"The winner is the chef who takes the same ingredients as everyone else and produces the best results."
--- Edward de Bono
Seeking innovation for improving the bottom line of your business is not a new business success strategy. It has been the secret weapon of industry leaders for centuries. Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, and many other great business leaders depended on innovation to keep their enterprises not only alive, but also thriving.
Your business will naturally become stale and unprofitable without change. Your dictionary probably defines innovation as the act of introducing something new. For your business, it is more than that. It is improving on the products and services you already provide.
"When you innovate, you've got to be prepared for everyone telling you you're nuts."
--- Larry Ellison
If you are selling pet rocks and they sell like crazy every day for three weeks, you could make a bundle. But, if you decide not to innovate or change your product selection, you'd better invest that bundle into some US port management company or something that will make you enough money to survive.
The sign products or services you are providing now will either be obsolete in a few years or your competitors providing the same products will flood your market area. You have to continually think about changing, updating, improving and adding versatility to your product/service line.
"The real source of wealth and capital in this new era is not material things.. it is the human mind, the human spirit, the human imagination, and our faith in the future."
--- Steve Forbes
Change to your product line does not always involve a complete, expensive makeover of your shop. Simply adding a customer checklist to all of your invoices is an inexpensive change that could add to your bottom line. You could create a reminder checklist that helps to market the other products that you offer.
Another quick, inexpensive way to innovate is to empower your installation team to up-sell to your customers while they are on the customer's property. This can be accomplished in a non-intrusive way and gives your business more exposure than just your name in the phone book and your shop traffic.
"Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower."
--- Steve Jobs
If you are finding it challenging to brainstorm innovation ideas, then set aside every second Thursday, or Monday, or whenever to visit the library and read other industry journals and trade magazines. Ideas will come. Keep an idea journal or a tape recorder handy to record your thoughts. Record even the off-the-wall thoughts. Only you will have access to it.
Use these ideas to come up with innovative ways to improve your company's bottom line and to add some spice to the humdrum of your everyday business.
"The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow."
--- Rupert Murdoch
It has been said that the race is not always to the swift… but that is how you should bet. Be slow in developing your innovative changes, but fast in implementing them and you will stay ahead of the pack.
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