Knowing how to write good copy.
Managing staff.
Building rapport with prospects.
Sales skills.
Understanding accounts.
Marketing.
Being open to Internet marketing.

And those answers will probably be influenced by their own area of expertise because they believe that their skill is the key to your business success.  That’s a fair position but you need to think about who is giving you the answer.

The problem is that not humanly possibly to be good at all of those so something has to be sacrificed which ultimately is better business results.

How about this as the key skill?

Decision making.

Al of the skills I gave above you can have done by other people – your staff, contractors or expert agencies.  In fact, you should probably have them all done by external suppliers so you can concentrate on your strategy and talking with customers.

But how do you have them undertaken by others?

By making the decision to do so.

Just decide.

I want more sales.  I want better staff relations.  I want more marketing.

And then find someone to do it for you.

I had an example this week.

Someone rang a client of mine asking how they had got such a good position in Google.  He referred her to me.  We chatted about her situation – she already had a good basic SEO in place but hadn’t got any results yet.  Sometimes you just need patience because it takes time for Google to find sites.

So we were able to talk about the next level for her, not just waiting for people to come to her site but actively going out and getting among people looking for her type of material. I call it marketing off-site.  More on that next week.

It’s the difference between having a shop, hoping people will walk in or sending out flyers, running ads and issuing press releases. You have to actively market your business online, not just wait for people to come to your site.

I gave her a proposal on Monday, we spoke early Wednesday. By midday, she decided to go ahead.

And the result?

Instead of hoping people would come along to her site and maybe see some articles she has written, she now a small part of her has her knowledge in 50 different locations where people are actively looking for material and articles that they can use in their own publications.  You can imagine how much more likely it is that people will find her work now.

She has plenty more material so over time, she will build a huge number of contact opportunities out on the Web.

Plus she also now has 50 links into her site. (Links account for 80% of the ranking of a website).

That’s the power of decision-making.

Making decisions is hard
Decision-making is like any other activity.  The more you do it, the easier it becomes.

Try this exercise.

Stand still, move quickly to one-side and then immediately try changing direction.

Now do the same thing but this time start off by bouncing on your toes or swaying from side to side.

See how much easier it is to change direction when you are moving?  It’s the same with decisions.  If you are in the mind-set of deciding, it’s easier to change to a different tactic.

What if I make the wrong decision?
If you do happen to make a decision that doesn’t give you the results you wanted, when you are in decision-mode, you can easily make another one to do something else.

Teddy Roosevelt, former US President, said,
“In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”

So, what decisions have you been putting off?  Make a decision today to do something that will take your business forward.

Technorati Tags: action-taking, Internet marketing, Marketing