Lakeland Business Owners: What is important to your business?
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It’s time to take a step backward and gain perspective on this whole “business” idea.
I examine several companies in Lakeland every day to evaluate their position in our economic community. Some are wildly successful in their field and very profitable. Some are struggling. And some have recently gone out of business. As a resident of Lakeland and a small business owner myself, I depend on the success of our community in order to survive and thrive personally and professionally. As a matter of fact, it’s Polk County and the State of Florida, too.
Cypress Gardens just went out of business. Closed. No more visitors. No tourists to spend their money along Cypress Gardens Boulevard shops and restaurants. More jobs gone. More county and state taxes gone. The Butterfly effect will ripple through Winter Haven to Auburndale to Lake Wales to Bartow to Lakeland and beyond.
The problem with Cypress Gardens, as with so many businesses here, is perspective. What is important to YOUR business? Go ahead – make a list. I’ll wait.
Ask most business owners this fundamental question and you’ll usually get these responses: location, product or service, management, cash-flow, traffic, the economy, employees, customer satisfaction, overhead, pricing and market share. Sure, all those things are important to achieving business success. There is a crucial factor that most of us don’t really consider and it may be the MOST basic and important reason business succeed or fail: communication.
A basic college degree generally requires a communication class and I have taught many, many classes. I always start off with a simple definition of the communication process.
Communication requires a sender to form a message and deliver it through a channel to a receiver who must provide a response. Think about it. Does any business get done unless that happens? You can’t get a location or employees or a bank account or a loan or customers or market share or profits without communication. It doesn’t matter if you are a plumber or air conditioning company or a dentist or an attorney or Wal-Mart. How and what and when and to whom you communicate will determine your business success on a very basic level. What is important to your business?
Your business depends on your ability to send the right message to the right audience at the right time in the right way to get them to take the action you want. Who is going to be more successful in business: an owner who communicates well or one who does not? How well you communicate is going to determine your sales and your profits (or losses). If you’re not satisfied with your profits (I’m not), then maybe you need to take a look at that.
Easy question: What is the fastest growing means of communication in human history? You’re right – the internet. How important is THAT to your business? Is your competition taking advantage of internet marketing? Are YOU? Are you getting the response you want from your website? What can you do today to communicate better to improve your business?
I’d be glad to take a look at your website and offer three ideas for improvement at no charge. No strings. The only condition is that your business has to be headquartered in Polk County. Email me at info@radianceroadmarketing.com or call me right now at (863) 668-1086. You may not qualify to be a client, since I only work with a few, select companies, but your business is important to all of us here in Lakeland. I want to help you to succeed.
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