Organisational Needs

What is the organisation trying to accomplish or avoid? These can be categorised as:

• Strategic—The need to increase revenue and growth. The need to expand into a new market. The need to reduce expenses. (Not a strategic or marketing plan or a cost reduction analysis).
• Technical—The need to have their servers up and running at all times. The need to operate more efficiently. The need to launch a new product. (Not a new monitoring service or time / motion study or new logo).
• Financial—The need for ideas on how to become more profitable. The need to sell the business. The need to improve sales results. (Not a tax return or valuation or sales compensation study).
• Political/Environmental—The need to bring a new acquisition into the fold. The need to allow a new store to be built. The need to avoid bad publicity. (Not an employee survey or a grassroots campaign or a series of press releases).

Individual Needs

What is influencing the individual or individuals who will decide to engage our services? These are the needs that are often unspoken and less obviously connected to our services. While you cannot always uncover these types of needs directly, by being aware of what may be going on, you can be alert to the obstacles that can keep you from connecting your services with your prospects needs.

• Professional—To get a promotion. To prepare for a new job. To become well-known. To gain experience in new areas. To do a good job.
• Social—To impress the neighbours. To be accepted and respected by peers. To have a nice place to hang out.
• Psychological—To avoid risk. To take risk. To have someone to talk to. To please the boss. To gain recognition.

Determining Your Client Needs

How do you uncover your clients’ true needs and position your services in a way that fulfils their organisational and individual needs? I suggest the following exercise to get you thinking about how your clients view your services and how you can define them in terms of your clients needs.

1. Bring your key principals, partners, or business developers together for a brain storming session.
2. Think of all the clients you currently have. Why did they seek you out? What needs did they have that caused them to look for a service provider?
3. Think about the last sales conversations you had. How did your prospects speak about their needs?
4. Try to use the words that your clients and prospects use, not the marketing speak you use to describe your services.
5. On a flip chart, write all the needs that you have down the left-hand side.
6. On the right-hand side, write the services you provide.
7. Connect the needs to the services. Which ones satisfy the most needs? Are there any needs you have listed for which you have no services? Should you have those services?
8. Develop the questions that will help you uncover these needs in future conversations.
9. Continually refine and reshape your needs list as you engage new conversations and new clients.
10. Repeat the process as needed.

So, the next time you are asked what your clients need, you will be prepared to answer with the real reasons they seek out your services. You will make better connections, develop stronger relationships, and most likely find new clients in the process.

1. An entrepreneur is an inventor. Not all inventors are entrepreneurs though. What do I mean exactly?, well entrepreneurs look at the world with open eyes and and asks “what’s missing?”. Once identified the entrepreneur thinks about how to fix this gap. What an Entrepreneur does next is to create a new business instead of new products.

2. Entrepreneurs do not buy business opportunities, they create them. Sorry guys, this includes franchises. You may be successful in a franchise, but your creative juices are stifled by the rules of the franchise. For the true entrepreneur who is creative he/she will be doomed to disappointment as the entrepreneurial passion is doused by the rigours of the franchisor. Franchises can become successful jobs for those that buy them.

3.Invention is contagious. People love the feel good factors involved when other people experience their invention (business). The more significant the invention the more likely it is to succeed.

4. An entrepreneur measures the success of the business by its growth. The faster it grows, the better the invention. It shows that people love to interact with this business. Those that do not experience this growth should not continue as less and less people will want to interact with it and will ultimately lead to financial ruin.

5. Everyone can become an entrepreneur. Everyone can create and develop an new invention if they follow their passion. In order to achieve this an entrepreneur needs to develop patience while developing the skill to drive the invention forward. This calls for the practice of developing new business ideas before actually implementing them. Entrepreneurs are made, not born.

From the above it is clear that many business owners are not entrepreneurs. Many business owners actually own a job that pays for their current lifestyle. It is important to realise that entrepreneurs create businesses for their clients and staff. They create a culture that everyone wants to be part of and are excited by it every day. When this happens the entrepreneur can stand aside and let his business boom with him/her only steering the business in the right direction.

This is a continuation of my “Why do some businesses grow” series. Improving your business systems (Part 1), Leadership skills in your business (Part 2) , The importance of Marketing (Part 3) , Available Capital in Business (Part 4)

This time I will share with you about the importance of ensuring you have appropriate suitably qualified external support to help you achieve your commercial objectives.

So who are the people you need on your business success team, as I like to call them?

Let’s run through a quick checklist of your present advisors for:

1. Business Planning

2. Goal Setting, Monitoring & Goal Attainment

3. Taxation & Accountancy

4. General Management issues

5. Staffing matters

6. Product & Service knowledge

7. Sales & Marketing

8. Legal issues

9. Asset Protection

10. Wealth Creation/Financial Planning

11. Your Exit Strategy/Succession Planning

12. Insurance – business, income protection, trauma, life etc

How did you go?

Yes to be successful you do need more than an accountant and lawyer on your success team.

Would you or your business benefit by having an advisor, consultant or coach to hold you personally accountable for achieving greater results from the business?

If your answer is yes…then you should make a forward booking to have an initial conversation for possibility with Tibor Mackor from Better Business Strategies a Business Growth Specialist.

No matter where you are located in New Zealand or Australia we have Business Improvement Specialists available that assist business owners to take their business to the next level.

(For clarity we have people within our trusted network that can assist you with every one of the twelve areas mentioned above).

Of course, you could also do nothing…….and nothing will change.

Personal accountability is not something that is particularly popular these days. So often people in their personal, professional or business lives are looking for a scapegoat to push the blame onto rather than having a good, hard, long look in the mirror and accepting that personal changes need to be made.

What about you?

Now remember if you have the right people on your success team they will make a quantifiable difference to your bottom line. There will be no mistaking the positive impact they have.

I dare say if you cannot identify where your current advisors are making a difference to your bottom line – then you need to ask yourself why and probe to identify if they are value adding to your business.

If they are not – find another advisor who can and does value add.

A typical example I use for illustrative purposes is Accountants.

Now like all professions there are those that are good and those that are not.

Some accountants are what I call “rear vision” accountants”. They will tell you how your business went last year (after the event). It’s too late then to affect the trading results of last year.

Now this is not a beat up on accountants – after all I am a member of NZICA [although I choose to coach and consult for my clients].

Many see their role as providing some tax planning and attending to the compliance issues of their clients which are important and necessary.

Yet many in the accounting profession will lament their inability to do both the compliance work as well as actively get involved in coaching and consulting with their clients to ensure that their business thrives.

It is my contention that what your business needs is an external advisor that will hold you and your team accountable to make changes in your business now that will affect the current week/month’s trading results and those week’s/months into the future so that your current & future trading results and the return on your investment can be optimized.

This requires working together collaboratively. It is not something that magically occurs with a meeting once a quarter.

It also requires time, energy and commitment on your part as the business owner to follow through and the willingness to be held accountable and perhaps even to be told things that you may not want to hear.

Your homework:

1. Who do you need on your success team that is not currently in place? Why?

2. Are your current advisors making a quantifiable difference to your bottom line? If not, why not?

3. What areas of your business would you like to optimize in the September 2008 quarter? How do you intend to do it?

Meanwhile you might want to give some thought to this question:

As a successful business owner what is your time worth to you or your business? (I want you to come up with an hourly rate).

Invitation & Challenge for progressive “forward vision” Accounting Firms

If you are the principal or managing partner (or you know the principal/managing partner) of a “forward vision” accounting practice serving the small to medium sized business community throughout New Zealand that is passionate about helping your (their) business clients achieve maximum returns on their business(es) AND you (they) are willing to work collaboratively with a network of Business Growth Specialists for the benefit of their clients then I extend an invitation for you to have a confidential discussion in the first instance with me.

Call me now if you want to increase the results of your business and take that extended holiday in Europe.

I too have found that this fisrt point is relevant. Many businesses have a lack of direction. This means the failure to establish clear goals for each part of the business and invariably no business plan.

Now you say “but I know where I am going and I have a business plan but am still struggling”

Well, perhaps the plan is old, not updated or not reviewed regularly to suit current market conditions or it may be the wrong plan for the business. You need to know what each part of the business is to achieve and have reports to monitor the progress of each part.

The next mistake is impatience. Here many businesses try to do too much too soon. One example may be spending too much on advertising and not enough on building a customer base. I have found that it takes up to twice as long and it costs almost three times as much as originally estimated to achieve a goal.

“Now hold on a minute!” you say. “I have been patient all the time, I need to get the business growing!” Well, yes you need to grow the business but it needs to happen in an orderly fashion or else you may find that you sign up people for your product or service and find yourself inundated and can’t keep to your promises. The alternative may be true too in that you spend all the cash on ineffective and unmeasured advertising and wonder what went wrong?

The third mistake is greed. Here businesses try to charge too much in trying to become wealthy without building a market reputation. I recommend that making a reasonale profit in the beginning and raising your prices as demand for your product or service increases is the better way to go.

“I am entitled to a reward for my efforts and capital invested” I hear you say. I agree, but while the business is still building a reputation in the market place and competitors are lurking around each corner, then you need to moderate your expectations and grow the business and your income as the business becomes a market leader over time.

Another mistake in business is insufficient working capital. Many businesses rush off and think that they are in business but don’t plan for the costs, taxes, capital expenditure, etc. and suddenly find that they have run out of money. Here it is important to have a business plan so that many of the costs can be anticipated and planned for. In addition, the plan will program potential capital expenses in the future which leaves you time to negotiate with finance companies, if required.

“How do I access additional capital?” you ask. There are still lenders out there who are prepared to finance aspects of your business provided they are happy that the business has a solid plan and growth strategy in place. If necessary, I have access to several lenders in the market to whom I could refer business owners.

The fith mistake, poor quality of product or service. It will be difficult to sell your product or service initially and impossible a second time. Poor quality will make it hard for you get paid what you have sold initially. I think that businesses need to establish quality controls so that a good product or service is provided in order to build up a reputation in the market place.

The sixth mistake, poor cost control. I have found that many businesses spend too much, especially in the beginning. A business needs to retain as much cash as it can because a business will no longer survive if the cash is gone.

“But costs keep rising in this day and age!” so you tell me. Some costs are fixed and others are variable. The fixed costs like rent, etc. are difficult to alter. However, the variable costs can be and here it is important to ask the question of every expense, “is this necessary and is it going to help create greater profits?”. Without the curbing of costs it will become impossible to stay afloat in business.

The seventh mistake is insufficient sales. When the sales team loses momentum and management is too busy operating a business the businesses loses money! Sales must be the priority in any business and all other aspects must come second. This where I have found many businesses lacking the clarity of being in business.

I hear you say that all these aspects have or are affecting your business performance. “What can I do about it”? Well, it is all in the planning of where the business is going. If you do not plan each phase then you may as well sit on a rollercoaster and pray that you have more ups than downs.

Contact us if you have any of these issues. We offer a top service in order to rectify many business “mistakes”.

This is a continuation of my “Why do some businesses grow” series. Improving your business systems (Part 1), Leadership skills in your business (Part 2) , The importance of Marketing (Part 3)

This week I will share with you about the importance of making sure there is sufficient capital available.

By “Capital” I mean working capital or sufficient liquid funds to enable your business to operate as it needs to.

The diehards might be saying or at least thinking, “I don’t need any more capital” my business is just fine as it is. And that might be so.

However, humour me for a moment and imagine if you had an additional

If $2 million dollars were available for investment in your business – what would you do with them?

I have listed a number of suggestions below:

1. Would you invest in additional buildings (or perhaps your own building)?
2. Would you invest in capital equipment? What equipment and why?
3. Would you open another branch of your business elsewhere?
4. Would you make your business more equipment intensive rather than labour intensive? (Are their productivity gains to be had? And what would be the annual wages savings?)
5. Would you expand into a new market within your industry?
6. Perhaps you’d invest outside of your present industry?
7. What about investing in additional marketing campaigns?
8. Or engaging additional staff – say Business Development Managers – to assist in the growth of the business.

What additional things would you do that are NOT listed above?

Now I am not talking about just blowing it all on indulgences like travelling around New Zealand or the world.

However, there is no reason why you wouldn’t or couldn’t use the capital to better prepare your business for sale so that you maximise your return on investment and then can take that well deserved break.

I mean you do have an exit plan or strategy for your business don’t you?

Now for many the exercise is only hypothetical. However if you treat the exercise seriously you may well uncover creative ways of approaching your business that you had not thought of before.

OK Tibor, so now I have thought of all these ideas, IF only I really did have the money.

So how do you go about accessing additional capital?

There are many ways and it is not my purpose to give an exposition on capital funding options as it is outside the scope of this article.

Nevertheless if you are in need of capital and you want to explore the traditional sources, by all means drop me a line, and I will connect you with professionals in my trusted network that specialize in all types of finance and capital raising.

That said there are often a number of overlooked sources of capital or cash within businesses.

Take a good close look at your operations and you will often uncover mountains of hidden cash that is lying untapped and unproductive in your business.

I can hear you say, “Tibor, you can’t be serious?”

I couldn’t be more serious.

For example, IF You could increase your Net Profit by 61.75% that would give you additional cash flow which could either form all or part of the capital required or enable you to service a debt facility that provided the capital required – would it not?

Clearly the answer is yes.

So, Tibor – how do I increase my Net Profit by 61.75%?

You can do this by implementing street smart strategies that

1. Increase your Sales by 5%
2. Decrease your Cost of Goods Sold by 5%
3. Decrease your Overheads by 5%

Now Tibor – you are teasing me (yes I am) – what strategies are these?

These are strategies that my clients appreciate and benefit from because they have invested in the street smart marketing, business coaching and/or consulting services of Better Business Strategies – Business Growth Specialists.

(You didn’t really think I was going to spell it all out for you did you?)

The good news is that you too can make a positive choice to engage external expertise that can greatly impact the profitability, productivity and ability of your business to access to capital it requires to go to the next level.

If you need any assistance with the above the please contact me.

Final questions for today:

If there was one primary obstacle you could remove from your path that is hindering your businesses growth and prosperity – what is it?

And what are you now going to do to get it out of the way?

Next time I will round off with the final article in this series on the 5 Growth Limiters.

Call us now is you require help in this area.