Red
Yellow
Green
These colors are visible on every stoplight in America.
There are 75 days left this year — less when you exclude holidays, conferences, days off, etc.
If you were to create a year-end/Q4 action list — better yet, if your clients or your team were to create the list — what would be considered red, yellow and green?
Red: Mission critical, long-term ROI/benefits of getting these done, plug holes in client experience/revenue/productivity/profitability and/or improve back-of-the-biz operations. Definitely worth outsourcing or coming in on Saturday mornings to complete.
Yellow: These items would be good to get done. Finish that product you’ve been back-burnering for too long, oil those squeaky hinges, swap out your CRM, hire/outsource for that position, build in recurring revenue streams (could also be a Red item depending on the predictability of your cash flow).
Green: These items would be nice to have and, over time, become more important. They’re the extra step on the extra mile — including some direct mail to your clients, a more compelling opt-in goodie, more frequent connections with your audience. Upleveling/Upserving in new and innovative ways.
Wondering where to start? Take a good look at every client that:
- left your business this year
- said “no thank you” to continuing with you
- didn’t make it to “client” status — a prospect that never followed up or bought
- or every month your business didn’t reach a revenue or profit goal.
Then shine a very bright light on it and, with a no-excuses attitude, objectively determine the reason and if there’s anything to add/tweak/remove in the business that would have alleviated it (the answer will not always be “yes”!).