We all know when a ball is thrown up it will eventually fall down, if you put one foot in front of the other, you move forward. In the same way as business owners you can plan for predictability rather than chance. I recently read on a website about a small business that used Groupon and almost got buried from this service. The problem with this statement is this business owner had planned for chance and not predictability. What do I mean by planning for chance?
The owners of this small business believed if they advertised Groupon that somehow they will get increased business which will increase profitability in the long run. The problem with this logic was this business was willing to take a loss for transactions with business generated by Groupon. The goal was to get them in and retain them as customers over the long run. This reasoning was purely left to chance as there was no data leading them to believe that Groupon customers eventually become loyal. Planning for predictability would have sought to use data to predict the most likely outcomes of the partnership.
As business owners when we fail to do our due diligence we are planning for chance.
The more due diligence we do, the more tried and true methods we use, the more likely our results resemble our plan. Have you had an experience when you planned for predictability or chance? I will love to hear about your experiences in the comment box below.