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During my six years as a small business owner, the thing I missed most about working for someone else was the meetings with my boss or my peers to boot ideas around. It's amazing how helpful it is to have someone else's input on something when you are striving to find profitable new products and services.
Three Reasons to Get a Different Look at Your Business
After I left El Paso, I became a consultant for another company. During the 40 months I was on the road with them, I noticed that one of the major benefits I brought to my clients was an outsider's viewpoint.
All of us get into a rut in the way we see the world around us. It's far too easy to fall into the trap of "this is how we do things here" so you don't even look to see how that might be holding you back. A consultant or coach can give you a different perspective.
The other challenge for small business owners and managers is that the people you work with daily tend to know your business and your industry like you thus it's hard for them to think outside the box. They know how to use your product so are less likely to think of other uses, other markets where it could be applied.
The third reason it's so hard to find profitable ideas is that it takes time and effort to come up with original ideas. Sometimes it's just easier to bring in an outsider who already has a different viewpoint without your small business' fixed way of seeing things.
Ask Yourself this Question: How May I Serve?
The attitude of serving customers' needs and wants was how I closed sales worth as much as a $1,000,000 in service contracts and $420,000 in hardware. Use this perspective of serving when looking for new product and service ideas. If you want them to be profitable, they must serve a need customers know they have and want.
So don't waste time, effort and money inventing a new product that you think is great until you confirm that people care enough about what it will do for them to buy. Make sure too that the target market who wants it has the money to buy.
Become Curious
To find profitable ideas, you need ask questions and be open to seeing things unrelated to your current business. Become curious about new inventions and new services. Ask yourself how did they think of that? Why did they think of that? What need did they fill?
Eleven Ways to Find Profitable Ideas
These are the things I use to expand my horizons:
- Ask your best customers, "What do you need that I'm not providing now?"- Get away from your office and expose yourself to new and different experiences
- Hire a consultant or coach
- Join a mastermind group or hire a mentor
- Join an organization like Rotary, Kiwanis or Lion's Clubs or any other group where you can give service and meet lots of people from different businesses, even from different cultures
- Travel to another region of the country
- Participate in trade shows for your industry
- Attend online teleconferences
- Read books by thought leaders in business
- Look at other industries to see what they are doing, especially things that are new and different
- Use brainstorming techniques to find new associations and different uses for your current products and services
These eleven ideas are the ones that I personally use or have used. I find them invaluable for opening my eyes to seeing things differently. They definitely broaden my ability to see new ways of doing things. Albert Einstein warned us that insanity is "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." So to find profitable ideas, you need to either go outside your current experiences or hire someone else who already has.
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