Stage 6 of the 2010 Tour de Profit is the last stage related to your Value Proposition. If you’ve been doing your work, you now have your Value Proposition well defined. Your current customers have helped you think about the value you deliver in terms of the feelings they get when they do business with you. And you’ve taken their advice and lined up your internal processes to deliver those feeling each and every time you interact with a client or prospect.

Good for you! Your efforts in these first 5 stages of the race are setting you up to shift gears, move faster and exert less energy as the 52 stage race continues on. But, before we leave the Value Proposition subject, there is one last piece of work for you to do. You need to ask yourself three very important questions:

1) What must I START DOING to deliver my Value Proposition?

2) What must I STOP ALLOWING to deliver my Value Proposition?

3) What must I IMPROVE that I am currently doing today, but need to do it better?

These are critical questions you must focus on and answer in order to make your business better. Many business owners come across new ideas and they simply add them to the many other things that were once priorities in their business. They never take the time to ask these three questions. If they would, their efforts would return the benefits they desire.

START DOING - These should be limited to only a critical few items. Never attempt to totally overhaul your processes. Simply identify the 2 or 3 things that are most important in the delivery of your Value Proposition and add them to your processes. These should be high impact additions. If it does not have high impact, then leave it for another time.

STOP ALLOWING – This is the most critical question of the three. In order to give yourself more freedom and flexibility to make changes, you need to identify those activities that are simply wasting your time and not adding to your value. If you give this some thought, you will absolutely identify activities that you can stop and replace them with those you must Start doing to add more value. Don’t brush this aside. Focus on this hard. There is gold in this question!

IMPROVE – There are things you are doing right today, but maybe just not consistently or in the most professional way. Identify these and take the time to make them better. Give them more of a priority and a commitment. Packaged with those activities you will start doing, and not being crowded out by those activities you are going to stop doing, these will be game-changing improvements for your business.

So, there it is. Stage 6 is as easy as focusing on three critical questions. Then taking the time to make the changes you identify permanent and consistent. You may need to reinforce these new behaviors within your team. They will naturally resist your changes, but if you are committed to success in this Tour de Profit, then you will NOT ALLOW anyone to knock you off course in this area!

Three simple questions…massive improvements in the Value you deliver to your customers! Take the time to focus on this during this stage. Good Luck!

Contact Rich Allen, Business Coach at www.actioncoach.com/richallen or at richallen@actioncoach.com for more information on his business coaching programs.