Winning In The Era Of “Meritocracy” – Business Trends November 2023

Running a business is really different right now in this current ecosystem than it was six years, a year, or even two years ago.

I’m gonna explain what I’m seeing in this video.

So across all of the clients I work with, across the nation, and across various industries, I’m seeing this pattern emerge.

When I see these patterns like to share them with my clients so they can be more aware of what’s happening across the ecosystem versus maybe what’s just them and a specific issue that THEY are facing.

What Business Trend Am I Seeing Right Now?

What I’m seeing right now is that business is changing really, really drastically.

COVID And The Post-COVID Era

We just survived the COVID era of things and the post-COVID period, and there were some changes that happened.

So prior to COVID business was “okay”. It could be difficult to be successful in some ways, but it was possible.

The meritocracy was working to some degree, meaning that the better businesses had a chance to succeed and to rise to better and better positioning.

There were some entrenched businesses that made that somewhat hard, but that will always be the case.

COVID happened basically the entire deck got shuffled up, and everything changed.

The workforce changed and money problems changed.

Post-COVID, there were employment issues – people trying to hire people and get that process going.

The New Era

Now, interest rates have gone a bit crazy so some economic crunch has been felt.

Now student loans have gone back to where payments are being activated, and some general financial concerns about various reasons seem to have slowed the spending.

What this means is that money that was easy for businesses to get from their clients in the past has become much, much harder.

That money that they used to not think twice about paying for a business to do something – now the consumer is hanging on to that dollar much, much harder.

How To Win In The New Era Of Business

Three elements must be on point to win in this new era.

1. Meritocracy
2. Systems and Processes are essential
3. Sales Approach

1.) Meritocracy

Meritocracy is in full effect.

This is going to be a survival-level event happening.

This means that if you’re not doing a good job of running a good business in an ethical way that’s going to be happy customers, you are at a high chance of failing.

2.) Systems And Processes Are Key

Systems and processes are going to be really really key to having that reliable, consistent service.

Consumers have recently been fairly forgiving.

I have talked to many people who have tried to hire general laborers for example to come in and do work, and they called 8 different companies and no one even called them back. Or two did call back and then didn’t even show up to the appointment time…

That’s a common thing that has been going on but the consumers were so desperate for those services they were willing to look past that.

It seems that that is no longer the case.

With these hard-earned dollars becoming harder and harder to hang onto, consumers are much more discerning about who they’re giving their money to.

These consumers also remember how they were treated when the business had all the power and there is some bitterness and lack of trust towards some businesses that needs to be built back!

So first of all, it is a meritocracy. You need to be really focused on being better than your competition

Secondly, It is going to be much harder to just run your business overall.

So you need to make sure you have the systems and processes in place and financial education and you are doing each thing very, very well.

3.) The Sales Approach

Make sure that your sales process is really really good.

What I mean is that you have competition, so if someone has to call a particular provider you’d like to be able to stand out in that field of providers.

Now your real competition is more either

1. The client doing it themselves
2. Or clients waiting and putting off taking action until sometime in the future

So if you’re offering a product or service, the biggest competition I see now is a customer base who is concerned about their finances, and they may decide to just wait and not do anything and wait six months or a year or forever.

Secondly, customers are asking themself if can they just watch some YouTube videos and do it themselves, read a book, or generally try to figure it out on their own.

That’s the biggest competition that you’re facing.

Your ability to explain to them the benefits of not doing that, and how you can actually help them are really, really key.

There will be no tolerance for tricking people into saying they can help customers, and then not actually delivering on those promises.

Across the board, I’ve seen this type of meritocracy.

This is good in my opinion, because to be honest, a lot of people who were very good at what they did and very good in business have not been rewarded appropriately in the most recent short-term events because of the structure of the ecosystem.

So if you are a meritocracy, focused person doing a good job, keep doing that good job!

Focus On The Fundamentals

If you’ve let the craziness of recent history make you take your eye off the ball and you’ve lost the focus on the fundamentals, now is a time to refocus on those fundamentals.

The fundamentals matter more now than they did a year ago.

And they will keep mattering more and more and more.

So NOW is the time to double down on best business practices.

Make sure everything is tightly put together.

You’ve got this!