To help you reach your sales goals
Strategic Planning
4 + 2: The Secret Code to Superior Business Performance
Apr 5th
4 + 2: The Secret Code to Superior Business Performance
By Mike Krause
If you’re rolling your eye at yet another claim to “a secret” or the “magic pill” to gain business success this post is for you. It turns out there really is a key to superior business performance and the intelligent minds at Harvard Business School have found it.
Over the years management ideas, tools and techniques have come and gone. Different approaches and theories have been implemented sometimes to the success of the user, other times…not so much. Harvard Business School wanted to know which management practices really work? They carefully examined more than 200 well-established management practices as they were employed over a 10-year period by 160 companies. The study was dubbed The Evergreen Project and the results surprised them in a big way.
Turns out it really doesn’t matter what you do. Read that again. There is no causal relationship to any specific technique to the outcome of business success. What does matter is a company’s grasp and ability to use the business basics. The study found that without exception the winning companies had a firm grasp on four management practices:
- Strategy. Your product must be sharply defined, clearly communicated, and well-understood by employees, customers, partners and investors.
- Execution. Develop and maintain flawless operational execution.
- Culture. Holding and nurturing high expectations matters most.
- Structure. Reduce bureaucracy and simplify work.
In addition to these four basics they had a mastery of any two out of the four secondary management practices:
- Talent. Hold on to talented employees and develop more.
- Innovation. An agile company turns out innovative products and services and anticipates disruptive events in an industry rather than reacting when it may already be too late.
- Leadership. Great leadership can raise performance significantly.
- Mergers and Partnerships. Some winning companies mastered mergers.
Winner, loser, climber or tumbler–the level of your success is defined by your grasp of the basic four plus mastery in two of the secondary practices, hence: 4 + 2.
So now you know the secret code to superior business success. And now you know why we at Sales Sense Solutions are so persistent when it comes to strategic planning. Strategic planning is not a gimmick. It’s not something reserved for the upper echelon of the Fortune 500. Strategic planning is for you, the small business owner and it’s what determines if you will be a winner, loser, climber or tumbler.
A Strategic Growth Kit
We assembled our series of articles on strategic planning for the small business owner. Think of each of these articles as a tool. Together they make a strategic growth kit full of the tactics and practical applications you need to achieve mastery of the 4 + 2. These articles will take you through the each step to measuring, establishing and implementing a strong, flexible strategic plan.
1. Strategic Planning Questionnaire: Step One for Strong Growth and Sales
Answer these questions for a current snapshot of your strategic plan.
2. How to Conquer the Strategic Growth Ghost
This is a basic approach to establishing a strategic growth plan–specifically how to identify your unique selling proposition and a unique value proposition. This is particularly important for consultants and small businesses; you can’t afford to be a generic commodity!
3. Your 5 Competitive Threats: Are You Digging Deep Enough?
This gives you the questions you need to ask to assess your assets, strengths, weaknesses, and vulnerabilities.
4. Street Talk: Internal Capabilities
Here’s how to objectively evaluate and pinpoint your internal capabilities and resources. These are a must-have to maintain a competitive advantage and survive as a winner or climber.
5. 20 Ways to Recognize Your Star Clients
Identify these clients and improve your operational execution, structure. Side benefits include an increased bottom line and vibrant company culture.
6. Cash Is King
Financial issues are a reality. Here is a collection of smart ideas to stretch your cash.
Here is how you manage your strategic plan so you can remain a winner and climber. Unbalanced companies are tumbling or losing.
Mike Krause is the Chief Sales Architect and owner of Sales Sense Solutions where he helps business owners stay ahead of the competition with stellar sales and high performance sales assessments, strategies, tactics and tools. Call him at (585) 704-6453 if you need help with any of these tools or want the strategic growth kit for your winning business.
Score Success with a Balanced Business: Here’s Your Tool
Mar 22nd
Score Success with a Balanced Business: Here’s Your Tool
By Mike Krause
Have you ever made an adjustment to something that has resulted in causing new stress in unexpected places? This often happens in your body. If you hurt your knee you will compensate with other muscles for the duties the knee used to perform. Cars are another example. You get a tune-up and now the car runs smoother, more efficiently and a little faster. Except the tune-up means one of the belts has to work harder, can’t quite take the stress and eventually needs attention.
There is another environment where this phenomenon occurs regularly. Your business.
Let’s assume you’ve made a strategic plan based on strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities (if you haven’t, stop what you’re doing right now and read article on SWOT). As you execute your strategic plan you will have to recalibrate your internal systems.
Chances are your plan included a focus on sales. As a result your sales have been steadily growing. Congratulations! But now that you’re selling at a higher level what does that do to inventory? Do you have adequate staffing for customer service to maintain your reputation? Can your shipping and receiving absorb the extra work? Do you have a hiring system in place to minimize disruptions while you bring on much-needed staff? Do you need new technology to handle the larger volume?
Focusing on one aspect of your business and then stepping back to assess your system is called achieving a balanced score card. As a business owner it’s up to you to keep everything calibrated in order to support your vision and strategy. The Balanced Scorecard Institute developed a tool to help:
1. Take four pieces of paper and label them: customer, financial, internal business systems/processes, and learning and growth.
2. Under each title write this key question.
Customer–To achieve our vision how should we appear to our customers?
Financial–To succeed financially how should we appear to our stakeholders and investors?
Internal Systems/Processes–To satisfy our customers and shareholders what businesses processes must we excel at?
Learning and Growth–To achieve our vision how will we sustain our ability to change and improve?
3. Under the question write a list of these four words: objectives, measures, targets, and initiatives.
4. Fill out your plans, activities, goals, etc. under the appropriate category.
A healthy, balanced business should have a balanced scorecard. Categories and actions should be identified, articulated, and complementary throughout the scorecards. Gaps on paper signify gaps in your business and need attention.
Sounds like a lot of work, doesn’t it? It is, but the effort invested here will streamline your efforts in other areas and make your business run collectively more efficiently and successfully. If you want to grow, it’s a necessity. You have three options:
1. Do it yourself. Create the scorecard tool then schedule time to think and update it on a regular basis. Once/month, bi-monthly, twice/year: whatever works for you. Just make sure you do it. Having trouble managing your time or staying on task?
2. Create a Board of Directors. Acquire a small group of peers and mentors who you admire and make yourself accountable to their feedback. Or,
3. Hire a consultant. Consultants are hired for nearly everything these days–virtual CFO’s, administrative assistants, writing, etc. Consultants have a point of view you will never find inside your business–the external perspective. They are more affordable than a full-time employee because they are fee-only and part-time. You only pay them when you need them which makes their rate an extremely high ROI. A good one will ask you difficult questions and provide guidance to keep you on track. It’s not their job to make you feel good about your decisions. It’s their job to make sure you are being accountable to your vision and strategy in the capacity of the project you hired them to manage.
Good luck.
Mike Krause is the Chief Sales Architect and owner of Sales Sense Solutions where he helps business owners stay four steps ahead of the competition with stellar sales and high performance sales assessments, strategies and practical advice.
Cash is King: 7 Ways to Play Your Hand
Mar 6th
Cash is King: 7 Ways to Play Your Hand
by Mike Krause
In his book Small Business Management, author Michael Ames points out that insufficient capital or cash flow is one of the top reasons for failure. But like all things in business, there is strategy to managing your cash. For a small to mid-sized business a smart cash strategy will often mean the difference between growth or collapse.
Poorly managed cash flow is an internal weakness. Here are seven things you can do to acknowledge that weakness, improve your cash flow, and ultimately put the king in your hand:
• Ask for money before you need the money. Let’s say you just made a $20,000 deposit. This is the time to be proactive about applying for a loan or credit. You can keep the funds as a cash reserve for the moment when you really need it and will need it now.
• Manage your payments. Ask your suppliers if there are discounts for early payments. If yes, take advantage of them. Conversely, make sure you are avoiding costly late payment fees. Organize your payment schedule around these discounts and penalties.
• Manage your inventory more responsibly so you can convert your products into cash.
• Ask your suppliers for longer payment options. If you’re a regular client of a supplier they may be willing to extend your payment terms. Ask for this option, and then continue to pay on time. The longer term will give you a cushion should you ever need it.
• Bill your clients regularly. Businesses can be so focused on securing new clients that they become negligent on billing the ones they have.
• Reward timely customers. Offer a small discount for early bird payments from your clients.
• Accept credit card payments. Yes, you will have to pay a small fee for the service but by offering payment through credit you simultaneously make it easier for your client to pay and you pass the burden of collections to the credit card company.
The Takeaway
Don’t neglect the necessity of cash flow and capital in your strategic growth plan. Simple monitoring and key changes will keep you prepared for the inevitable rough spots.
Mike Krause is the Chief Sales Architect and owner of Sales Sense Solutions where he helps you stay four steps ahead of the competition with stellar sales and high performance sales assessments and strategies.
From the Street: A True Tale of Internal Capabilities and Resources
Feb 26th
From the Street: A True Tale of Internal Capabilities and Resources
By Mike Krause
Can you describe your internal capabilities and resources? Are you absolutely sure? I cannot emphasize enough how critical this information is to your organization’s ability to sustain a competitive advantage and thrive.
Do any of these describe you?
• You’re starting a new business.
• Your company is developing or launching a new product line.
• Your business or division is offering a new service.
• You’re facing direct competition.
• You’re not satisfied with your current levels of growth.
If you answered yes to any of these, please read this true story.
A number of years ago a business opened its doors to service the golf population. The enterprise wanted to provide an indoor environment where golfers could practice and perfect their swing anytime of the year. Golfers would be assessed digitally and receive personalized instruction and feedback on how to improve their stroke.
It was a strong idea. The enterprise was located in a city that claims the highest density of country clubs and golf courses in the U.S. The targeted demographic was comprised of people who have the desire and income to purchase ancillary activities related to their game. The business is located in a city with long winters that shut the courses down. Golfers look for alternative places to play and this business filled that need.
Three years later they shut their doors. What happened? They failed to acknowledge their internal capabilities and strengths.
This upstart faced a franchised competitor with a strong national presence, established marketing campaign, and sales process. What the competitor lacked was the connection to the local community.
Instead of capitalizing on the competitor’s weakness, our upstart company tried to beat them at the same game. What they did wrong:
1. The upstart’s owners were absent which weakened the infrastructure.
2. They had no outbound sales process that would maximize their local presence to a community which welcomed and supported local businesses.
3. They chose a golf pro to be a spokesperson for their company whose personality offended the local community.
4. They selected a geographic location too close to the established franchise.
If they had leveraged their internal capabilities and resources their strategy would have looked much different. Here’s what they could have done right:
1. Maximize their local story and appealed to the community’s desire to support local business.
2. Establish a revenue-sharing referral program to local country clubs.
3. Use local but highly-visible events and golfing celebrities to establish rapport with the local golfing community.
4. Develop a personalized sales-process that emphasizes multiple touch points and follow-through for customers and prospects.
Lessons Learned
You need to develop an awareness of what you don’t have and don’t know. To do this you have two options: 1) invest in hiring an outsourced analyst who has the capacity to give you the knowledge and information you need to avoid making on-going costly mistakes or 2) do it yourself. Which one do you think is most qualified to provide the objective, hard-hitting advice your business needs to make an educated, strategic plan? Choose carefully…your future income is on the line.
Mike Krause is the Chief Sales Architect and owner of Sales Sense Solutions where he helps business owners stay four steps ahead of the competition with stellar sales and high performance sales assessments and strategies.
Webinar:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/609469051
Your 5 Competitive Threats: Are You Digging Deep Enough?
Feb 8th
Your 5 Competitive Threats: Are You Digging Deep Enough?
by Mike Krause
Assets, strengths, weaknesses and vulnerabilities–the ability to pinpoint these items are critical factors to your organization’s potential for long-term success. True strategic planning comes from analyzing these factors on the internal and external forces affecting your business.
Competitive threats represent one such force. Yet understanding competitive threats is where most business leaders fall short. Why? They simply don’t dig deep enough. As a result these threats can sneak up on an unsuspecting company and leave the staff wondering what happened as they scramble around trying to contain the issue.
Scrambling. Wondering. Catching-up. These aren’t words you want to use to describe your business. Fortunately, there is a powerful tool at your disposal: The Model of the Five Competitive Forces developed in 1980 by Michael E. Porter.
Porter identified five competitive forces that sculpt every industry and market, including yours. Identifying these forces is not an academic exercise. They directly impact your sales. Here’s what you need to know.
Porter’s Five Forces are:
1. Competitive rivalry within an industry. This is your direct competition and sits at the center of Porter’s model. Most businesses limit their competition by geography. This is a fatal mistake.
Example: Let’s say you own a pizza place. Your competitors are other pizza shops within your geographic vicinity. Right? Dig deeper. Is pizza sold in the local grocery store? What about the online store specializing in quick delivery of frozen pies with the promise of “best in the world?” What about the baker who sells dough for people to make it themselves? Or the cooking school that teaches people how to cook pizza?
2. Future Threats. This summarizes how easily a new competitor can enter your industry.
Example: How easy is it to move into your industry? Your service? Is your customer based easily reached? Can a new competitor easily access your distribution channels? Are your customers loyal to your brand?
3. Determinants of Buying Power. Think of this as a customer’s buying power.
Example: Can you compete with other pizza sellers like BJ’s, Wegmens or Sam’s Club? Is your pizza differentiated? Is choosing a competitor’s pizza easy and not related to any costs of a customer’s time, wallet or effort?
4. Determinants of Suppliers. This is your suppliers’ buying power and refers to everything you need to provide your goods and services.
Example: Are there only a few suppliers to those who make pizza? Is your ability to be different dependent on a supplier’s special product (an imported cheese, fresh tomatoes, etc.)? Can your competitors easily access your supplies? What would happen if one of your suppliers closed their door or started selling to your competitor? Don’t forget your employees as a service supplier. Is finding and retaining reliable help competitive?
5. Threat of Duplication. This threat comes from the availability of alternative products with lower prices or better performance.
Example: How easily can a competitor access your customer base? How easily can a competitor duplicate your pizza and service? How loyal are your customers? Does your pizza reflect the whims of a trend? Or is it a commodity, easily substituted with another pizza?
Bottom line: if you want sales you need a sales process that considers this comprehensive competitive analysis. Without one you’ll discover that one day your business is…you guessed it…scrambling, wondering and catching-up. A sales strategy is about staying four moves ahead and enjoying the income, confidence, and peace-of-mind that comes with it.
Mike Krause is the Chief Sales Architect and owner of Sales Sense Solutions where he helps you stay four steps ahead of the competition with stellar sales and high performance sales assessments, strategies and practical advice.
How to Conquer the Strategic Growth Ghost
Jan 21st
How to Conquer the Strategic Growth Ghost
By Mike Krause
If you don’t know exactly what you’re selling and why your customers are buying, strategic growth will remain a ghostly apparition–always elusive and never materializing. And if your organization isn’t growing, it’s dying.
Most businesses, at some point, were able to provide these answers. But over time organization leaders become so immersed in their business they lose perspective and fail to work on it. Eventually, they’re left wondering how the competition incrementally stole the marketshare.
Here’s how to stop it: know your unique selling proposition (USP) and your unique value proposition (UVP).
What’s your USP? What do you sell that separates you from your competitors? This is not an elevator speech. This is a clearly distilled statement about what you do in 8 words or less. You should know it. Your executive staff should know it. Your sales staff should know it. Your clients and prospects should know it. Your receptionist, phone operator, and in-house mail clerk should know it. This statement is one of the single most important selling guides within your organization.
Here’s the other one.
What’s your UVP? Why do your customers do business with you? What is their perception of you? Maybe they see value where you don’t. Perhaps they like the color of your logo or the aura of your company culture. Maybe it’s your location, convenience, expertise, friendliness, reputation, price, knowledge, visibility, coolness rating, or frustration with a competitor–whatever it is you need to know it.
Be open to learn that what you think are reasons your clients are buying may not be their greatest influencers.
Are your ideal customers who you think they are?
Are you channeling your USP resources into a package your customers want?
Are your customers attracted to you because of the uniqueness of what you provide?
Alignment between USP and UVP equates into real strategic growth. The ghosts are gone. But by now you have correctly guessed this alignment requires maintenance. It relies upon paying continuous attention to your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT). And to do that you need your USP and UVP.
Wondering where to start?
Try this for USP: at your next staff meeting place a big box next to you. Pass out sheets of paper and pencils then ask attendees to write your organization’s USP. Don’t warn or prompt them. You’re trying to collect a true snapshot of their understanding. Their answers will tell you how much work you need to do in this area.
Try this for UVP: make a list of all your current assets that collect prospect and customer opinion of your organization and then use them to listen to your customers and collect their input.
Is your list a little sparse? Consider:
• Surveys (make sure to provide an open-ended question)
• Social media (yes, another valuable trait of this technology)
• Testimonials
• Case Studies
• Website analytics
• Focus group
• Mixer (a little unconventional but a great way to solicit conversation and thank your customers)
Now you have some tools to get started. Will you use them and conquer the strategic growth ghost or continue on and just hope for the best? It’s your move.
Strategic Planning Questionnaire: Step One for Strong Growth and Sales
Jan 14th
Strategic Planning Questionnaire:
Step One for Strong Growth and Sales
By Mike Krause
Strategic planning. The American Marketing Association defines strategic planning as “the consideration of current decision alternatives in light of their probable consequences over time.” We can all agree this is a critical and necessary part of running a business.
Strategic planning can and should be refined to address two interrelated subjects: growth and sales. In today’s competitive environment, if you aren’t growing you’re dying. How does that work? A failure on your part to grow strategically translates into an opportunity for your competitors.
How can you tell if you have an effective strategic growth plan? If you’re unable to answer the following questions quickly and concisely, your growth plan needs attention.
- How often are your regularly scheduled meetings with your sales team and/or executives?
- How are you measuring success?
- Do you have a spreadsheet that tracks these measurements?
- Can all your employees describe your sales process?
- What exactly are you producing for the company? (Everyone should have a tangible answer to this, including the owner.)
How’d you do? Most people stumble around on those questions for one simple reason; they don’t allow themselves to step outside of their business long enough to work on it instead of in it. The next set of questions will give you that outside perspective. The answers will reveal your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT).
- What value are you delivering to your customers?
- Why are people buying from you and not someone else?
- What are your customers really buying from you?
- What is the comprehensive customer experience?
Your strengths are made up of your core competencies and resources. Think in terms of skills and attributes. What is your organization great at doing? In what capacity do you outpace everyone else? Use your answer to describe your value.
Once you can identify your value, you can strategically search for new opportunities. Collectively, these actions determine your capacity for growth (remember, if your organization isn’t growing, it’s dying).
Look in the mirror: identifying the opposite is equally important. If something isn’t a strength, perhaps it’s a weakness? Once you know your weaknesses then you know your threats. Your flaws are your competitors’ advantage and ultimately threaten your growth and sales. Fortunately, it works both ways.
Share these questions with your staff. Your goal is for everyone to have similar, well-articulated, crystallized answers based on an authentic understanding of the organization. And that is your first step towards establishing a true strategic plan.
