Look at this photo …
A brand-new garden gate surrounded by tiny freshly-planted bushes.
Some would say it looks odd.
It DOES look odd … but you can’t fault the optimism of the people who did that.
They know that those bushes will grow over time.
They’ll grow to the height of the gate.
They know it won’t happen quickly.
The gate is the benchmark height to aim for.
The gate is their goal.
This applies in business too.
Some things take time to grow, but you have to start somewhere.
The problem is that people often plant the small bushes without having a goal gate to know they’ve succeeded.
For example, a business knows that their website needs lots more case studies and testimonials.
It’s a time-consuming process that few people look forward to.
So, the business starts sourcing those case studies and testimonials, but they stop after awhile.
They don’t realise that they haven’t created enough of them to make a difference to their website conversions.
They didn’t have a goal to strive for.
Their ‘gate’ could have been a metric such as:
We want 10% of our website visitors to make contact after looking at our service pages.
That goal can be achieved if there’s enough focus on case studies and testimonials (related to those services on the website).
Without that goal gate to strive for, the bushes (case studies in this case) will remain small.
What’s the gate in your business that will keep you focused on growing bushes that make a positive difference?
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