I want you to take a good long look at both. Because contained in these images is the key to not only long term business success, but also protecting your business from short term business calamities.
What do you notice? Well if you look you will notice that the Parthenon which has stood for thousands of years is built on many pillars. The other is a diving board. It has one pillar holding will it be there two thousand years from now? Time will tell. 🙂
Most businesses are built on diving boards! That is to say, they have or rely on one main pillar for getting clients. The “this is the way we do business in my industry method” of getting clients. They rely on that and it works (for now).
But… What if that stream of business dries up? The business dies right?
Imagine building your business around the yellow pages. Some businesses did (they are not around any more. But who would be stupid enough to build their business around the yellow pages, I mean idiots am I right?
If history teaches us anything it shows that plenty of businesses were short-sighted when it comes to their business. Imagine building your business around the high street. Do you think that is going to be around forever?
Let me let you into a secret.
Great businesses build like the Parthenon (they are built on many pillars).
They are always looking to add additional pillars to their marketing process.
They don’t tie themselves to “We do it like this” thinking. They are constantly looking for additional ways to profitably attract customers to their business. In turn, they protect themselves against whatever the market throws at them.
Online, offline, joint ventures, direct mail, Salespeople, Telesales, digital marketing, social media marketing. They are constantly testing new ways to profitably add customers to their business.
The more profitable pillars they add the better their business performs. More importantly the safer their business is in the long run. If one of their pillars fails it is a setback, NOT a catastrophe.
Where lesser businesses fail they survive and prosper.
Let that sink in for a second.
Ok, well that’s a little bit of food for thought today.
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