How do you play the game? When it comes to your business, should you be playing more Defense or Offense?
Some of you may say Defense, I need to protect what I have and minimize any risk my business I have already created. Many of you may say “Offense” because I need to develop new clients to grow my business and maximize my upside. Well, I believe both answers are correct. We need to play “defense” to protect our business and relationships and play “offense” to go for growth.
I love NFL Football; throughout the season, both sides of the ball helped teams win games. Our business is like the NFL.
What we have to do is have a game plan and execute it. For example, in the NFL, I will use the Cincinnati Bengals. The coaching staff and players prepare their game plan based on the team they are playing. They make adjustments based on the information they have on their competitors.
The goal of the Defense is to stop the other team from scoring. Both sides of the ball review countless hours of film on their competitors to see the opportunities they can expose. The offense constantly looks for ways to score by adjusting and controlling what they can. In many cases, a great defense wins the game.
How much Defense is in your work day, managing your email inbox and unplanned customer calls with issues, market conditions, and daily distractions that steal valuable time from you connecting with current or new customers? You feel like your day got away from you, and your game plan for growing your business is sitting on the sidelines.
What can you do about that?
You need a complete game! A game plan that allows you to play Defense when necessary and offense to score more clients. You do need to protect the business you created. It took time and energy to develop your business, so you must ensure you do everything you can to protect it. It can become a balancing act.
How do you play offense in business?
An offensive player in business works on tasks that get them closer to scoring and delegates other tasks that get in the way of them reaching their goal. They ignore distractions.
Creating new conversations and introductions for new opportunities will ensure your business keeps scoring. The best news about playing offense is that it is in your control.
So what does your game plan look like today, tomorrow, and this week?
Have you identified certain people from your network that can do an introduction to you?
Have you blocked time on your calendar to identify companies that you can help solve a problem? Focused time with no interruptions?
It’s easy to fixate on all the things out of our control. What I have come to realize over my career is that there are two we absolutely can and should be in all our game plans: our plan and our ability to execute it. The sooner we shift to focusing on those, the sooner we can start playing offense and start scoring new clients and growing our business.
Playing offense, of course, is what your business is all about. Your terms, timetable, innovation, or opportunity to create, and knowing you’re leading the industry and making others course correct or play catch-up.
Keep learning through each experience, adjust your game plan when necessary, and stay aggressive with your approach.
I guess the adage is true: The best Defense IS, in fact, is a good Offense.
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