Basics Win Ball Games

Back to Basics. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The most successful businesses are those that master the basic transactions of their market and execute them with reliability and excellence.

Identify what the core operations are for your market, and what the constituent parts of those operations are. Then ask yourself if you are executing the mun­dane details as well as you are capable of. “Winning” is very often the result of focusing on the little details, and then doing them well again and again.

My current business climbed to the #4 brand in its highly competitive space – from not even being a market player. A big achievement, and something we are very proud of. It came from small beginnings, executed by very small staff when compared to our competitors. We were nobody – literally not even having a website. We changed our ‘nobody’ status by doing 1 or 2 right things every day for a period of about 3 years. The cumulative effect of those small, correct actions was very powerful in that we soon had direct and predictable growth in our core metrics: We were absolutely focused on core operations.The key was to ask this question on a daily basis: “What can we do today that will have an incremental effect for the long term?”

Consider this: the difference between wild success and complete failure may be as small as a 3 percent difference in your performance, run out over a period of years. With this in mind, the little things start to look more and more important.

Excellence starts with basics. If the basic operations of your business are not being handled, then the sexy new stuff, new opportunities, and exciting “next” things will mean much less to you. You have to get the basic current opera­tions down and running well before you spend too much energy grasping for the next big thing.