In my last post I introduced you to a concept that has worked wonders for the UK’s Olympic medal haul – and could hold the key to improving your sales performance in our near nil growth economy.

Have you started thinking yet about the ‘Aggregation of Incremental Gains’, and what small improvements you could be making to processes that will impact on the bottom line? The business strategist in me urges you to make the most of this advice to benefit your own business.

6. Get Out Route Riding

Block off time in your diary to get out with your field sales people to watch, listen and coach. At the end of the day carry out a Kerbside Review highlighting the good, not so good and areas that must be improved before the next field accompaniment. Just spending time on the road with them can lead to a boost in sales people’s confidence and results.

7. ‘Bird Dogging’ Incentive

Many sales people are reluctant prospectors, preferring to spend time with the customers they know.  Launch an incentive programme that rewards contact with new prospects and increase the level of reward in relation to the quality of information gathered. Ten per cent customer loss is the norm in good times, now it’s even higher so it’s important to leave no stone unturned when looking for much needed new prospects.

8. Trawl Through Dead Accounts

Work out strategies to reignite old clients and lost deals. Times have changed, people have moved on and requirements are often different. One company took the time to revisit seventeen years of dead and lost opportunities which produced an annual 10% increase in sales for the next 5 years.

9. Make the Purchase Process Frictionless

Gather together all your sales software suppliers, your IT people and your sales support leaders and ask them “Is this the most frictionless sales process there is?” As sales and marketing guru Matt Heinz stated in his recent blog: “This is more than just tools. What does it take to process an order? What steps, what paperwork, what’s required of the customer, of the sales rep, of the manager? Where does the process typically break down, and could certain process stages be improved, sped up or eliminated? How much time does it take for a rep to get back on the phone with another customer (after recording the conversation and status, finding the next prospect to call, etc.)? Process may be boring, but it’s the foundation on which successful, streamlined sales organisations are built.”

10. Follow Up, Follow Through  

Whoever heard of a First Birthday Gift for a bathroom or a Wooden Gate Brushup? Two entrepreneurial sales directors have notched up additional sales with these simple ideas, both costed into the original price but never talked about until they take place. On the first anniversary of the completed installation the sales manager for the specialist bathroom refurbishment company calls on the customer with a small hamper of Molton Brown bath and shower products and during the visit checks that everything is OK and leaves a referral offer for the homeowner. For larger customers the wooden gate company do a similar thing, cleaning down and re-oiling the gates, again leaving a referral offer for the homeowner. Both sales directors say this is one of the best low cost referral lead generation programmes they have ever implemented and it pays off big time.

Which ten areas of your sales operation are you going to include in your Aggregation of Incremental Gains programme?

 Apply the concept of the ‘Aggregation of Incremental Gains’: making small improvements to every stage of a whole process. Take a step back and look at your whole sales operation, identify ten areas that could perform better and envisage what a one per cent improvement in each of them would do to your bottom line.

 As a business strategist with decades of experience in advising family businesses and owner managers across Yorkshire and further afield, I believe the following steps could yield real gold in your sales campaign:

 1. Reboot your CRM programme

Call in your CRM provider and ask them to review how you are using their programme and make suggestions on how you could achieve a ten per cent improvement in sales.

2. Gather more customer data

Use the quieter summer months to gather more information about your customers, their buying behaviour and purchasing preferences. One domestic heating oil distributor spent the summer contacting every customer to find out how they managed their home heating; how and when they made decisions about purchasing heating oil; when was the best day for them to take delivery; and how they felt about various purchase and supply plans on offer. There was no attempt to sell – just an agreement about when the telemarketer should call back to discuss the first order of the winter. Using this extra data the company increased sales by over 7%, improved gross margin by more than 1% and reduced transport costs by 2% – all of which fell to the bottom line.

 3. Get Google Adwords certified

Sign up your IT or social media person to the Google AdWords Certification Program . It’s a globally recognised stamp of approval which showcases knowledge of the latest AdWords tools and best practice techniques and will enable you to effectively manage AdWords campaigns and strategy, improving the quantity and quality of those sales leads who click through to your site.

 4. Check your keywords and phrases

The Google AdWords Certification Program hones in on this. Making time to delve more deeply into your Google Analytics will highlight which words and phrases are working best for you, how visitors find your site and the level of competition for these phrases. Evidence shows that a few small tweaks in key phrases can significantly improve the quantity and quality of sales leads.

 5. Is everyone following the script?

Or are they left to do their own thing? Are your telesales people covering all points of the script, asking the right questions, getting the right information, handling the objections effectively and always asking for the order more than once, or are they just focused on hitting their call targets? Take time out to listen in on calls and discover where techniques can be improved.

 There’ll be more gold in the next five steps – don’t miss my next post for the chance to make an Olympic difference to your bottom line.

What three things do people most want from their business leaders? The answer, according to a new survey from the Chartered Institute of People Development is: more frequent one to one meetings, coaching sessions and regular feedback.

Eight out of 10 business leaders and managers think they are doing a good people management job according to the survey, while only just over five out of ten employees think their boss is good at people management. This could well explain why there are so many stressed employees, and such high levels of absenteeism and workplace conflict in so many SMEs and family businesses, across Yorkshire and beyond – not to mention the growing piles of discipline and grievance complaints!

But here’s the good news: if the Institute’s survey is correct, there are only three easy steps to boosting your people management skills and thereby boosting your business performance.

1. More one-to-one meetings to discuss how the employee is developing in their current role and what needs to be done and achieved in order to advance the individual’s career objectives. During such sessions you should ask the employees for their opinions on how things could be done better – and some of these suggestions should be tested and put into practice.

2. On the job coaching to improve and develop knowledge and skills, and provide a better overview of the big picture. Coaching also helps to explore possibilities and alternative solutions and to share best practice.

3. Regular Feedback on what is happening in the business, the department and the team. Regular feedback on how individuals’ performance contributed to these developments, what is required to achieve these targets and objectives and the resources being made available, along with how changes and improvements are working out.

What steps have you taken to improve your people management skills?

With a strong sales pipeline being more critical than ever to power your business through

1. Refresh the Sales Leadership
Search out and recruit new sales leaders with the track record and fresh ideas to open up bigger sales opportunities and potential new business and with the skills to coach, develop and motivate your salespeople to raise their game to meet the new challenges.

2. Sharper Customer Focus and Targeting
Identify current and potential customers with the capacity and commitment to grow, find out what their goals, objectives and plans are – and who and what their key people and profit drivers are. Identify how these growth plans can be harnessed to accelerate your business.

3. Get Closer to Customers
Spread the level of contact you have within your major customers and engage effectively with them, don’t leave it all up to the field salesperson. Involve your accounts people, marketing, production, logistics, technical and customer support to gain as much information as possible about your customers and what is happening inside their business. Regular top person to top person contact is crucial, not only does it open up new opportunities but helps to cement business.

4. Boost Sales Knowledge and Skills
Hire a part time sales coach to breathe new life into the sales team, run refresher courses, revamp product and service knowledge and bring them up to speed on new sales and negotiations tools, techniques and technology.

5. Stimulate and drive a  Continuous Improvement Culture
Ask everyone in the business: “Is This the Best We Can Do?” and keep on asking them until they come up with better products, services and availability that offer the customers better value.

6. Pump Up the Pipeline
Call in a lead generation specialist to give you processes a thorough going over – identifying weaknesses, missed opportunities, poor co-ordination and sloppy behaviour. Get them to point sales and marketing in the right direction, sharpen their focus, hone their lead generation skills and enhance their ability to harness the power of new lead generation technology.

As a business strategist with more than three decades of expert, I’m all too aware that Sales Insanity is defined as “Doing what you have always done and expecting a different answer”. These six steps have helped What If Forum members significantly power up sales and the payback has been outstanding.

What new things have you done - or will you now start doing – to kick start and boost sales?

A new report into life inside Britain’s boardrooms commissioned by executive recruitment and talent specialists Wickland Westcott, has revealed that Yorkshire bosses only take 80 per cent of their annual holiday entitlement – with three out of ten regularly working weekends.

The survey of 1,000 company bosses and directors across the UK highlighted that 38 per cent) of Yorkshire’s leaders put in more than 40 hours a week and 9 per cent regularly clock up between 50 to 70 hours on a weekly basis.

As a business strategist with decades of experience in helping the heads of family businesses and owner managers across Huddersfield, Harrogate and further afield, to achieve a work life balance, below are my tips to start now by breaking the cycle of taking half the office home or away with you at weekends and holidays.

Top tips for achieving a work/life balance:

Learn to let go
Start working ‘on’ as opposed to ‘in’ your business. You will be a far more effective and successful leader if you keep focused on the bigger picture.

Learn how to delegate
Build a talented and outperforming team around you and delegate effectively. You don’t have to be at every meeting – just the key ones. Identify which they are and learn how to get the most out of your managers in one-to-ones

Utilise the power of processes
Get the right systems in place so your team can run the business smoothly. Extract everything from your head into a ‘How to’ manual.

Define what is important to you

Establish exactly what you want to be, do and have. Pin down what is holding you back from achieving these goals and determine how to overcome potential obstacles which may get in the way.

Make time for you
Find an exercise, sport or leisure activity you enjoy and keep doing it. It’s important to stretch yourself mentally and psychically.

In the adage that if you keep on doing what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got – what are you going to do differently from now on?

Following the news that 25 per cent of small to medium sized businesses (SMEs) in the UK are forecast to crash by 2014, as a business strategist with decades of expertise in boosting the profitability and effectiveness of SMEs, I’m offering a FREE Business Booster Clinic.

The level of growth that is right for you depends on the solution you are seeking, your investment level and how fast you desire improvement and change through doing the right things.

Criteria for What If Business Booster Clinic:

• You are a business owner with a turnover of £5 million and above who needs to gain some impartial, external advice on how to improve the performance of your current business
• You realise that there are things within your company that are frustrating you and possibly holding you back
• You could really use a sounding board for some solutions to your current frustrations

What do you do next?

Contact us (see details below) and we’ll let you know the dates and times of the next clinics

We’ll arrange a mutually convenient time to meet at your offices for a two hour session.  We’ll talk through your agenda on of what’s frustrating you and give you an outline of some of the options that are open to you in your current situation.

What do you need to invest in to attend a What If Business Booster Clinic?

As this meeting involves us getting face to face all it involves is your time and commitment to meet us on your premises.

You’ll receive a free appraisal of your business and at the end of the session you are free to take away any advice and action plans you receive to use as you wish. You may also use this meeting as your assessment of whether you would like to take our meeting to a further stage. There are a number of ways in which What If Forums which I run for owner managers and family businesses across Yorkshire can help you kick start your business growth and sharpen your skills at running your company.

 Why is this a FREE meeting?

It’s a perfect way for you to meet us and discover how our business can help you and your business.

To get the ball rolling, contact me on richard.bosworth@whatifspedialist.comor go to @richardwhatif on Twitterand Richard Bosworth on LinkedIn.

Profit is the amount of added value created over and above the costs, and profit drivers are the five core activities that influence and impact on your profit levels. 

Most crucially, knowing where and how profit is made in your company – and how to maximise it – is key to surviving and prospering in the new economic cycle – particularly in light of the latest news of a double dip recession and more volatile times ahead.

As a company leader operating in products or services industries across Yorkshire, New York and further afield, it’s critical that you maximise the five key factors which drive profitability. 

1. Sales

As a business owner, understand in detail which products, customers and sales people generate you the greatest profits and why. Are they realising their full potential? If not, why not? The sales, turnover and margin profit drivers to put under the microscope are:

• Product and/or service mix
• Customer profiles and mix
• Region or area performance  

2. Margin

As with sales, get to grips with the detail of which products, customers and sales people generate the greatest profits – and why. How can you improve margins without damaging customer relations and sales?  The key margin profit drivers to analyse are:

• Individual products and/or services
• The cost structure
• Market Strategy – low margin / high volume or high margin / low volume
• Credit policy – the true cost of offering credit           

3. Operations

Are your production and distribution people making the most profitable use of the resources they have? Are they doing things in a certain way just because they always have?  Now is the time to get into lean processing in a big way. The operations profit drivers you should focus on are:

• Cycle times and product mix
• Material costs
• Operating expenses 

4. Overheads

What if you reduce overheads down to less than 10 per cent of sales? Now is the time to rethink your business model. Harness the power of technology to outsource all those activities that are not core to the business, do not add value and for which the customer doesn’t want to pay. Check out these overhead profit drivers:

• Space utilisation
• Head count / productivity
• Operating expenses

5. Finance

Is there enough money available to fund your future growth? Make the money in the business work harder – it all adds to the bottom line and sends a clear message to all your stakeholders about the importance of good financial management. The financial profit drivers you should look at are:

• Borrowings and bank charges
• Working capital controls
• Cash-flow management

Once you’ve completed the above actions, maximise this wealth of knowledge by doing the following : 

• Monitor the drivers as part of your monthly management reports and drill down to discover the impact they have on the performance of the business.  
• Make your managers accountable for the profit drivers in their areas, and have them identify ways in which they can improve the profitability of the business.
• Agree profit improvement targets for the business, built around improvements to the key profit drivers.
• Set up a credit strategy 

What are your tips for being more profitable and successful?

In today’s hectic business when everyone is required to achieve more with less – the importance of

Is the following scenario typical of your working day?

Don’t have time for breakfast; run through the mornings on coffee and adrenaline; grab your lunch (what’s a lunch hour?) without a thought to what you are eating; plough through the afternoons feeling sluggish, with memory, mood and concentration impaired. Home and … crash!

You can change this with a little thought about what goes into your lunch box.

L = Living Foods

Salad vegetables, celery, broccoli, spinach, carrots, avocados, apples, pears, basically anything you can pick from the ground or pluck from trees. Raw Living Foods give abundant ENERGY! They will also fight FATIGUE, providing a broad range of absorbable nutrients and hydrate. If you cook them, make sure they are steamed, not boiled or microwaved. For snacks eat fruit, or chop up the veggies … lovely in dips. Yum!

U = Unprocessed

Proteins are important for maintaining STRENGTH, but choose those that are clean, i.e. don’t contain any additives or preservatives. If it’s been through any process at all, forget it, the negatives will outweigh the benefits of the food. Chicken, turkey, fish, eggs, beans and pulses can be added to salads, soups and stews. Cottage cheese and hummus make great dips with some raw veggies as a snack. Plain, organic live yoghurt is good too.

N = Nuts

A handful of mixed nuts and seeds as an afternoon snack will keep your blood sugar even and avoid the afternoon slump. They also contain Omega 3 good fats that feed the brain and will keep you mentally alert, giving better CONCENTRATION and SHORT TERM MEMORY. Avocados and oily fish can be added to your main meal for the same benefits. Get ratty or intolerant in the afternoons? These will help with mood swings too.

C = Carbs

Slow release carbohydrates are needed for ENDURANCE … it can be a long day so you need to keep your energy up! Wholewheat bread, wraps, pittas can be filled with wonderful foods.  Pasta, brown rice, couscous, quinoa all make perfect bases to add any vegetables to …. Sprinkle with an olive oil dressing and you’ll be adding even more ‘good fats’! Not too much of these carbs though, an excess will contribute towards weight gain!

H = Hydrate

Water and more water will reduce your internal STRESS. Your body is made up of 85% water, the brain 80% water …. not tea, coffee, pop or bought juices. These not only create a huge stress to your body, they will drain your body of vital nutrients and dehydrate you. Make your own juice or smoothie from the Living Foods, packed full of nutrients and hydrating too. 1.5 to 2 litres max of pure, clean water to be drunk throughout the day for maximum benefit.

BOX – clever!

As a business strategist with decades of expertise in helping owner managers and family businesses to achieve boost their business performance, profitability and work/life balance, contact me contact me on richard.bosworth@whatifspecialist.com or go to @richardwhatif on Twitter, Richard Bosworth on LinkedIn or www.whatifforums.com.

Do you often start the week raring to go – and with the best intentions to work ‘on’ as opposed to ‘in’ your business – only to get sucked into issues and problems that come crashing through the door?

The domino effect invariably sees your new initiatives hurtling out of the window by mid week as you deal with ‘stuff’ which takes your eye off business strategy and resulting in you ending the week with the Groundhog Day insanity.

Here are five steps to help you get back on track:

Stop doing it all yourself

Instead of taking on your management teams’ issues and challenges – restructure and refocus them to manage instead of just following your lead. Evaluate everyone’s competency, commitment, knowledge, capabilities, experience and performance. The ultimate achievement is having the perfect management meeting.

Know where you add value as a leader

Getting the right people and systems in place is vital, but understanding and harnessing where you add value as a leader is the catalyst to drive the business forward. This includes finding out what customers value about doing business with you by taking the time to visit them and really understand their aspirations and challenges.

Determine if your business is an investment or a job

Are you working for the salary or is it the ‘buzz’ that does it for you?  What if you considered the company as an investment and saw your challenge as creating and growing the wealth for yourself and/or the owners? How would that change things for you and the way you operate the business?

Set a Return on Assets (ROA) goal

Increasing net income – profit after tax – is often an adequate goal for many CEOs.  But it doesn’t reflect how well the assets of the business are being managed and used. What if you set a target rate? Would this alter the way you run your company if you were aiming to achieve the cost of capital plus inflation and a risk premium?

Plan your exit

Get yourself a plan, keep your eye on the end goal – and stay focused and grounded. As the owner, determine when, how and to whom you would dispose of the business and for how much? The value of most businesses is built around future earnings and cash-flows, so it’s vital you get your people and processes in plan to enable you to realize the true value of your business when you leave it.  

How do you avoid getting sucked into the minutiae detail?

If you were out of the business for an extended period – whether this is going through the process of

As a business strategist who has helped hundreds of business owners to enjoy a work life balance without the wheels rattling – let alone flying off, I know that the secret of success lies in working ‘on’ as opposed to ‘in’ your business.

It also means setting in place the right systems, processes and people.

A good start is to identify the eight key tasks that only you can do – and which are critical to the survival of your company.

1. Review business performance against the plan and decide the most appropriate options/ actions in light of the challenges and constraints
2. Take on the role of executive coach. Conduct 1-2-1s with your key executives to coach and develop them to make better choices and decisions. Keep them focused on the strategic goals
3. Walk the four corners of the business, see what’s going on and what requires reviewing in the 1-2-1s
4. Regularly visit customers and listen to their thoughts and future plans
5. Find out what suppliers are working on and what is happening in their markets
6. Communicate with all your stakeholders (inside and outside the business) to ensure everyone knows what is happening and why
7. Develop yourself by joining a peer group learning forum such as What If Forums
8. Research future possibilities and attend conferences, exhibitions and events.

How many hours a week are you currently working versus how many you aspire to work?