Success Comes After You Ask the Right Questions
If “Success” is your answer, what are the questions?
What questions must you ask yourself if this is going to be your best year yet?
Ask — and respond to — these questions, and you can create your Roadmap to Riches for 2007:
/ What are your financial goals for 2007?
/ What are your other business goals for 2007?
/ What are the five major challenges facing your business?
/ Who do you see as your major competitors?
/ What is the target market you need to penetrate in order to meet your goals? (Be as specific as possible)
/ How many of your current and/or past clients can afford to pay the kind of money you need to make to reach your financial goals?
/ How would your current clients respond if you were to significantly increase your fees?
/ What are five groups within your target market you would like to network with and speak to?
/ What are five publications within that market you would like to be featured in?
/ Which allied professionals (builders, realtors, etc.) could best help you achieve your goals?
/ Who has been your most lucrative client –and what’s been your most lucrative project – thus far in your career? (Try to recall as many details as possible about both.)
/ What 2-3 marketing strategies have worked best for you in the past?
/ What part of your business now is the most lucrative?
/ What part of your business now is the least lucrative?
/ What do you see as your 3-5 key “Onlys?”
/ What are your three major accomplishments thus far as a design professional?
/ What are the perceptions of you as a design professional?
/ What would it take for you to communicate with more confidence and become a more effective self-promoter?
/ How would you describe your feelings when you have to explain and/or justify your fees?
/ Do you have a strategy for handling difficult clients? If so, explain.
/ What do you consider to be your five “Questions from Hell?” (Questions you have the most difficulty answering)
/ How many hours do your work per day? Per week? Would you like to increase or decrease these numbers?
/ What are five major tasks that you would like to delegate to others?
/ What would you like your business to look like 3, 5 and 10 years from now?
