Have you fallen into a comfortable routine of doing business?
It's pretty easy to do. Once you develop a process that works, it's easy to become complacent and just keep doing things the same way. The problem is that we're part of a constantly evolving marketplace. If we don't change to keep up, we'll soon be left behind.
It's a good idea to regularly evaluate what you're doing to be sure it still makes sense. Let me tell you a little story about monkeys.
In a laboratory somewhere near Omaha, some scientists placed three monkeys in a room. In the center of the room they placed a short staircase. At the top, the scientists hung a bunch of bananas from the ceiling.
Whenever a monkey tried to climb the stairs to get the bananas, the scientists sprayed the other two with a fire hose, much to their dislike. After many repeated dousings, the monkeys took to beating the monkey that tried to climb the stairs. Eventually, the monkeys stopped trying to get the bananas, and the scientists put away the hose.
After a while the scientists replaced one of the monkeys with a new one. The original two monkeys violently protested any attempts by the newcomer to climb the stairs, and she quickly quit trying. One by one, the scientists replaced the other two monkeys, leaving no original participants.
As new monkeys were introduced, they in turn were beaten and learned the rules. Although they had never been sprayed or even seen the hose, the monkeys continued beating each other for climbing the stairs.
Why? Because that's the way they'd always done things.
What are you doing that no longer makes sense? How long has it been since you have updated the look of your website? Years? I have recently updated my site to css and gave myself a logo. I am very relieved to have it finished.
Examine your selling process and shake things up a little. Measure what happens. Get a new website template, register a new domain and publicize your new site with some well placed pay per click ads. Make a new banner and trade some links. Optimize your pages and submit them again.
The Internet is the ultimate source for innovation. New web sites, new software and new opportunities are created every day. Investigate them. People are discussing fresh ideas all over the place. Join in.
Read all you can, take some risks and develop new relationships. There's a quote I like to try and remember. It goes something like this...
There are no guarantees that things will improve if you change them, but without change, there can be no improvement.Don't let yourself turn into a monkey.
