Some of last year's stress was figuring out where to get business from, how to formulate an effective proposal, how to communicate the value of the service and how to toe the line between asking for the sale and avoiding the hard sell. Each of these challenges were stressful and required a lot of trial and error. These challenges were also enormous hurdles to driving revenue.
This year has been different.
- After reframing my conversation from Social Media to Social Business I've had better conversations that more effectively communicate our service offering, and our prospects are now asking for next steps.
- After putting in years of hard work, learning, reading and tinkering, it's getting easier to explain things, hence my proposals are hitting the mark and we're closing more business.
- After spending time building and nurturing relationships, caring about other people's businesses, and empathizing with other people's life situations I've built a strong network of wonderful people who support me and refer me constantly–literally multiple times per week.
This year the struggle is different. The life cycle of my company is now about learning to grow. There comes a point where there isn't enough time to service clients while continuing to build a pipeline.
Don't get me wrong, it's a great problem to have, but it's still a problem.
This year, opportunity is kicking my door in, now I just have to figure out what to do about it.