10 Rules to Apply for Results-Driven Inbound Marketing Success

As an agency that works with several industry leaders in media, B2B, and professional services, at LeadG2, we’re focused on driving results through both inbound marketing and sales performance. We believe success isn’t about who has the prettiest website, but about whether your calls-to-action actually convert. It's not about vanity metrics and tracking numbers just to give you numbers, but about actually improving sales results and driving revenue.

To convert and improve revenue at an organizational level you need strategic goals and execution. To executive successfully, you need to establish and practice a results-driven mindset as an individual. 

According to Brian Tracy, a well-known sales training and personal development advocate, if you want to succeed professionally, you really need to zero in on results. He states if you master the high-return tasks then you both expand your job responsibilities and the opportunity for you to drive greater results for your company.

10 Rules for Being Results-Driven 

Improving revenue and results for your company can be achieved by being a results-driven leader. Here are Brian Tracy's 10 rules to focus on.

1. Contribution is Everything

Tracy stresses that companies don’t ultimately set compensation, but that it’s set by you based on the contribution you make. You’ll make what the marketplace dictates as "standard" or you will do something to show why your value exceeds the standard.

2. Don't Bank on Job Security, Build Your Value

"If a person doesn't continually learn and grow, developing skills ever higher (then your value) will decline over time," states Tracy.

You need to update skills and knowledge to deal with changing market conditions and position to better see new opportunities.

3. Connect High-Value Work to High-Value Return

Luck and hard work can go hand in hand, but hard work needs to be done efficiently and at the highest value possible. This includes getting work done on schedule or earlier along with the right quality for best results.

4. Polish Your Personal Brand

If you're your own brand, do you have a good idea of what people say about you if you are not in the room? Do you know, ideally, what you would want them to be saying about you?

"Do everything you can do to improve your reputation and perceived value," Tracy says.

Along with creating strong internal visibility in your company, you are wasting an opportunity in the era of social media if you are not showing yourself in the best professional light through social platforms, especially LinkedIn. It is an important way to establish and enhance personal branding through thought leadership, prospecting, nurturing and recruiting. If you are a sales professional, here are some ways to optimize your profile.

5. Broaden Your Job Boundaries

Identify goals at work that are not being achieved, evaluate ways they can be obtained and volunteer where you can help address them to get better results.

6. Look at the Consequences of the Use of Your Time

When scheduling activities, take a bottom-line approach to the payoff. Postpone or delegate lower payoff tasks.

7. Take the Long-Term Approach

"People with long-term perspective make their day-to-day decisions based on where they want to be many years in the future," Tracy said. "Long-term thinking improves short-term decision making."

8. Stay Focused

During the day keep the following questions in mind, Tracy advises:

• What are my highest value activities?
  What do you do that contributes that greatest value to your company? What are you most directly accountable for vs. what can be done or should be done by others?
• What is the most valuable use of my time right now?
  Tracy always uses this question to cut through questions about priorities. "Your ability to answer this question and apply yourself to doing only that one thing is the key to high personal performance and maximum productivity, " he says.
• What tasks and responsibilities am I totally responsible for?

9. Refine Your Work

Cut out unneeded steps from every job and activity. Are you effectively delegating or deleting activities? "Creative abandonment" is a good strategy to use to test the importance of an activity. Often you will find something you dropped did not matter or had minimal cost involved for the benefit of being freed up for higher value work.

10. Forget Past Mistakes and Look Forward

"Focusing 100% of your energies forward gives you the critical edge," emphasizes Tracy.

the extra mile

Napolean Hill (1883-1970), while of a very different generation, wrote the classic book "Think and Grow Rich" which published in 1937 in the heart of the Great Recession. In one part of the book he introduced the idea of "Going the Extra Mile" and spoke of the principles behind it.

Brian Tracy's advice is often from the foundation of Hill's thoughts. If you are not familiar with the specifics of Hill on the Extra Mile, click here for the ideas behind giving the extra effort and work in what you do.