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. Consider what you are doing that isn’t effective. Do you make many mistakes? Does it tire you out? Would you rather go to the dentist for a root canal than complete the task? Get real with yourself and stop doing these tasks. Find someone else to do them faster, better or cheaper than you can.

2.  Stop learning how to do things that aren’t high ROI (Return on Investment). I always tell people that I make it a point NOT to learn how to update my website. If I don’t know how then I won’t be tempted to try to figure it out. It’s a waste of my time and money to do it myself and I know better. There are very good website development businesses out there who could give you a cost-effective alternative.

3.  Become ruthless. It can be a lot of little seemingly insignificant things that add up to big time wasters. If you were determined to create more time for what’s important then what would you cease doing immediately? Buying office supplies? Figuring out whom to do your product distribution? Doing all those social marketing posts?

4.  Create an exit strategy. For the bigger roles that you are more integrated into (like project managing or handling the operations) you may need to follow the steps of many successful CEOs and create an exit plan from these tasks – what can you do over the next 6 months to replace yourself in that role?

5.  Change your mind about what’s important. If you are a control freak or regularly find yourself holding on to something because no one can do it as well as you, then it may be time for a reality check. I guarantee that in one Coaching Session I’d be able to find at least 10 tasks or roles that you could get off your plate. So start being realistic about what you can really accomplish and remove yourself from the rest of it.

Be willing to clear the decks of everything that is getting in your way of the most important things. When you look around at the people who really do enjoy a lifestyle business, who make consistent income in the high 6, 7 or 8 figures and are enjoying some level of sanity in the process, you’ll see that they never try to do everything and often they do very little. Sir Richard Branson said in an interview once that it is easier for him to run his multiple billion dollar companies today than it ever was to run a small company.

Something tells me he figured out how to remove himself from a lot of tasks! This analogy is important in realising that there is more to business than just doing it all yourself. You may actually start enjoying being in business again. Remember that with the right information and expectations communicated to others the tasks can be done just as well or even better than you. Try thinking outside the square and think of virtual assistants that can help with on- and offline tasks or even get interns to help out when certain tasks need to be performed, usually at no extra cost to you as these people need the experience.

For your business to grow and be successful, you have to eventually settle on the one with the best fit, and pass the others off.

We make a strong distinction between the following

• The Business Owner creates the Vision.
• The Manager creates the Systems.
• The Technician creates the Results.

Each person requires a different hat.

All business owners have qualities of each, but where they most often lack confidence or expertise is in that of The Manager. Makes sense though, right? Most businesses are started by a technician that thinks he/she can be an entrepreneur. Being a manager doesn’t even come up in that scenario.

After careful deliberation a business owner will conclude: “What I really need to do is to hire a Manager.” It is here though that many business owners think “I can do this myself”. That thought does not leave the possibility of creating a business that can operate without the business owner being present. A business is only an effective business when the owner can stand aside and see that the vision is being implemented through a manager and the technician. It is this type of business that will create wealth for the business owner over time, not to mention the freed up time to invest somewhere else.

What a Manager Needs to Be

An effective manager certainly has the potential to take on some of the accountabilities that command so much of the business owner’s time. But how is this by itself really going to move your vision any closer to reality–and without causing too many hassles?

Back to the hats: In the development stage of your business the business owner wears all of them. You must be able to look at your business from each of the three distinctive points of view. As The Entrepreneur, you have the sole authority and responsibility to determine the direction of the business. How will the business be positioned in the eyes of its customers, employees, lenders, vendors and the larger community? The Entrepreneur must determine and constantly communicate and reinforce the company’s intention.

The business owner’s vision is The Manager’s follow-up orders; the vision is the high standard set. The Manager’s duty is to communicate, enforce and manifest the vision.

Managerial work ultimately bridges the space between the business owner’s vision for the business and the daily technical efforts needed in moving the business toward that vision. Effective managers, those who can encourage and motivate employees to reach their full potential while working on important tasks, are instrumental in building turnkey, systems-dependent businesses.

What a Manager Needs To Do

A Manager must have several critical characteristics. One is “know-how.” Some managers arrive with some “know-how” intact–knowing what to do and how to do it—getting work done through other people, i.e. technicians. Effective managers will, as a minimum, have the ability to find out how to do that. Knowing how or knowing how to find out how is one of critically required skills of a successful Manager.

Another essential characteristic of a successful Manager is the ability to communicate and implement that know-how into processes and systems that will enable people to get the desired results.

The only effective processes and systems are those that will achieve the Entrepreneur’s vision. Those processes and systems are the tools the Technicians use to get the results that fulfil the vision. The Manager does not manage people per se. The Manager manages systems.

People respond to orchestrated patterns. Within those patterns (systems and processes), people can manage themselves! People are effectively unmanageable. Systems are not.

A successful business must begin with the vision. The effective business owner creates a compelling vision and communicates it throughout the entire organisation. The effective business owner lives the vision. The effective Manager transforms that vision into systems, and delegates the tasks to the Technician. The effective Technician operates within the system to create the results that move the vision forward.

A successful business owner does not wear all the hats at once. The owner of a successful business must practice the art of discrimination. The owner of an effective business must know what hat is appropriate at any given moment, what characteristics are essential when wearing that hat, and when it is time to pass it off.

Here is how to have more victorious meetings:

1. Pre-game Plan

Purpose: Don’t call a meeting until you have identified and written a clear purpose, defined objectives and the specific outcomes you are seeking with this meeting. This will reveal the lack of necessity of most meetings.

Rules of engagement: No crack(berry) heads… Complete focus and engagement. All phones off and laptops closed—no exceptions. If you were meeting with the prime minister you would turn your phone off, right? Give everyone that same respect. Schedule breaks so folks can fiddle with their toys, but boldly enforce a full engagement policy.

The invite list: Only invite those integral to the discussion. Everyone else can get the 10-minute summary update. Don’t drag innocent bystanders through these slog-fests. Only key contributors to the dialogue need suffer through the full fanfare.

Schedule guest appearances: If some won’t be needed until 30 minutes into the meeting, have them come in only then and depart immediately when their contribution is over.

Agenda: Circulate a draft agenda and get feedback, suggestions and input from the participants in advance. This will refine the agenda and acquire buy-in.

Ask for prep: Distribute reference materials that should be reviewed or studied before the meeting. The meeting can now focus on the discussion and decisions, not the background information review.

II.      Game On!

Pep talk: Start with reminding group of the major purpose and concluding objectives.

Referee: Have someone assigned to be the time referee. Have them give the 2-minute warning when approaching the conclusion of a section to the agenda and announce the hard stop. If someone starts to take the conversation down a rabbit hole, have them throw the yellow card, suggest the conversation go outside the meeting or get the information written up and circulated back to the group.

Fight! Fight! Fight! (But fairly): Encourage debate, dispute and disagreement. If everyone agrees with everything, you don’t need a meeting. Fight, but fight fairly. Attack ideas, not people; battle with concepts, not the character of the person with the opposing view. No unnecessary roughness or unsportsmanlike conduct or you will get tossed from the game.

1. Post-game Wrap-up

WWW: What is the post-meeting action and deliverables? I call it the WWW – Who, What, When? Every action needs to be 100 percent accountable only by one person with a specific date of delivery. Circulate the key points and WWW’s to all attendees. Assign someone to follow up on everyone’s WWW’s.

Consistency: If you start practising sloppy play you will start losing in the game of productivity. Continue this reckless behaviour and it might even cost you key players – death by meetings.

This is an interesting statistic as it indicates that there could be a flood of businesses for sale with no potential buyers for these businesses in the near future. Why do I say this? Well, many of these smaller businesses that do ok for their current owners may not be up to modern business systems and practices. What I mean by that is that the potential buyer will be looking at businesses that have proper business systems set up as well as the potential for growth.

In the area of business systems it would be important for buyers to know how things are done in a business and that these aspects are documented. For example, how are  purchases of products ordered, received, distributed, etc. Another example may be what marketing system has been set up and how effective is it? Any potential purchaser of a business wants to know that the systems work and that they are efficient. New buyers want to spend more time generating new business than fixing or installing systems into a business.

No purchaser of an existing business would want to buy a business that has no upside potential. It is therefore important to identify markets that can potentially be tapped for future prospecting. If these markets can be easily identified then there is potential upside for the aspiring new owner and a potential increase in the selling price of the business for the owner.

To get around these issues it is important that business owners plan for their succession now and not once they have decided that it is time to change their focus. I have an on-line questionnaire that can help business owners understand the issues surrounding their business and help them identify them so that they are ready to sell at the right price. Contact me now to find out more.

Obviously, as the business owner and leader, you have a unique stake in the success or failure of the business because it is tied to you as an individual. You therefore go though the tough times filled with the excitement of what is to be once your vision for the future is realised.

“Business Strategic Objective” is an entrepreneurial exercise that forces you to describe with conviction what your business is all about. You, as the leader, must be clear about where you want the business to go, and what it will look and feel like when your vision is realised. Why is this concept so important? That is because you are not alone on this journey. Your employees will also require this level of clarity if they are to commit to going there with you.

Your People Strategy

After developing your Business Strategic Objective, you are then faced with the task of taking it to the next level. This includes communicating your vision to, and getting buy-in from, all of your staff members. This is where it gets challenging. As employees of the business, they will not have the same relationship to the business as you do, and will therefore not have the inherent personal connection that drives you.

So how do you motivate them to take a personal interest in, and ownership of, the goals and objectives presented in the Business Strategic Objective? The answer is that you must strive to understand their needs, and then position the opportunities within your business so that it touches them on a personal level.

What Employees Want

Any company has the potential to be a source of personal satisfaction for the people that work there. And your business is not exempt from this important aspect, no matter what the product or service it provides, be it cleaning services, adventure travel or dentistry.

Take a step back and think about it from an employees’ perspective – would you want to work for your company? Wouldn’t you want to know such things as whether personal and professional growth opportunities were available; whether other employees were proud to work there; and how the business is known and understood by its competitors, customers, and suppliers?

Think back on your own work experiences: How did you feel when you worked for a company that you truly believed in? And what was it like to work in a company that simply provided you with a pay check? The bottom line for most employees is not just about the money, it’s also about personal fulfilment and achievement.

Fulfilling Needs, Reaching Goals

In order to engage your employees in your Business Strategic Objective, you must concentrate on their needs and find something about the business that will provide personal satisfaction for them. Maybe it will be in the customer focus systems that you have created, or your unique company culture, or the exciting projects they are assigned based on their individual skill sets. Take the opportunity to find out more about them as individuals, and what drives them, what turns them off. Then review your Business Strategic Objective and make sure you have created opportunities that will attract the right people.

Remember, the business must not only serve you. In order for it to be truly amazing, it also must serve those who work in it. Engaging employees in your Business Strategic Objective should be seen as an important, strategic, and necessary task to successfully reach your goals. Not only are fully engaged employees beneficial to the business, they will also be more actively involved with their families and community. These happy employees can certainly help the business with future referrals coming into the business.

Local business coach, Tibor Mackor of Better Business Strategies, has found that a large percentage of local business owners are paying a high price for being in business by having to pay their staff members more than they earn themselves.

In conjunction with Results in Business Institute (RIBI), Mr Mackor was able to conduct local and obtain the results of RIBI’s Australasian surveys and found that 63.6 per cent of business owners said they had a staff member taking home more weekly pay than them.

In addition, a high 61.3 per cent of owners responded that they felt that they did not take home a salary that justified the time and effort they put into running their business.

“The results are obviously quite concerning and reflect the enormous pressure on business owners employing staff to pay high wages, especially in a marketplace where low unemployment means it is more difficult to find and retain good staff“, said Mr Mackor. “For more than two-thirds of owners, it seems that being in business is anything but lucrative when they have employees earning more than they do.

This is despite the fact that 42.4 per cent of the owners said they had some form of tertiary qualification and 50 per cent stated they had spent money on business or personal self development and improvement courses.

In addition it was found that 56.8 per cent of respondents said they were not satisfied with or did not get a commercially acceptable return on investment.

The respondents were asked to list their three major concerns in business, 45.5 percent listed finding and retaining good staff, while 12.8 per cent named bureaucratic red tape as a major concern. Cash flow difficulties, finding new clients and marketing also listed highly in their concerns.

Mr Mackor said that while he was shocked by some of the survey results, other outcomes were in line with what he, Better Business Strategies and the RIBI network found on a daily basis when consulting to the SME community.

“The results are symptomatic of the many problems facing small businesses, but it’s not until a large number of businesses are surveyed and the results collated that the big picture becomes evident. We are in a strong economy but many small business owners are not reaping the fruits of their labours when they have to factor in the high costs of just being in business, such as spiralling rents and expenses.”

Contact us now if you have any issues mentioned above.