Susan Trivers’

Alternatives

Generate

Exceptional

Business Growth

For Your Company

I’ve been hurt by bad advice and profited from

great advice

Name recognition doesn’t guarantee good

advice

Brand power doesn’t make them right

I’m sharing ALTERNATIVES that work

www.susantrivers.com

Best practices:

Institutionalize the past

Blind you to seeing the future clearly

Assume every situation should be addressed

in the same way

Alternative: Customized approaches are the

ONLY way to generate the highest quality

results

Limited reading means you:

Miss developments with broad implications

Fail to discover new applications and

markets for your offerings

Indicate a lazy mind

Alternative: read widely-business, news,

politics, world affairs-to develop your

innovation skills

No risk = no growth

If you only offer what you’ve always offered, you will only sell what you’ve always sold, and eventually you’ll be out of business.

Alternative: Take prudent risk every year

Simply wrong and wasteful!

Alternative: The best innovations and

improvements will come from what is INSIDE

your box

Your expertise

Knowledge of your customers & clients

Your reputation and brand

Adapted for business, this makes no sense

Showing up doesn’t guarantee action or

results

No skills & knowledge gets you nowhere

Demonstrates profound lack of respect for

others.

Alternative: Prepare effectively. When

you’re 80% ready, GO! (Alan Weiss)

I don’t buy this! Plans:

Blind you to both obstacles and opportunities

Become a ceiling where you stop

Increase risk aversion; decrease potential for higher returns

Alternative: Articulate your objectives and work towards them while remaining

responsive to changes in the environment.

In fact “strategic planning” simply sets a new goal based on current numbers. It does not help you design your ideal future state

Alternative: begin with correct definitions:

Strategy states what your offer is and who it is marketed to

Planning guides your operations (How)

Spend 1 day/year articulating your driving force, one week creating operating plans,

and the rest of the year on execution.

Anyone who promotes this is a charlatan.

Limited experiment by Mehrabian is not applicable to any business situation

Alternative: Invest in your language skills

Language is: •persuasive, • influential

• informative • inspirational • analytical

• historical • imaginative • evocative and much more.

USE Language!

Charging by hour is:

Unethical (client benefits from speed, you benefit from sloth)

Incorrectly imputes intrinsic value to time. (This is true only for very routinized work)

Makes you a commodity subject to price competition

Alternative: Think and speak only about outcomes—Value–and charge

commensurate with the value you provide.

When you discount or do “Free” you never

get back what you gave up.

You train buyers to wait for discounts, either

yours or your competitors.

As soon as you end the discount or charge,

your buyers will look elsewhere

Alternative: Always, always deliver high

value and the fair (full) price will be easy

to sell.

Susan Trivers has applied every alternative to many medium and small businesses.

Growth is continuous

Every consulting/coaching/mentoring engagement is customized to focus on achieving your objectives in the shortest possible time. Contact Susan today at:

www.susantrivers.com

susan@susantrivers.com