Stay Ahead Of The Curve With These Tips
If you want to thrive and succeed in business, exceed your goals and ambitions, or perhaps even your career; you need to stay ahead of the curve.
Future planning is an important part of strategizing, because it can allow you to focus on what’s working, and what you need to work on to get to where you want to be.
In this article, you’ll learn how to stay ahead of the curve, so you can not only survive in business – but thrive as well.
Stay Ahead Of The Curve With These Tips
What Does Stay Ahead Of The Curve Mean?
Prior to going into our stay ahead of the curve tips – what does stay ahead of the curve mean?
To stay ahead of the curve, means that you continue to innovate to ensure you stay current, and keep tabs of what’s currently happening now within your business landscape – so you’re not left behind.
When a business or person is ahead of the curve, it means their ideas, products and services are more advanced or modern then that of their competitors.
Learn more: How To Stop Winging It, And Learn Exactly How To Close Consistent Sales With Ease
How To Stay Ahead Of The Curve
Below is a list of areas and topics to focus on, learn, and take action with if you want to stay ahead of the curve.
Stay Ahead Of The Curve Tip #1 – Look After Your Clients
The first step if you wish to stay ahead of the curve, is to know your customers well and look after them.
Having a great relationship with your current clients is important for two reasons.
Firstly, by nurturing them and giving them a positive experience, they’ll more than likely remain loyal which will keep them either buying more, and also letting their network know about you, which’ll give you referral income.
Secondly – your current clients can be an excellent trove of knowledge and information in regard to how to make your product or service even better.
They can help you stay ahead of the curve by giving you insight into how you can potentially improve your product, service, and the results they’re looking for.
Stay Ahead Of The Curve Tip #2 – Have A Targeting Strategy
Many businesses fail to stay ahead of the curve, because they don’t put a lot of energy into their sales targeting strategy and marketing efforts.
Don’t be a well-kept secret.
Create a sales targeting strategy, and find out who your ideal clients are, and why. Focus on where they’re hanging out, and document how to reach them as well as the message they’ll resonate with.
When putting together your marketing efforts – ensure you speak to what it will mean when they own your product, rather than purely focusing on features and benefits.
Tip #3 – Set Aside Time For Innovation
Many business owners naturally copy what their competitors are doing.
Although this may seem normal and even feel like a fruitful exercise; by doing what everyone else is doing, you stay ordinary and unfortunately brand yourself as just another ‘me too’ business.
To stay ahead of the curve, ensure you put aside time to innovate and look at things differently.
What are other different businesses doing in different fields that wow their clients, that may perhaps also work in your industry that your competition isn’t doing?
What other business verticals can you borrow insight from, and then tweak and change to make work for you?
To stay ahead of the curve with innovation, focus on your people, your clients, your product, and your internal systems and processes.
Tip #4 – Be Flexible
Naturally, everything is changing around us.
New competition pops up, technology rapidly changes, and the expectations of what our clients want changes with it.
Staying flexible, and not being wed to your ideas and business is imperative if you want to stay ahead of the curve because it’ll ensure you won’t be stuck in your old ways and will continue to evolve as to where the world is moving.
An excellent example of this is with Netflix and Blockbuster.
Blockbuster stayed wed to their ideas; renting out physical movies and best sellers, and people had to physically attend their store to pick up what they wanted.
There was the risk of people attending, not finding their movie because it was in limited stock; or sometimes they had plenty of new releases and had to cut back on classics for shelf space. This then alienated customers who wanted to watch other movies.
Netflix however – was online, always available, and gave you plenty to choose from with no risk of all the movies already being out.
Netflix stayed ahead of the curve, by focusing on where the world was going, rather than just copying what everyone else was doing.
Tip #5 – Know Your Competition
There are two types of competition in business; and to stay ahead of the curve, you need to know both.
The first is your direct competitors. Who are they, what are they selling, and what are they doing well you can learn from, yet exploit, innovate, and do better.
Secondly; what other things are happening that is competing with you, for your potential client’s attention?
What is making them stall from buying from you?
Are they buying something completely different, that’s preventing them from buying from you?
What can you put into play, that’ll make it easier for someone to buy from you?
Research both these two competitions types and revisit it often to stay ahead of the curve.
Tip #6 – Invest In Your Personal Development
The best leaders who stay ahead of the curve, continue to do so by investing in their personal development.
They invest in sales training, develop their staff, and continue to read about what’s happening in world current affairs and the economic landscape around them.
Investing in your personal development is the difference between staying mediocre and where you’re at, to moving forward and thriving in business.
The best investment you can ever make to stay ahead of the curve, is by investing in yourself.
Final Thoughts If You Wish To Stay Ahead Of The Curve
If you wish to stay ahead of the curve, there are a number of topics and areas to focus your attention on.
You have your competition, researching innovation, and learning from other potential case studies of business that stayed stuck in their ways, and didn’t come to market with new ideas fast enough.
To avoid becoming a failed statistic, ensure you keep ahead of times by reading, and by investing in your personal development.
Want To Learn Exactly How To Close Sales – Consistently & Easily?
If you’re committed to wanting to learn exactly how to close sales deals consistently and more easily, then you may be interested in our sales blueprint.
Our online sales training course is self-paced, affordable, and completely online for your convenience.
Click the link below to learn exactly how The 5% Sales Blueprint can help you learn how to close sales on a consistent basis, and will get rid of all the guesswork.
