7’ Shades of Managing for Excellence as an Entrepreneur
The one common parameter of success of the 21st century business entrepreneurs is their continual aspiration to achieve excellence. That objective applies to every stage of running an enterprise, from managing people to planning & administration, marketing & selling, financial management, customer care and so on.
Extraordinary people and other creative performers, in businesses or other spheres, have constantly known this truth and have spent their lives searching for perfection. Smart entrepreneurs too have the same ambition, driving them for continual excellence in all aspects of their businesses and their lives, making them focused and smarter.
In Managing for Excellence as an Entrepreneur, this article focuses on some of the fundamental and key points – The 7’ Shades of Managing for Excellence as an Entrepreneur.
- Strive for Achieving Excellence
- Leading Effectively & Managing People
- Thinking Strategically & Managing Projects
- Managing Accounts
- Selling Successfully
- Marketing Effectively
- Understanding Information Technology
Steve Jobs says, “We don’t get chance to do that many things, and everyone should be really excellent, because this is our life. Life is brief and then you die, you know? So this is what we’ve chosen to do with our life”.
- Achieving Excellence or Striving for Excellence is an essential element of any professional job. It includes attempting to place quality into all that you do. This state of mind is the difference between the smart achievers and the mediocre ones in their professional work. Nowadays ambition and excellence is quite deep and visible in every workplace. There is no shortcut to achieving success and businesses have to give their best at every stage of enterprise.
- Leading effectively & Managing People: “Leaders are people who do the right things, Managers are people who do things rights”, says Warren G Bennis.
An Entrepreneur can be well known by titles like Leader, Mentor, Guide, Advisor, Facilitator and Supporter. The duties of the Leader or Entrepreneur can be seen when its qualities include a horizon and a vision without bounds, conveying that vision to the team members and to the people and letting people believe it and focus on it. On the other hand, they have to be accountable for realizing that vision and see whether it is executed effectively to achieve success.
Teams are comprised of people who have different perspective, attitude, thinking and talents and who are at different phases of their careers.
Your ability in this part of managing your team members is to make the best team from the best talent you got around you. If you can encourage your team members to end up better at what they do, you’ll be the person whom individuals seek to work for. It will be great benefaction to your organization.
There is a saying that goes – a leader’s role is to create more leaders, not more followers.
- Thinking strategically & Managing Projects: To start with let’s first discuss, what is “thinking strategically”. It is the process in which individuals consider, evaluate, perceive and make the future for themselves as well as for others. Strategic thinking is greatly powerful and profitable instruments that one can apply to work.
The Six P’s of Thinking Strategically by Dr. Peterson clarifies what is required in thinking strategically.
- PLAN – action that you have deliberately knowing.
- PLOY- what you will do to out the competition.
- PATTERN – building success as a steady event.
- POSITION – creating & maintaining market position.
- PURPOSE – goal as a team.
- PUSH – goals that enlarge the organisation.
Managing projects as an entrepreneur is the implementation of processes, methods, knowledge, skills and experience to achieve the project outcome. Managing projects involves focusing on the whole project cycle rather than an ongoing activity and focus on managing resources and assets, human and financial.
- Selling successfully: Majority of people define Selling as the activity of manipulating people into buying the things they neither need nor want. As each entrepreneur knows that behind every business is a dream, a vision of something better than what exist today. Nevertheless, the sole way that dream of a successful business can come true is if the company’s products or features help people to achieve their goals and their own dreams.
The true definition of Selling is the procedure of making dreams come true. Selling successfully is a deliberate, thoughtful activity. You can’t sell here, there and everywhere. Selling requires a strategy, a process, a way to proceed that you can measure and monitor and it can only be done if you love selling and committed to doing it and have a passion.
There are few basic points that should be kept in mind while selling.
- Define your target market.
- Making effective and impressive presentation.
- Features Tell and Benefits Sell.
- Selling by Listening.
- 80/20 Rule.
Wendy Connick of the National Association of Sales Professionals points out few good examples to make us understand better the concept of Unique Selling Proposition (USP).
- FedEx Corporation: “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.”
- Domino’s Pizza: “You get fresh, hot pizza delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less, or it’s free.
Company use the plans and strategy to sell their products.
- Marketing effectively, I mean really effectively is an important word in business. The product and services (especially the digital ones as we know in this blog) possibly sometimes complex, because marketing is the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising.
Marketing basically is advertising campaign to sell your product at the best level and it should result in increased revenue for your business. To promote your product it is very important to understand the different ways of marketing effectively, which can help you to make the right choice for your business.
- Electronic Media: – The media one can share on any electronic gadget for the groups of audiences viewing, dissimilar to static media (Printing) electronic media is telecasted to the larger community. It is a general term for any media that requires an electronic device for the content to be accessed. Nowadays electronic media is the best way of promoting your product in the market.
Examples of Electronic Media:-
- Television
- Smartphone’s – Apps like G+
- Internet – Website or emails
- Social Media – Facebook, Twitter, Google
Print and Graphic Art Media: – This type of media depends upon what type of message you want to share or communicate to your clients or customers. Some examples of Print Media are: –
- Business Cards
- Posters & Brochures
- Local Newspapers advertising
- Magazines
- Additional Promotional Ideas to promote the Product are: –
- Promotional gifts or discounts on festivals like Festival discounts.
- Networking and community involvement.
Understanding Information Technology, a term that encompasses all forms of technology used to create, store, exchange and utilize information in its various forms including business data, conversations, still images, motion pictures and multimedia presentations
With regards to technology and your business, you’ll have to know enough about the subject to realize what your business needs and why. Your business will have its own particular novel arrangement of hardware needs that most likely contrast from those of the organization nearby. What’s more, obviously, you’ll have an alternate measure of cash to spend. Today we consider technology is all about gadgets (PCs, programming, web applications, and so on.), yet I would recommend that smart entrepreneur still view technology —in whatever structure—as an unfortunate obligation, and not an end of itself.
The quest for excellence keeps on going, whether it is in the developing organization or in any non-profit organization is very easy in concept but not very simple in practice. Excellence cannot be achieved overnight or by taking any ‘magic pill’, it comes by itself by passion, hard work and determination. In spite of having a tremendous number of articles, books, blogs, videos etc, it is not an easy task which can be achieved. Excellence comes by spending hours in learning what you really love to do, learning from your mistakes and accepting criticism and researching on new technologies coming and training schemes to enhance yourself and your organization.
To achieve a gold medal in Olympics, an athlete has to work hard and practice for years, it’s the same concept to achieve excellence in business. In this article “7 SHADES OF MANAGING FOR EXCELLENCE AS AN ENTREPRENUER”, I have tried to mention some basic points which will help you to become excellent entrepreneurs, and you could try to apply these shades and practice them. Every successful entrepreneur must work hard toward establishing and nurturing a culture that promotes excellence. This can be reinforced by the vision and mission and this should focus on clients of the organization. I conclude with my sincere wishes to all the entrepreneurs. Get smarter, this is just the beginning.
Author Profile
- I'm a dreamer, passionate reader & writer. I do love spending time on the web and research about the digitally inspired entrepreneurs and their organisations secrets for excellence.
