Business Development Specialist

This is the sixth blog in the series explaining what I do as a Small Business Consultant in Christchurch.  As good as I like to think I am at my job in getting results for my clients, inevitably there are problems, unexpected little glitches which delay a goal being achieved or even forcing the goal be completely re-assessed for the business to move forward.

What happens at these crucial points, how do we overcome the hurdles put in front of us and what affect does this have on the business owner and their staff?  Every life coach, motivational speaker, sports coach, school teacher and of course business consultant will preach the importance of having goals in pretty much every facet of your life, and I agree they are vital to improve, move forward and to be able to assess any given strategy but equally important is to have a contigency plan for the day the goal does not get reached; why?  because when a person or business does not reach it’s goals it very quickly turns from the major motivating force to a major demotivating force having the exact opposite affect of the strategy put in place to achieve the original goal.

It is at this point a good life coach, motivational speaker, sports coach, school teacher and of course business consultant will have a contingency plan to ensure the person / business gets back up on their feet immediately, they re-focus, adapt the goal (in line with the ultimate goals for the person / business) and take steps to get to where they need to be.

Let me give you an example ….

I had been working recently with a company that wanted to increase their turnover; we set some goals; we put some sales aids in place; we had a figure we needed to reach; we let the staff choose their own incentive; everyone in the business was highly motivated and things were going great guns, they had a successful quarter up to month 2 and were well on their way to reaching their target.  Come the last day of the month for the invoicing to be completed I was fully expecting a phone call from this company to say how well they had done but the phone stayed eerily quiet.  I called the following day to be greeted by a very low sounding boss who talked about everything other than the target, I knew straight away they had not reached it, the whole team were down.

On meeting with the team we reviewed the performance of the team in that last month, the work was there, their productivity was sitting at between 69 & 75% but the revenue alluded them not because they didn’t work hard enough but because their customers still had things to do before the jobs could be finished.  How did we turn this around ………… quite simple in the end, we looked at the jobs that didn’t get completed and asked the question how long will they take; we looked at the pipeline to see how much we could complete there, we combined the two together and this was the new goal for the month immediately after the quarter, it was decided the staff would still get their incentive because of the very high productivity.  This ensured the motivation remained high and the productivity remained high for the rest of the month, this ultimately worked and their targets were reached; this had a direct (positive) impact on the businesses cash flow which kept the business owner happy too.

To summarise, it’s great to have goals but it is just as important for whoever sets them to have a back up plan just in case things don’t go according to plan, this is especially important for us consultants as it is our job to take your business to the next level.

If you have suffered from demotivated staff or struggling to reach your goals then please contact me.

Tags: Small Business Consultant and Business Development Specialist Services