England v Success – The World Cup of Business

June 23, 2010 Website Strategy 3 Comments

If you walk around any part of England at the moment you’ll find houses adorned with England flags.   The more passionate about England, the less brickwork is visible.   There is a lot of passion about our national football team.

But imagine what could be achieved if that passion for football could be translated into a passion for business success?  A recent example I’ll share with you can probably be replicated several times over …

A house nearby me has a serious amount of England stuff all over and around it.  When the games are on, they party and there’s no doubting the passion.  I got talking to the owner of the house who happens to have a (small) construction company.   He was talking about England and how all his mates go to his place for the games.  It turns out that his mates also include other people who are business owners or are high up in their businesses.   On match days such as today you could consider it to be a gaggle of business opportunity all wrapped up in white and red plus copious amounts of booze.

The conversation got interesting when he let slip that business wasn’t going so well.  He knows there’s been a downturn but yet some of his competitors seem to be doing better than him.  So I looked at his website and part of his problem became clear as it was woefully inadequate in so many ways.  Of course, a website is just one element in the mix of gaining new business but it’s my area of expertise so I can only talk about that.

So what we have here is someone in business who is extremely passionate about England in the World Cup, but who doesn’t have the same passion for his own business.  It just made me think about how fantastic it would be if we could bottle the passion people have for their interests (e.g. football) and then sprinkle it over people’s own businesses.    Just imagine what it would be like to sit down with a business owner and run through their website opportunities, with them exuding a similar passion to what they will be displaying during the game this afternoon.   How amazing would the result be?!

Whether England win or lose today, it’s worth looking at that phrase: ‘England v Success’.   If England don’t go through to the next round (or whenever they get knocked out if they do), people will still have businesses to run.  Long after the flags have come down from the fronts of houses, how many of those ardent England fans will have considered that they can transfer their passions to their businesses so that they can start beating their competitors? 

In the World Cup of Business the games are played on a rolling basis.  Those that don’t focus on strengthening their businesses (including website strategy and online marketing) will find themselves like Scotland, Ireland and Wales this year – not even making it through the qualifying stages.

So at the end of this World Cup, whoever wins, it may be worth thinking of that team as being the equivalent of your biggest competitor – what is it that makes them perform better than everyone else in your industry sector ‘world’?