Posts Tagged ‘ Business Development ’

How do you develop leaders in your organization?

One of the ways I give back to the community is to volunteer as a Varsity Coach for the Boy Scouts of America.  I work with 14 to 18 year old young men.

We just completed a 57 mile hike at Philmont near Cimarron, New Mexico.

In that setting, you learn about life and leadership.

I know what I said last week.  It still applies in most situations.  But in a climate of disruptive innovations, listening to your customers can cost you industry leadership.

Your customers know what they need now.  But if you always base your plans off of what your customers think they want in the future you will lose your position of industry leadership.

Your customers are chasing markets with higher sales and higher margins.  They should and you should.  But there are new businesses trying to expand from their markets to yours.

An example from the steel industry over the last 20 years in the United States is a prime example of this problem.

You need a business plan.

It needs to drive daily decisions.

There are tons of free resources out there to help you get started.

One website has over 400 free sample business plans.  This can be a great place to start.  But all it is is a start.

You need extra eyes looking at your business plan.

Find people with expertise in a variety of areas and meet with them twice a year. The big secret on how to recruit them: free food. Never underestimate the power of free food.

Here is an example from working with one of my clients.  He started his firm at the beginning of this year and discussed his business plan and strategy with me. At a previous employer, collections lagged services rendered by 6 months or more.  Being a new firm, he knew that his cash flow would become unmanageable if his collections were so slow.

Who are you?

What is your business?

If you can’t answer those questions, you’re in trouble.

The answers to those questions dictate how you interact with your customers and employees.

Your business mission statement is the most important part of your business plan because it tells you what else is important.

Adam Stephenson is a patent attorney at Adam R. Stephenson, LTD.  Check out his business here.

Adam started out with a business plan created from a template, so we took it and made it better.  The template told him format, but we spent the time to create a plan that will give him specific milestones to measure his success as the business grows.  I helped him with the financial projections, cash flow planning, and other business management strategies.

I wanted to include his recommendation from my LinkedIn profile here:

“Tony reviewed my business plan in detail, examined my financial projections, and sat down with me face to face to analyze my market’s opportunities and challenges aspect by aspect. His advice about how to successfully navigate the startup period and manage cash flow by using ways to encourage early payments has been extremely valuable.

A reader asked how to do a break-even analysis.

Here it goes.

Whether it is salaries for new employees, equipment, or both, starting a business or expanding production costs money.  Doing a break-even analysis will tell you how productive the expansion needs to be to pay for itself.

You need to know a few things to get your break even analysis to tell you the truth.

You know you need to work on your business plan.  Do you work on your job descriptions?

You need to have training from day one that you bring someone new to your team so they know the whole structure of the business and how their role is important.

What happens to someone who no longer makes the business money?

There are many not-for-profit businesses out there.  The problem is most don’t intend to be.

Here’s what it might look like: Employees lack focus.  Management tries to motivate them, but nobody knows how their specific tasks relate to profitability.

It’s time to trim the fat.  Get rid of the tasks that don’t make you money.  Add tasks that make you more money.  I know it sounds elementary, but not enough businesses do it.

These three rules will help you make business development decisions: