In yesterday’s post, I started to talk about a not so favorable topic of how very successful businesses led by very successful people make major mistakes. Now let’s talk continue our talk on other mistakes mangers can make.

The five Big Ideas that keep reoccurring and demonstrating their importance are these:

1. How you think about money
2. How you manage and invest your time
3. How you cater to and leverage your 5% and 20% best customers
4. Price elasticity, premium pricing and transaction size
5. Under-utilizing or under-valuing prime asset(s)

Nothing new under the sun here, of course.

#1 and #4 link together. A lot of what happens in these groups is profound shift in thinking about money and then about price, or about price and then about money. As I described this time, the absolute base, fundamental decision is to believe in “finite” or “infinite” money. How you think about that one thing defines your life, your business, your approach to price, to frequency of offers to customers and much more.

Re. #3, John Davis (tree service business/ “total tree health”) described how they identify their “Dream Customers” and “Dream Referral Providing Customers” (not necessarily the same) and very deliberately handle them, protect them, nurture them, reward them differently than the rest of their customers. This links to #5, because often although not always, one under-utilized prime asset is the cream of your crop, your very best customers. In fact, the danger is taking them for granted and actually spending more time and money on the bottom 5% and 20% than on the top 5% and 20%.

But we found many under-utilized prime assets. For one, an effective salesforce being incentived for undesirable behavior, not incentived for the desired behavior. Another Member, vastly under-valuing his ‘toll position.’

I suppose overall, the biggest entrepreneur/marketer/manager error is allocating resources equally. That may mean dividing time equally between high and low value tasks, between clients, between salespeople. It may mean spending the same amount of money mailing to all customers, with no differentiation best/worst. It is expressed so many different ways. But same error: equal, across the board allocation.

Author Info:  Dan Kennedy is internationally recognized as the 'Millionaire Maker,' helping people in just about every category of business turn their ideas into fortunes. Dan's "No B.S." approach is refreshing amidst a world of small business marketing hype and enriches those who act on his advice.