Everyone knows that in business (as indeed with life in general) the best way to be successful is to understand where you are going and what success looks like when you get there, but how on earth do you stay focussed on your goals for the business when they are 10, 20 or 25 years away?

Essentially you need a plan, once you have clarified what success is and what your business looks like in 10 years (say), you need to break that plan down into sizable chunks, right down to quarterly goals, once you know that, you can then split your quarter into months and each month should have 4 “one things”.

“One things” are just that, they are one specific task that you need to do, over and above the day to day stuff that will inch you closer to achieving the big goal.  Can I ask you how much closer would your business be to achieving what you want it to do if you could achieve 46 “one things” each year for ten years?  460 one things is a lot of tasks to get done, specifically to achieve your vision / long term goal.

“One things” can be used for the day to day stuff too, how many of you reading this now are snowed under with work or administration?  How many of you have fallen behind in one or several areas of your business?  How do you address that problem, you prioritise what needs to be done, break it up into a series of manageable “one things” and  deal to one each week, before you know it you will have caught up with the back log and in doing so will have created a habit of doing a “one thing” every week, it’s at this point you can start getting a head of the game.

The old saying goes “Rome wasn’t built in a day”, that’s right it was built brick by brick over time, business is the same, no business is created and successful over night but they are all built on the ability to achieve a series of “one things” over time.

What’s your “one thing” for this week?

1. When are you at your best?

This might seem like I’m teaching you to suck eggs but if you are an early riser, the chances are you will be able to accomplish complicated mental tasks more efficiently earlier in the day so that should be when you schedule in that complicated proposal or project.  If you have to do overtime, do it before the office opens for business, you will get far more done.

Equally if you struggle to get out of bed in the morning and you are the type of person everyone avoids until morning tea break,don’t even think about getting stuck into that complicated project, find some less mental challenging jobs to do until lunch time, after which put your head down and get that complicated task out of the way.  If you have to do overtime, you are more likely to get stuff done after the office closes.

Important – The mind can only sustain highly focussed mental effort for approximately 90 minutes but only needs 15 minutes to recover – make sure you take regular breaks from what you are doing!

2. Delegate Effectively

This in itself is a big topic, but I’ll ask you to consider point one.  Do not treat all your team the same, if you have a combination of people that are either one of those examples in point one (or a mixture of each – quite common), then delegate the more complicated tasks when you know the individuals within the team are working at their most focussed and efficient.  You will get far more out of them, get more task completed thus potentially lighten your own work load.

3. Never Book Out Your Calendar

Curve balls are a part of business (and life for that matter), the unexpected always rears it’s ugly head when you least need it, so plan for it!!  Leave 25% of your day unaccounted for, if the unexpected doesn’t happen, excellent, you can slot in something else to do, but if it does, you have a window of time that you can dedicate to it without causing too much upset to the rest of your day.  The biggest problem we all have with the unexpected is the waste of time and mental energy worrying about how you are going to find the time to deal with the problem, rather than putting that energy into finding a solution, gaps in your calendar reduce the stress of worrying about the time element.

4. Prioritise Your Tasks

Decide what is essential (critical to the business performing) and what isn’t then prioritise your list of tasks accordingly, if you find your list of tasks are almost all critical, try prioritising them by filtering them in proactive (make money now) or reactive (make money later) tasks.  Ultimately we are all in business to make money so it makes sense that income should be the deciding factor in the decision making process.

5. Say NO!!

Managing your interruptions will have the greatest impact on your time; is your service time critical? If not what is a reasonable length of time to reply to a clients email, would it really matter if you didn’t get back to them for 4 hours could you stretch them to a 8 hour window?  If you could, why then do you need to check your emails any more than once or twice a day?

Do you have staff that can answer the phone?  If you do, get them to filter the calls, if you are busy, tell them you do not want to be disturbed until a certain time.  Can other people in your business deal with certain inquiries, if so, let everyone know within your team that if a call comes through inquiring about a specific service / product then they should direct it to that specific team member.  Just because you are the owner or the manager of a business, it does not mean the clients have access to you 24/7.

Check out this book by Marc Mancini, Time Management 24 Techniques to Make Each Minute Count at Work it’s a great little book with lots of great tips.

What is a KPI?

Wikipedia states that “KPIs are commonly used by an organization to evaluate its success or the success of a particular activity in which it is engaged. Sometimes success is defined in terms of making progress toward strategic goals, but often, success is simply the repeated achievement of some level of operational goal.”

The key word in the above statement is evaluate, if you do not evaluate your staff’s performance then how on earth do you know if they are doing a great job or a terrible one …… that’s right, your don’t!  One of the biggest threats to any business is it’s staff performance, the only way you can keep them focused on what they should be doing is to keep them accountable.

Norman, the inspiration for this site!

Since August 2009 when a Norman McKenzie, director of web design company Meta Solutions suggested to me that I create a “blogging” website for my business I have published a continual stream of blogs, most designed to give business owners the heads up on things to think about within their business, others were funnier blogs about my observations coming from the eyes of a customer and more recently my blogs were the only thing that kept me focused on my business through the most devastating natural disaster to hit our city in over a century.

When this site was first created, I doubted the wisdom of Norman, I didn’t “really” think I had it in me to continue writing, but he identified something within me that I hadn’t identified myself …. the level of passion I have for what I do!  The excitement I still get from putting out information, I believe will help others in business help make their life just that little bit easier, is always there and increases when my readers interact by leaving comments or sending me emails.

The blogging journey started off by launching a couple of blogs per week for the first couple of months, talking about marketing and how businesses can really refine their message to their target market by understanding the 5 principles of marketing, the feed back in the early days was limited and when I look back at the content, it was not as good as some of the later articles but it did put our website at the top of the main search engines for most marketing inquiries – they did their job.

One of the single most popular blogs I wrote was titled When The Journey Is Better Than The Destination, it was a more humorous blog about a weekend trip across the alps in New Zealand and what we faced at the end of it, during the trip we learned that New Zealand has it’s very own Rambo …….

From a business point of view the most well received blogs that had my inbox running on over time were Where Is Your Time Going? which talks about the modern day time vampires of business, the internet! Sales Rep or Account Manager? which highlighted to many that there was indeed a difference between the two and depending on the sales objectives of the business would very much influence the decision as to which would be right for the job.  Coping With Adversity was written after the biggest earthquake, a magnitude 7.1 hit Canterbury on September 4th 2010 and was intended to help local business owners keep focused on their business to ensure it was ready to trade as soon as the local economy started to pick itself up again.  This article had comments and emails from all over the world, from business owners who had experienced disasters like floods and tornado’s.

The most important blogs I have written since the creation of this site was the Christchurch Earthquake series – A Business Mentor’s Story, this series began after the earthquake of the 22nd February 2010 a 6.3 magnitude quake that brought our central city to it’s knees and left nearly 200 people dead.  From that day, we had no work for 6 weeks as business owners fought for their own survival and then the survival of their businesses.  To drag me out of my own dark place, I decided to write about what we (my family and I) were going through with a commitment to my readers that I would talk about what I, as a business mentor and coach, will be doing to rebuild my business, in a hope that I can inspire other business owners along the way to do the same.  This series went worldwide, with emails and comments coming from all over the world, all with words of support or sharing of their own similar experiences, this series kept me accountable and very definitely saved our business.

In my mind, the advice I received from Norman that day, in July 2009 was the best advice I think I received for my business, blogging is indeed a very powerful tool, ideal way of keeping your clients and followers up to speed with principals and experiences that can enhance their own business, of course it is also a great tool for ensuring the search engines know your site exists and ultimately blogging lets potential clients get an understanding of how you think and gives them a good indication of the level of experience you have within the industry, giving you the best chance of converting any inquiries for your services into paying work.

Where will the next two years take us, who knows, but two things are for sure, the earthquakes and their aftershocks will decrease and the economy will grow and we will definitely be around to experience both!!

Going into business without a “big picture” strategy in place is madness, yet almost all of us starting out in business don’t think any further ahead than invoice day or the ‘Z’ read at the end of the week.  I ask you this, if you do not have time to put everything in place for your business when the business is smaller and not overly busy, how on earth do you think you’ll have time to address this when your business suddenly takes off ……….. that’s right, you wont.  That’s why there are expressions out there like “the business went boom then bust” or “the business went rip $#!t and bust”, the owners did not plan for the success.

So what areas should a small to medium sized business owner consider when thinking about their medium to longer term strategy:

Personal Goals

It is a fact of life, no-one suddenly had the urge to start a business so they could give their money away to staff, everyone goes into business for personal reasons, they have their own ideas of what a successful business will bring them so before you start thinking about the business’s goals what are your own personal goals that your business will have to meet?

Business Goals

Now that you have decided what you want for yourself, what will your business have to do to ensure it gives you what you want, this will start to shape the income and more importantly the profit levels it needs to attain for you to get what you want.

Staff

You have an idea how busy your business needs to be, for you to get what you need, so how many staff will you need to reach the business goals?  What type of staff will you need, what job roles will need to be created, who will manage them and train them?  There are many more areas to think about when you bring on staff, all of which you will need a plan in place to ensure you get the most from your staff.

Culture

What type of culture do you want to foster within your business?  How are you going to encourage that culture and how will it fit with the type of staff you need to grow your business.

Service Levels

What type of service are you intending to give your customers, will you be operating at the top end of the market where service is everything, or will you be operating at the lower end of the market where price is deemed more important than service?  What will be the acceptable level of service between your employees and between your business and your suppliers, will this fit with the culture that you are trying to foster.

Marketing

To get your business to the level it needs to be you will need a marketing strategy, who will you be selling to, what price will you be selling your products or services, will your target market be able to afford them?  What will bring your target market to your business to buy your goods, what will that marketing message need to look like for this to happen?

Systems and Proceedures

When your business takes off, what systems and procedures will you need in place to ensure your business works effectively  and efficiently no matter how busy it gets and will these systems be able to accurately capture your clients details and spending habits for you to use in the future?

A bit of preparation now will ensure your business can maximise every opportunity presented to it and once it takes off, you will have confidence knowing you have everything in place to cope with the extra demands on your business.

"Cost of training has always been prohibitive"

It now means that any “qualifying” NZ business who wants to develop their business in a number of key areas can now get help with the training they require through the Capability Development Voucher Scheme This scheme will provide funding for 50% of any training course cost(s) up to a value of $5,000 per year.

The NZTE have set up a network of “Regional Partners” around the country to help facilitate the scheme.  Each partner will help business owners assess whether or not they qualify for any funding, if they do they will then point the business in the direction of suitable providers for the training they require to take their business to the next level.

Do I qualify For Funding?

The following criteria will be used by the regional partners to identify whether or not your business qualifies for funding:

• Have fewer than 50 full time employees.
• Be operating in a commercial environment.
• Be registered for GST in New Zealand
• Be privately owned or a Maori Trust or corporation under the Te Ture Whenua Maori Act 1993 or similar organisation managing Maori assets under multiple ownership.
• Demonstrate a desire to innovate and grow.
• Have undergone an assessment with a Regional Partner

What Areas Can I Get Funding For?

There are a number of areas within your business that you can get assistance with, for more details, you will need to speak to a Regional Partner near you but here are the general categories:

• Marketing Strategies (Includes Sales Strategies)
• Business Planning
• Business Systems
• Finance (Including Budgeting)
• Business Sustainability
• Managing Resources
• Governance
• Lean Manufacturing / Business Operations
• Export

What Areas can Dave Sewell Ltd Provide Training For?

We provide training and coaching services in the areas of marketing, business planning and managing resources.  All of Dave Sewell Ltd training modules and workshops qualify under the Development Capability Voucher Scheme, for more details on the content of these check out our Products page.

If you have been thinking about making improvements in your business but cost was a prohibitive factor, now just might be the time to start considering getting the help needed to make that improvements happen.

If there is one thing I have learnt about being in business for yourself, you are the sales team and the sales manager, whether you have staff or not.  The problem we have as business owners, is that the Sales Manager role is a 24/7 job, it never stops.  Even when you are on the touch line watching your kids play footy, the Sales Manager is never too far away, you never know who you may be standing next to, you never know who you are going to speak to, who may need your products or services and because of this, everyone you talk to or interact with may well become a customer.  Inevitably the pressure is always there, that feeling you always need to conduct yourself professionally always looking for that queue, someone has a problem that your business can help with.

As business owners, we have our own business because of the love of what we do (for the majority!!), the sales process is a process much like accounts, we know we have to do it but it doesn’t mean we like it or are good at it, for those of you that understand where I am coming from, I am going to shed some very basic rules on managing your sales and clients for (this article will focus on business to business, my next blog will have a business to customer focus), keep these in the back of your mind and you’ll find this part of the job will become easier.

Be Prepared

If you are about to have a meeting with a potential client, do your homework.  Websites are awesome sales tools, check out your potential clients website, go to the “About Us” section, see if you can get any details of the person you are about to meet.  Check out the range of products and services that they provide, maybe have a question or two about some of these (shows interest in what they offer).  If they have a link to a FaceBook page then click on the link, “Like” their page and see what information they post on there, they may have other activities being talked about that are not on the website but maybe more relevant.  The more information you have the better, one word of warning, do not start drawing assumptions from anything you have found out prior to the meeting, it can be the quickest way to lose any chance of a sale!!

Set An Objective For The Meeting

Despite popular opinion it is not necessary or prudent to try and close the sale at every meeting you ever have with a customer or potential customer and in many industries it is just not feasible so lets remove that pressure now.  If you are meeting a potential customer for the first time, the objective may be to gather as much information about this business, maybe you will have to take the information and ponder over it later and come up with potential solutions, in this case maybe the objective for the meeting would be to secure another meeting (possibly at your own business premises so the potential customer gets a better understanding of the type of company they may do business with) or secure the opportunity to provide a quote.

Follow Up & Stick To Your Promises!

Whatever was discussed at the previous meeting with your customer or potential customer, make sure you deliver, set expectations (especially with potential customers) on what you can do and how quickly but be warned, once you have set that expectation you had better stick to it!!  Lets use my business as an example, as a business mentor, my first meeting is always at no charge, I use this meeting to gather information, what is my customer’s issues and plans?  This meeting is also used for them to find out more about my skills and experiences, at the end of the meeting, all going well, I tell them that they will receive my “assumptions email” within the next two days.  This email summaries the meeting (demonstrating that the information I gathered is accurate), clarifies their issues and goals and providing all this is right, outlines a plan to go forward, it finishes with a statement that says I will follow this email with a call (on a specific day) to get their thoughts.  This is my window of opportunity to get things right and secure a new customer, if I don’t follow through on any of this, chances are, I will not have a new customer!!

Keep In Touch

It is widely accepted in sales that if you are not communicating with your clients at least every three months (preferably in person) you run the risk of losing them, either because you are not keeping up to date with their needs or your competition has been given the time to weasel their may in under your nose.  You need a plan in place to ensure this does not happen, Customer Relations Management (CRM) packages are a great tool for this, you can record every interaction with your customers, you can add values of sales pipelines and sales achieved and you can schedule your next visit, ensuring you never leave them too long without a visit.  However you manage this process it is important that you take the guess work out of when you should next visit your client and when you do, go back to the first step “Be Prepared”.  Ensure you know what you talked about last time, do you have to follow up on anything specific, have you launched new products or services?  If so you need to educate  your customer about these, have they launched any new products or services?  Again, if they have, can your business help them in some way?

As the Sales Manager to your business, remember, always be prepared, never assume anything prior to meetings, listen well, keep your promises and be sure to stay in touch, if you start this process today, within the next three months you will be back in control and actively managing  your customer base.

Why is it then in New Zealand where the culture of owning your own business is greater per head of capita then anywhere else in the word, do we still continue to jump in there, boots and all, with that famous Kiwi saying “..she’ll be alright mate”?  I would be interested to hear back from all you readers not living in New Zealand, is this attitude similar in your country or do you generally adopt business with a different mind set?

To me, at the risk of repeating myself from blogs previously written, buying into a business (or starting a business from scratch) can be compared to going out and buying an Austin Martin V12 Vantage worth a cool $250,000 without knowing how to drive it!!  Yes some people may well be able to sit behind the wheel of one of these delightful beasts and be able to figure out how to drive it, most of us however would cause significant mayhem and carnage getting the car from the showroom to our home, some of us would not make it at all.  So why is it then that we feel we can spent the same amount of money and by a business, having never run a business, managed someone else’s business or even know anyone who has had their own business?

To have your own business means that you need to be a book keeper, a human resources manager (if you have staff), a marketing manager, a sales manager, an operations manager, a project manager as well as whatever your trade is e.g. mechanic, hairdresser, printer, etc.  How many of us who are in business can say they have experience in all these areas?  What skills and experience should someone have to better enable them to make a success of any business they buy or create?  In my opinion (please feel free to comment if you have different ideas!) every business owner should have the following skills and experience:

• In the words of my own personal coach, Tony Burns from i2i, your brain needs to be wired for success and for that to happen you need 1) clear goals- know where you are going; 2) Desire – understand why your are doing what you are doing; 3) Belief – understand how you are going to do what you want to do.
• You need to have a basic understanding of marketing so that you are very clear about the following:
  • Fully understand your product and how it can provide a solution to your customer’s needs.  The needs of your customer also need to be understood.
  • Price your product confidently, this will need to reflect how you are intending to gain market share.
  • Know where your target market is, ensure you understand who makes up that target market and what issues they have that your product(s) can provide solutions to.
  • Understand how you are going to promote your product(s) to that target market in the most cost effective (not necessarily the cheapest) way to encourage returns as quickly as possible.
  • Understand the people required to get your product to the customer, how many staff do you need, what positions need to be created, do you require suppliers, and who are the decision makers that ultimately buy your products
• You need to have a basic understanding of management principals, whether you have staff or not, there are principals that can help EVERY business owner:
  • Time Management – understand how to prioritise your day to get the most out of it;  how to put structure into what you do in a week again to ensure you have time to work on your business as well as in it; understand what can waste time so that you can then identify these things in your business and avoid them or manage them more effectively.
  • Problem Solving – the same problems come up time and time again, get an understanding of how to deal with problems by getting down to the real reason they appear, there are ways of doing this that can save you lots of time and frustration.
  • People Management – there are good ways and not so good ways of keeping your team happy, you owe it to your business to understand what you can do to keep your team motivated.  A motivated team will do more for your business growth than one that isn’t.
  • Management Styles – there are times when orders need to be given and no questions asked, but there are times when input from your team to address a particular problem would be beneficial, there are also times when you should just leave your team to do what they are experts at doing.
• You need to have a good understanding of the selling process.  Why would someone buy anything from your business?  What does it mean to “look after” your customers?  How can you ensure your customer’s keep coming back to you?  Why is it important to capture as much of your customer’s details as possible?
• You should absolutely have a good understanding of the industry you are in, what are the challenges facing the industry in general?  Are there specific challenges facing the industry at a local level (too much competition, poor public infrastructure, local property costs too high), is there sufficient skill base in the labour market to meet the needs of your business.  I could go on and on, but it is the responsibility of every business owner to understand their industry and keep up to date with what is going on.
• Surround yourself with professional help, find a bank that has a proactive bank manager or business banker.  Find an accountant that understands all the financial implications of doing business in your industry.  Get yourself a good lawyer, again one that maybe understands the legal requirements of your industry.  Find yourself a business mentor, one with your industries experience would be ideal or one that has a good cross section of business skills that can keep you on the right track, but more importantly, know where to find someone with specific skills and experiences to help your business as and when it needs it.

Owning a business, like everything else in life, you never stop learning, as a business owner you need to keep yourself up skilled in advances in best practices, technology, etc specific to your industry.  You should also keep yourself up skilled in techniques and skills to improve your management capabilities to ensure you are always working as efficiently as you can, allowing yourself time to work on your business as well as in it.

Do you ever wonder why some people always seem to be a success at whatever they do…whether it’s in business, or on the sports field or simply just going about their everyday ‘stuff’?  The same can be said for certain teams and businesses.  Success seems to come natural to them.  They often make it all look so easy.

Do you ever stop to wonder if these people, or teams, have a secret recipe?  Or do you just put it down to them being lucky; having a charmed life; the Midas touch.  Or maybe you think they may be cheating?!

Well guess what?  There actually is a ‘Recipe for Success’!  And furthermore it’s not a secret.

Each time I run one of my i2i courses, I ask the delegates if they can identify the ‘Recipe of Success’.  They never fail to come up with the correct ingredients!

‘A Goal, the Desire and the Belief’.

That’s it.  That’s the Recipe. That’s all there is to it. Honest.  End of story!

“Surely there’s more to it than that?” I hear you ask unconvinced.  “Otherwise, why do so many people fall short of being successful?”

No, it’s true.  To be successful, you simply need the three ingredients.  But you must have all three.  If you’re missing one of them, then forget it!

And they have to be the real deal insofar as you have to be absolutely clear on what your goal is; you must desire the outcome so much that you would be prepared to work night and day for it; and you must have true belief in your ability to achieve the end result.  Anything less and you run the risk of failure.

Success requires focus, determination and resilience.  It may be a simple recipe, but it’s a tough cake to bake.  That’s what Theodore Roosevelt meant when he said “Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty…”

I’ve just caught the evening news on TV.  After a gap of 28 years, the Indian Cricket team is once again the World Cup Champions after beating New Zealand’s conquerors, Sri Lanka, in the Final over-night.

That’s 28 years of focus, determination and resilience since Kapil Dev last lifted the trophy after they had beaten the West Indies back in 1983.

Here at i2i, we believe that our work with the Indian cricket team over the past few years had played a significant part in harnessing that focus, determination and resilience. It’s great to see one of our clients ‘on top of the world’!

Remember though, you too can make it to the ‘top of your world’.  You know the Recipe.  You just need to make sure you have the ingredients.

Preparation is the key, take control of the conversation before you even pick up the phone or walk into their offices.  You decide how the conversation will go, you decided what to talk about and in what order, most importantly you set yourself an objective for the meeting.  What is my ideal outcome for this meeting (what will success look like).  If you are very clear in yourself what you want from the meeting, you have already increased your chances of it being a success, if you have prepared the meeting to reach that outcome, you have increased the chances even more of the outcome being realised.

I would recommend that this approach is taken for every meeting that you have in business, whether that is an internal meeting between you and another in your team or an external meeting between yourself and potential clients, existing clients or your suppliers.

So what are the elements of a well prepared meeting:

• What is the aim of the meeting, what is your ideal outcome?
  • Is the outcome to secure a second meeting?
  • Is the outcome to find a specific solution to an ongoing problem?
  • Is the outcome to get your customer to pay their invoice?
  • Is the outcome to have the customer confirm the sale?
  • Is the outcome of the meeting to discipline your staff member?
• To get that outcome, what specific areas need to be discussed?  There are a number of things you should think of here, depending on the situation, these may include:
  • Ask questions to gather any information you may require to progress the meeting.
  • Address any questions and fears the other party may have (anticipate these and come prepared).
  • If tasks are to be completed by the other party, be specific and include time frames and any other expectations.
  • Agree a course of action going forward with time lines agreeable to both parties
• Ensure you have all the resources in place to follow through on any potential outcomes from that meeting, make sure you can deliver on your promises.

Lets look at an example, you have a call come through from a potential client, they found your web site, they have used a competitors product for a number of years but like the look of what you have to offer, you set up a meeting for the following day.  Your preparation may look something like this:

1. In my industry the sales process can take up to 3 months, my objective for this meeting is to be allowed to present a proposal.
2. To provide a proposal I will need to understand the following
   1. How are the key decision makers within the organisation?
   2. Get them to summarise what it is their business provides?
   3. What was their motivation for using that type of product in the first place?
   4. Is the product still providing a solution to that problem?
   5. Why are they looking to replace or change this solution? (never assume here, it may be obvious but ask the question!)
   6. What level of support do they require further down the line?
   7. Is there any other issues they may have that you can provide a solution for?
   8. What are their time scales for putting any potential solution into place?
3. To ensure the meeting starts off well, improve my knowledge of their business, check their web site, to get a basic understanding of what they do and understand some of their trade terminology.
4. Understand where they are located and ensure I give myself enough time to get there.

In this example the business owner will have an understanding of their potential clients business, will have a basic understanding of their issues but by preparing for the meeting in a bit more detail, they will ensure they have all the information required to provide a comprehensive proposal when the opportunity presents itself.

It does not matter what type of meeting you have (and that includes phone calls) if you prepare before hand, you’re more likely to come out with a favourable result.