Plan the Action! Action the Plan!

I do get frustrated at things not happening quickly enough for my liking.  My frustrations tend to build up while I am waiting for things to happen.  You know what it is like, you finish a specific activity, and then you have to wait around for someone to either do the next bit or come back to you with an answer.  You can sit there waiting for a long time or at least that is how it feels to me.  Well, I simply don’t do it.  So what do we do about this never-ending cycle of hurry up and wait?  The truth is that there is not a lot you can do about the need to wait for others to complete their side of the job, so don’t make it an excuse.  If business is not going that well or at the pace you would like take ACTION NOW!

If I had a dollar for every time a client told me, “So and so has not responded yet so we can’t move on and we are just waiting for a few more responses before we make the next move”, I would be a millionaire.  Sitting around waiting for things to happen is so debilitating.  You certainly need to keep the pressure on people to ensure you can close the deal.  On the other hand, if you sit around waiting for their response you will begin to doubt their commitment or your product or ability.  Have someone in your office be responsible for making those “How are you going?” calls.  You don’t need to do it yourself.  You need to get back to your action list and keep on actioning! In fact, if you don’t have a good periodic action list i.e. daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly etc you will find that waiting for people to come back to you becomes a convenient excuse for doing nothing.

It is not difficult to set up a simple 90 day action plan using a excel spreadsheet.  Set out your weekly monthly and quarterly goals.  There are 13 weeks and don forget there are 7 days (not five) in week.  I find it best to reverse the order, so I set my goal or goals for the quarter and then work back to my weekly goals and then to the daily actions I am going to need to take to reach my goals.  Commit to this action list and do not deviate.  Distractions will arise each week so you will need to be completely disciplined. Stick to your guns here.  Give a copy of your action to someone who know cares about your success and will make you accountable each week for meeting you objectives.  Set up a convenient time to discuss each weeks achievements and the week ahead.  Discuss both your success and importantly your failures.  Why have you not undertaken certain activities or followed another course other than the one you committed?  Be rational and listen to yourself as you respond, you will sometimes hear the guy with the excuse trying to get out.  Don’t let him.  As much as we hate to admit to it without an organized actionable list few of us would achieve very much at all.  “Better offers” are presented every day you just have to learn to say NO. Do this religiously for 30 to 60 days and you will astonish yourself at what you can achieve in a day, a week and a month.

Until next time

Your, back to the list and into action, business coach

Neville@thesmallbusinesstoolbox.com

The Opportunity Value of Risk

I have just come away from a meeting with a client who is looking to implement a new strategy. Really, it’s an OLD strategy with a new twist, but who am I to say anything. The issue with this new/old strategy as with all strategies really is there risks involved. As we, all know risks need to be managed. The, 64 thousand dollar, question is how?

There are a couple of ways of looking at the management of risk in your business. One is to develop procedures and monitoring to ensure that the risk doesn’t arise. This is the eradication of risk approach, see it, and kill it off!

Alternatively,the second is to see the risk for what it truly is, an opportunity to be understood and managed. The eradication or, expunging etc of risk is by far the most frequent approach adopted by management and particularly by a Board.

The Board certainly do need to be concerned with risk because that s their job and in today’s nervous corporate environment, Board risk is an issue.

I know that you may have a small company and you are wondering how does all this risk stuff affect you. Just think about it.

Most of us risk our lives just getting up out of bed everyday. We cross the road, often against the pedestrian traffic lights and with traffic coming through a busy intersection (J-Walking. Oh sure you have!), or by eating a meat pie from a dodggy road side cafe, or jumping on a new low cost airline aeroplane to get to a holiday or business destination.

That’s different I hear you say. Well, not really!

Each one of the actions outlined above is calculated and when you proceed, you have decided thatwith the benefits being assessed to outweigh the apparent risk. Just because it is done almost instantaneously doesn’t mean you haven’t thought about and how you would manage the risk.

Take, for instance, booking on a low cost carrier out of London’s Stansted Airport or even from Johannesburg or Changi Airport in Singapore. The flight might well be delayed, or they send your baggage to your previous destination from two weeks ago! On board they might run out of food and, of course, worst of all it might not even make it to your destination. I bet you have considered all these possibilities (okay maybe not the luggage bit!) and you have developed a back- up plan to cover the eventualities. You didn’t write it down, or maybe you did. In any event, you thought the whole event through and proceeded on the basis that you had managed the risk. The outcome was , you had more money to spend on your holiday or business trip. You created value for yourself. Well done you!

Now, take this approach into your every day business life. You will face decisions, every one of which is subject to some form of risk. As with your holiday flight decision, where you saved mega bucks because you chose to take a risk on a low cost airline. The same will happen in business. Can you see what the potential value might be created in understanding how to manage you risks and realize the financial benefit, rather than expunging the risk and not achieving your financial goals?

Value Risk management is a tool or process available to all businesses and professionals regardless of what size your business is. The value of the process is in its ability to meet narrow or complex businesses needs. I have used it with companies that turnover $2m a year to $1.5bn a year and everywhere in between. The process is so simple it can be incorporated into ongoing management and Board level reporting. The benefits to business are that the strategy is managed on an ongoing basis rather than once annually in the planning meeting and then stuffed away until next year.

Valuing the opportunity of risk rather than mitigating it may seem counter intuitive but it is after all the very reason the entrepreneur exists.

Until next time Your, humble keeper of risk, coach

Neville@thesmallbusinesstoolbox.com

How to Get Your New Business Started

Thinking of starting your own business? We’d like to share this thought provoking article “10 Mistakes that Start-Up Entrepreneurs Make” By ROSALIND RESNICK

How to do Market Research?

A recurring question amongst small business owners is this: Does a small business owner need to know how to do market research?

The short answer is – yes, absolutely! No business can operate successfully without knowing something about the market(s) it is working in.

However, the term “market research” is more often than not associated with terms like “statistically significant” and “sample size”, followed closely by “very expensive”! Those three by themselves, let alone any of the other technical terms usually associated with scientific research, are enough to make any small business owner throw their hands up in despair and run for cover.

So unless you have a qualification in statistics, or enough money to employ a market research company, the likelihood of a small business being able to get directly involved in a formal market research project is remote to say the least.

Yet your small business still needs information on the market it is operating in. So where to from here?

Well, its a sure bet that every small business owner, after running his or her business for a while, intuitively knows quite a lot about the market – prices, suppliers, competing companies, geographical distribution etc etc are factors that a small business owner will deal with on a daily basis.

The trick then is for the small business owner to try to put all this intuitive knowledge into a meaningful framework that will not only help them make good marketing decisions, but will also highlight areas where information is deficient.

The ideal framework for this kind of information can be found at The Small Business Marketing Toolbox. Here the small business owner will find a step by step process for developing a marketing plan unique to their business, utilising their own knowledge and filling in the gaps using methods that involve the business’s brains trust, and not the owners trust fund!

Market research is a key element in running a successful business and it doesn’t need to cost an arm and a leg. On the other hand, market research is not an end in itself – it needs to be used and incorporated in a marketing plan that will give a business direction and a competitive advantage. The good news is that any small business owner, using The Small Business Marketing Toolbox can easily and quickly put together a marketing plan that they can use to achieve their goals.

Strategy the Nuts and Bolts

A small business with a strong sense of identity, knows who it is and where it is headed.

Its strategy may be a simple matter of “nuts and bolts”, so simple it can be written on a serviette or the classic “back of a cigarette box”.

Yet without this basic strategic framework any small business is much like a rudderless boat in a storm. No
matter how sturdy the craft it has no direction and will end up wherever the wind and currents send it!

A good strategic plan will create synergies both internally and externally and this increased momentum and energy will provide positive direction attracting both customers and alliances, which are essential to sustainable success for small business owners.

Bring your team together, use data already available within your business and brainstorm “what if’s” around new, cost effective way to create awareness, interest, desire, trial and conversion in your product or service.

It doesn’t have to be complex. What makes a good customer for you? What problems do they have that your product/service could solve? Where can you find these people i.e. where do they “hang out”? How can you get your story across in a way that has them listening e.g. what benefits can you offer in order to solve their problem?

Having answered these questions you’ll be able to allocate tasks against an action plan, track progress, monitor the budget and measure the results.

Success is achieved when the plan is used to breathe life and purpose into the business activities undertaken and exceptional success is found when the plan is revisited regularly all through the year, tweaking and amending until your individual success recipe is found!

Use TheSmallBusinessStrategicToolbox.com to assist you in determining your unique selling potential, bottle your small business’s individual character and decant it liberally to outclass your rivals.