& Lighten Your Load">

Delegate Well & Lighten Your Load

Posted on March 21st, 2012

 Does this sound like your company?

Four peo­ple named Every­body, Some­body, Any­body and Nobody were asked to do an impor­tant job. Every­body was sure that Some­body would do it. Any­body could have done it, but Nobody did it. Some­body got angry about that because it was Everybody’s job.

Every­body thought that Any­body could do it, but Nobody real­ized that Every­body wouldn’t do it. It ended up that Every­body blamed Some­body when Nobody did what Any­body could have done!”

This is a sad but true story of many com­pa­nies. In busi­ness today, it is crit­i­cal to focus sharply, plan care­fully, and assign def­i­nite responsibilities.

When del­e­gat­ing tasks to another per­son it is essen­tial that you pass on clear instruc­tions of exactly what has to be done. It’s not enough to merely assign respon­si­bil­ity. Poor del­e­ga­tion sets your peo­ple up to fail, it wastes pre­cious time, it increases stress lev­els and gen­er­ally leads to no-win sit­u­a­tion all around.

Expec­ta­tions should be part of every assign­ment you del­e­gate– in terms of qual­ity, quan­tity, time, reports, what­ever is impor­tant for the suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of the job.

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Have You Built a Business or Created a Job?

Posted on March 20th, 2012

Many small busi­ness own­ers fall into the trap of build­ing a busi­ness so entirely depen­dent on them it would not sur­vive if they were unable to work.

They have not built a busi­ness rather, they’ve cre­ated them­selves a job.

Think about it. What’s the sole pur­pose of a busi­ness? Of your business?

It’s to give you more life. That’s the only thing most of us want from our businesses—more life!

And unless your busi­ness is built to do that, it will con­sume your life. Look at the major­ity of small busi­ness own­ers. They toil seven days a week, many times 12–14 or more hours a day. Doing it, doing, it doing it. Hop­ing one day to finally see a light at the end of the tun­nel. Most busi­ness own­ers are actu­ally enslaved by their busi­nesses. They’re any­thing but free. It’s lit­tle won­der the major­ity of small busi­nesses fail. And those that do sur­vive fail to reach their true potential.

Here are five ways you can deter­mine if you have built a busi­ness or cre­ated a job.

1. If you fell ill and could not work for a period of time, the busi­ness and the peo­ple who work in the busi­ness could carry on with min­i­mal interruption.

2. The busi­ness can be sold and will run suc­cess­fully with­out you in it.

3. You have a clear pic­ture in your mind of what the busi­ness will look like and how it will act when it is finally done. You’ve shared that vision with your employees.

4. You have a 3–5 year plan and are work­ing on imple­ment­ing your mar­ket­ing, prod­uct, and finan­cial strategies.

5. You are able to take extended vaca­tions and can decide not to come into the office on the spur of the moment with no neg­a­tive impact on busi­ness performance.

We can help you build a busi­ness that works with­out you. Ask us how to get started today.

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5 Tactics of an Idea Crusher

Posted on March 16th, 2012

Yes­ter­day I talked about ideas being the lifeblood of your busi­ness and the fact that a con­tin­ual stream of ideas is a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage in busi­ness.  If you are try­ing to improve your busi­ness and get past that “I’ve run out of ideas to improve” men­tal­ity, have you con­sid­ered how you accept those ideas?

Have you ever been guilty of apply­ing some or all of the idea crush­ers listed below?

1. Point out all the rea­sons it won’t work, this will ensure that the rea­sons it might work will not need to be addressed.

2. Say you’ll look into an idea, and then just sit on it.

3. Remind the pro­po­nent that his last idea was a total fail­ure or on a sim­i­lar theme, remind him what hap­pened to the last per­son who came up with a failed idea.

4. Change the sub­ject (i.e. ask the pro­po­nent how his cur­rent project is going). That will be a reminder that team mem­bers are paid to work not to think.

5. Say we have already thought of that. That will remind the pro­po­nent that he is no smarter than peo­ple who have been there for some time and that as a new­comer he is not yet qual­i­fied to make suggestions.

Two ques­tions you should ask about your lead­er­ship style are: “how open am I to con­sid­er­ing ways to improve what my busi­ness does?” and sec­ond, “what do I do to proac­tively encour­age peo­ple within my orga­ni­za­tion to chal­lenge the sta­tus quo and con­tin­u­ally seek to improve processes?”

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Ideas Are The Lifeblood Of Your Business

Posted on March 15th, 2012

Every great busi­ness was once an idea in someone’s mind. Of course, that’s not all there is to it, but it’s the idea that is at the source. And it’s the con­tin­ual stream of ideas that keep a busi­ness vibrant and give it a sus­tain­able com­pet­i­tive advantage.

How­ever, too often you’ll hear peo­ple say “I don’t know what else we could do to improve this busi­ness” or “we have tried lots of things and we’ve found that what we do now is the only way for this busi­ness to oper­ate properly.”

Peo­ple often say they have run out of ideas, and when you look at the per­for­mance of most busi­nesses you’d have to agree that there’s lit­tle evi­dence of any­thing new hap­pen­ing. Yet when peo­ple are exposed to new ideas they are more likely to reject them than to con­sider them. Ideas do not need to be huge to have a big impact. There are very few big things a busi­ness can do to make it a suc­cess. But there are lots of lit­tle things.

That’s why exper­i­men­ta­tion and inno­va­tion are so crit­i­cal to high per­for­mance. Small ideas are often over­looked pre­cisely because they are small ideas and peo­ple do not think they war­rant doing any­thing about.

Do you have a for­mal process for cap­tur­ing and eval­u­at­ing the busi­ness growth ideas your team mem­bers have every sin­gle day?

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& Win More Customers">

5 Ways To “Add Value” & Win More Customers

Posted on January 19th, 2012

 Adding value is the best way to gain a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage with­out sac­ri­fic­ing your profits.

Here are five quick tips for adding value to your cus­tomers busi­ness experience:

1. Rou­tinely, ask your clients how you could bet­ter ser­vice their needs, find out what they want and respond to their suggestions.

2. Pub­lish a newslet­ter to keep past and cur­rent clients informed of your offer­ings. Include valu­able infor­ma­tion that will keep it interesting.

3. “Try before you buy.” Offer your cus­tomers sam­ples of your prod­ucts or ser­vices to give them a taste of what is available.

4. After sales follow-up. Find out if the cus­tomer is happy with their pur­chase. Offer addi­tional ser­vices such as train­ing or a main­te­nance warranty.

5. Let your cus­tomers or clients share their skills, tips, expe­ri­ences with one another. Host a monthly forum and fea­ture a guest speaker.

Don’t com­pete on price. Work to add value to your cus­tomers in other ways.

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Question Your Own Success To Survive in Business

Posted on January 18th, 2012

 Suc­cess in busi­ness is a won­der­ful thing. And too much of it can lead to failure.

When a busi­ness is suc­cess­ful in some areas, many oth­ers become less impor­tant and fail­ure can be hid­den or masked. When sales are high and prof­its are good, most peo­ple tend to become com­fort­able and with com­fort comes complacency.

It’s nor­mal to feel good about your direc­tion and to think you are doing every­thing right when you are real­iz­ing suc­cess. But it’s crit­i­cal for you to under­stand that in real­ity you are prob­a­bly be doing some things very right and other things very wrong. The things you’re doing right may well enable you to sur­vive the imme­di­ate future, per­haps even pros­per, but at what cost?

Your present suc­cess can often pre­vent you from achiev­ing even greater suc­cess. It can even lay the ground­work for the ulti­mate demise of your busi­ness. Think about the buggy whip man­u­fac­tur­ers of the last cen­tury. There were extremely suc­cess­ful and not at all threat­ened by the inven­tion of the motor vehi­cle because they saw no imme­di­ate decline in busi­ness. The rest, so they say, is his­tory. Or at least, the buggy whip man­u­fac­tur­ers cer­tainly are.

Even if you don’t con­tinue to ques­tion your own suc­cess and how you could do things bet­ter, you can be absolutely cer­tain your com­peti­tors will.

And they will win, every time.

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Are You Willing To Sleep By The Fire?

Posted on January 5th, 2012

Busi­ness is tough right now, and I know many of my busi­ness own­ers are giv­ing it their all just to make a liv­ing.   Some­times own­ers feel that they need to do any­thing to get the busi­ness.  I wanted to relate a story that, on the sur­face, reflects how hard peo­ple are work­ing now.  But the under­ly­ing mes­sage is one that all busi­ness own­ers need to take to heart — and that is one of pric­ing and strat­egy in deal­ing with this recession.

This is a true story attrib­uted to Ben Franklin that car­ries a pro­found mes­sage for any business.

It goes like this…

Ben had a print­ing busi­ness and was con­cerned about a com­peti­tors pric­ing policy.

He invited his com­peti­tor over for din­ner and placed a bowl of broth and a piece of bread on the table. In the room was a warm fire with a blan­ket next to it.

Ben said to his guest, “I can live on this bread and broth and have no trou­ble sleep­ing by the fire wrapped in that blanket.

If you can live on less, you can starve me out. If you can’t, you had best recon­sider your pricing.”

Issues of ille­gal price fix­ing aside, the les­son is clear.

Unless your costs are lower than your com­peti­tors’ or you are will­ing to sleep in front of the fire, don’t com­pete on price.

You may be think­ing the low­est price may be the only way to get the busi­ness in today’s econ­omy.  Per­haps you should be ask­ing another ques­tion — “how can I develop a dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion strat­egy that will enable me to com­pete effec­tively with­out dis­count­ing my prod­ucts or services?”

Still think it can’t be done?  Con­tact me to dis­cuss ways we can help you accom­plish this.

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Your Blueprint For Business Success

Posted on January 4th, 2012

For any busi­ness owner, all of the busi­ness books say you need a busi­ness plan.  Yet few do it when they start up unless they are look­ing for financ­ing.  Over the years, I’ve seen many own­ers start them only to never fin­ish them.  If they do actu­ally fin­ish them, after they serve their pur­pose, they sit in a file box maybe never to be seen again.

A busi­ness plan is not just a means for secur­ing financ­ing. It is a step-by-step guide to run­ning your busi­ness and cre­at­ing a prod­uct or ser­vice that will suc­ceed in the mar­ket­place. And like any other map, your plan will have to be adjusted accord­ing to your vision for the com­pany, con­di­tions and oppor­tu­ni­ties in the mar­ket­place and your busi­ness’ cur­rent condition.

As you start your year, remem­ber that a busi­ness plan can set the tone for a direc­tion change.  If you’ve never done one, even if you’ve been in busi­ness for years, it is never to late to change direc­tion.  If you did one and it is sit­ting in a drawer, pull it out, dust it off and update it.  Make it your blue­print for change in the com­ing year to man­age your busi­ness by and give you direc­tion to where you want to go and build a busi­ness that you’ve always wanted.

Sev­eral things a busi­ness plan should con­sider are:

• What is a rea­son­able expec­ta­tion of prof­itabil­ity and in what time frame?

• How will the busi­ness pay you and any team members?

• What are the esti­mated expenses?

• What is the pric­ing strategy?

• What is the demand for what you are offer­ing and what profit mar­gin can you expect?

Writ­ing down your plan will rein­force your vision, give you a ref­er­ence point for check­ing your busi­ness’ progress and will bring up fac­tors you may not con­sider if you just cre­ate the plan in your head. Writ­ing your busi­ness plan down:

• Helps you deter­mine and coor­di­nate all aspects of busi­ness operations

• Gives you a means to ana­lyze and deter­mine how best to improve your business

• Assists you to deter­mine the risks and ben­e­fits asso­ci­ated with any changes

• Decreases your chances of mak­ing a mis­take or not con­sid­er­ing impor­tant fac­tors in your business

• Increases your chances of success

As I stated ear­lier, busi­ness plans aren’t just for those just start­ing their busi­ness.  They’re use­ful when acquir­ing a new busi­ness, fore­cast­ing growth, intro­duc­ing a new prod­uct or ser­vice, enter­ing a new mar­ket and respond­ing to changes in the market.

Isn’t it a great time to build that busi­ness you’ve always wanted?

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Encouraging Your Team

Posted on January 3rd, 2012

As we begin a new year, con­sider the impact you have on your own team.  For you to make 2012 “your year” what are you going to change about the way you do busi­ness?  For things to change, we some­times need to look at our­selves first.  Con­sider the fol­low­ing questions:

Have you ever worked for some­one who did not care what you thought, how you learned, or frankly any­thing about you?  Was that fun?  Were you pro­duc­tive?  If you were pro­duc­tive, was it only because you feared for your job?

If you man­age peo­ple, have you thought about your lead­er­ship style?  Even if you are not the leader in your orga­ni­za­tion, it is still a good idea to think about your style.  How do you treat peo­ple below you, around you and even above you?  What are you try­ing to accom­plish?  These are seri­ous ques­tions.  The answer to them will deter­mine how far your busi­ness goes, and how far you go as a leader.

The book “Dethron­ing the King” is a fas­ci­nat­ing account of the takeover of Anheuser Busch by InBev.  As great as Anheuser Busch was, this book chron­i­cles the lack of lead­er­ship and how it even­tu­ally gives out. The lead­er­ship of August Busch III was dic­ta­to­r­ial and auto­cratic. He rarely encour­aged August Busch IV and that cre­ated the rea­son why it made sense for Anheuser Busch to sell.  There was a quote in the book that said that August Busch III had two moods - “pissed off” and “sus­pi­cious.”  They did not have effec­tive lead­er­ship and there were no viable alter­na­tives when InBev offered to buy the business.

If that is the atti­tude of the leader, then the orga­ni­za­tion has a lim­ited life expectancy. Anheuser Busch prob­a­bly out­lived its life expectancy.  Peo­ple do not want to work in fear. Instead they want to work in an open col­lab­o­ra­tive envi­ron­ment.  How you lead deter­mines what that envi­ron­ment is.  This is just as true for a cus­tomer ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tive as it is for the pres­i­dent of the company.

If your goal is to build busi­nesses that will last, then all of us have to cre­ate the right cul­ture by encour­ag­ing and coach­ing oth­ers to achieve your joint goals.  In these days of unsure job mar­kets, encour­ag­ing your team can go a long way to build­ing a com­pany that is pro­duc­tive both today and in the future.

Ques­tions to Ask Your­self:

1. How do I treat the peo­ple who report to me?
2. How do I treat the peo­ple who are at the same level as me?
3. How do I treat my boss?
4. How can I be a more encour­ag­ing person?

Please con­tact Wade Car­pen­ter if you have any ques­tions or need help imple­ment­ing this Busi­ness Inspiration.

 

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Getting Tough in a Tough Economy

Posted on December 14th, 2011

You don’t have to be beaten because the econ­omy is tough. You just have to get into fight­ing shape. Here are some exer­cises that will make you more fit to deal with tough times.

• Tighten up your cash flow mus­cles. Con­sider reduc­ing credit peri­ods for cus­tomers and if nec­es­sary, use all the credit your sup­pli­ers give you.

• Shed excess inven­tory. Excess slow-selling inven­tory is unwanted fat. Ana­lyze your inven­tory and put your money in the bank instead of on shelves.

• Mea­sure your mar­gins. If your prod­uct is sell­ing fast, you may be under priced. Check to see if you are priced appro­pri­ately. Also use this oppor­tu­nity to nego­ti­ate with sup­pli­ers for bet­ter prices.

• Mon­i­tor over­head costs. See if there are any areas that war­rant cut­ting back and also check your stand­ing orders and direct deb­its. You may be pay­ing for things you no longer need.

• Pro­mote, pro­mote, pro­mote. It seems the eas­i­est and fastest way to reduce expenses, but cut­ting your mar­ket­ing in tough times may not be wise.

• Don’t take the easy out. The eas­i­est ways to cut costs can end up cost­ing you big time in the long run. Be cre­ative in how you reduce your expenses, such as reduc­ing employ­ees to 4 day work weeks instead of lay­offs. Offer employ­ees a per­cent­age of any sav­ings they can cre­ate in pur­chas­ing and mate­ri­als etc.

Research shows that peo­ple remem­ber those who keep adver­tis­ing through a reces­sion, even if they don’t patron­ize the busi­ness imme­di­ately. And impor­tantly, keep these prin­ci­ples in mind even when trad­ing con­di­tions improve.

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