Today, I want to talk to you about innovation in your business.
This is part two of our seven part planning series to help
you plan for the future to help you in your own eyes and strengthen and protect
your business no matter what's happening in the world.
And this seven part series is really important because you can focus on one
area at a time and also include your entire team.
So whether you are a solopreneur or you already have a team in your business,
make this part of what you do with everybody that's involved and really focus in
on these particular areas that I'm going to walk you to over the next couple of
weeks this week,
I want to talk to you about innovation and your business and how to consistently
innovate your products, your programs, your service,
and also your delivery. As always, before we get started,
make sure you hit the bell and you subscribe to our channel.
So you never missed a thing. Welcome to powerhouse business on YouTube.
I am your host, Carolin Soldo. I'm a business owner, business scaling master,
and mom of two boys.
I love thinking big pushing boundaries and doing things differently.
Most of all, I'm all about achieving massive growth with ease.
And how do you scale your business by living the life you love?
Let's go over the last 10 plus years,
I have consistently remodeled,
reinvented and innovated in my business in a variety of different
areas. And that has helped me stay on top of my industry.
Evolve, go with new trends,
new developments and new things that were happening in my market.
And it truly also has made my business a ton of fun.
So innovation is a very creative way to bring your team into your
business, to come up with new ideas, to have fun,
and also continue to grow and stay ahead of your competition.
In any industry you might be working in. When you're able to make innovation,
part of continuous improvement in your company,
you can accomplish a couple of very important things. First of all,
you stay ahead of the game.
So many industries are experiencing some highest saturation, right?
Your facing a lot of competition, a lot of people seeing the same things.
So when you're looking around your industry,
you see a lot of people and it's very hard to differentiate.
And maybe that means it's time for you to elevate re-invent
remodel and innovate your business. Not just what it is that you do,
but also your marketing message and how you position yourself to make sure
customers see your unique value.
And they're able to figure out why they should be working with you instead of
your competition.
In addition to staying on top of the game with your competition,
innovation will help you keep your prices high, right? So that your, again,
not facing price Wars and people can't differentiate anymore,
but you're able to come up with new ideas, new programs, new services,
new ways to position your services, maybe even a new brand,
a new marketing message. And you're really with the times,
and you're really current,
which will help you price your services and your programs accordingly as well.
And last but not least innovation helps you feel aligned with your
business. I have worked with many business owners over the years who said to me,
you know what? My business is fine, but I feel like I have new interests.
I have more expertise.
I have new things I want to do in my business.
And so as you grow as mature,
and as you evolve over time as a person,
you can bring your business along that journey as well.
So maybe you feel called to serve a new market.
Maybe you feel called to work with people in a whole different way.
Launch new programs, offer new services.
All of this is possible for you with innovation to get started with
innovation, you can do this on your own.
You can also call a meeting with your team depending on the type of business
you're running,
but you should set aside a good two to three hours to really get into the
innovation exercise and really have enough time to brainstorm,
to get the ideas out, to contemplate, to consider the ideas,
to weigh your options and come up with some really tangible action steps
that you can then plan for implementation over the next couple of months.
So the idea is for you to create new ideas related to innovative,
come up with valuable things that you can do right away,
and then incorporate innovation into your business, uh, at least twice a year,
or maybe even quarterly.
Imagine going through an innovation cycle once a quarter,
and then coming out of it with four or five ideas you can implement right away
and do that once a quarter.
Imagine what that would do for your business and how fresh and new and
exciting this would be for you, for your customers as well as for your team.
Right?
So I want to walk you through this exercise and have you right down
which areas you should consider. And some really important questions.
You can ask yourself and your team to trigger the ideas and to bring out
the innovation.
What we want to do is look at three really important areas when it comes to what
you can innovate and improve, and that is your programs or services,
your delivery,
which means how you deliver those programs and services and the service you
provide to your customers and your clients. Okay.
Let's look at your programs and services. First,
the first question I want you to write down and consider is what the barriers to
purchase are in your specific field might now,
what are some of the biggest objections or customers are giving you?
What are the barriers to hurdles?
What makes it hard for someone to buy your service, to say yes to it?
Maybe there is something that is preventing them in the environment.
Maybe there are new trends, new technology and new competitors, mine,
new needs and desires are new pain points that customers are experiencing.
That creates barriers to purchase your services.
You want to be really aware of what these new barriers are and come up with ways
to eliminate them or reduce them to of course,
make it easier for your customers to buy from you.
The second question you should ask yourself is who are your buyers?
And maybe this is an obvious question for you, but let me think about it.
Has your customer base shifted?
Are you still targeting the same people or are you changing it in a certain
way? Are you moving upstream or downstream?
Has your demographics changed, right?
Are you really targeting the same people or are you shifting your targeting
slightly? And then also what do these buyers really need?
There are so many things happening right now in the world and they will in the
future and you need to be on top of what is going on in how people's needs and
desires are changing because you can meet those new needs and you can
position your programs and services in a way where people see that you are
really meeting them where they're at. So consider who you're targeting,
but also what these people or businesses or organizations really
need right now.
And any new needs that you can innovate for and need for these clients.
The next two questions you should be asking yourself is one,
how could you literally innovate your industry and your
programs and services so much that nobody can compete with you.
And along with that,
how can you make your programs and services so irresistible that
people literally cannot say no to them? Like maybe you have some ideas, five,
not, maybe you're not sure how that could happen,
but it might be possible for you to slightly pivot what you do slightly,
you know, shift and change,
or maybe take a really radical left or right turn and
move your company in a way where people can not compete with you.
Or it's really hard to compete with you and your office offerings are becoming
so attractive because of their features because of their pricing,
the financing, the availability,
anything really that you have a really easy time getting them to
the by clients. And then of course,
the last question you want to ask is how can we continue to add more value
to the programs and services that we already have? What new features,
new aspects, new bonuses,
can you be adding to these programs to make them even better?
And the best thing to do was ask to customers.
So if you don't have that data available to you right now, ask your clients,
how are they doing right now? What works for them? What doesn't work for?
What would they like to see in the future?
And come up with a healthy list of potential value,
added services and features that you can be adding to your offerings. Mike.
Now the next important area you want to consider is delivery and
delivery. To me means how you actually get your services to your customers,
how they consume it, them mine. So how they learn from you,
how they get value from you.
What did I say you're actually doing for your clients?
The first question that you should be asking yourself in this area is about
technology. Over the last couple of years,
technology has shifted completely and now things are going virtual
more and more new tech is coming out and people are consuming
services and they're buying things fun ways.
So Willie look at how you can go with the times,
how you can shift your delivery and use the latest and greatest
tech tools to service your clients.
And that could be a variety of different things you could think about online
chat, online customer service.
You could think about delivering your meetings through a virtual
zoom experience.
You could be offering people your services through an app on their phone.
There are literally hundreds of ideas we could come up with,
and it depends on your specific need by technology is really,
really important area that could give you a competitive edge and meet
your customers where they're at right now. Along with that,
you should ask yourself what new trends can you leverage?
I'll give you an example.
There has been a recent trend for people to go off the social media networks,
such as Facebook and Instagram and build their communities on
third-party platforms, non social media, you know,
own platforms. So not Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.
They're privately owned networks that you as a business owner can
control completely.
So if you have a client community or a free community,
or you want to build a membership site or anything like that,
there are some amazing third party networks and membership platforms that you
can leverage, but you have full control over what your customers see,
what the experience is like and how much you can market to your communities as
well.
And then one last question you can ask yourself within delivery is how your
customers are actually consuming your services.
An example here is learning styles. So people learn in different ways.
Some people like to see things, some people like to hear things,
and we all have these different styles of learning and consuming information.
So look at how you get your information across to your customers right now.
Is it in person or is it online? Is it through an audio,
a video? Are you using PowerPoint or keynote slides?
Are you just use speaking to a camera? Do you have workbooks?
Are they online? Are they in PDF format or in Google docs?
Or what are you doing right now? See how you can innovate your,
your content delivery to your clients in a way that it makes it easier for them
to consume the information and actually get the results they want from
you.
And the last area I want you to focus on when it comes to innovating in your
business is how you provide service to your clients. My,
and I'm thinking about customer service for the most part.
And so within service, you want to look at, first of all,
the most commonly complained about area.
So what do your clients complain about most frequently and how can
you attack those problems, eliminate them,
or would you stand with innovation with new tech, new tools,
or potentially hiring someone to alleviate this particular problem?
Mine, to give you an example, a problem in the past,
in my business has been community management. As our communities have grown,
which is great.
We needed someone to really take control and facilitate those communities and
make sure people are heard and it's organized well,
and there is engagement happening. So we had to hire a community manager,
the takeover, the experience in our groups.
So think about the experience of customers are having in your business right
now,
and which tools or systems or people can help you make them
better. Ultimately, when you get to innovate in your business,
you are going to make your company stronger. You can reduce barriers,
approaches,
you can make your products and DePaul programs more irresistible to your
clients, and you can grow revenue and profit over time.
Plus you can have a whole lot of fun on your own or with your teams.
And now I would love to hear from you, what innovation ideas did you have today?
What are you considering?
What are you researching in which areas do you want to innovate your
business invite? Now, let me know. Down below in the comments,
let's have a conversation. I would love to hear about your innovation ideas.
This was part two of our seven part planning series to help you consistently
grow your company with ease and excellence. I hope you enjoyed it.
And I hope you'll join me again next week for part three of the series,
where I want to talk to you about how to make your marketing and your
positioning a lot better, and how to brainstorm that,
to get that area of your business,
to that next amazing level as always stay focused on your goals.
Because I believe that your message and your services are meant for the
world.
They're meant to make an amazing impact and a huge difference for the people out
there. Are you an expert and you're building a coaching or consulting business,
or are you already in coaching and consulting and you want to grow your business
in the easiest way possible?
Well then I'm your coach for the last 10 years I've been running an inc 5,000
ranked international consulting business.
And I specialize in helping women just like you achieve fulfilling success.
It's all about helping you grow your business with ease and so that it makes you
truly happy. So if you want to gain better clients, if you want to assist in my,
as your business,
if you want to go from offline to online marketing and automate your entire
marketing process, I want to help you this month,
we're offering complimentary business strategy calls and on these calls,
we help them to you to customize growth plan so that your business can grow with
ease.
All you need to do is go to Carolyn Salva com slash apply book in a
time. And then we'll be talking in just a couple of days from now.
I look forward to helping you grow your company with ease and excellence.