Mini-Case Study 2: Increasing Accountants’ Sales By 32%

Scan: three companies of accountants had merged, but operated to their own agendas as businesses and individuals. Too many were merely “order takers” leading to poor client relationships.

Evaluate: a business review showed little clarity of purpose or direction, and no unity of operating systems. Needed to change 1+1+1=3 into 1+1+1=5.

Recommendations: management and staff seminars created a shared sense of purpose and willingness to co-operate because they would all profit. New system set up by DC and key staff. Training was practical, comprehensive and positively received.

Results: 32% increase in services taken by clients transforming profitability. 10% annual growth exceeded.

Contact Paul Jobin or Robert Craven at The Directors' Centre to find out more. +44 01225 851044

Mini-Case Study 1: Doubling Net Profit In 18 Months

Scan: a care homes group in the Midlands with 6 homes. Good care, good people, low profits, no growth. Being out-gunned by national big company competitors.

Evaluate: too many NHS residents at low rates. Residents cared for, but not happy. No strategy. No direction.

Recommendations: increase the rates; cap NHS resident numbers. Invest in activities to create happier residents. Launch positive initiatives: position as leaders in “home-from-home care” (what the big companies could never do); create a Fair Prices Campaign positioning them as the champions of good value; Elderly In The Community Awards to build community relationships, attract sponsors and recruit new residents.

Results: happier residents; a waiting list of residents; net profit margin up from 12% to 26% in 18 months.

Contact Paul Jobin or Robert Craven at The Directors' Centre to find out more

A New Mastermind Group is Born! October 2011

A Mastermind Recipe:

1. Take six business people (three men, three women).
2. Lock them away for two solid days. With me.
3. Show them how to healthcheck their businesses, define and set their personal, career and business goals.
4. Get them to bring their key issues to the table.

This is a recipe for a high octane mix of:

• results-focused decision-making,
• breaking self-limiting beliefs and
• creating the focus and drive that so many of us seek.

Chatham House Rules apply at such events. Names and identities will always be disguised to protect the innocent!!!

However, I can tell you that we had a vivacious mix of industries represented: media, e-learning, auctions, fitness, financial services and events.

The original issues were clearly defined as ‘GROWTH’ or ‘survival and growth’ and this manifested itself in many different ways.

At the heart of every conversation was an obsession with ‘deliverables’ and the actions required to achieve those results.

By results we meant increased profitability, better sales, and a better work-life balance. The subjects tackled were diverse and varied but the intensity and passion were second-to-none:

• How to really make our clients feel loved-up!
• How to create an out-sourced business model
• How to introduce crowd-sourcing as an idea-generator
• How to scale-up fast
• How to switch director roles so that people do what they are best at
• How to create/hit challenging sales/profit targets
• How to put in place/create a scorecard process for highly effective monthly board meetings

Everyone left tired but invigorated to take on the exciting challenges that lay ahead. All condensed into three succinct action points to work on first thing Monday morning.

What is clear is that the formula works:

The right group of individuals
+

The right leader with the right knowledge/skills/attitude
+
An action orientation
+
Honesty, not politeness
+
Respect and the right chemistry
+
Accountability to deliver
=
Massive results for all the individuals concerned

RELATED LINKS

See Will a 'Mastermind' group accelerate business growth? Or blow up in your face?

Will New Business Consultancy Programmes Translate Into Better Businesses For The Client?

SEARCH FOR THE PERFECT BUSINESS IDEA

So, imagine the situation. Five budding entrepreneurs come together and decide to look for a new business venture.

They create their wish list and send out their researchers to find

• the perfect industry (growing, immature, without any significant major players) and
• perfect clients/customers (hungry for the product, insatiable appetite for repeat purchases).

Some other characteristics would be ideal:

• relatively easy to brand
• the opportunity to productise and create apparently unique special formulae/recipes
• a growing national obsession with the topic
• a few celebrities available to be associated with the brand.

If it were 1970, then the industry would be the diet industry.

If it were 1980 it would be independent record labels or holidays.

If it were 1990 it would be extreme sports or fitness.

If it were 2000 it would be gap year students.

And in 2010, my guess is that it could be business support for small businesses.

COULD IT BE BUSINESS SUPPORT?

The business support industry has been a classic growth industry. The collapse of the existing providers (Business Link etc) who had a variable reputation combines with a growing obsession with entrepreneurship (The Apprentice, Dragons’ Den, Queen of Shops, an entire government pinning its hopes on entrepreneurship and SMEs as the hero of recovery). All this creates the perfect breeding ground for new businesses focusing on selling to the small business.

BUSINESSES UNDER £500k AS A TARGET?

So, some might say that they have small businesses (typically under £500k turnover) as a ripe market for plundering.

• The numbers stack up: millions of them.
• The demand is there: they want to know how to grow their businesses, the secrets, the quick-fixes, the short-cuts.
• They have the spending power: generous redundancy and pension packages to be plundered
• They have the hurt: poor profit, low sales with the recession as the backdrop. They have the desire.

So, the next step is to satisfy the need. The ‘so-called’ formula is relatively straightforward (whether you are selling accountancy, web design, marketing, business development, or growth services):

• speak in a voice that the customer/client can relate to, demonstrate your credibility (testimonials, endorsements, case studies, video, website, how tos)
• have a proven track record
• have an expertise and an ‘ology’(a proprietary point of view)
• ideally focus on a niche subject or market

and away you go.

Add to the mix some combination of:

• money-back-guarantees,
• Try Before You Buy or free seminar/workbook/ebook
• an obsession with long copy
• another obsession with capturing email addresses

and you have the ingredients for your new business development business.

In a nutshell:

• offer an overt benefit
• give clients a reason to believe in you
• be dramatically different!!

I have no beef with how this has panned out. Quite the reverse.

In my humble opinion, the whole industry is about results. What else could it be about?

IT IS ALL ABOUT RESULTS FOR THE CLIENT

The attention of the potential client has to be focused on the (subtle?) difference between what consultancies sell and do as opposed to what clients wish to buy. It is clear that small business clients want to buy more sales and more profits. Most consultancies seem to sell a variation on the theme of more profit/sales for the business owner. What is in dispute is whether the consultancies deliver on the promise.

After several decades in the industry, having taken client businesses literally from zero to hero, from dream to final sale, I understand how the industry can deliver not just for their own share-holders but, more importantly, for the clients.

It is not sustainable (or moral) for the industry to under-deliver on its promises (even if there appears to be a bottomless pit of needy clients in search of the magic silver bullet). Neither is it good enough to make the sale, take the clients’ money, deliver on the promised service… especially if the client doesn’t get the benefits (= results) offered.

SO, WHAT WORKS?

What I have learned from both sides of the business development/growth industry is that books/seminars/tapes/videos/CDs are fantastic at pushing you in the DIY direction: showing you the basics and explaining the mechanics.

However, they still miss out on an essential ingredient: one-to-one support is the point at which you and the expert are able to design the model to fit your own specific circumstances. It is this one-to-one (consultancy) or one-to-few (mastermind/masterclass) interaction which has the massive impact on your business especially when run over a time period of several months.

So, the opportunity is there for the new providers to help/assist the smaller businesses. That is not in dispute. But, will these interventions translate into significantly improved business performance on the part of the clients and delegates? It is as simple as that.

The "Secrets of Success" - My Foot! Research On Mastermind Groups (reprinted)

Due to popular demand I am republishing this article here. Apologies for any cross-posting. It was originally published at The Directors' Centre Online Business Club

The eternal search for the secrets of business success creates wave upon wave of products and services that “unlock the potential” etc etc. However, some evidence of what actually works does already exist.

After a late night brandy and long discussions about exciting people I have worked with in the past, I decided to do some digging around. I followed up a cadre of companies I worked with some ten years ago and decided to see quite what had happened to them.

What we do know is that the ‘successful’ are very different from the ‘less successful’ (see the Magic Million Survey) and one of the key differences is how the successful take control and ownership of their destinies. They do not blame others.

Other characteristics include a “can do”, “take action now” and “get the best help” attitude. All good stuff. And then, of course, there is the obsession with strategy, marketing and teams… but that’s not what I wish to talk about here.

So what became of my 2001 business group (and why)?

I chose to chase up a typical group of entrepreneur and business owners that I had worked with in 2001. The eight businesses had an average turnover of £1.2million; they varied between £50k and £3m turnovers. They worked with me over the year, coming together in what would now be called a Mastermind Group, to explore and develop their businesses. And what became of them?

Well, the results were almost too good to be true (but I think I can explain that). Depending on how you measure “current business activity” (because of acquisitions, mergers etc), the average £1.2m p.a. turnover is now between £3.5m and £13m.

All are still trading in one form or another. They have gone on to achieve:
• Sales in excess of £500 million
• One business sold for in excess of £20million
• One business the subject of a full management buy-out in excess of £10million
• One business owner able to retire aged 42 and hand over the business to a management team.

So, is there some kind of secret formula? Some magic, silver bullet? Well, the answer is ‘yes’ and ‘no’!

But, mainly no.

Let me explain.

The world is currently littered with get-rich-quick, too-good-to-be-true, money-back-guaranteed promises to help you grow your business. Our inner child looking for relief from the stress and pain of our ‘under-performing’ business responds positively to offers.

Sometimes the “ten things to do in the next ten days” type programme can be the red-hot raw ginger we need to sort our businesses. But, more often than not, the real problem is more, shall we say, ‘structural’ and requires a more considered and bespoke solution to create a long-term improvement. Anyhow I digress.

My point is this. You need to think about whether your business will benefit from a quick fix (a quick tune-up, points, plus an oil change) or whether it needs a more significant, real fix (changing or replacing key components to match what is really required). Either way we all know what we think about anything that claims to be a quick-fix or too-good-to-be-true.

So, why did these businesses do so well?

I believe that there were two reasons:-

1. The nature of the programme: A closed group that meets with the sole intention of improving each other’s businesses. All attendees were looking for profound, significant and measurable growth in business performance; they shared ‘insider secrets’ and best practice from ‘been-there-done-it’ experts. The programme also created intense, supportive business relationships and produced the accountability required to make delegates over-deliver on their action plans.

2. The nature of the people who are attracted to such a programme: Only certain people (the truly success-focused) would be attracted to such a programme, people with the “can do”, “take action now” and “get the best help” attitude that I mentioned before.

This combination of the right programme and the right people creates a dynamic and electric atmosphere.

Government Health Warning: While the results of the individual firms concerned are very impressive, one doesn’t really know whether they would have done much, much better or much, much worse had they not attended!!! We will never know the answer but what we do know is that the sort of people who do attend these kind of programmes see truly significant improvements in their business performance.

P.S. I have subsequently looked at other similar groups and they have all got similar leaps in business performance

Robert

The Real Virus That Is Killing Your Business

There seems to be a virulent disease spreading through the business community. Like all viruses it has pervaded its hosts almost unnoticed, and slowly but surely it has spread and got so comfortable with its parasitic existence within the body of its hosts that the hosts seem oblivious of its existence.

This disease, this scourge of the business community, is the recently discovered “five-year-old-itis”.

Symptoms

The symptoms are plain to see:

• Nothing seems to work as well as it used to (sales campaigns, adverts, proposals)
• Everything seems to take longer (commitments, decisions, replies to emails)
• There seems to be less traction and more ambiguity wherever you look
• You’re working harder than ever before and making less progress than in the past.

These are warning signs that you are probably suffering from “five-year-old-itis”!

Cause

Most businesses have behaved like frightened rabbits in the headlights of the recession. They have got stuck, unable to decide what to do, petrified of making the wrong decision. And their whole world view will have been based on a pre-recession model of the world. In the past five years everything (and nothing) has changed. Five years ago everyone was doing pretty well. There was virtually no Twitter, FaceBook or Linkedin; we had become familiar with living in a constantly-growing economy where consumer demand and house prices just kept going up. And then the bubble burst.

Most businesses that I currently see are using five-year-old assumptions about:

• Their business and financial model
• Who the customers are and why and when and how they prefer to buy
• Who the competition is
• Current staff, processes and systems, and whether they are the right people for today’s true customer and market needs.

Cure

There is no shortage of hyperventilating, breathless, get-rich-quick, money-back-guaranteed, effusive, testimonial-driven business programmes now on the market. However, I am not convinced that a one-size-fits-all quick fix is necessarily the right answer for your business. None of us believe that quick fixes (hair removal, sun tans, patio doors, weight loss) really work. (As my mother says, if it is too good to be true then it probably is.) So, why would you think that a quick fix would work for your business?

The alternative to the quick fix (despite how seductive and appealing it may look), would be the ‘proper fix’. And this, my friends, may be harder work but may sort you out properly. By this I mean actually stopping and redesigning your business, creating a business for today and tomorrow rather than for five years ago.

Food for thought.