5 Steps to Nurturing A Winning Idea

Greetings from the Garden State, New Jersey! I trust that you had an enjoyable weekend and that your week will be productive and prosperous.

Today I would like to share with you five steps to nurturing a winning idea.

The typical consumer purchasing decision passes through five distinct stages. In the first sage the consumer recognizes that he or she has an unfulfilled need or a problem. It could be the need for transportation which triggers the need for a car. Next the consumer will conduct information search on cars. This will be followed by an evaluation of different brands of cars or alternatives. In the fourth stage, the consumer will decide whether or not to make the purchase. In some cases depending on the complexity of the decision, the consumer may conduct a post purchase evaluation to determine whether not he or she made the right decision.

A good salesperson is trained to lead buyers through a progression of steps based on each stages mentioned above. The objective of the salesperson is to guide the consumer to ultimately making a purchasing decision.

Today I would like you to treat your ideas similar to how a good salesperson treats consumers. I will use the acronym A.D.A.P.T which stands for adopt, determine, activate, proceed and test to explain.

First, adopt your idea as your own by developing passion for it. Own your ideas by speaking with your family and friends about it. However, remember that having passion for something and talking about it does not move an idea forward. Next determine how your idea fit into your goals. The next step is activation. This is where you start to lay the foundation for action. Rather than launching straight in to acting on your idea, you should research information on your idea. Here your goal is to gather enough information that will enable you to act on your idea in an informed manner. Once you have sufficient information relating to your idea you can now make a determination on whether or not want to proceed to act on your idea. Remember a key question that must be answered is how will acting on your idea affect your goals? Finally once you decide that you are going to act, you should test your idea to see how well it works. A good practice is to write down your plan of action.

My idea for a blog came about more than four years ago but I did not have a clear plan of action for blogging. Don’t treat your ideas like how I treated my idea for blogging four years ago! Use the acronym A.D.A.P.T to guide yourself to act on your ideas. Just as a good salesperson guides a consumer to a purchasing decision you too can nurture a winning idea.

Mark McKenzie is a leading Subject Matter Expert in financial services regulation and supervision as well as a professional motivational speaker, corporate trainer and youth mentor.  He can be contacted by email mastbmckenzie@gmail.com or by telephone 647-406-4622. Read my blog  http://mastbmckenzie.blogspot.ca/ and always write me a comment and share. Follow me on Twitter @mackynacky. Connect with me on www.youtube.com, Google+, Facebook and Linkedin.