In my last three blog entries I discussed number five (Failure to Think Strategically), number four (Failure to Focus) and number three (Failure to Systemize) on my list of the Top Five Barriers to Business Growth. Today I will discuss number two – Failure to Plan.

2. Failure to Plan

So you’ve taken my advice and you’re thinking long-term (Strategically), you’re extremely focused and you have started to Systemize your business processes. Have you planned any of this out? If you haven’t, you’re wasting time, money and effort.

Planning comes in many different forms, from planning your day, week, month or quarter to planning your Systemization to long range planning.

Planning adds focus, clarity, direction and purpose to your business. I have used the roadmap analogy many times before and I will use it again. Would you drive across the country without a roadmap, would you not figure out where you are going to stay, what places you want to visit, how much it will cost and so on?

Well, if you’re going to plan your road-trip why would you plan your business?

Failure to plan appropriately adds stress and cost to your business. Failing to properly plan will mean that you will miss opportunities that you can never ever recover. Failing to plan will add to employee turnover and entity-wide low morale, which of course will cost you money.

Planning (Failing to Plan) is cited as a factor in 78% of business failures.

Planning is so easy, adds so much to your business (for instance, you will experience 70+% higher/faster revenue growth simply from planning properly) and takes so little time, it is astounding that all businesses don’t plan.

So why don’t more businesses (only 42% use a plan to guide their day-to-day operations) – I suggest to you that planning is like all the other fundamental things most businesses don’t do. And that is they have built it up as HUGE and COMPLICATED process that they could not possibly do or would not use to any significant success.

This is nonsense, planning at its simplest is putting your thoughts down on paper and the marching to those thoughts.

In my last two blog entries I discussed number five (Failure to Think Strategically) and number four (Failure to Focus) on my list of the Top Five Barriers to Business Growth. Today I will discuss number three – Failure to Systemize.

3. Failure to Systemize
Okay, let’s say you are starting to think strategically, that is positioning your business for long term growth, for the overall impact you want your business to make in the marketplace.

And since you’re thinking long term, you are starting to focus on the one or two strategies that will move your business into the future, but to fund those strategies you will need two or three actionable items you can do right now that will either drive top line or bottom line results.

How do you drive those results? You do it through Systemization. Now most business owners are overwhelmed by the prospect of Systemizing their business like it was some major league complicated and difficult process.

On the contrary, Systemization is one of the most straightforward and actionable things an owner can take on. All it really takes is the discipline and determination to stick with it!

Systemization can be broken down into three general categories:
Implement a new System (Implement a System where there is no system currently.)
Make sure everything your business does is has standards, policies and a process / procedure.

Systemize a Current System
Take a current (and sloppy) “System” and rigorously set standards, policies and procedures for that system

Improve the Current System
Take a Current System and diligently improve it incrementally every week.

You can do Systemization both on revenue generating processes and on the back office processes; and both will generate lucrative bottom line results if done properly.

Most business owners only scratch the surface of systemization, if they do any Systemization at all. This can be near-catastrophic for their business, as they will leave stacks of cash on the table every day, lose opportunities for more revenue generation forever and increase their employee turnover needlessly.

In my last blog entry I discussed number five (Failure to Think Strategically) on my list of the Top Five Barriers to Business Growth. Today I will discuss number four – Failure to Focus.

4. Failure to Focus
Failure to focus is one of the paramount deficiencies small business owners rarely address. This is – I suggest – why only five percent of all businesses make to a million dollars in revenue and way less than one percent (0.08%) ever reach five million in revenue.

What is meant by “Failure to Focus”? Several things. First let’s think the typical business owner, with all their day-to-day fires and crises, in addition to their nearly all-consuming concentration on the Technical and Fulfillment aspects of their business. Is it any wonder with the staccato of issues that arise every day that they never focus on growing their business?

You might ask “How can they focus on growing their business if they are up to their eyeballs is daily issues?” or “Aren’t they focusing on the correct things now?”

I take these one at a time. “How can they focus on growing their business if they are up to their eyeballs in daily issues?” First, they have to train themselves to take time to grow their business. If they don’t they will remain one of the 95%. How do they train themselves to work on growing their business? They make growing their business their top priority, not something they will get to after the day-to-day is done. Address it first thing every day, they need take an hour (or whatever) and work on something that will grow their business. All it takes is discipline and determination.

Now as to “Aren’t they focusing on the correct things now?” Only if they want to stay where they are! Only if they want to keep doing the same things over and over and expect a different result – isn’t that what Einstein defined as insanity? They may have to use a majority of their time working on the day-to-day, but if they don’t take the time to work on growing their business they will never change. This time can be as little as one hour a day, five lousy hours a week – is this too much to ask? You would be surprised what improvements you can in five hours a week. The improvement will be small but they will be improvements. And the cumulative incremental improvements they make over the course of a year would be huge.

You might think that you don’t want to “Grow Your Business” any larger than it is now – and that’s fine – you should fit your business into your lifestyle and not your lifestyle around your business. But there are all kinds of growth…

What about growing the bottom line – making more profit for the same revenue. Who among us would want that?

What about growing smarter – working less or working in a less stressful environment?

What about growing stronger – being able to withstand the constant ups and downs in your business cycle?

There are many kinds of growth and all business owners should make it their number one priority to spend some time focusing on growth – those two or three items that could make a lasting improvement in their business.

In my last blog entry I showed what was in my opinion a flawed survey on Barriers to Business Growth. Maybe I was a little tough on this survey, I think not. Now I will put forth what I think are the Top Five Barriers to Business Growth - In reverse from number five to number one.

5. Failure to Think Strategically
Most owners are so caught up in either the tactical, the day-to-day machinations of their business or in the purely technical side of their business that they never think of the overall impact or the long-range goal they want to accomplish.

Why, well first of all they are extremely comfortable in the Technical side – this is where they “grew up” in the business, this is where they are the most competent. And few people really like getting out of their comfort zone.

Second, the day-to-day fire drills, keep them “busy” and therefore they define this activity as accomplishment – it is not. We all know or have know people that are so busy rushing from pillar to post, but they never get anything of significance done. Activity is not accomplishment – effective activity is accomplishment.

Notice I didn’t say efficient activity is accomplishment, you can be very efficient at staying “busy” – at being completely reactive instead of proactive. Answer every email the second it comes in, let the phone interrupt you every 30 seconds, let your peers and subordinates destroy your train of thought and so on. What good is this – NONE!

Without a Strategic mindset how are you going to upstage your competition and dominate your market? Without a Strategic Objective in mind how do you know where your business is going. Without a long-range vision how can you communicate to your employees your expectations of the business and of them?

Thinking Strategically is a skill the same as fixing a faucet or installing a particular software, but few business owners take the time, effort and commitment to truly learn how think, act and be strategic.

It takes 4,000 hours to become a master of a skill but when I talk to business owners about Strategic Thinking the typical response is “Well we tried that once and it didn’t work out as well as we thought so we stopped”

Was the lawyer as good at a task their first time through as they were on their 1,000th time, how about a plumber, a physical, a electrician? Any skill takes time, effort, commitment and practice to learn and become comfortable with. Yet we as business owners don’t take nearly the time we should to master strategy.

I am astounded by the nonsense that “consultants” are putting forth these days. The bilge that some of them are putting out hurt all coaches, consultants and advisors… Charlatans and professionals alike.

Recently someone (the names have been withheld to protect the guilty) published the results of a survey which is the following:

The top five barriers that stop or slow the growth of UK businesses with a turnover of £5-25 million.

The top five barriers are
1. A lack of understanding of customer needs. Responses show that it is far more common for businesses to think in terms of products and attributes than in terms of the customer needs being satisfied. 

Well DUHHHHHHHH…

2. A failure to develop compelling value propositions. Very few companies could say that they had strong value propo¬sitions and competitive positions for each product they offered and each customer group they wanted to serve. Many failed to differentiate and instead used a ‘one-size fits-all’ approach, while others used very general statements such as ‘best value’ and ‘high quality’.

Yeah and…

3. Poor new product development processes. There was almost universal agreement among respondents that identifying and developing new products and services would be a huge benefit in achiev¬ing sustained growth.

Just how many businesses are really stopped from growing by their product development process???

4. A failure to price for value. Many businesses price on a ‘cost-up’ basis, while others take their lead from the competition and price according to what the market will allow.

Same as number 1

5. A lack of market insight. For many respondents understanding the market translated as understanding the competition.

Can they get any more obtuse…

In my next blog I will put forth my thoughts on the above and what I thing are the top five issues that prevent small businesses from growing.

(I have been using this for about a year and I thought it would benefit many of you…)

By Kirsta Jones

You may have heard that most Americans read at a 7th-grade level. Sounds pretty scary to me, but it does show us why we should keep our writing clear and simple.

If you use Microsoft Word, you can test the "readability" of your writing by clicking on "Tools" then "Options" and then "Spelling and Grammar." Then click the check box at the bottom that says "Show readability statistics."

After you spell-check your document, a box will pop up showing the number of words you used, the number of paragraphs, the number of sentences, the number of sentences per paragraph, the number of words per sentence, and the percentage of passive sentences. It will also give you two indicators that are based on the Flesch-Kincaid formula for readability. These indicators measure reading ease (based on 100 points, with 100 being the easiest) and grade level.

I use these stats all the time. My writing used to be in the 50-55 range for reading ease, and now it generally ranges from the low 60s to the mid-70s. When the reading ease is 65 or higher, that tells me I have a good chance of connecting with my reader.

This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, the Internet’s most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.

Picking up from my last post on time managment…

I got into some bad habits as to my own time management was concerned.

First, I started doing the small and or unimportant things early in the morning, rationalizing to myself that this would leave me some good blocks of time for my more difficult and also more strategic issues.

WRONG – the best time to work strategically (working on your business) is the first thing, this is when you are sharpest, when you are your most creative and when your concentration is highest.

Second, even though I do monthly, weekly and daily planning and schedules, I stopped reviewing them always at the end of the time frame. I was telling myself that there were good reasons for not reviewing them – heck, I am always productive, I always get things done.

WRONG – the lined out items became fewer and fewer which led to…

Third, I started pushing things to Saturday – “my free day” again rationalizing to myself that there were good reasons for this – I’m busy guy. And fourth I stopped using my accountability partner to check my progress.

WRONG on both counts… again! This caused a major upheaval in my household, my put her foot down about all work and no play.

My solution – go back to the basics:
1) I got back together with my accountability partner. It’s too easy to rationalize to yourself. It’s much harder to blow smoke at your accountability partner.
2) I started working on the strategic things first thing during the day – depending on coaching appointments.
3) At the end of each day I went back to reviewing my schedule to see what I got done and why.

The results are in, for the last month I have been more productive than I have been for at least six months. My sense of accomplishment and achievement were sky-high. My Saturdays became semi-free (I still have two major projects that I knew would take some Saturday time) and I am a much happier camper.

So, the moral of the story is – never, never, never get away from the sound fundamentals of any discipline. There is a reason they are sound fundamentals – THEY WORK!!!
 

As a business consultant, one of the first issues I address with clients is Time Management. Entrepreneurs typically don’t have good time management. Most of them are used to doing what they want, when they want, where they want, and how they want.

I’m not saying they lack discipline, after all they started a business and they built a business to some level or another. But and this is a big but, they generally don’t have a tight structure that they operate under. This structure is not necessarily a rigid and dogmatic structure, but structure nonetheless.

Somewhere along the way they lost an amount of the discipline that made them so effective in the start up and building stages of their business. So as a business consultant it is my job to help them rediscover that structure and discipline that will help them become effective time managers again.

Some of the pillars of good time management are
Be strategic first (working ON the business), tactical second (working IN the business)
Work on the most important things earlier, rather than later
Work on the same type of thing (strategies, tactics, sales, marketing – whatever) at a consistent time, on consistent days of the week
Measuring themselves as to their effectiveness

These pillars are there to put the entrepreneur in the right frame of mind, to give them a routine, to help them gain a sense of accomplishment and achievement and allow them to check themselves against their plan and course correct as necessary.

In my next post your humble correspondent will relate some personal observations on time managment.
 

I ran across this from my friends at Early to Rise and thought it was relevant to all of us…

By MaryEllen Tribby

I just returned from my family vacation. We rented a beautiful beach house on the ocean side of Fire Island, New York. It was wonderful. No cars are permitted on the island; everyone bikes to and from town. We played tennis daily and built sandcastles on the beach. And believe or not, for the first time in my career, I left my laptop at home. (I call it my unplugged vacation.)

Knowing I was going to be out of touch for a while, I prepared everything I needed ahead of time. That included setting up the following autoresponder message for all the e-mails I would be receiving while I was gone:

Hello and thank you for your e-mail.

I will be out of the office from June 12th - 24th. Due to the high volume of e-mails I receive, I will delete all e-mails sent during this time period. If your e-mail still requires attention after the 24th, please resend it.

If you need immediate attention, please contact another member of the ETR team.

Cheers,

ME

Well, while I was away I received 979 e-mails. Only 68 were re-sent after my return, and three had been forwarded to my assistant. That is barely over 7 percent of my e-mails that really needed attention.

Next time you go away on vacation, don’t waste your time upon your return sorting through e-mails that have either been taken care of or really did not require your attention to begin with. Set up an autoresponder like mine and delete ‘em all. Then you can jump back in by taking care of tasks that actually make you money - right when you are fresh and raring to go!  

This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, the Internet’s most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.

This is part two of a two part blog…

When advising business owners one of the issues we insist they do is periodic reviews of their business. While year-end is a great time to take stock of the past year and lay plans for the New Year, you should also do mid-year and even quarterly reviews.

Here are the last four of the seven tips to get you started!

Create a Marketing Plan - Evaluate your marketing mix for the past year, and make changes for the better for the coming year. Freshen up your marketing message and strategy. Are you consistently getting the right message out to the public, or do you find your strategy and materials are sending out mixed messages? ¬

Update the Database - Review your database, updating information as needed. Renew contact with lapsed customers, and touch base with your existing customers. Ask for more referrals from some of your best customers; connecting their associates business with yours is a win-win situation. It is a quick and inexpensive way to increase business.

Review Staff- ldentify staff behaviors and accomplishments that should be acknowledged or even rewarded. Also, identify those whose behaviors or work need to be addressed and improved. Everyone wants feedback on: how they are doing. If you have difficulty remembering pertinent examples, schedule a few minutes each day or week to update notes (both positive and negative) for performance reviews for each of your direct reports.

Learn Something New - Resolve to update or improve your profession¬al skills. Take a class or plan to read a book or two in an area in which you feel you could use more training.

Eliminating products or services? Let affected customers know the reasons and provide alternatives (even a competitor) for their needs. Some of these customers may also purchase from your more profitable areas now or in the future, so do not alienate them or adversely affect your reputation.