a higher chance of conversion as they have shown a desire to have more information about that specific business or product that you are promoting.

Building up a connection and trust is key to making sales and increasing your network marketing income.When a person requests your information they have already seen your name and starting that trust process.Once you begin connecting with them whether it be via email or phone your name will click and make the next step in your sales presentation that much easier.

As many career network marketers know having your own list is very important.Countless times stories are shared about losing databases of 1000's of names when companies shut down or when changing to a new company.By having your own list you are in control of those names and they belong to you.Lists can become huge and therefore great sources of additional income from affiliate products, new product releases from your company, and good ways to also distribute information- just make sure you are following all SPAM laws.

In addition, in using a lead capture page you can actually make money on generating your leads instead of spending money through a funded proposal.This is very attractive to those with a smaller advertising budget.

4) Blogging and Social Networking.

Blogging social networking have become a huge source of gathering prospects over the past few years and you are able to make the most use out of attraction marketing principals in this venue.

Blogging itself has become a preferred way of sharing information, getting your thoughts and ideas out, teaching what you know, and creating a brand yourself.You can do searches for almost any topic out there and find countless blogs about that topic.For someone who has the motivation and persistence to persevere in the blogging world, you can create not only an increased prospect base to raise your network marketing income, but also set yourself up to be an authority in the industry.

Different social networking sites are popping up all of the time and are a very inexpensive way of advertising and finding new prospects.But don't just jump on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, BetterNetworker or any other social networking site out there and start pitching your business.If you do, you will get a response opposite your desired one.

One of the best ways to learn the ins and outs of a specific site is to join, observe, participate with comments, share your knowledge, and then if the situation arises and you are asked, talk about your opportunity.Most sites and forums will have specific policies about business, product, and affiliate promotions and will stick to them.

Some network marketers prefer this form of generating prospects because generally in this situation the prospects are able to observe you, your site, knowledge, and authority and then they are the ones contacting you for more information about your business.There is a lot less one-on-one legwork with this method as each post you write and each site you participate in has the possibility of being seen by thousands of people.If the information is strong enough you will attract the strongest prospects to you and increase you network marketing income.

Increasing your Network Marketing Income.

No matter which way you choose to go, your overall goal is to increase the dollars that are coming in to your business.Not every person is meant to do every one of the ways listed above.If you are going to be an effective network marketer one of your biggest obstacles is going to be choosing the prospecting method that works the best for you and the one that is going to increase your network marketing income the fastest.

What are some of the ways that you prospect?

About the Author

Jen Patton is an entreprenuer dedicated to sharing knowledge within the network marketing community.

This article was originally published at http://tipsfromanetworkmarketer.com/2009/01/10/increasing-your-network-marketing-income-5-different-ways

Feel free to go there make a comment, give some input, or suggest an article.

Copyright 2009 by Jen Patton

Relaited Links:

• Starting An Online Business? Here Are 3 Choices
• What Are The Ebay Income Possibilities?
• Dental Web Page Design Success Is Measured By Visitor Usability