NO MISSION STATEMENT MEANS BIG TROUBLE
It Might Be Time to Consider This Often Overlooked Aspect of Business.
By Scott Covert
Anyone reading this article has probably already read hundreds or even thousands of pages of home-based business advice. But there's one thing that you may not have read about yet...and it's so crucial, that to ignore it is to doom yourself to failure.
I'm talking about your Mission Statement--a short paragraph describing the definition of exactly how and why you do business.
Your Mission Statement is one of the concepts that make your life easier, more enjoyable and more profitable. Whenever you need to make a decision, deal with a customer, work on a product or do marketing, you'll be able to look at your mission statement and know EXACTLY what to do.
Let's look at a few Mission Statement examples.
1. "I'm going to help people who suffer from chronic illness to understand the options they're being given by both the alternative and traditional health industries."2. "I create and market video training courses for sales professionals."
3. "I market video training courses for sales pros."
4. "I package and market disk-based training to make businesses both more environmentally friendly and more efficient."
Note that #2 and #3 are DIFFERENT businesses. Because of their mission statements, they will make different decisions on certain matters.
A mission statement may go beyond the examples above, which describe what you do for your customers. It may include statements like "I wish to be personally involved in my own business no more than 26 weeks per year" or "I want a million dollars by the year 2009." Those are things you SHOULD paste on your refrigerator as a reminder, but your customers probably won't care about them.
And what if, like some people, you have subconscious fears about making money, because it's "evil" or you "don't deserve it?" Putting a statement like "Twenty-five percent of my net profits will be contributed to Childrens' Hospitals" in your mission statement might make earning money seem moral and worth doing, instead of immoral or futile. Try it--it may help.
BEFORE YOU WRITE YOUR OWN MISSION STATEMENT
Before writing your Mission Statement, it's important to put your entire business life into perspective by considering several factors. You may be very limited and rigid or very open-minded about any of the following aspects of your business.
* Future Vision--You may have a well-defined image in your mind of what you want your business to be in one, two or 10 years. Or you may not be thinking beyond next month's rent.* Product/Service Focus--Do you sell products or services, or both?
* Market Focus--Do you focus on selling to a specific market, or do you have products and services that can be sold to different markets?
* Marketing Method Focus--Do you sell only through catalogs, only through salesletters, only through trade shows? Or some combination? Or will you use whatever new method seems best at the time?
* Distribution Focus--Boy-oh-boy--you'd better figure this one out FAST if you haven't already. Are you a retailer, a wholesaler, or a licenser? It's okay to dabble in all three, but you'd better specialize in just one of these methods of distributing your product.
* Manufacturing Focus--Will you produce only videotapes, or only books, or will you produce your products in any format that seems suitable at the time?
Then there's your CONVERSION Method. The possibilities include:
A. Renting mailing lists and doing "cold" mailing to people who don't know youB. Contacting your existing mailing list through normal mail or email
C. Joint ventures which allow you to achieve instant credibility with new prospects
D. Electronic one-step or two-step marketing
Finally, what do you sell? Here are some possibilities:
A. "I raise ostriches and I sell ostrich meat and baby ostriches and nothing else."B. "I investigate hundreds of MLM opportunities every month and I sell my exhaustive findings to opportunity seekers and I also will personally join the two or three best new MLMs that come along every year."
C. "I will attempt to sell anything, at any time, dumping previous half-completed projects if necessary, to try to make money."
Guess which business is in serious trouble? You guessed it--it's "C." Companies that will try literally anything to make money are not customer-oriented and their lack of focus dooms them. They can't follow anything through. They obviously have no mission statement. They may make money from time to time, but will never gain a good reputation or any momentum.
NOW WRITE YOUR MISSION STATEMENT AND COMMIT TO IT
Go over all the factors listed above. Then write down a mission statement that describes what you sell, what your business will have to do for you to consider it "successful," and what your ideal lifestyle consists of.
Then keep reading...
IS MONEY THE KEY TO HAPPINESS?
Why can people be rich but still feel unfulfilled?
Well, if your personal relationships and/or physical health are dismal, a simple pile of cash won't make you happy. Also, you must be adding to the value of your customers lives in proportion to the amount of money they've given you. In order to put money into perspective and understand how to be truly happy, you have to understand that...
THE VALUE OF YOUR LIFE IS THE VALUE OF YOUR COMMUNICATIONS
What do I mean by that?
I simply mean that how you communicate with yourself and others will determine whether you are happy. Never forget that throughout history there have been very happy poor people and suicidal rich people.
If you make money, for example, by writing salesletters that cheat and deceive people, you may well not end up being very happy with all the money you make. Why? Because the way you have communicated with your customers is dishonest, and therefore you have not added any value to the lives of your customers. Your subconscious won't let you be happy.
On the other hand, if you concentrate first on creating a product or service that's really going to increase the value of your customers' lives, you will find three benefits:
* A slowly but strongly growing feeling of goodwill towards your business, throughout the marketplace* Maximum repeat business
* Easy sales
By "adding value" to a customer's life, I mean you must give them a benefit that makes the price they paid seem puny by comparison. When you force yourself to apply better selling techniques without changing the underlying philosophy of your business, you might slip back into bad habits, even if the change was successful.
This is similar to someone using willpower to go on a diet and successfully losing weight, only to slip back into old habits and gain the weight back.
Well, as any dieter knows, if they could SHIFT THEIR METABOLISM, they would lose weight naturally, would not have to use their willpower (which runs out for 99 percent of people), and the change would be permanent.
Setting down a mission statement on paper is like a metabolism shift for a dieter--it's a FOUNDATIONAL change that you don't even have to think about after a short time. You will experience increased profits and it will be truly effortless. You will find you are no longer struggling for immediate profits and wondering what to do next.
Your mission statement should control your life from the inside out. It should NOT be something that you have to keep thinking about all the time.
Scott Covert is a direct marketing specialist and author of several books on disk. You may reach him at:
Future Media 5 Massey Square #1802 Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4C5L6 (416) 699-9838
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