This article is based on the following book: Turbo Strategy 21 Powerful Ways to Transform Your Business and Boost Your Profits Quickly By Brian Tracy AMACOM, 2003 ISBN 0814471935 160 pages

This article is based on the following book:
Turbo Strategy
21 Powerful Ways to Transform Your Business and Boost Your
Profits Quickly
By Brian Tracy
AMACOM, 2003
ISBN 0814471935
160 pages

Businesses are run mostly on auto-pilot and any problem
areas are only dealt with when they are already critical,
but by then it may already be too late. Most business
managers are too busy with the day-to-day work to sit back
and look at the business critically in terms of its context
and the direction it is going. Brian Tracey's Turbo
Strategy provides a checklist of areas that should be
regularly examined by all businesses to ensure that it
remains on the right path towards success and profitability.

In the book, the author introduces practical techniques
that will help you come up with strategies and more
importantly turn up profit quickly:

1. The answers have changed – most businesses operate the
way they do because they are “tried” strategies, not
because it is efficient and profitable.
2. Flexibility is essential – from time to time, it is
important to take a step back and reevaluate the situation,
then do something about it.
3. The one true measure – two basic questions you need to
ask everyday “What is working?” and “What is not working?”

Conduct a Basic Business Analysis
Whenever you go in for a complete medical exam, the doctors
and nurses follow a set procedure. In the same way, there
are basic business examination questions that you need to
ask and answer continuously to determine the overall
health of your organization. Remember the following:

a. The Customer as Centerpiece.
b. Determine What You Sell.
c. Define Your Competitor.
d. Set Clear Goals.

Design Your Ideal Future
Practice Idealization. To do this you must think of what
your company would look like five years from now if
everything were perfect. Then think in terms of
possibilities. Are the goals you set achievable in five
years?

Create a Mission Statement and Determine Your Values
A mission statement is essential to an organization
because it gives meaning and purpose to the people in
their daily activities and work. It inspires loyalty,
commitment and become a key factor when making business
decisions and when you are clear then you can easily
revisit your mission statement and follow its
guidelines.

Select the Right People
The two key qualities in finding the best people are
that they can be counted on to get the job done well
and to get it done on time. Another quality is that
they should be good team players.

Market More Effectively
The four essential elements of marketing are:
specialization, differentiation, segmentation, and
concentration. All marketing elements are important
but you should constantly evaluate what you are doing.
Remember that the market is changing and changing fast!
You may have to change one of your strategies or more
than one at the same time.

Analyze Your Competition
You have to know your competition. You have to find out
why the customers buy from them, what values and
benefits do they get from buying from them. The biggest
mistake you can make is to belittle your customers. You
have to study them and learn from them.

Three Potential Areas of Superiority

1. Operational Excellence
2. Lead the Field
3. Be Close to the Customer

Change your Marketing Mix

1. Product – define your product or service in terms of
what it “does” for your customers.
2. Price – be open to the possibility that you may have
priced your products or services wrong.
3. Promotion – this encompasses everything you do in
the process of marketing, advertising and sales.
4. Place – this is the location where the sale of your
product takes place.

Position Your Company for Success
Social proof is a major influencing factor to determine
whether or not people buy your products or services.
Your reputation is the value that people will pay for.
Building a brand trust requires personal experiences by
people with your products or services. It is very
much like a personal reputation that takes a long time
to build but can be damaged or destroyed overnight with
bad decisions.

Develop Strategic Business Units
The strategic business unit concept revolutionized
multi-product or multi-service businesses; each of the
products is grouped with similar products or services in
different ways. The starting point of implementation is
to have someone specifically responsible for the
operations and results of the unit. To make this work,
you begin by drawing up a complete business plan that
would include sales revenue, costs and profitability.

Sell More Effectively The fact is that 80 percent of your
markets have not yet been approached by your salespeople.
No one has told them about you. Your business could be
probably being selling twice as much if you could just
find out how to sell it to them.

Eliminate the Bottlenecks
There are two important steps that you need to take. First,
decide on your specific business goals; make them clear,
measurable and time-bounded. The next step is asking the
question: “why am not in that goal already?”

Reengineer Your Company
To simplify and streamline your operations so that it is
more efficient, faster and more effective and therefore
more profitable, you have to reduce the number of steps
in each process. You have to simplify the processes and
make faster and better decision.

Pump Up Your Profits Conduct a complete profit analysis
on every product. You must also remember that labor has
a real “opportunity” cost along with other use of other
resources especially in a multi-product or multi-services
business.

Focus on Results
All your customers care about is results. They do not
care much about your problems with your people, products,
processes or any other aspects of your business.

There are four questions that customers answer before
buying the product or service. These are:

What does it cost?
What do I get for the money?
How fast do I get the benefits you promise?
How sure can I be that I will get those benefits?

Seven Steps to Personal Performance

Step 1: Set clear, specific, written goals for each
important area of your business. Make them measurable
and time-bound.
Step 2: Make a list of activities before you begin a day,
put it on paper. The best time to do this is before you
go to bed so the subconscious mind can work on your list
as you sleep.
Step 3: Set priorities on the list you made. Apply the
80/20 rule and select the top 20 percent of your tasks
to work on.
Step 4: Practice creative procrastination. Since there
are only 24 hours in a day, decide in advance which of
those tasks have little value or importance can you do
away with.
Step 5: Select the one most important job and have the
discipline to accomplish that first thing.
Step 6: Practice single-handling with the most important
task you have identified. Resolve to work on it until it
is resolved.
Step 7: Develop a sense of urgency. The faster you move,
the more work you get done and the better you feel. This
will create momentum.

By: Regine P. Azurin and Yvette Pantilla
http://www.bizsum.com
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About the Author

Regine Azurin is the President of BusinessSummaries.com, a company that provides business book summaries of the latest bestsellers for busy executives and entrepreneurs.