However the first half of the year went for you, the midpoint in the year provides an opportunity to review the experience of the first six months, to learn from that experience and then to take the necessary action to achieve even greater results in the second half of the year.
Here is a quick, simple and effective technique that you can apply as an individual, team and organisation to achieve greater results.
Consider the following questions
Looking back at the first six months of the year:
- Which aspects of your approach to attracting new clients, customers, sponsors or funding worked well for you that you should do more of in the second half of the year?
- Secondly, which elements of your approach to attracting new business didn’t work so well that you need to change; and
- Thirdly, for each of the elements that didn’t work so well, outline what you are going to do differently
In considering these questions, look in particular at the way you went about developing new business i.e. the method and process that you used. For example, in prospect approaches, meetings and presentations, identify what you did in those that went well compared to those that didn’t turn out as you planned.
The benefit of asking these questions
Irrespective of the external environment which you can’t control such as interest rates, oil prices and business confidence, you can take control of your own actions to achieve greater results.
To that end, the more that you can identify and distinguish between your effective and ineffective processes the greater your opportunity to focus your attention on areas that will create the most impact for you.
The impact of not asking these questions
If you don’t take the opportunity to learn from your experience, other things being equal, you will achieve the same result in the second half of the year as the first.
If you had a good first six months, you might want more of the same, but why limit yourself to that which you have already achieved?
If your year to date has not been so good, failure to learn from your experience could make for a tough remainder of the year.