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- Focus on Four Critical Aspects of Business During Uncertain Times
Focus is a huge problem for any CEO in the business world today. With so many demands on their time and their energy, how does a business owner determine what are the right things to focus on at the right time?
As a business grows, the rules begin to change. The business owner can't grow the company any longer by simply doing more of the same thing. Business owners are constantly balancing a myriad of issues. In today's business climate, tough by everyone's standards, focusing on the areas of your business that improve sales, drive profits and protect cash and capital are crucial.
However, the other area of focus that each leader must address is how their leadership style is matching up with the demands of your business. Here are four areas that a leader should be addressing that will help improve revenues and profits.
1. Roll out 3-4 new revenue generators that diversify your sales engine and allow you to create multiple streams of revenue.
2. Evaluate your company's profit design to improve the allocation of your company's resources and clarify the underlying profit architecture.
3. Explode your beliefs about your current leadership style and how minor tweaks in it could add 5% to 9% to your bottom line.
4. Identify and then rivet your company's focus on only 3 to 5 profit drivers.
Utilize Wide Range of Sales Generators
Most leaders understand that to grow your business you need to: grow your customer base, increase transaction value and/or increase transaction frequency. Have you renewed your commitment to these three areas lately?Where can you:
-- Deliver higher-than-expected levels of service?
-- Increase the sales skill levels of your staff?
-- Make irresistible offers?
-- Develop a unique selling proposition?Evaluate Your Company's Profit Design
Most companies understand the need for a business plan. Few begin with a profit design. Twelve specific components make up a company's profit design:
1. Value exchange
2. Customer intelligence
3. Scope
4. Strategic control
5. Knowledge management
6. Strategic allies
7. Culture
8. Organizational structure
9. Research and Development
10. Capital intensity
11. Business development
12. Operational systemsWhen you begin to understand your company's profit design, you begin to limit risk and improve performance. Profit design questions everything you know about your business and forces you to think about:
-- What is your company really good at?
-- The expertise it takes to sell your service or product
-- What the customer magnet is that is built into those products and services
-- How employees access important information
-- Your company's primary personality culture
-- Your organizational capacityAdapt Your Leadership Style
Companies change. You, as the leader, must change also. By understanding the specific needs of your company as it grows, you can adjust your leadership style to stay ahead of that growth curve. As a start up, companies demand a leader who can make things happen, who can create the vision and excite a group of people to follow that vision.However, a company with 50 employees requires a leader with a coaching style, someone who is able to encourage employees to solve problems on their own. A dominant CEO in a company of this size can disenfranchise the organization, creating a company that is CEO-centric, not a good formula for growth.
Identify Your Company's Profit Drivers
Only 12% of all firms researched in a recent study were able to unequivocally say what their key drivers of profitability were. It all gets down to the intensity of focus. Successful company's have a laser focus. Unsuccessful companies are scattered.To identify and then focus on these key drivers, you need to understand what drives the success of the organization, communicate that understanding to internal stakeholders and know when and how to focus the organization in the right direction.
Examples of profit drivers include: customer purchases, new product releases, customer retention, customer acquisition and strategic alliance development. Notice that not one of these are financial controls? They can and should be, but if that's the only profit driver you are focused on, you are probably not covering all your bases.
If you've ever felt overwhelmed, unsure or frustrated about your business, you're normal. Take control of those feelings by identifying and maintaining a rock-solid focus on these four critical aspects of your business.
-- Review and refresh your sales generators each quarter
-- Evaluate your profit design
-- Adapt your leadership style to each phase of your company's growth
-- Identify and focus on your 3 to 5 profit driversAbout the Author
Laurie Taylor is a speaker, trainer and a business growth specialist. She works with business owners with fewer than 500 employees and speaks to business audiences all over the country on a unique model called the 7 Stages of Entrepreneurial Growth. Visit her website at http://www.igniteyourbiz.com.
Article Source:Content for Reprint
- How To Build A Successful Business Plan
By definition, a business plan is a formal statement of a set of business goals, the reasons why they are believed attainable and the plan for reaching those goals. They are used in both primary and secondary programs to teach economic principles. A business plan having changes in perception and branding as its primary goals is called a marketing plan. If it identifies and target internal goals but provide only general guidance on how they will be met, the they are called strategic plans.
It should contain whatever information is needed to decide whether or not to pursue a goal. It can be helpful to view the business plan as a collection of sub plans, one for each of the main business disciplines. Indeed, there are no fixed content for a business plan. The format of a business plan depends on its presentation context and cost and revenue estimates are central to any business plan for deciding the viability of the planned venture.
An external business plan should list all legal concerns and financial liabilities that might negatively affect investors. However, they may require each party receiving the business plan to sign a contract accepting special clauses and conditions. Traditionally, business plans have been highly confidential and quite limited in audience. Business plans are kept as secret, however, the emergence of free software and open source has opened the model and made the notion of an open business plan possible.
In the free software and open source business model, trade secrets, copyright and patents can no longer be used as effective locking mechanisms to provide sustainable advantages to a particular business and therefore a secret business plan is less relevant in those models. Every business plan is uniquely suited to its companys situation but successful plans tend to have several key traits in common.
Moreover, while there is no one perfect length for a business plan, you should make sure your plan hits the right level of detail and meets the expectations of your readers. A good business plan will be the best indicator that can be used to judge your potential for success. Though, in some cases the business plan as a whole contains similar information but for one type of plan it is mere detail and for another it is a key decision making factor.
Sometimes a business plan will seek to earn a superior return by adding superior management talent to an existing weak company. Infact, external business plan should list all legal concerns and financial liabilities that might negatively affect investors. Depending on the amount of funds being raised and the audience to whom the plan is presented, failure to do this may have severe legal consequences.
Moreover, they may require each party receiving the business plan to sign a contract accepting special clauses and conditions. Marketing plan defines all of the components of your marketing strategy. It should also integrate traditional offline programs with new media online strategies. Powerful business plan will be the best indicator that can be used to judge your potential for success.
Nevertheless, a good business plan should indeed contain whatever information is needed to decide whether or not to pursue a certain goal. When preparing a business plan, draw on a wide range of knowledge from many different business disciplines like finance, human resource management, intellectuals, property management, marketing and other sources. A successful business plan is a living roadmap to your future, not a packet of paper in your desk drawer. Start your business plan