Revenue Journal®

One of the things that drives me crazy about revenue generation is how complicated the "academic" types make it. It's complicated enough to run a business without mucking up the subject with a bunch of fancy language that people in ivory towers think up to amuse themselves and impress others.

In plain language, if you want to succeed in business, there are four things you absolutely need to do:

1) Know what people really want and offer it.

2) Promote it properly, making promises you can keep.

3) Deliver it, as promised.

4) Use what you earn and learn to do it all over again.If you don't offer something that people need or want, no amount of promotion will save you. If you don't promote your product or service properly, you'll have to close your business someday because you simply didn't make enough to sustain it. If you fail to deliver, the word will get out, and the negative backlash will overwhelm your promotional activities. If you don't learn from your experience, and make adjustments as you learn from customers, your customers will start to go elsewhere. You will find yourself staring at a dried up river of revenue.

How do you know what people need or want? Most people guess.

Entrepreneurs are often better at guessing than corporate managers. Entrepreneurs tend to be more exposed to customers, whereas corporate managers spend 99% of every day surrounded by people who work for them (and make them feel smart and important).

But, even entrepreneurs who talk to customers all day are at a disadvantage. Customers won't tell you what they're really thinking while you're selling them and/or delivering your services. You have to ask them what they think when you're NOT selling them, and you have to ask them in a way that makes it easy for them to tell you what you need to know (the appendix of my book tells you exactly how to do this).

You can keep yourself busy all day and still go out of business, if you're not doing these four essential things. I'd recommend a note next to your computer that says: "What do they want? How do they want to find out about it? Are we delivering on our promises? What did we learn from customers today?"