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Who runs your business?

Written by: Linda Mattacks

Article Overview: Would you just 'kind of like' to get more profitable business without changing the way you currently operate? Or are you prepared to explore and investigate exactly how to make it happen? A tale of two businesses…

Who runs your business?

Would you just 'kind of like' to get more profitable business without changing the way you currently operate? Or are you prepared to explore and investigate exactly how to make it happen? A tale of two businesses…

Company One

A while ago I spoke to a chap who runs a company that provides accounting solutions.

The business has been established ten years and he sees it as a service company. They have about fifty active clients whose value to them is anything from $2,000 to $120,000 a year and once they gain a client they tend to keep them.

The bigger problem is getting new business. He would like to actively target more of the larger potential business. He told me he has spent "loads" of money on sales and marketing and it's by and large been wasted. The company was up to ten staff at one point but now employs six full-time and two contracted.

He wants to get one new client per quarter rising to one a month. Although he hates telephone prospecting, because he finds it demoralising, he has engaged a lady to do some mail shots for him to follow up.

We went through the gold mine regarding best customer attributes, Decision Critical Factors and how they can both be applied to smarter prospecting and reduce rejection - "fully with you on this" – was one comment during the conversation.

So where was he, when we next spoke four months on?

Actually he was in round about the same place. The reason so much time had elapsed since we'd talked previously was that he'd been fighting fires. First tax returns got in the way, then one of his customers was being particularly demanding, then someone was off sick, then people were on holiday… anyone who’s run a small business can probably identify with the scenario, and he’s nowhere near achieving his goal because he hasn’t followed through on any of the things we talked about.

… And eighteen months on?

You’ve guessed it: He’s in exactly the same situation. I believe that he genuinely wants things to change but won't accept that the problem is largely down to him doing the same old things yet expecting different results. He’s a nice person and nobody’s fool but is he running his business or is his business running him?

Company Two

Another guy whom I first talked to about his sales and marketing activities at about the same time realised that a new approach was in order. His business provides independent market analysis on a specific industry sector to ‘money men’. His company had been going for four years and had a good reputation yet all of its work was project by project rather than on the annual fee basis that he was striving for but not making much headway in achieving.

The latter was needed to:

· More accurately forecast future business
· Plan staffing levels and
· Grow the company

We agreed that his primary aim was to discover whether this fee basis would be a viable option for any of his current or future clients. That required him undertaking research that would accomplish three objectives:

· Identify/confirm the principal drivers and constraints upon retaining an independent specialist analyst company for an annual fee rather than on a project-by-project basis
· Establish/confirm what and who the hidden influences/influencers were and their power over the final decision
· Ascertain what would make choosing his company to carry out the work a viable solution

The final objective additionally enabled him to establish and act on new business opportunities.

Where is this guy’s company now?

· He has worked through the ideas we came up with together
· Changed his business plan
· Taken on an individual who has now developed his own soft sales skills
· Gained twenty new clients through a mixture of research and straightforward prospecting, two of which are really substantial

They have a much better understanding of their sales and marketing needs and have broken them down into four areas:

Cold
Sales leads
Account management
Upselling

As a result they now have a much more structured approach to their sales and marketing activities.

He doesn’t have a yacht in the Bahamas yet, but he’s well on the way to where he wants his company to be!

The moral of the tale of two businesses:

The second guy isn’t necessarily any cleverer than the first and didn’t work any harder than him but he was prepared to stop bashing his head against a brick wall when he saw it wasn’t getting him anywhere fast and try a different way.

Who runs your business: Are you in control of a sustainable expansion programme for your company?

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Article Tags: business plan, profitable business, sales and marketing, sales and marketing, sales and marketing, service company



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