Surely in the most difficult moments of your entrepreneurship , when you fail to close that long-awaited contract, or when sales are down, you have asked yourself: why do others have more opportunities to do business than me? What am I doing wrong?
The answers we can give ourselves are many. “I don’t know how to sell.” “I don’t have enough money to do more advertising.” “I’m not lucky.” “I need better contacts…” And indeed, as the experts explain, relationships are the basis of any successful project. The key is in how we use them in our favor.
Because it’s not just about having a growing contact list, or spending more time participating in networking events. The secret is to use our business, your brand reputation and your value proposition to expand our network. And thus generate those opportunities that we are looking for so much. Let’s see how to achieve it.
1. Work on your personal brand
As the founder of the business, you will always be its most visible face. That is why it is so important that, through your personal brand, you build authority and trust in your field of activity . In each interaction with customers, suppliers and business partners, show yourself as a positive, proactive, hard-working, committed, expert and willing to collaborate person. When you are a celebrity in your sector, you will see how more people will contact you naturally.
2. Surround yourself with people who make you grow
Many entrepreneurs focus on reading, taking training courses and workshops, and being inspired by the success stories of great entrepreneurs . But at some point, you need to put all that new knowledge and skills into practice. And what better than doing it in the company of someone who has more experience, or a team as committed as we are to the success of the company. Look for a mentor, who will accompany you along the way and give you his objective vision of things. If you can’t find one, approach a good business accelerator, which usually has mentoring programs. In addition, look for a trusted director or partner in your company, with whom you can discuss your concerns and share valuable points of view when making decisions.
3. Stay away from the “red ocean”
One of the most common mistakes among SME entrepreneurs and businessmen is looking for opportunities in those markets that are growing at a fast pace , but where there are also more and more competitors. And think only of the money they are going to earn. Focus instead on analyzing what market problems remain unaddressed, and how you can solve them with an effective and innovative solution. Of course, this is a strategy that will take much longer, but only in this way will you be able to generate profitable projects with the possibility of growing in the long term. As corporate development experts explain, to survive the ups and downs of the market , your purpose must be greater than your desire to make a profit.
4. Don’t help just one customer, help millions
With a business, you can help three, five or 100 people in a month. But if you change the life of thousands, or millions, with the same effort, then you will attract the best business opportunities and, finally, achieve accelerated growth for your company. This is especially true in the service area, where many professionals with a successful career in the corporate world start entrepreneurship and end up selling their hour of work . If that is your case, you need to develop a business model that allows you to generate passive income, or products and services that can be taken advantage of at the same time by a larger niche market.
5. Engage your entire team in innovation
When we start a business alone, and we get used to handling many tasks at once, we find it hard to delegate, or trust the point of view of others . But if we are determined to grow our company, and create a true culture of innovation, we need to rely on team effort and talent. With the help of the Human Resources area, develop communication and collaboration mechanisms to listen to the ideas of your employees. Support them so that the best proposals can be analyzed, turned into prototypes, and launched on the market. Eliminate words like “failure” or “mistake” from your vocabulary, and replace them with “learning” and “experience” .
