How vision can transform your business
Feb 12 2008 by Sue Scott, Evening Gazette
LAST week we talked about the common characteristics shared by companies successful in international markets: vision, commitment, focus, research, planning, training, relationship building, quality, adaptation and energy.
We promised that we would look at each of these "top traits" in more detail and outline how you can use them to transform your business.
The first is Vision.This can be defined as: showing foresight and imaginative insight.
It's five years from now. You're standing in reception, about to welcome your best customer for their first visit to your office. What does your reception look like? Where is it? Who's there with you? Who is your customer? How big is the company? How much is the latest order from them? How did you get it?
This process is called visualisation, and successful people do it all the time. Indeed, we all do - most of us spend half our lives imagining the future, I'm sure you've thought about how you would spend a big Lotto win. Successful exporters are no exception.
They daydream, but with one significant difference. While most of us focus on what might go wrong, the successful exporter will focus on what will go right - they visualise success, and the vision tells them how to get there.
Of course, no vision of success can be based wholly on imagination. It needs some basis in fact and successful exporters gather information to populate their vision with details.
This will include information about customers, competitors and suppliers; about culture and language; about legal and financial and political issues; about themselves and the way they perform.
They then apply their skill in visualisation to build that vision. Having built it, they write it down, because they know that expressed visions are more likely to become real than those that exist only in the mind.
So begin by imagining your company as a successful exporter and then take steps to realise that vision.
And one of your first steps should be to contact UK Trade & Investment to find out how its range of services can help.
To find out more, call the North East International Trade Hotline on 0845 05 05 054 or email: enquiries@ukti.rito.co.uk.
