Hurry, hard!

The expression in my title is an oft used expression that you hear at a curling rink.

I’ve recently gone back to the game of curling after a very long absence.  I know that it’s been a long absence because all of the muscles in my chest wall and arms are telling me so.  That said, I think that curling holds some useful metaphors for those of us who are interested in business success.

As you might know, curling is played on a sheet of ice. At each end of the ice surface, there is a target (called the house) painted onto the ice.  Two teams, of four players each, takes turns sliding (called throwing) a curling stone (rock) towards the house, at one end of the ice, and points are scored for the team with the rock(s) closest to the centre of the house.

In a business sense, the house represents the goal(s) that a business establishes for itself. The rocks that are thrown represent the efforts expended to reach the goals. However, the opposing team (ie the competition) is also trying to achieve their goals at the expense of you attaining yours.  The rocks that they throw become obstacles that you must overcome.

You can attempt to remove the obstacles that are in your way by hitting those with one or more of your rocks.  Or, you can attempt to go around the obstacle.  In either situation, you are intentionally dealing with situations that are hindering the attainment of your goal.  With each throw taken, the situation on the playing surface will change.

You could say that curling mimics our business life.

The important thing to remember is that we must attempt to overcome our obstacles if we are serious about achieving our goals.  Of course, we might not be successful.  However, in my mind, the only failure comes from not trying.

BIZBUZZ: Robert Michel: Strategy Pure & Simple

Hi, I’m Gary Brown a FocalPoint business coach.

Welcome to episode 15 of BIZBUZZ.

I stimulate conversations in order to challenge business owners to Be Different and to Act Boldly.

The following video highlights some content from Strategy Pure & Simple, written by Robert Michel.  This is a book that is  about strategy development.

I’ve chosen to comment on Strategy Pure & Simple, a book written by Robert Michel that deals with strategy development.

I am going to comment on three ideas that are developed by Michel.

The first is that profit is the outcome of strategy, not its objective. I think that this bears repeating. Profit is not the objective of strategy but rather the outcome. This is interesting to me because I think that most of us assume that profit is the brass ring that we all chase.

Secondly, Michel refers to ten strategic areas that need to be considered. They are:

1. Product/service concept

2. User/customer class

3. Market type/category

4. Production capacity/capability

5. Technology/know-how

6. Sales/marketing method

7. Distribution method

8. Natural resources

9. Size/growth

10. Return/profit

He contends that generally one of these ten strategic areas will be the one that propels a company towards it future success.

My third choice is humourous but nevertheless salient. That is that the ability of people to execute a CEO’s strategy is inversely proportionate to the length of the strategic statement. This is clearly a case of less is more.

Well, that’s it for Strategy Pure & Simple.

Thanks for watching.

Your comments are always welcome.

Stay tuned for more BIZ BUZZ.

Rising To The Challenge

 

 

A lesson learned …

My wife and I, with a group of friends, were recently in Provence, France on a cycling holiday. On one of the days, we had the opportunity to ride to the summit of Mont Ventoux. This is one of the climbs that is frequently included in the Tour de France cycling race. Now, to be absolutely clear about this, we were not racing. We weren’t even in a hurry! Our objective was simply to reach the summit.

This is a mountain that is geologically part of the Alps. The top 500 metres are devoid of trees and the name Windy Mountain is well deserved. We had read that wind speeds of over 300 km/hr have been recorded and that the wind blows at 90 km/hr 240 days out of the year. Furthermore, at 1900 metres elevation, the temperature can be downright frigid.

With the above as our understanding, we were nervously anticipating the day of our ascent. Had we packed sufficient clothing to stay warm? Could we do it?

Fortunately for us, the day of our ascent was one of the 120 non-windy days!

It turned out that the ride to the summit wasn’t as difficult as we had conditioned ourselves to expect. But, it is interesting to me to reflect upon the thinking that preceded the actual ride. It wasn’t too hard to think that a number of plausible excuses for not going would avail themselves on the day of the ride.

And, that causes me to wonder “how often do we let ourselves get overwhelmed by the possibility of an obstacle”?   How often do we pull up short without having taken the time to consider how we might overcome that particular obstacle?  How often does our fear of failure prevent us from even trying?

I like to think that obstacles are meant to challenge us and without a challenge, how can we know the satisfaction of accomplishment?

I can tell you that it was very satisfying to know that I’d succeeded in riding to the top of Mont Ventoux and it was also very satisfying to reap the reward of the accomplishment.

The view was spectacular!

A Strategic Getaway

The home stretch for this calendar year is in view. It’s a great time to review YTD performance against the current strategy and it is also a good time for some sober second thought about whether the current plan is sufficiently robust for your next fiscal year.

Convention Business Travel (CBT) is worth your serious consideration.

You can take the team to a retreat destination of your choice this fall and I can help you make the experience unforgettable for you and your team and also a Smart Investment. As your facilitator and business coach, I can help you map your meeting discussions in an agenda to meet your business objectives AND with the help of our Strategic Partner at Convention Business Travel you gain access to their Agenda Builder Tool with which you will record the meeting discussions, duration and participation.  The report provided by the Agenda Builder Tool is the document you will need to attach to your expenses for Canada Revenue Agency purposes. It supports your travel expense claim and is immediately available, upon request.  Furthermore, my facilitation exercises and work assignments are all built-in and ready for us to discover together…

http://www.conventionbusinesstravel.com/FocalPoint.aspx

What could be better!  You and your team get some good planning time together. I add additional value, truly making this a Smart Investment.  Furthermore, depending upon your particular industry regulations, the FocalPoint content qualifies for Continuing Education Credits. (for more detail visit:  http://www.conventionbusinesstravel.com/Education/FocalPoint.aspx).  Talk about two birds with a single stone. But it gets even better!  You also have the opportunity for some free time that you can use to further improve team morale.

It’s easy and it’s strategic!

BIZBUZZ: Gary Hamel: Competing For The Future

Hi, I’m Gary Brown a FocalPoint business coach.

Welcome to episode 13 of BIZBUZZ.

I stimulate conversations in order to challenge business owners to Be Different and to Act Boldly.

The following video highlights some content from Competing For The Future, written by Gary Hamel. I enjoyed reading this book and it offers some interesting observations on the subject of differentiation, which is one of my favourite topics.

http://youtu.be/8MCbRuKBEgI

I am going to highlight three of Hamel’s suggestions that I find particularly noteworthy.

The first one deals with return on investment (our return/our investment). Hamel contends that we spend too much time obsessing over the denominator (the amount invested). In an environment where our competitors are growing, denominator reduction with steady revenue is simply a way to profitably sell market share. Hmm. Do we know how well our competitors are performing?  Are we paying sufficient attention to what is happening with the numerator?

Secondly, Hamel suggests that tomorrow’s competitive advantages must necessarily be different from today’s. Companies must be capable of getting different. He further states that laggards follow the path of least resistance.  However, challengers follow the path of greatest opportunity. Which are we?

There are numerous other interesting tidbits in this book but I’m going to end on Hamel’s assertion that it is not necessary to be a seer to discover the future but it is absolutely vital that you be unorthodox. Now if that isn’t a call for differentiation, what is?

Well, that’s it for Competing For The Future.

Thanks for watching.

Your comments are always welcome.

Stay tuned for more BIZ BUZZ.

The Levers to Your Sales Growth Success

Dun & Bradstreet conducted a study that evaluated the factors that contribute to business success. They concluded the following:

– businesses with high sales tend to succeed

– businesses with low sales tend to fail

– all else is commentary    

We can cut our costs, improve our efficiency, consolidate our purchasing power, etc. However, ultimately, our success is going to be measured by how well we sell our goods and services. Hence, our future success lies in how effectively we pull on those levers that influence sales growth.

Sales Growth Success

Brian Tracy is the person who introduced me to the following approach related to sales growth. He describes adherence to the following as The Way to Wealth.

In order to generate increased sales revenue, we need to determine how we can leverage the four inputs that drive sales.

First, we need to find more leads who we will convert into prospects. (This step requires that we know where or how we can find leads.) In turn, we need to convert the resulting prospects into customers.  Both of these steps have a corresponding conversion rate. That is, what percentage of our leads do we turn into prospects and what percentage of prospects become customers?

Can we find more leads and increase our conversion rates?

Once we have customers enjoying our goods or services, we need to know the number of transactions per customer that have occurred during a given period. For the sake of illustration, let’s consider a 12 month period.

How do we increase the number of transactions of each customer?

Finally, our measurements need to capture the average dollar amount per transaction during the 12 months under consideration. Do we have a strategy that we can use to increase this number?

Now, please understand that measuring the above numbers are critical to understanding where we can apply greater leverage to our business. So, if these numbers aren’t part of our current key performance indicators, we need to realize that flying in the dark can be extremely hazardous!

In summary, we know that the levers to our sales success include finding more leads and converting them to more prospects and subsequently converting them to a greater number of customers. What can we do to improve our lead/prospect conversion rates?  Once we have them in the door as customers, what actions can we take to increase the frequency of their purchases and the dollar amount that is spent on each purchase?  This is where we might put on our marketer’s cap to contemplate such things as segmentation and differentiation, as part of our marketing strategy. But, that is for another post.

Now it is time to leverage your sales growth to greater heights!  May the fulcrum be with you!

For some greater detail on the above subject, you might like to listen to a webinar that I recently conducted for SmallBusinessSolvers. It can be watched below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01V2ZSoUxUM