The world’s greatest Business Tool revealed
The world’s greatest Business Tool revealed
Experimentation and measurement are the most effective tools any business owner can ever employ.
Did your ever hear your dad/ grand father/ uncle utter these words:
“If a job’s worth doing it is worth doing it well…”
Mine did, but now I disagree (respectfully of course). Instead I make this statement:
If a job is worth doing it is worth messing around with!”
Too often we feel stifled by the feeling that this or that problem needs to be tackled if only we knew what THE answer was. We are afraid we won’t get it right, that it won’t work, we’ll fail….
And of course we don’t know THE answer…………..
Good news and bad news:
The Bad news is: …….........…..There is no answer!
But the Good news is: ……..….There are lots of answers!
There are as many answers as there are businesses and business owners. This is not to say that there aren’t many basic principles that apply to all businesses. There are important common principles of marketing or finance for example, but how those principles apply to you in your business is entirely dependent on the unique combination that is you and your business.
Somewhere in those 11,000 books on Amazon you might find the answer to your particular problem, appropriate for you and your business, although that is by no means guaranteed. Besides, if you have time to read even 1% of that library you don’t need to read the rest of this article, your business is already running the way it should.
A much more useful approach is to look at the issue, pull it apart into as many component parts as possible and ask yourself: I wonder what I could try next? That is experimentation. Look at an issue and say hmmm…I wonder….. Big change can come from little experiments, and if the experiment doesn’t work out…try something different.
The “But”
There is always a “But” and this article is no different, sorry to disillusion you. The “but” is this: Experimentation must be based on measurement, without relevant measurement, experimentation falls flat on its face, is frustrating for everyone and costs lost of money.
You can’t manage what you don’t measure.
It is the continual cycle of measurement, experimentation, more measurement and more experimentation that will have the greatest impact on the sustainable growth of your business.
Case in point
I am going to take you through a real world example that will demonstrate what I mean. The example comes from a client of mine who is an electrician. I have reduced the story down to the bare essentials, and obviously it demonstrates a principle only. How you translate this principle into something that works for you and your business I can’t say from here. My hope is that you will let it stew in your brain for a bit and ask yourself: “I wonder how I can experiment with that principle in my business?”
My client has a number of vans on the road, with a tradesman and apprentice in each van. One of his burning issues was the amount of (un-chargeable) time that his teams spent running to the local suppliers every week to pick up bits and pieces for each job. The vans normally carried some stock (mostly stuff left over from previous jobs) but a lot of time each week was lost because the vans were on the road, shopping. Over the years he had experimented with different ideas, but the issue persisted and he really didn’t know how to make headway with it.
This is what we started working on:
First we set up a way to measure how much time each team spent travelling to buy the bits and pieces, day by day and team by team.
We learnt two things:
On average he lost about 11 billable hours per week for all teams combined to “shopping time”
One of the teams spent significantly less time shopping than the other three.
Armed with that information we decided to find out what was different for this team.
We found two differences:
Their van was tidier than the other vans,
They kept rough diary notes about some of the items they were running low on.
Clearly here was the beginning of a solution worth experimenting with.
We also decided to measure 2 other things:
First we measured what the top 100 most common items were that were used on jobs.
Second we worked out that 85% of jobs would require nothing else besides those 100 items.
This gave us some solid base lines to work from.
Stock lists
Putting together all this information we decided to make the top 100 items the standard inventory of each van. At the completion of each job, the team notes on a standard stock list how many of each item they used on that job. When they next pass one of the regular suppliers, they replace everything on the inventory list in the exact same quantity that they have used (and noted on the list) since the last time they went to a shop. And then they start a new list.
Now he is measuring again. The initial impact is significant; he has reduced the non-chargeable shopping time by 50% across the board. There is further work to do; the goal is to have no more un-chargeable shopping time at all, by the end of the current financial year.
Linda Evangelista
For now my client is able to take on an average of 3 extra jobs per week with the same resources. That equates to approximately $25,000 extra profit per year.
Apparently even Linda Evangelista would get out of bed for that!
One of the benefits of working with a business coach is that you will be encouraged time and again to ask yourself that question: “I wonder what would happen if……”
Further reading:
“The E-Myth series” by Michael Gerber
“Re-Imagine” by Tom Peters
“The Solutions Focus” By Paul Jackson and Mark McKergow
“Solutions Focus Working” by Mark McKergow and Jenny Clarke
“The One Minute Manager series” by Ken Blanchard et al
The worlds greatest Business Tool revealed - To learn more about this author, visit Roland Hanekroot's Website.
Like this article? Share it with your friends
Amazon stocks some 11,000 titles in the category “Small Business Management”, and although I can’t profess to have read them all, I am reasonably sure that very few will give you this simple bit of advice:
Experimentation and measurement are the most effective tools any business owner can ever employ.
Did your ever hear your dad/ grand father/ uncle utter these words:
“If a job’s worth doing it is worth doing it well…”
Mine did, but now I disagree (respectfully of course). Instead I make this statement:
If a job is worth doing it is worth messing around with!”
Too often we feel stifled by the feeling that this or that problem needs to be tackled if only we knew what THE answer was. We are afraid we won’t get it right, that it won’t work, we’ll fail….
And of course we don’t know THE answer…………..
Good news and bad news:
The Bad news is: …….........…..There is no answer!
But the Good news is: ……..….There are lots of answers!
There are as many answers as there are businesses and business owners. This is not to say that there aren’t many basic principles that apply to all businesses. There are important common principles of marketing or finance for example, but how those principles apply to you in your business is entirely dependent on the unique combination that is you and your business.
Somewhere in those 11,000 books on Amazon you might find the answer to your particular problem, appropriate for you and your business, although that is by no means guaranteed. Besides, if you have time to read even 1% of that library you don’t need to read the rest of this article, your business is already running the way it should.
A much more useful approach is to look at the issue, pull it apart into as many component parts as possible and ask yourself: I wonder what I could try next? That is experimentation. Look at an issue and say hmmm…I wonder….. Big change can come from little experiments, and if the experiment doesn’t work out…try something different.
The “But”
There is always a “But” and this article is no different, sorry to disillusion you. The “but” is this: Experimentation must be based on measurement, without relevant measurement, experimentation falls flat on its face, is frustrating for everyone and costs lost of money.
You can’t manage what you don’t measure.
It is the continual cycle of measurement, experimentation, more measurement and more experimentation that will have the greatest impact on the sustainable growth of your business.
Case in point
I am going to take you through a real world example that will demonstrate what I mean. The example comes from a client of mine who is an electrician. I have reduced the story down to the bare essentials, and obviously it demonstrates a principle only. How you translate this principle into something that works for you and your business I can’t say from here. My hope is that you will let it stew in your brain for a bit and ask yourself: “I wonder how I can experiment with that principle in my business?”
My client has a number of vans on the road, with a tradesman and apprentice in each van. One of his burning issues was the amount of (un-chargeable) time that his teams spent running to the local suppliers every week to pick up bits and pieces for each job. The vans normally carried some stock (mostly stuff left over from previous jobs) but a lot of time each week was lost because the vans were on the road, shopping. Over the years he had experimented with different ideas, but the issue persisted and he really didn’t know how to make headway with it.
This is what we started working on:
First we set up a way to measure how much time each team spent travelling to buy the bits and pieces, day by day and team by team.
We learnt two things:
On average he lost about 11 billable hours per week for all teams combined to “shopping time”
One of the teams spent significantly less time shopping than the other three.
Armed with that information we decided to find out what was different for this team.
We found two differences:
Their van was tidier than the other vans,
They kept rough diary notes about some of the items they were running low on.
Clearly here was the beginning of a solution worth experimenting with.
We also decided to measure 2 other things:
First we measured what the top 100 most common items were that were used on jobs.
Second we worked out that 85% of jobs would require nothing else besides those 100 items.
This gave us some solid base lines to work from.
Stock lists
Putting together all this information we decided to make the top 100 items the standard inventory of each van. At the completion of each job, the team notes on a standard stock list how many of each item they used on that job. When they next pass one of the regular suppliers, they replace everything on the inventory list in the exact same quantity that they have used (and noted on the list) since the last time they went to a shop. And then they start a new list.
Now he is measuring again. The initial impact is significant; he has reduced the non-chargeable shopping time by 50% across the board. There is further work to do; the goal is to have no more un-chargeable shopping time at all, by the end of the current financial year.
Linda Evangelista
For now my client is able to take on an average of 3 extra jobs per week with the same resources. That equates to approximately $25,000 extra profit per year.
Apparently even Linda Evangelista would get out of bed for that!
One of the benefits of working with a business coach is that you will be encouraged time and again to ask yourself that question: “I wonder what would happen if……”
Further reading:
“The E-Myth series” by Michael Gerber
“Re-Imagine” by Tom Peters
“The Solutions Focus” By Paul Jackson and Mark McKergow
“Solutions Focus Working” by Mark McKergow and Jenny Clarke
“The One Minute Manager series” by Ken Blanchard et al
The worlds greatest Business Tool revealed - To learn more about this author, visit Roland Hanekroot's Website.
Like this article? Share it with your friends
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David BarrDavid Barr is the President of Venture Opportunities, Inc. David has been a professional business broker/intermediary since 1980 focusing on General Business Brokerage and Mergers and Acquisitions representing client transaction value from $400,000 to $20,000,000. Mr. Barr has handled the sale of over four hundred and fifty companies. David earned a university degree from the State University of New York majoring in economics and business. David holds the Mergers and Acquisition Master Intermediary and the Certified Business Intermediary designations from the International Business Brokers Association. He is also a Senior Business Analyst and a Texas licensed Real Estate Agent. For more information about David and Venture Opportunities, visit www.bizdealmaker.com. - Visit David Barr's Website |
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Anne BarrAnne Barr has over 26 years experience in sales and marketing, six years as a franchisee. She has assisted over 367 business owners and purchasers to achieve their goals in career change, transition and exit strategy. She holds the designation of Certified Franchise Executive from the International Franchise Association, Certified Business Intermediary from the International Business Brokers Association and Board Certified Broker from the Texas Association of Business Brokers. Anne is active in professional organizations, networking groups and volunteers for non-profit entities. As owner/operator of four successful businesses, Anne has proven people skills and enjoys helping clients find the right "fit" in business ownership. Visit www.FranchiseOpportunitySpecialist.com for more information about me and my company. - Visit Anne Barr's Website |
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Casey GollanCasey Gollan, Business Coaching & Mentoring Programs. Add $1 Million to $10 Million in the next 1 to 3 years. Since 1996 Casey has to added hundreds of millions of dollars to businesses. Watch a free video see client results Business Coaching website. - Visit Casey Gollan's Website |
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Kim CastleWith nearly two decades in the advertising and design business, with clients like Domino's Pizza, General Motors, Direct TV, Pedigree, Wolfgang Puck, Higher Octave Music, Hollywood Celebrity Products, Disney, and Paramount, as well as thousands of entrepreneurs around the world define, structure, communicate, and position their business for greater profits, BrandU(R) co-creators Kim Castle and W. Vito Montone discovered that entrepreneurs could experience the same power that big brands command for a fraction of the cost with the world's only process-based results-drive Integral approach to business creation. BrandU(R) is helping entrepreneurs grow with the power of extreme clarity from idea...to brand...to market(TM) and helping one million entrepreneurs become successful and whole so that they can make a difference in the world. Are you one of them? If you want to experience clarity all the way to the bank(TM), get started now at http://www.brandu.com. - Visit Kim Castle's Website |
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Jeff FosterWebBizIdeas.com is a Minneapolis website design company founded to help people start an internet business by providing them with website, business, and internet resources that help foster the growth of successful online businesses and develop innovative Internet business ideas. We specialize in internet consulting & internet marketing. - Visit Jeff Foster's Website |
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David AchesonDavid Acheson is the founder of DCJA Consultancy. DCJA Consultancy is a management consultancy business specialising in B2B sales consultancy. They offer bespoke and packaged sales consultancy including Sales Optimisation Review, Interim Sales Management, Sales & Marketing Review, 1:1 Sales & Management Staff Analysis, Management Training, Solution Sales Training, Creation of New Pay Plan, KPI's, run Customer Feedback Campaigns, assist with Recruitment, Coaching, Appraisals and set up Strategic Marketing Campaigns. David spent his early career in accountancy and then moved into sales in 1982, working in Office Equipment, IT, Advertising, Training, Outsourcing and Consultancy. He has held many Senior Positions in SMBs and Global Organisations including Head of Sales Operations & Head of Business Development. His knowledge, skills and great experience of the Sales Industry has led to David making keynote speeches and running educational sessions to key businesses through organisations including The Chamber of Commerce and Business Link. - Visit David Acheson's Website |
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Leanne Hoagland-SmithAre your sales where you want them to be? Will you be one of the few who achieves sales or business success or one of the many who have failed to change? Are you tired of being told you are like everyone else? Then you may find my first book on sales of interest. Be the Red Jacket in the Sea of Gray Suits, The Keys to Unlocking Sales available at Amazon or at http://www.processspecialist.com/red-jacket.htm. This book is a reflection of my no-nonsense approach to improving sales to overall business results. If you are truly committed to making sustainable changes, then I can help you secure a positive return on your investment because I focus on executable solutions not telling you the problems you already know you have. From training to corporate (group) coaching to executive one on one coaching, my approach is to assess, create awareness, build a goal driven action plan and then execute. The bottom line question is "Not do you or your employees know it, but do you or they want to do it?" Please call for a free strategy session at 219.759.5601. - Visit Leanne Hoagland-Smith's Website |
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Cheryl MatthynssensCheryl is a life skills coach, licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor and a 20 year entrepreneur. Cheryl's dedication to achieving a life of balance led to her expanding her teaching from the simple managing of life's daily challenges to adding financial well being as well. A direct marketer with DrinkACT, she is gaining ground in the online community with her concepts of making sure business owners, entreprenuers and employees have well rounded life styles. She opened up a small affiliate site - The Balance Guide- to help others find resources for mental and emotional well being. Visit Cheryl's blog to see more of the diversity beyond business she has began offering online at www.thebalanceguide.blogspot.com - Visit Cheryl Matthynssens's Website |
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