Achieving long lasting prosperity in business is easier than you might think.
Sales and profit need to happen constantly, hopefully without you having to do all the work.
You need some form of automated continuity income, you need systems in place to create structure, to show you where gaps might be and to allow other people to do the work.
You need to keep money and spend less than you get.

Still businesses that seem to have these things in place disappear every day. They followed these steps, some were prosperous for some time but eventually faded away.

Why is that?

Today in order to achieve long lasting prosperity in business you need to understand consumer’s wants, needs and behavior and need to pay attention to 3 very important elements.

We call these 3 elements the PAT model.

P stands for Positioning. Your business not only needs to be well positioned in the market, it needs to be aligned to what the market wants. Strong positioning is crucial in this new economy. Unfortunately, entrepreneurs tend to spend a lot more time thinking about tools and channels they can use to promote their business and not how they should position their business in the market. They don’t think enough about the purpose of their business and most of the time just try to follow the perceived leader in that category which is, to say the least, foolish. The consumer already has framed who the leader in that segment and will not change this story in their mind just because you want to. A wiser action would be to position your business in a piece of the segment where there is no perceived leader.

A stands for Attention. Most entrepreneurs using channels like social media or even traditional advertising are really fighting for visibility. As good as visibility can be, without the attention from the consumer, nothing happens. What is the use of 1 million followers on Twitter if no one is paying attention to what you are saying.
In order to get attention from your market you need to create an irresistible business. This also has a lot to do with positioning.
You need to have a higher purpose for your business. One thing the recession made very clearly to all of us is that we don’t need stuff and we don’t need businesses that are about nothing.

Attention has a lot to do with you understanding the story already in the mind of the consumer and placing your business in a frame that can be part of that story. You will not change the story in the consumer’s mind, you will frame your services or products to be part of that story.

T stands for Traction. We make money when people take action. So, we need to get traction with our market to motivate them to take action not only once but several times during a period of time. The first two steps we talked about need to be in place in order to get traction. No strong positioning, no attention from the market equals no traction or action.
You need to have systems in place where you can constantly communicate with your market, motivate them, keep them interested in what you do and keep them buying over and over from you. It is your job to keep them buying, it is not about hoping, it is about systems and channels to keep them motivated and don’t forget to innovate every now and then.
You need to innovate in order to keep attention and traction.
Add a hint of entertainment and you have a wonderful combination.

Here are a few questions you need to answer to see if you have this PAT model in place in your business?

What is the higher purpose of your business?

What business are you really in?

What is the end result or what do they become by working with you?

What is the story you are telling? Even more important: Are you telling a story? We all need to become good business storytellers. There is a good reason traditional advertising is not working.

Do you have follow-up systems in place?

Do you have continuity income?

Are you irresistible to your market? We have a lot of blog posts only on this very important point.

If you don’t have good answers to most of these questions, it is time to take action and work on these 3 points. Action is the keyword here. Not the kind of thing you can keep waiting to work on later.