Business Planning
A business strategy is a fundamental tactic or combination of tactics to hit goals such as growing the business, gaining a competitive edge or turning around an ailing business. Your business strategy
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Audit your finances to identify leakages, cost saving opportunities and new revenue streams.
Assess and mitigate the various risks your business faces from a legal, finance and marketing perspective.
Track, analyse and improve the performance of your process, employees or your entire business.
Review where your business currently is and develop a plan of action to achieve your long-term business goals.
Unlock your potential to help you grow your business
Maximise your time management and increase productivity levels across your whole business.
Produce a viable, strategic and realistic business plan that will set you up for success.
Plan how your business can prepare for and continue to operate after a serious incident or crisis.
Find out how healthy your business is. Learn what you’re doing well, what you can improve and whether your business can go the distance.
Unlock your full potential as a business owner to achieve your long-term business goals.
Assess the market-fit of your product or service against your competitors and the supply demand to see where your business sits.
Business coaches can steer your business in the right direction for short and long-term growth.
Conduct an audit of your marketing strategies, objectives and campaigns to identify which areas can be improved.
Improve efficiency and remove any roadblocks in your organisational structure, process, systems and workflow.
In terms of building a sustainable business which do you consider most important revenues or margins?
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Brian Le Mon, Principal at EQP Optimisation Solutions
@Hatty Bell Many successful companies start off with Me-too offerings. The same service as a competitor or the same product range.
Make your competitive advantage something that customers are needing or wanting but not getting from your competitors. Take The Iconic as an example. You could argue that this companies started out in a heavily saturated market. There were thousands of offline and online clothing retailers that would be considered competition with The Iconic. What the customers of these various online and offline clothing resellers disliked was the time they had to wait for delivery or having to travel to a store only to find no stock in the style and size you needed. The Iconic works on a rapid delivery methodology. Theyc started out with guaranteed same day delivery so you could order an outfit for a party tonight and be reasonably confident it would arrive in time. This made buying from them significantly more appealing than other oline retailers and even gave them some degree of preference over going to a store and choosing an outfit.
So on this one aspect of delivery reliability The Iconic was able to corner a significant market share in an already saturated market.
If you are in a "me-too" business, this doesn't mean you need to do everything the same and resort to continueal price wars to fight for a share of the market. There are often aspects of service or business operations that you can change that your customers will also be happy to pay a little extra to receive if this means they don't experience the same frustrations they are having with your competition.
Put you hands up if you can see the future! I have been amazed over the years how simply having a strong vision of the future I wanted, needed, would like, has resulted in arriving, at some point...
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Jef Lippiatt, Owner at Startup Chucktown
Always assume everything will change. Business is complex like solving an intricate algebra problem. Getting one variable figured out doesn’t necessarily give you the solution immediately. It is important to understand that you can have great resources, research and still produce things that don’t produce results.
Most importantly, never lose sight of providing value to your customers. Without customers, you don’t really have a business - you either have a hobby or a passion. So if you ever stop engaging with your customers, don’t be surprised if your business starts to experience a drop or steady decline.
I mention this because customers are always changing (their needs, desires, demographics, geography, life events, etc.). That is why it is important to constantly engage with them and gather feedback.
Marc Shaffer, CEO at US DataVault
Don't take your eyes off the long game. As with most things, this too shall pass. Even if you can't follow-up on everything you want to do, plan for it so you are ready as things ease.
Beau Ushay, Owned Media & Marketing Specialist at Ushay Consulting Group
Rather than trying to predict what the future will look like, the smart money instead focuses on what won't change.
Double down on learning what your customers want, how you best solve their problem and think about the elements of that which will still be present in a post-COVID world.
Hatty Bell , Community Manager at SavvySME
This is a brilliant perspective! Any trends you're seeing?
Beau Ushay , Owned Media & Marketing Specialist at Ushay Consulting Group
The main trend we're seeing is that businesses are jumping feet-first into tech and digital transformation, feeling they need to be hyper-agile when they haven't really thought through the problem, first.
The general sentiment is there will be a lot of unwinding of technology solutions in 2021 and beyond, as companies realise they rushed into spending big on tech and haven't actually solved their own problem.
Time management Implementing simple but disciplined time management principals is a great start. I recommend blocking out a morning or afternoon a week or once a month to help get the mindset out of...
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If you've been in the business world for a while, then you definitely know the importance of creating a business plan before starting out. However, simply writing down a beautiful business plan is...
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Question: how does a business plan, work with not so good with credit good or bad, or does it work with bad credit?
What should you say or do to increase your chances of getting the job, instead of losing to other tradies underquoting you?
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Tim Stokes, Managing Director at Profit Transformations
It's a great question and one with a large range of answers, some simple and some deep and complex.
It's a topic I've assisted many businesses with some I'll share some more simple points.
First of all customers like the idea of buying on price however they buy on value 9 out of 10 times. We may tell a business we're buying on price but there's always more to our decision than price alone. If 9 out of 10 people purchased on price as their only decision making criteria, then people wouldn't pay more than $5 for shoes, $2,000 for a car (second hand) etc.
In a business a potential customer will start analysing a business for its credibility, integrity and trustworthiness within 2 seconds of landing on the business' website.
A website is the starting point for winning sales on anything other than cheapest prices. People are very analytical and start deselecting options of businesses to buy from just from the website alone. And 9 out of 10 websites are not appealing enough to prospects as seen by the average response rate of a website visitor to becoming a lead (phone call or email opt in) of 2% to 5%. That's a 95% failure rate of the website.
Words have great power and the wording of a website can create an overall impression of being basic and very average with its service, or very professional.
People usually won't pay more than the cheapest if they feel the website is basic. They associate appearances with competency and quality of service.
Great wording has a very strong impact on the quality of people contacting a business to buy. This isn't something new, its been proven for decades, long before the internet.
People pay for benefits. Emotionally beneficial ones. They don't pay much for features or facts. A business may have 10 years experience in the industry. That's not a benefit, its not a feature, its a fact.
When people make their decisions based on emotion, every time, they are looking for a number of emotions not just one to base their decisions on. Their decision making already began within 2 seconds of seeing the business' marketing (website, social media page/profile etc.)
If a person feels comfortable, reassured, confident in the competence of a business that has been clearly articulated in words and communicated verbally then price alone becomes secondary and they are prepared to pay more.
An example is the old fashioned "Quote". Most are written as itemised costs and total cost. Even the word 'cost' isn't as effective to use as investment or price.
Instead of a quote, use a Proposal and write benefits of buying from your business first. Every person who buys from a business has a second business as a choice so articulate the benefits of buying from your business in your proposal, first - before any price or costs.
List your points of difference and what makes your business better or unique. Most well run businesses have good points they can list.
Selling is a definite skill to learn. Big improvements in results have been seen from hundreds of people in sales roles (such as admin, PA's, phone answers, retail assistants, estimators, and even bookkeepers) that talk to potential or existing customers as a result of some basic training.
Selling is not about being pushy or pitching. Its about the art of asking questions to find out exactly what a person's buying criteria is and clarify their key points of interest and what's important to them in their purchase.
Having seen a business jump by $400,000 in sales income one month after a 1 day sales training this strategy is one of the best if you want to win more sales.
If your conversion rate from quote to sale isn't 50% with brand new leads then there's a lot of room for improvement.
Hope this was helpful without turning it being a 2,000 answer.
Tim Stokes, Managing Director at Profit Transformations
Obviously John they are never going to give the answer you stated. Your whole point is obvious and nothing to do with my reasoning. Every product doesn't need to be sold at 15% but a minimum figure is good management decision. I've turned many struggling businesses around using the described process that are hitting higher margins. Its a smart business decision that is supported with strategies to achieve the higher profit margin in sales.
Owned Media & Marketing Specialist at Ushay Consulting Group
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A business strategy is a fundamental tactic or combination of tactics to hit goals such as growing the business, gaining a competitive edge or turning around an ailing business. Your business strategy is brought to life by creating a business plan. Business strategies are essential for your long-term direction and success.
There are many different business strategies for a small business and some of the common ones are:
In order to develop the best business strategy ideas, you must do a comprehensive market research, study your competitors, utilise new technologies and take inspiration from big brands or small businesses from other industries. If in doubt, hire business advisors and coaches to refine your business strategies.
A typical business plan projects between 3 to 5 years ahead and is constantly being updated, refined and reviewed to reflect the current position, direction and goals. There are several common elements in a business plan.