So you are on your merry way to conquer the world with your plan. Best strategies come with a clear target. Finding the proper focus of things is of paramount importance. To analyze if your diabolical scheme is a good one, some tools are needed.

Back in the 70’s a Boston based business hacker known as Mr. Henderson deviced a tool for strategy and portfolio analysis. This tool we called “The Matrix”. Do you want to know, what it is?

The Matrix is a tool to analyze business and product lines and has four categories as follows:

• Cash cows: high market share in a slow-growing industry. Mature and sustainable products or businesses that generate more money than is needed to maintain it.
• Dogs: low market share in a mature, slow-growing industry. Dogs are “break even” -businesses at best or consume more money than they bring in.
• Question marks: low market share in a high growth market. Most businesses start with typically with a Question mark -product or service.
• Stars: high market share in a fast-growing industry. Stars are the Question marks that have survived the market trial-by-fire. They have potential, but often require high funding to fight competition and maintain a good growth rate. The goal is to turn a Star into your next Cash cow.

In life cycle analysis they look like this:

The Pareto law also states that 80% of results come from 20% of effort. This might mean 80% of your sales come with 20% of products. If you’re trying to boost sales, focus on things that bring in customers: lead generation, sales calls, marketing. Not on cleaning the windows, vacuuming, arranging coffee cups or just sitting in your volcano lair refreshing the sales inbox every 5 minutes.
Start focusing on stuff that creates the most bang!

 

Identify your businesses and evaluate, under which category they fall.

• Which of your Question mark products or businesses have the potential to grow into a Star and graduate into a Cash Cow?
• Which ones are turning into Dogs? Are you holding on to an old, bad business for sentimental or other reasons?

Evaluate your tasks and routines. Are your daily tasks directed to reaching out to new customers and making sales or are you focusing on useless things?
The ability to clean windows is insignificant next to the power of the close.