Whether the sun rises or sets on your business, depends on how well you execute on these three pillars of entrepreneurship – Sales, Marketing and Leadership.
Can you delegate sales, marketing and leadership? Possibly yes. Should you? Well, that depends what stage your business is at. At the end of the day, the responsibility of executing these three areas well falls on you, the entrepreneur.
When Mark Cuban became the owner of Dallas Mavericks, the season ticket holder sales were extremely down. So what did he do? He picked up the phone and began calling … current season ticket holders, previous season ticket holders, angry season ticket holders, reluctant season ticket holders. He called everybody.
Entrepreneurs take charge when ship isn’t turning the way the want it to. They grab it by its horns and turn it in the direction they want to go.
In my personal opinion, your most important key performance indicators lie in these three areas.
Here are some questions to consider in each of these areas.
Sales
- Are they increasing or decreasing?
- By how much? (Think in percentages, if possible)
- How often?
- In a single segment, or across the board?
Sales are a window into your marketing, and to the reputation of your company.
Marketing
- How many people know about the company and its products?
- How are they learning about it?
- What is their perception of the company and its products?
- Where are they talking about my company?
- Who are they talking to?
Marketing is about the width and depth of your reputation. Width is the number of people who know about you. Depth is their likeness for you. Wider and Deeper it goes, better your brand.
Leadership
- If I were to stop taking care of day-to-day operations, can my people take the lead and keep the business running and growing?
- How many leaders have I created?
Leadership is not about you, the leader. Rather, it’s about how many leaders have you created? A good leader leads people. An amazing leader creates leaders.
Just some thoughts on these three pillars of entrepreneurship. Your thoughts?