Back onto sport analogies this week, as there seem to be quite a lot of international matches going on at the moment on the football, cricket and rugby (both union and league) fronts. Amongst all the main stories, one of the slightly smaller headlines, which caught my eye, was about the banning of 6 of the Australian rugby union team from playing this week, as they had broken the rules of their team culture. Essentially they had all gone out for a meal midway through last week, but these 6 had decided to ignore the team “rules of the game”, had drunk far too much, and thereby overstepped the line.

As team manager/coach, it must be very tempting to overlook this transgression, as the loss of 6 first choice players in a team of 15, could of course be a major detriment to the side, and could potentially lead to them losing the match. However, the manager has taken the view that he cannot let this sort of thing happen (the thin end of the wedge) and has subsequently punished them accordingly. I for one, applaud his tough stance, as he ran the risk of far worse happening in the future if he did not stick to his guns.

The same thing applies to your business. The temptation to overlook transgressions or even oversights by your staff, in particular those who you might consider key personnel, is indeed strong, but if you do so, you are opening the door to further wrong doings in the future. Once you have lost your integrity over discipline, it is very difficult to pull it back, because you can easily be accused of inconsistency or being unfair.

So create a clear and strong culture in your business, and then make sure you live by the rules you have drawn up. If you don’t, you can be sure that you will have greater problems to live with in the long run.

As everyone knows, you should test and measure your marketing. In other words before you spend large amounts on your marketing campaign, ideally you should do a test or a pilot run wherever possible, so you can get an idea of whether it is likely to bring a decent return on investment.

Furthermore, you should be using a number of different strategies every month, both passive and active, so that if some of your marketing doesn’t work, at least some will, and you will constantly be generating new leads.

One marketing tool which is not quite so clear cut however is networking. I do a fair amount of networking, not as much as the social networkers, but enough to get a good feel for all the different groups which are in and around my area. Some of them are full of energy and vibrant, some are very structured, some are interesting in one way or another, and some are a waste of time. However, in all cases it is often very difficult to judge if you are actually getting a return on investment, after all, it can take a long time to build a trusting relationship with your fellow networkers, so it may be a while before you start to get referrals. But, just because you don’t get direct business from networking, it should not necessarily be a strategy which you drop.

The thing is there are a lot of other things (intangibles) which you can derive from networking, which may be hard to put a value to. The energy you get from a vibrant group, can be enough to give to give you a boost for a day or two, which in turn can help you to convert new leads to become clients. You can learn new and interesting facts, it can make you keep to your commitments, and even make you feel uncomfortable, which in turn is often a sign of self development.

So before you dismiss networking as an expensive waste of time, or general socialising, think carefully about what you can get out of it. After all, you never know who you might meet next.

I love it when my clients get “it”, whatever the “it” might be. Doing a cash flow, carrying out some marketing, writing a business structure, or simply saying something which shows they understand and have changed.

Yesterday I had one such “Eureka” moment, when one of my clients said “I think I should put a day (or an afternoon) aside to work on the things which need to be done a move the business forward. In other words he had realised how important time spent working on, rather than in, the business can be. The trouble is that most people take a long time to take this on board because all they can see is the need to increase their sales, and the only way to do that (as they see it) is to carry out the contracts themselves.

Another client I have recently started working with is a prime example of this, constantly going from feast to famine because they can’t find the time to do more marketing while they are working on a contract, and therefore there is always a lag between money coming in and the next job. In their own words they spend their whole time just “bumping along the bottom” and can never break free to the next level because they are always working in the business and therefore do not have consistently good income month on month.

There is no quick fix for this problem, but simply by understanding that you have a problem and why it exists is a good start. Then at least you can start to do something about it. And if you are not sure how to go about it, why not get in touch, and I can help you take the first steps.