Images_Digital_Edition_March_2020

www.images-magazine.com MARCH 2020 images 41 KB BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT Simply pushing the same orders through your system might not be enough: complacency equals irrelevance O wning and running a business is hard. If it were easy, everyone would do it. You know this, as daily you pour your soul into running your company. But, in the chaos of day-to- day decision-making, a few things can get easily overlooked or pushed aside. This article is about ‘training your business owner brain’ to see things from a different perspective. There are some key concepts that you should keep in mind that will help you in the long run. Time There are only so many hours in the day. How you choose to spend them has a direct correlation to the success of your business. For starters, I want you to consider what an hour of your time is worth. £50? £100? £150? £200? More? Really consider this and name a number. Why is this important? Because most days you’ll spend time working on things that you aren’t skilled at doing, don’t like doing, or are low priority tasks that you shouldn’t be doing. Try this: take a pad of paper and during your week jot down those tasks that you find yourself handling in your business. What are they? How much time are you spending on them? Instead of working on higher priority and more important work, you find yourself deep in the trenches, wallowing in tasks that you can find someone else to do for far less. I know what you’re thinking. “Marshall, I’m saving money by doing those things. I don’t have to hire someone and this keeps my labour rate down.” I totally understand why you think that way. However, when you are doing any of those lower priority tasks, you are not working on growing your business. You aren’t saving any money, you are simply hamstringing your growth potential. I can’t tell you how many shops I’ve been to where they were incredibly busy for months on end, and then the work simply dried up. It’s like the sales drove off a cliff. What happened? The owner was too caught up in the day-to-day and didn’t focus on what’s coming down the pike six to eight weeks from now. This is typically how the ‘feast or famine’ sales cycle works in this business. Your challenge: Time To retrain your brain, every day keep track of the ratio between the high priority and low priority work you are spending your time working on. You definitely need to keep your finger on the pulse of the shop as to what’s current, but in order to grow your business, the majority of your time should be spent thinking ahead. Ask yourself: what’s in the sales funnel? What marketing ideas are we developing for next quarter? Are there opportunities out there that we can bring in? What is the biggest problem I can tackle today? What low profit jobs are on our schedule right now that we should be saying no to? Prioritise your day so you are working on your business, not in your business. Sales Why do businesses wither up and die? Usually, it is due to a lack of sales. Orders coming into your shop are the lifeblood of your business. Yet despite knowing that, plenty of shop owners simply rely on the phone to ring, foot traffic or their website to drive home sales. That isn’t a sales strategy that will give you mind-blowing results. But here’s the ironic thing. When I talk to shop owners one of the first questions I ask is, “Do you have a business plan?” Easily 60-75% of them respond with a “No”. Why is this important? Because a business plan gives you a tool to focus directly on the customers that are in alignment with what you offer, and value the work that you bring to the table. It’s how you hit the sales bullseye. This is how you create your ‘unique selling proposition’. A business plan allows you to choose who you want to do business with on a daily basis. As the owner of the business, it is your responsibility to pick a lane. You need to define who is your best customer, and why. If you do this correctly and build a robust marketing plan that works in conjunction with your business plan, potential customers will start coming after you to do their work. Planning is anticipatory decision making. When you do the work and research and develop a business plan that truly defines your best customers, you have given your business a fantastic tool to use. That plan helps guide your effort with your time. When you know who are the best customers for your shop, it’s easy to develop strategies to go after them. Juxtapose that with the idea of ‘anyone that walks in the door’. How are you going to develop anything sticky with that narrative? Instead, focus like a laser on finding the unique niche that works best for you. It should be an inch wide, but a mile deep. A unique selling proposition is commodity- pricing kryptonite. Specialise. Your challenge: Business planning Spend some time doing the research and define exactly who are the best customers for your business. Don’t take just any work. Build your business to go after more profitable customers that truly value what you bring to the table. Write a business plan that details your best customer and best order. Review this at least twice a year. You don’t have a business plan? Use the template in my eBook, Shop Basic Info Pack . Culture Business culture can be likened to the company’s personality. In your shop, do you have a culture of ‘getting things done’, or do you have one of ‘Mother, may I?’, where everyone stops and asks