Best and Highest Use
Despite your hard work and endless hours, your business has stalled.Or maybe that project you were sure was going to take your company to the next level, went to a competitor.What now?
Your choice is obvious - you need to take steps that'll get you moving in the right direction. The first step is to sit down and determine your best and highest use or BHU. Your particular BHU stems from your unique talents and passions, the things that set your business apart and translate into the distinctive solutions you can offer your customers.
Determining your BHU will connect you to the passions and purpose that led you to start your business in the first place. So let's start figuring out just what your BHU is.
Finding Your Passion
What do you love to do? What does your firm do well? Why does anyone buy your products and services? Many owners findit difficult to answer these questions because many businesses do not have a clear reason for being. These businesses subsist rather than succeed, flowing along with one new trend after another until they get caught in a whirlpool.
Without a sense of purpose, owners pursue survival and sales objectives as if these tactics will lead to wealth, long life, and happiness. In contrast, the stars within any marketplace clearly understand their own core competencies and uniqueness and prosper from them.
In its purest form, BHU is the point of convergence between what you love to do and do well and what customers want or need and will pay to get. Don't confuse BHU with the actual products or services you sell; rather, it is the purpose behind the products and services you sell, so it remains a reservoir of energy and ideas that connect you with your customers' changing needs. Best and Highest Use manifests your preferences and talents in ways that fill needs in the marketplace:
So how do you discover your Best and Highest Use? Grab and notebook and pen and do the following:
1. Document your successes
List all the things you do well, practical and impractical. Brainstorm; set a timer for ten minutes and jot down everything that comes to mind, even if it has nothing to do with business. Examine your list several times over the next few days, looking for skills and talents (sung and unsung). Your personal strengths are the power behind the value you offer to customers.
If you are a sole-proprietor or have only a few employees, your personal talents will drive your firm; otherwise, make a separate list of things your company does well, mundane or dramatic.
2. Consider the importance of fun
List the tasks, relationships, and experiences you enjoy, both now and in the past. Look for examples in your personal and professional lives. This enjoyment drives future success, confidence, and self-esteem.
3. Discover what clients, customers and staff like about you
Hire a trusted third-party to talk to your customers and employees. You will get some remarkable feedback.
4. Distill and simplify
Turn your strengths into your message. As Warren Buffett, the world's greatest investor is known for stating, "If I don't understand it, I don't invest in it", and the same can be said about customers.
5. Know your blind spots
Too many businesses are proud of themselves in ways that don't matter. How many customers really care if a business is family-owned or has a 100-year history? Some companies waste millions promoting features and services that are irrelevant to their customers.
6. Synthesise, apply and focus
Work with an objective outsider to put it all together. Take the combination of skills, experience, and expertise and state it in terms of what a customer, prospect, or marketplace wants.
Apply these steps and you will gain new insight into your business and its customers. Customers will notice. The relentless logic of the marketplace demands that you deliver solid value to customers in order to keep them loyal to your business, and as they respond positively your comfort zone will expand.
