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Are you listening to your business and its own goals?

Go21 at BizVision.co.ukHow are you helping your business achieve its goals?

by Malcolm Gallagher FCIM

You’ll likely have set your personal goals for this new year, perhaps even the decade. But if your business could talk to you what would its personal goals be? After all, especially if it is a limited company, your business is a “living thing” – an entity.

And if you were to give your business guidance on setting its goals (tongue-in-cheek!?) what would be your advice to it?

Let me give you some suggestions to may like to make!

5 worthy and better business goals.

You could advise your business to aim for the following

  1. Be Caring.
  2. Be Productive
  3. Be Ethical
  4. Be Alive
  5. Be Feared

Let’s consider each of them

  1. Be Caring. Your business wants to play its part in the community, after all it lives there even if you don’t! It wants to “do good” for the community, its people and the environment. A good start is to implement a Living Social Value (LSV) policy. This is not just something to achieve third-party compliance but a truly embedded and enthusiastic activity. Let me know if you need help on understand and creating your LSV.
  2. Be Productive. Your business is not daft. It wants to be around for a long time and knows that productivity feeds profitability. It wants to keep working and relies on you to have a Productivity Improvement Plan in active use. What’s one of those? Well, it starts with a simple but thorough “enterprise audit” to identify loss and opportunity. It wants you to be agile in 2020, adaptable and ready to embrace change.
  3. Be Ethical. Your business’s people are important, along with its customers, suppliers and influencers so it wants to trade ethically and with integrity. If you haven’t yet helped it develop a Business Culture then it’s time to do so. A Business Culture goes beyond the typical employee handbook and, properly done, it sets your business soundly apart from others.
  4. Be Alive. Too many businesses have become gloomy. Possibly as a result of global uncertainty and indecision. Possibly as a result of inactive leadership. Your business wants to “be alive” and buzzing. It wants you out there proactively telling its story and giving confidence with a solid communications plan.
  5. Be Feared. Your business knows that if it can achieve the previous four it will not only be resilient but will make competitors tremble when they hear its name. That’s something that will make your business proud!

So there you have it. Your business is likely saying to you “If I could…”. How are you helping it achieve its goals?

 

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Banish Gloom with my No Problems Only Opportunities mantra

https://bizvision.co.uk Beat #Brexit blue and Thrive by flying blue sky

Hello from the BizVision Sales Shed. I’m Malcolm Gallagher and I’m feeling positive and optimistic.

I’ve been taking my Brexit Gloom Buster Tablets twice daily and they are working! For example, this last week I developed thrive strategies for 5 businesses I met, mostly in food and drink, developed a win contracts strategy for another, come out with an exciting new brand initiative for us and have initiated a programme for SMEs to access the African market. All in a week……!

I’ve managed to do that, and motivate the businesses involved because I have long been practising what I call “beyond half-full”. I have a mantra of No Problems Only Opportunities and I’ve bored people for years with it!

But it’s true and works!

For instance, research just published by Aberdeen and PJA Marketing clearly shows that buyers actually reach out to vendors or suppliers at the beginning of the buying process.

What’s more, buyers are especially willing to speak to suppliers early in the buying process IF the supplier can actually help them make a buying decision.

Far too many businesses have salespeople who are not making the prospect contact and are coming up with the weak excuse nobody is buying because of “Brexit”. Now, I can understand that excuse existing when you are besieged daily with Brexit gloom. But somewhere the sky is blue. And that’s where I prefer to fly. How about you?

A great answer to finding the blue sky is in my recent interview with Charlotte Foster (see it in Sales Shed TV ) in which she talks about the real need to communicate even more in these challenging or uncertain times. Keep existing and potential customers updated with positive news and great ideas.

One other thing that I’d add is the need to firm up on the communication of your difference from your competitors. Don’t let yourself, or your team, fall into the “similar” trap. As Dr. Jonas Ridderstråle in Funky Business said too many similar businesses, offering similar things, to similar people… you get the idea. Maximise your difference.

With the businesses I work with, I usually go straight in on this at the beginning and ask where they are different. It usually needs a lot of probing to get the answer. Most are too busy getting on with the business that they have forgotten their differentiation which usually means they are missing opportunities.

This last week I also did something I hate doing and have avoided for the past number of years by hiding behind the web and email. I actually went cold calling and I got two new customers! It was hard to do at first, (it’s years since I did it) but then I felt elated after the first call said yes to my proposal. That made me confident for the second one which also proved to be successful. High fives all round!

And, on top of that, I succeeded in getting two other clients, with whom we had been communicating by email but were wavering, fully on board through a face to face visit.

Watch out world next week – I’m planning more personal visits!

What about you- are you still hiding behind the web or are you getting out?

I had to laugh at one web company who were trying to prospect, or sell to me, the other day. They invited me to travel to their place for a coffee and a chat!

It doesn’t work that way does it?!

So many businesses have been seduced by IT slick-talk into thinking that the web can do it all for them. That’s not true and I’ve been walking the walk myself to prove it. The old adage that people buy from people they know like and trust is so important at this time. It’s not just important for surviving but, I believe, vital for thriving.

Don’t get me wrong the web has an important to play in lead generation, customer confidence and service but don’t let your salespeople , or even yourself if you are the salesperson, believe that nobody is buying because of Brexit.

I’m quite excited about the African trading initiative, the new channels for my distillery client, the development with another client of their new home delivered freshly prepared food pack, the new heritage range with my Ceramic artist client around Mayflower 400 which is about the fact that in 2020 it’s 400 years since the Mayflower – think of the American market opportunities around that! Oh, and have I told you about the many Indian companies talking to us about accessing the UK market…. See there are no problems only opportunities. I’ll repeat don’t let your sales team, marketing people or anyone else tell you that “nobody is buying because of Brexit”. There’s a big world out there beyond Brexit and the EU. Tell yourself you are going truffle hunting to sniff out opportunity or reach for the blue sky (select your own analogy!).

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3 steps to great decision making

You want to make the right quality and timely decisions. You can’t afford to wait and see. So your decisions need to have velocity alongside quality.

I was intrigued to read recently that the Consultants, McKinsey, said that businesses who make decisions well use 3 ingredients. How are you performing in all of the following 3?

McKinsey found first of all that winners use SPEED as part of their process. Those winners will often make a decision with just 80% of the necessary information rather than waiting for it all and possibly lose out to a competitor.

Its sensible here, as the business leader, to identify what decisions ONLY YOU can make and delegate the rest. Make sure your decision process allows you to move good ideas forward quickly.

The second ingredient of decision winners, says McKinsey, is that they favour interaction amongst themselves over the process of deep analysis. Good interaction sparks off great ideas and it also has the extra benefit of heading off biases with the result that everyone is in tune together.

And the third ingredient is to what they call “Choreograph the decision process”. Hey, if you have been to a stage show or even watched Strictly Come Dancing you know how effective and impressive good choreography can be. Without choreography, your decision making could become turgid with countless reviews and approvals. Craft it so the decision process is made in one place.

So that’s a brief look at a key soft skill of decision making. Sharpen your process now and you’ll be more fit to compete for any business opportunity. Are you using all 3 steps?

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Ready for business growth? 6 key questions

Ask yourself these 6 key questions to see if your timing is right for growth

says, Malcolm Gallagher of BizVision,

A key question at the moment should be “Is your business ready to grow”? Irrespective of what is happening in the bigger “Brexit” picture at the moment. In growth,  timing is crucial.

You need to decide if your business is in what I call a sensible position to journey on a growth strategy. To help you make this decision, coming up are just 6 deep dive questions to ask yourself.

  1. How is your business performing against your budget in sales, and costs? I hope you are using some key ratios here. If not then email me mg@bizvision.co.uk and I’ll send you the top 3 ratios for small businesses
  2. Thinking of your available resources, how is your business using those resources to generate profit? Or is it not? Sometimes resources such as assets are bought and they lie unused or underutilised. Also, have you sold off old equipment (say on eBay)) – a few pounds is better than nothing
  3. Is your market sector expanding or contracting? Or where is it changing? We have seen horror stories about retailers recently and problems about construction businesses. But these changes usually mean there is opportunity elsewhere. Are you missing it? Is your radar working to seek out opportunities?
  4. How are your competitors behaving? Rationally or not? What are they saying publicly? If you don’t know, you need to start what I call a Comp Set. Take your top 5 competitors and monitor them, benchmark your elf against them, keep a watch for news on their website with RSS feeds or use services such as Mention.com or Talkwalker.com to get a hold of what they are both saying and doing.
  5. Ask yourself the truthful question of how much cash have you got that is readily available to fund growth. Likely it is not enough so you need to go searching for funding. Do it soon not last minute.
  6. How well do you use your working capital? Funders will want to know but you should know this NOW not when you want more money.

Okay, there’s your six key questions to get you truly ready for growth. Armed with the answers you can make your growth decision. Which are the most relevant to you? Have I missed any key ones?

 

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Do you have these 4 core attributes to be a great supplier?

wholesale-distribution

How do you score on the supplier four?

Over the last few years we’ve had some frenetic activity at The Preferred Supplier with our programmes and presentations, filming of buyers and coaching on tendering. But one thing has arisen a number of times.

I’ve been by asked many what I think are the essential attributes of a great supplier. I’m not talking skills, resources or facilities here but instead the spine or the core that gives form to the selected or differentiated supplier.

My suggestion to you is that the difference lies in the four core areas of CRIC – Committed, Resilient, Innovative and Compliant.

Here’s a brief overview of each of the 4 parts of CRIC. Read through and think how they apply to you and how you score with each of the four.

Committed is about a commitment to continuous improvement and the ability to be evidential about that improvement. Now, wrapped up in this is commitment to quality, commitment to consistency and commitment to customer service. It’s also about “keeping your promise to your customer” such as commitment to delivery on time. Far too many suppliers reckon they are committed to say quality because they have ISO qualification but forget that it is daily living that commitment that sets the excellent apart from the average. You can measure yourself and be evidential in your commitment by asking us about The Preferred Supplier balanced scorecard.

Resilience was something addressed by Nick Edgar, of IP Group who are fund managers, when speaking at our The Preferred Supplier event. Resilience is not totally internal, for example about your financial strength, but also external about resilience within your own supply chain and the market your serve. Start thinking, how strong and reliable are your suppliers because that’s what your customer is likely also thinking if they are to select you?

Innovative is to-day becoming an abused word! My friend, Charles Sellers, is an acclaimed expert on innovation and passionate about the need to start thinking just what is true innovation. When I talk about innovative actions he makes me think if it is truly innovative by asking which of these three things can be said about the innovation. Is it the same as, similar too or different than?  I can’t stress how important innovation is in being the preferred supplier but, at the same time, it has to be true innovation.

Compliance is something far too many suppliers hope will go away – but it won’t! A recent CIPS survey showed that 54% of companies expect compliance demands to increase this coming year with only 2% thinking it will decline. But compliance is an all-embracing word. Compliance in what? It differs across company, organisation and sector but don’t ignore the essentials of inclusion, environmental and health and safety.

CRIC is my core four attributes or make-up of a selected or preferred supplier. Have I missed anything truly essential? How do you measure up to the four? Where is your biggest challenge?

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