Business Management

Do you know the top three most important, high-payoff

activities that will contribute to achieving your goals?

Which ones need to have specific results set for every day?

Your consistency in those activities grow the business.

Boost Your Sales and Profits

Today, nothing plays a greater role in the success or failure of your company then execution. And if you are going to succeed in today’s ultra competitive climate, you’ve got to find the gap between what you want to achieve and your ability to deliver. Not simply tactics, but a system of getting things done through questioning, analysis and follow through.

Join me Monday, March 29th 9:30am as small business owners gather to plan their own economic stimulus package at the Mind Masters Second Quarter Planning Session. These are some of the things you’ll need to think about as you enter the second quarter of the business year.

What you must do today to:

• Get comfortable with the speed of technology that is capturing your market
• Look for what new skills will take you to the nest level
• Rethink your business model to answer the changing marketplace
• Get paid what you are worth
• Make a greater impact on your market, give greater value

Take the right steps now to:

• Re-evaluate your goals – are they big enough?
• Transform ideas to reality
• Understand the critical success factors for growth
• See better profits from more focused plans
• Enjoy the experience of learning from others
• Create a contract with yourself that results in immediate action

The planning session will be held at the 7 Seas Best Western, 411 Hotel Circle, So. in Mission Valley.

ONLY $45. Cost includes lunch.

How do I plan my time? Was the question of the day at Mind Masters. I have always held that the focus needs to be on high priority, high payoff activity if goals are to be achieved. For the solopreneur that is sometimes hard to define. The key here is to know what the goal or end result is, the question then, is simply how do I get there? Planning and scheduling on a weekly basis has always been the easiest way for me to make the progress toward my goals. Over the years I have also heard that you need to put a dollar value on all your activities, that way you would know what was high payoff.

The difficulty comes when you are more comfortable with activity of any kind, rather then “constructive” activity that leads to success. When you choose to put your attention on what you want, the value of where you spend your time becomes evident, those high priority, high pay off activities, like prospecting, telephone time, sales presentations rise to the top.

The outcome of the discussion at the Mind Masters meeting was first to take a week and review where you are spending your time, it is always easier to ask the questions of what would better get you to achieving your goals when you are aware of what you are spending your time on. The key is to honestly acknowledge what you need to be working on to create the greatest progress.

Mind Masters Entrepreneur Association wanted to share a set of keys that when committed to and practiced consistently produce success in any economy.

Nothing is accomplished by setting objectives, resolutions, behaviors unless there is a system or program in place for regular review of progress. Just like any game, there must be a score card in order to determine the outcome.

As workers create the foundation for a new building site by laying out cinder blocks, they must first place cement between them before they can proceed to add others to build another level. At Mind Masters we encourage members to share their successes, achievements and things they learned in order to lay a foundation for their on going success. Jack Canfield says that “the more you acknowledge your past successes, the more confident you become in taking on and successfully accomplishing new ones”.

This is especially important now with so much chatter about the “bad economy” and businesses failing. If you only remember what hasn’t been accomplished then the foundation to take on new risks will be shaky indeed. Confidence and expectations in your abilities comes with building on the images of success. It isn’t enough to just think about what you have accomplished, it is important to write them down.

Whenever I have helped someone with a resume, it is amazing how little they remember about the results and accomplishments they brought to the company. They write out job descriptions, rather than the outcomes of their work that they brought to the table. The same is true for you, as a business owner you must keep your mind focused and filled with images of your achievements, that happens when you take time to write them down. Sometimes we have to go as far back in our history to set strong foundational blocks for growth and success.

One of the best sources of encouragement is to record your achievements. Reviewing them as you plan each month helps to maintain a high level of motivation and an ever-increasing keenness for achievement. Consider all areas of your life, they add to your belief in your potential and your motivation to achieve even more.

To maintain on going relationships with clients/customers requires a consistent program that delivers value and meaningful actions. If you are not working at strengthening those relationships you are making it easier for your competitors to insert themselves into your market place. So what values (that require specific behaviors for them to be visible) and actions are you taking to facilitate a memorable customer service process?

We frequent the same restaurants and fast food establishments because we get what we want consistently. When they don’t deliver, we move on elsewhere. A few years ago my favorite coffee chain introduced a new flavored coffee, it hooked me. After the “season” was over I could not get a consistent replica of the same drink. Some of the people even asked me what went in it. When I wrote to the company about the lack of a consistent product, I got a form letter that said nothing. They are no longer my “favorite” coffee stop.

Customer service has become a joke. I think you will see the businesses closing in this economy are those who failed to create a good customer experience. So again I ask, what values and actions are you taking to insure that you retain the customers/clients you already have and want to have?

Can you be a resource to your customers/clients? As small business owners we all do a lot of networking. Letting people know about other products and services that can help customers address some of their other needs or challenges can create loyalty, which goes a long way in keeping your business stable.

Can you set yourself apart from the competition? The E-Myth defines customer service as “all things you provide over and above the basic value offered in your product or service. In other words it’s your chance to give your customers added value for their money, which will open up almost limitless opportunities to set you apart…”

Many retail businesses hire “shoppers” to get an objective view of what customers experience. Have you surveyed your customers/clients? When you know what the customer experience actually is, you can make the appropriate needed changes.

If you have employees, let them help you identify any problems or opportunities. Make sure everyone operates from the same set of procedures.

Remember, it costs less to keep a customer then it is to market for new ones, make sure your “customer service” warrants them coming back for more.

Over that last few weeks several articles and books have crossed my desk that deal with the relationships we develop with customers. Of all the ways to keep a business growing, increasing the frequency of interactions we have with clients is probably one of the most important. We would all love to boast a long list of loyal customers; when we increase the effectiveness of all of our business practices, the list increases.

To sustain profitability and customer loyalty, offering discounts or cutting prices may bring in new customers, but keeping them requires a different level of customer service. Good customer service is the lifeblood of any business. It is all about bringing customers back, and about sending them away happy – happy enough to share their experience with others.

The relationship you want with customers takes “management” and there are long lists of tips you can find all over the internet as to what that means. Here’s my suggested list:

1. Values provide a basis for how you want to show up to your customers.
   They are translated into behaviors that affect everything from how you
   answer the phone, to how you respond to customer requests to how you
   follow up with them. One friend shared how he and his wife stopped at
   a restaurant and asked the hostess if they could see a menu before they
   decided to enter. The Hostess’ response was to tell them to go look
   it up on the internet. Not a very good customer experience. Know what
   values and behaviors you want showing up in your business
2. Organize your business around your customer. Design your organizational
   structure around positions and activities that are necessary to sustain
   good customer service, rather then product/service focused. Use your
   strengths in other areas that you can leverage to help your customers
   address a challenge unrelated to your product or service.
3. Take the time to build trust with your customers. Trust means
   doing what you say you will do, because you put customer needs into
   the relationship. Trust shows up in the reliability of your service,
   doing what you say you will do.

There are many ways to keep customers coming back, use technology to enhance the relationship, but look for ways to customize it. I read where Starbucks can serve their coffee 19,000 ways – that creates loyal customers.

The Challenge: Review your own policies and procedures, make sure they are clear and visible to your customers and before hiring an outside company use that same criteria for choosing them.

As a business owner, it’s easy to get caught up in the bustle of day-to-day
business. In the drive to make sure you will reach your monthly financial
goal, it can be tempting to spend a significant portion of your time fighting
the myriad fires that crop up every day. Instead, take the time to step
back and set “laser-sharp” priorities to focus on what’s really
important – and keep yourself from spending time on what’s not.

When you have set goals for the business the priorities should be unmistakably
clear and specific, you know what to focus on and, therefore, what should
get your attention, resources, and follow-through. “The right priorities,
combined with appropriate follow-through, keep the truly important things
from being driven off the radar screen in the day-to-day hurly-burly of
life at work where everything can seem urgent and important.”, says
Ram Charan, author of Know-How: The 8 Skills That Separate People
Who Perform From Those Who Don’t.

Think of priorities as the pathways to your major goals. Which if you have truly chosen goals that are important to you, their achievement would have a significant effect on your business and your life. Haphazard planning of priorities is a result of following established habits in response to circumstances. Habits are actions taken without conscious decision. Your goals are too important to leave to chance.

Here are some things to keep in mind as you set priorities:

• A crystallized program of goals provides a sound basis for setting meaningful priorities.
• Get in touch with where you are spending your time; check to see if you are working in high priority, high payoff activities.
• Daily identify specific periods of time for activities that produce high payoff, everything else gets worked in around them.
• Set deadlines. They exercise a subtle effect on your attitude.
• If your priorities seem overwhelming, procrastination can set in, break each project or situation into smaller steps.
• Learn to delegate, and get agreement from everyone you need support from, as to what the priorities are.
• Take one half hour per week to plan and regroup, it can be the best priority activity you can give yourself.

The Challenge: Re-evaluate your priorities in relation to the goals you set for yourself, are you making the progress you want to make? Let us know if you need help.

In the course of meeting with members, I have found many service providers have a challenge leveraging themselves. So I started looking at what leverage really means to a small business owner. There are a variety of ways to increase business or the bottom line with leverage.

Leverage in the pure sense deals with how a business utilizes borrowed money, (that’s referred to as OPM, other people’s money). Sometimes it is used for expansion, research and development, and in early stages for getting the business on its feet.

Then there is operating leverage, which is the impact of a change in business that can increase revenues without a proportionate increase in operating expenses. You see this when a product or service really takes off, the fixed expenses remain the same, adding to the overall profits.

You can also leverage your business and time by diversifying your income sources or adding product lines. What are your profit centers? Because all businesses have cycles, just as the economy has cycles, if you depend on but one product or service line, there will probably be up times and down times, that’s the nature of a cycle. Business Week just highlighted the challenges that American icon, Coca Cola is having as a new breed of coffee, juices and teas are attracting consumers away from sales of Coca-Cola products.

There are many avenues to leveraging your product or service so as not to be caught in a bad cycle. Cross-promotion has the potential for a big marketing payoff when 2 or more organizations/businesses partner to better reach or serve a mutual market. You can gain an inexpensive and credible introduction to more of your kind of customer more effectively than with the traditional “solo” methods of networking, advertising, or public relations. There is more Visibility and more Value, because it is perhaps the least expensive, most efficient, least time-consuming, and most-credible method for growing a business.

Also Partnering with someone by offering their product or service to your clients, adding affiliate programs to your web site, creating your own products like information products, hiring others to do some of the work or training independent contractors to do what you do and certifying them to market it as their business. All of these provide a growth opportunity for any organization, from the home-based, to the public sector, corporate, or franchise operation.

The Challenge: What other ways can you use to augment what and how you are already selling?

Keeping up to date on legal matters is usually the last thing on the to do list of most small business owners; unless of course we need a lawyer fast. Last week I was invited to a Business Briefing by a friend and business attorney. He gave a brief overview of risk management. That sounded too corporate for the small business owners in the room, so we asked how risk management affects us?

Generally, Risk Management is the process of measuring, or assessing risk and then developing strategies to manage the risk. In general, the overview covered several areas of business that business owners need to stay on top of.

Basically , we need to look at the structure of the business, which in some cases will dictate what kind and amount of insurance is needed to protect us and the business. The highest awards given by the courts is in the area of employee liability cases. So keeping good personnel records can help avoid risk in the employment areas.

What risks do you take in your business practices? Your proprietary information should be protected with confidentiality agreements. Do you keep records on self renewing contracts? There was mention that some companies prohibit cell phones with cameras, so as to avoid theft of information.

One of the areas I have heard many horror stories about is the financial. Business owners have abdicated the bill paying, collections, check writing and even credit card use to one person, only to find out that thousands of dollars turn up missing. Create some checks and balances, even if you are doing it yourself, it is essential.

Another area we don’t often relate risk management to is marketing. Registering your business name, having copyrights designated or getting permission to use copyrighted material are all areas of marketing that put us at risk.

Here is a process for reviewing your risk:

1. Identify potential areas (Business Structure, Employment, Business Practices, Financial, Marketing).
2. Analyse the source of the risk or the cause of the potential problem.
3. Evaluate what steps can be taken, ( there may be a way to transfer the risk, avoid it all together, reduce the amount or simply accept the risk)

In any case consult the appropriate people, an attorney, your insurance person, your advisors – remember your business is too important to leave to chance.

The Challenge: Take step one and identify a potential area of your business that might be at risk.