How to Systematically Work on Your Best Profit Opportunities and Never Miss a

Thing.

After a brief break, I am back to share the latest Tuesday Profit Tip.

If you are like me, you may use the end of the year to reflect on your business

and set some goals for the coming year. And since you are obviously a

“learning” oriented person, you have no shortage of “good ideas”. If fact, the

list is probably overwhelming.

So how do you get your arms around all of these “good ideas” and organize them

so that you are working on your most important ideas first, and at the same

time not lose track of the ones you really want to get to sometime this year?

Tons of Great Ideas, But Where to Start?

Well, I created a workshop called the Hierarchy of Opportunities to achieve

just that. And at several 2, 3, and 4 day seminars, I have guided participants

through this process to help them prioritize all the great ideas they just

digested in 30-40 jammed packed hours.

In summary, you rank your opportunities (projects) A, B, C and then prioritize

the “A’s”,1, 2, 3 etc., using you own set of criteria (i.e. Cost to implement,

risk etc.).

But How Can I Immediately Recall My Best Ideas?

As I created my Hierarchy list, it got me thinking about how I could organize

these opportunities to ensure that we stayed on track and focused on the things

that we had deemed as priorities, as well as realistically implementable. Plus,

I did not want to forget about several ideas that I just had no time to get to

in the near future. This led me to create this simple but incredibly powerful

tool, The ProfitMap.

The ProfitMap is a graphic display of your business opportunities - all on one

single page. Personally I like to create one for each of the three primary

business areas.

Maximizing the Transactional Value of Every Customer/Client/Patient
Developing a SYSTEMATIC New Client Acquisition Process
Management - Mastering Implementation & Execution
To create your ProfitMap, you simply make a circle on the center of a page and

then draw a branch for each “opportunity” off the circle. I use a MindMap by

www.mindjet.com to create my maps. Click here to see a simple sample of a

ProfitMap.

Then you make a few branches off each of these primary branches (like a tree)

to capture any keys thoughts about that opportunity. And then you label the

priority i.e. A-1. I like to put the expected profit impact there as well.

So create your ProfitMap now and you’ll never lose your great ideas again!

The Profit Map Workshop

If you are a member of the www.SmallBusinessGrowthClub.com then you can listen,

and participate in the entire workshop of ProfitMaping, complete with examples

from real companies like yours. Simply go to

www.smallbusinessgrowthclub.com/members/login.cfm?hpage=169.cfm

It’s ALL about implementation! So focus on effectively implementing this

procedure this week and watch your performance improve.