4 Sabotaging Habits that Prevent You from Boosting Revenue

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Anne Bachrach, One of Thousands of Business Coaches on Noomii.

As an entrepreneur and business owner, it’s important to recognize how valuable your time is – and how you choose to spend it.

Yes, the bookkeeping is important, and so is voice-mail and email, but those tasks are not directly responsible for generating revenue, and are better left to be managed by someone else.

Are you guilty of focusing on the less important (low-payoff) tasks when you should be actively engaged with the most important (high-payoff) tasks? If you have ever been guilty of this, continue reading to learn four common self-sabotaging habits that keep business owners from the revenue and success they want and deserve.

1. Wasting Time on Low-Payoff Tasks
As the business owner, you are a valuable piece of the revenue-generating and business development puzzle. If you are sitting at a desk spending the majority of your time on low-payoff tasks, you don’t have the time to focus upon the most important part of your business: generating revenue.

Would you hire a $100-an-hour team member to do a $20-an-hour task? Not likely. This is the same reasoning behind why you shouldn’t be the company bookkeeper or receptionist. (This is not to say that these tasks are not important, but they are not directly related to driving immediate revenue; hence, they are low-payoff tasks).

Your sole focus should be upon the high-payoff tasks, aka. the revenue-generating tasks. All low-payoff tasks should be completely removed from your schedule and delegated to a virtual assistant or team member so you can focus your energy on the high-payoff tasks.

TIP: Doing log payoff activities are what I call revenue generating avoidance activities. You may not like doing some revenue generation and business development activities, but you may be the best and maybe the only person to do it and get it done.

2. Ignoring High-Payoff Tasks
Do you know what you need to be doing to boost revenue – but you’re not doing it or doing it on a consistent basis? Perhaps the fear of doing tasks outside your comfort zone is stopping you from doing the very thing that will make all the difference in your business revenue and ultimate success?

Let’s be clear: if you own your own business, you must become very astute at recognizing, and completing, the high-payoff tasks or you will soon be out of business.

Let’s say you’re the creative genius type; the sales part of your business isn’t your thing. You could hire a sales team to help drive in some sales, but at some point you’re going to have to tackle the very thing that scares you. It takes courage to step out of your comfort zone and conquer the things that scare you, but you can do it. To help conquer the fear, focus on the process of learning how to master your craft. Just as you mastered the creative genius, you can master the business development and revenue generation, too.

TIP: Mastering your high-payoff tasks is more important than you think because once you master the high-payoff tasks; you are in a much higher probability position to achieve your goals in the time frame you have set.

3. Lacking Intimate Knowledge of Your Business
In this case, ignorance is not bliss. In order to create a successful, profitable business, you must have intimate knowledge of your business (including where the majority of your revenue originates or could originate). If you don’t – you’re going to continue to struggle with generating the level of revenue you want and deserve.

Get to know your business as intimately as you would a partner, learning its quirks, perks, strengths and weaknesses. Accentuate the strengths, while committing to work on the weaknesses. Commit to continual learning so you are on top of potential opportunities. Technology advancements move fast and you need to keep up to stay in the game.

TIP: Think of your business as a valuable partner: the more you know about it, the better you can maintain a healthy relationship. Explore what makes it tick, where it could use some extra help or counseling, and commit to being the best partner you can.

4. Failure to Follow-Up
Although it’s mentioned lastly here, failure to follow-up is one of the top self-sabotaging habits in business. Sometimes the only thing separating you from a new or repeat client is the follow-up. A simple email or phone call could boost business revenue with little effort.

Essentially, it comes down to letting a prospective client know how you can help them – and asking for the business. Personalized follow-up can be time consuming when not managed properly, so create automated systems to follow up with every lead, prospect and client that comes into your world. From collecting business cards to building your mailing list from website visitors to staying connected to past clients – everything point of contact should have a follow-up system.

TIP: Create a Tiered-Follow-Up System. For instance, let’s say the first follow-up or follow-ups to “cold” leads could be labeled 1st Tier that can be delegated to a virtual assistant or team member. If your personal attention is requested or required at a later time, the follow-up could be escalated to 2nd Tier that’s handled personally by you. Reserve your personal attention for only the ideal prospects, all other low-payoff follow-up should be automated or handled by staff.

Don’t let the demands of running your own business distract you from success. Be aware of sabotaging habits that prevent you from boosting the revenue necessary to take your business, and life, to the next level. Growing your business is often a lesson in letting go and focusing. It’s about letting go of the low-payoff tasks so you have the mental space and time to focus on high-payoff tasks.