One of my friends was telling me about a discussion she had with her eighteen-year-old son. They were talking literally about a glass of Dr. Pepper. “Is the glass half full or half empty?” she asked her son. He said he thought she just used the wrong glass. If she had used a smaller glass, then she wouldn’t be thinking is the glass half full or empty. It would be full. This difference in how we look at things makes an important point for businesses when it comes to capacity, staffing, and all the elements of being in business. Perhaps the scale of your business does not match up to the reality of the market you have chosen to serve. Maybe you picked the right market with plenty of opportunity (prospects), but you haven’t been able to capture the market share you wanted due to some internal constraints, like your sales and marketing processes or business systems and processes.

Whether your glass is truly half full or you need a different glass (larger or smaller) depends upon a number of factors including:

  1. The market you serve: the problem you solve or the need you fulfill.
  2. The market message: your brand and how you communicate what it is you do for a customer—I call this the C.O.R.E. message when working with my clients—customers, operations, results and execution. It is the promise you make to the customer and the statement that enables people to identify who your customer is and the benefits (results) you provide them.
  3. The mechanics of the business operations: how you serve the customer and deliver on your promises.
  4. The ability to execute and use your business systems, deploy your team, and do business from identifying prospects to converting the into clients (making the sale) to delivering the solution and getting paid!
  5. External factors: regulations, access to funding, economic factors, and competition.

Whether you need to downsize your operations (get the right size glass) or increase your activities to fill the glass you have depends on your goals, resources, and plan of action. So is your glass half full, or do you need a different glass?

Copyright ©2016 Lea A. Strickland, MBA MA CMA CFM CBM

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