Thursday 11 June 2009

What keeps you awake at night...?

15 events in the last three weeks... about 1,500 people and all asked the same question: "What keeps you awake at night... about your business?"

The top two answers haven't changed over the past 12 months that I have been asking the question and the top two are:
  • how to get more/better customers?
  • how to get more profit/cash?
However new themes have been emerging that concentrate on the competition: "How can we compete on price...? how can we stop people migrating to the competition...? the competition are stealing a march on us..."

I am not sure if this isn't just a deflection from the real issues which are/were (for a recent consultancy client [professional service firm]):
  • get and keep the cash longer,
  • sell more to existing customers,
  • use existing clients and potential clients (friends and lovers) to reach new clients
  • do not discount prices but charge more where possible and justify the value-add
  • eliminate fruitless task/clients/marketing activities: just do a few basic things and do them stunningly well..., and underlying it all...
  • an obsession with the numbers on a weekly (if not daily) basis
In this case, the new seminar obsession ("competition, competition, competition") is simply not the big issue...

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Back to reality.

Robert, can you open up this story a bit (without betraying any confidences). The PSF tag is a little elusive and ambiguous for me.


BB

Anonymous said...

Robert's six bullet points seem to me to be pretty much 'on the money' for most businesses.

TW

Unknown said...

BB

THe company is a consultancy that specialises in health and safety within a particular industry. They employ 11 people including 7 fee-earners. Owned by husband/wife team who are the 100% share-holders.

They do consultancy and training with high value consultancy creating a sales stream for the lower margin/high revenue training...

Cute.

And now they are moving on to create a stream of assets (books, CDs, DVDs...)

The business has grown on the back of the H&S explosion and has a small number of key clients who are suddenly cutting budgets, cancelling courses and postponing consultancy.

Anonymous said...

Back to reality.

Robert, can you open up this story a bit (without betraying any confidences). The PSF tag is a little elusive and ambiguous for me.


BB