Making Good Decisions

The decisions you make every day can change your life and business success instantly, and quite often these decisions won’t just affect you, but also others working with you.

For example a decision not to attend a networking event, could cost you £1m! You ask why? Well if you had attended the event, you might have met a new contact that could have helped you secure a new contract £1m deal.  It’s seems crazy, but it’s true, business success is often about who you meet.

How do you confidently weigh up how to spend your time and money each day? Could you back up the reasons for your decisions if someone asked you?

It’s important in business to make the right decisions and quite often we make rash decisions as we are too busy doing too many other things. We can often be caught up in the day to day operations rather than making decisions with the bigger picture inmind.

So within this article we suggest you reflect on all of the following factors – strategic, evidence based, emotional and financial factors when making just one decision, and we’ve used a particular case study to help demonstrate our points.

Example Decision to Be Made - You are invited to attend a 2 day exhibition which would cost you £2000. You are told it will attract 10,000 people and give you the presence to sell your product/service…what would you do?

Strategic Decision Making – What are your goals for the business this month or this year? Will this decision help you achieve these goals? What impact could this decision have on your business success? Will you have another opportunity to make this decision again or is it a one off?

One decision is often part of a bigger decision, so it’s important to weigh up how this one decision competes with the alternative decisions you could make to achieve your end goal? You need to assess each decision against the evidence, financial reality and emotional intuition to see which option weighs up best overall.

e.g. You have £2000 to spend in your marketing budget, so how do you decide how to spend it? Do you spend it on magazine advertising, a newly optimised website, networking, cold calling or attending this exhibition.  Do you know which marketing medium will help you achieve the sales and profile you want? What methods do your competitors use to sell successfully? 

You need to decide how to spend your time and budget based on the evidence and financial assessment of each option, as this will give you the emotional confidence to say yes or no.

Evidence Based Decision Making – Do you have enough detail and evidence to make a decision? What questions are you still asking yourself about the situation? What facts and figures do you need to justify the decision to yourself and others?

People are often worried about making a decision and can take weeks to decide, and quite often it’s down to them not having enough information. It’s always better to ask for more information than to make the wrong decision.

e.g. What can exhibitors tell you about the success of the event from previous years?  Are your competitors already signed up to exhibit at the event? Do you have all the statistics on the profile of potential attendees? Are the people attending this event matched to your client profile for a certain product/service you sell? Are you confident that your clients would typically buy at an exhibition like this?  

Emotional Decision Making – Do yourely on your gut instinct to do something?  Do you just do what feels right?  What has been the outcome when you’ve gone against a better judgement?  

Some people just rely on their emotions to make quick decisions, but we would suggest you only rely on your emotions once you’ve assessed all of the other factors relating to strategy, evidence, and finance.  We believe you can make a much better emotional decision once you have all the facts and figures to hand, as only then can you make the decision with absolute emotional confidence.

e.g. Sales people are brilliant at making you feel good.  They tell you how good your brand is and how amazing it would be to have you exhibit; the attendees would definitely like to see what you have to offer.  They’ll offer you a prime position which will ensure you’ll get maximum profile.

By the time you’ve heard this, your excited and you can feel and visualise yourself being there.You can see the success and the result of everyone knowing about your brand.  This feeling makes you want to yes without assessing everything else, so at this point you need to halt the reigns and start assessing the other factors to make the right decision. 

Financial Decision Making – What is your budget breakdown – what money do you have available and how have you planned to use it based on your market research?  Do you have budget available to invest inthis decision? If not, how would this financial decision impact on other areasof the business? What is the potential return on investment? What evidence do you have to back this up?

e.g. How much is your marketing budget and how have you planned to spend it? Do you have £2000 to spend on this event out of the budget, and what is the potential return on investment from the evidence you’ve found out? How else could £2000 be spent and what would be the comparative return on investment? What is the real cost of exhibiting at the event? E.g.manpower, marketing material, preparation time etc. How many products would you need to sell to make it worthwhile? How confident are you in achieving this?

As a result of assessing all of these factors above, you should have the necessary evidence to confidently support and make your important business decisions everyday.

The reality is that a decision to attend a particular networking event could be just as important as a decision about spending £2000 on a marketing medium, once you way up all of the different factors involvedand aligned them with your overall goals. We’ll leave you with that one to think about…

Article written by Heather Wilkinson

Striding Out Managing Director and Business Coach

Need Help?

If you would like to talk through a particular decision or plan how to implement this decision making framework into your everyday life, the none of your business coaches would be happy to assist.

If you are interested in business coaching, please email coaching@stridingout.co.uk stating your geographical location and we’ll ask a business coach to contact you. We can also advise you on possible funding options to help you cover the costs of coaching.