Catching Opportunities
The key to making the most of opportunities is learning how to recognize the best ones for your business.
You have missed hundreds, possibly thousands of opportunities. Don’t feel too bad about it, though. We all have. In fact, every time we choose to do something, by extension we are choosing NOT to do something else. It’s a fact of life.
The trick is to catch those opportunities that are best for us. Sometimes, we don’t even see them until after they have passed. How many times have you seen what someone else did and said, “Why didn’t I think of that?”
Here is the secret to catching those opportunities before they slip past you: Teach your brain to make connections. Connections between related items. Connections between items that don’t appear to be related. Connections that are “unexpected” to the untrained brain.
Training your brain to make connections will help you to catch opportunities to create new products, package and repackage your products and services to attract new markets, find marketing opportunities others have missed, get publicity, and provide high-quality service to your customers. Plus, it’s fun!
Here are a few exercises to help train your brain:
Go through your Rolodex(tm) or address book. Pick a person at random, and look for connections between the two of you. What do you have in common? How do your differences complement each other? Could you come together for a purpose that would benefit them and you? Don’t stop at the obvious. Could they introduce you to a market you haven’t pursued? What could you do for them? What introductions should you make among the people in your address book?
When you’re surfing the web, look for connections between your business and the sites you visit. Is there a site that offers products or services to the same market you serve? Could you work together to build your businesses? How could your products and services be packaged with theirs?
Work puzzles and play games. I love to work puzzles—word puzzles, jigsaw puzzles, all kinds of puzzles—because they get my brain humming. When your brain is active, you’ll start to see possibilities you didn’t see before. Also, working puzzles gets you to look at things in new ways, from new angles.
Look at a calendar. How can you associate your business with holidays? Can you come up with a promotion for each season, or each month? One web site that sells baby products did a special Valentine’s Day promotion. At first glance, you might not see the connection but, as they say, “We know where babies come from.” Cute!
Get together with a couple of friends, and brainstorm. When you get a freewheeling session going, the ideas are flying and the free associations get made. Bring in a couple of wild and crazy friends, and see what you conjure up!
Learn how inventors do it. David Ayers is a toy inventor who helps others market their inventions, too. One way he suggests as a way to invent new toys is to take two existing toys and combine them. To try this yourself, play his contest at http://www.ayers-concepts.com/contest.htm.
Keep your eyes (and your mind) open for new information and new possibilities. Don’t forget these important words: What if? Use them often, and you’ll catch lots of great opportunities.
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