This weekend my fiance and I went to get our motorcycle license. We enrolled in a weekend course where you do three days of instruction followed by a road test. My fiance got a perfect score and I racked up four demerit points (you fail if you get 12 points or more). Throughout the weekend I was thinking about what business lessons could be learned from this experience and came up with my top four:

1) Get expert help.

By taking the course we learned from people who have been riding motorcycles for years. They told us how to operate them and what to watch out for. By absorbing the information from their experiences we were able to cut the learning curve down dramatically and be proficient at riding a motorcycle despite having no previous experience ourselves.

The same applies for your business. If you are trying to grow a company there are going to be many challenges that you will face where it will be brand new to you. This is the perfect time to bring in an expert to help. It could be in the form of a consultant, a joint venture partnership, an investor, or a new employee. You cannot do everything yourself and if you try it will take you too long to figure it out to do it properly. Know what you are good at and focus in on those strengths. Find experts to come in and surround yourself with so that you can tackle the challenges ahead effectively. Also consider creating a board of advisors to help you focus on the big picture and give you solid advice on building a company.

2) Listen to your peers.

In our particular course we had 40 students and eight instructors. That means five students to each instructor and made it impossible for you to always get the undivided attention of the instructors. The students, however, learned from each other. A number of the mistakes that I was making were pointed out by my fellow students and it helped me progress.

In the business world the same logic applies. You cannot be isolated and operate in a vacuum. By listening to those around you - customers, suppliers, investors, partners, etc you are more likely to know how to improve your product or service to best meet the needs of the market. Attend trade shows, read the important publications about your industry and follow trends through services like Google News. Also consider talking to your indirect competition. You might be able to co-operate on a few projects and they can likely give you valuable information that can help you better target your clients.

3) Trust your instincts.

No matter how much the instructor tells you to do something, you don’t really learn how to ride a motorcycle until you get on it and start riding. A lot of it comes quite naturally and you need to combine the knowledge you have gained with your instincts to react to different situations.

In the business world you can have all the training and market research in the world but the projects don’t always succeed. There is never enough information to make a proper decision and by the time the information comes to play you have likely already missed out on the opportunity. You need to learn to trust your instincts given the information you have and be prepared to act on it so you can capitalize on the opportunity at hand.

4) Offer incentives to join.

One of the benefits of taking the motorcycle training course that we did is that, if you pass, you get 20% off of your insurance on your motorcycle. The insurance companies recognize the training as something safer drivers do and they give you a break on your payments. That 20% can quickly add up to major savings and help make the training course pay for itself. We even had a number of experienced riders take the course just to get the insurance discounts. It is a great business strategy to tie the program into the insurance companies.

What kind of similar programs could you work out with your company? A good tool to use is to look at where your clients are spending their money before they get to you and after they work with you. What kind of products and services are they purchasing? What are the nice to haves versus the must haves? Once you have created your list, contact the providers of these products and services to try and make a deal together. Ask if you can take their regular referral fee and turn it into a discount for your clients. That way you can use it as a marketing tool to bring new clients into your business.

If your product, for example, costs $500 and you can offer $500 or more in free bonuses or discounts from items that the customer would have to buy in the future anyway, why wouldn’t they sign up with you? A key aspect to keep in mind here is to make sure that what you offer has real value and are those must haves instead of nice to haves. If there is no perceived value then your clients won’t care how high a dollar figure you put on the free bonuses.

I hope you had a fantastic Labor Day weekend!

Evan Carmichael

Evan Carmichael
YoungEntrepreneur.com Blog Manager

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