The 5 Phases of Business Evolution

There are 5 phases everyone always need to go through when learning any subject (if you can get past each one without getting stuck!)

This applies not just to business, but to every subject you will learn or have learned in life.

Knowing the path ahead of you makes the road ahead easier to travel on.

There are traps along the way, preventing your continued progress and being aware of them helps you to transcend them.

These are the 5 Phases of Business Evolution on your journey of success.

1. Denial – just getting started and not knowing what’s important
2. Scepticism – having a little bit of experience and doubt about who to trust for fear of making mistakes
3. Acceptance – you accept you need to learn and find a mentor to teach you what you don’t know
4. Justification – feeling like you already know what most people know, or your mentor
5. Quiet Confidence – this is when your mind becomes still, you don’t talk about your subject, but continue to learn quietly

Here’s an insight into how these phases work…

Which one of these do you relate to the most?

• Are you proud of your industry knowledge and technical prowess and feel your path ahead will be fine but advice seems to be too expensive?
• With your own business growth, are you unsure who to trust and doubt anyone understands you or your business well enough to mentor you?
• Do you accept you need a mentor with your business, someone who has been where you’ve been, understands what you need and can accelerate your progress?
• Do you feel you know nearly as much as any adviser or mentor and feel there’s little left you haven’t heard of before?
• Have you been in business for years, probably had a business coach or two, have learned much, but recognise there’s still so much more to learn?

These are 5 examples of the mindset of business owners in each phase of business evolution.

A very common trap is to be impressed by the Justification business coach or adviser. They talk a lot, telling you how smart they are and can’t stop talking. This is the business coach or mentor who tries to make out they have all the answers and because they talk so much they seem to be intelligent. They attract the sceptics and denial people and impress them as they talk.

However, the truly effective mentors are the ones who recognize the phase of learning you’re in and with their true wisdom suggest what your next step is. If you are ready for them, you accept their advice and follow it. This impresses the mentor to want to take you on as their student to teach. If you debate with them the advice, they simply agree with you and let you think you’re right. This is the way of the Quiet Confidence mentor. They only work with people in acceptance.

The Justification mentor works with anyone. They don’t know their limitations or admit to them, because they want to seem all knowing.

Can you recognize these situations from your life? Can you see the mindset and phases of both the student and mentor?

If you’re Sceptical of mentors, then its best you go with a Justification mentor. They will overload you with knowledge to try to prove (justify) what they know, because they don’t like to have people disagree with them.

If you’re in Acceptance then your best mentor is a Quiet Confidence one.

Be careful, as the Justification mentors are everywhere, often seen as speakers in seminars. They may sound like an expert, talk like an expert and have a lot to tell you, but they’re still learning themselves, so they aren’t there yet. Listening is one of their challenges, admitting when they don’t have experience with a situation or challenge is another.

If you’re reading this far, you’ll love the book!

The 5 Phases apply to unlocking profits in these areas…

• Sales skills – e.g. have you had sales training? If no, that’s denial of the need for it. If you talk too much when selling that’s justification. Quiet Confidence salespeople talk much less than the person they are talking to.
• Management skills – do you love spreadsheets? No, then you’re not in Quiet Confidence! Do you feel you’re ready to learn more about management? Congratulations, you’re ready for the Academy of Business Mastery!
• Marketing skills – do you think paying for someone to do it all for you – i.e. website developer, social media marketer, SEO company. Then that’s Denial. If you haven’t been to workshops and read 50 books you’re not up to Acceptance yet.
• People skills – do you believe you never need to use anger or criticism with employees or customers ever? That’s one aspect of people skills that displays Quiet Confidence.
• Systems skills – are you frustrated people can’t understand or use your systems? That’s not Quiet Confidence. It could be any one of Justification (if you’ve written a lot of systems, Denial – you’ve just written your first 1 or 2, or Skepticism – you doubt your staff would follow any systems written)

 
Your prospects will also be in one of the 5 phases when they contact your business.

Selling is actual a leadership opportunity, as you’re “leading” people out of ignorance (fear and bout) about knowing what to buy and into confidence about their buying decision. To lead a person its best to understand the follower and how best to lead them their ideal way.

The 5 phases assists greatly with who you need to be to lead them through the phase they are in. If you aren’t changing how you sell (lead) each person, you may struggle to reach very high conversion rates.

Our clients, after training on this, often reach DOUBLE their industry averages of conversion rates and often at prices higher than their competitors.

Like all things in life…

“Its easy, when you know how”

You can learn more about the 5 Phases of Business Evolution from the inventor of this concept and author of the book – Tim Stokes.

Download the book for free – to assist you in choosing wisely any mentor on your success journey. It could save you many thousands of dollars!

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