Forget Planning the 2nd Half of the Year...Embrace Choosing, Selecting and Acting to Achieve Profits & Productivity

Forget business planning the 2nd half of the year and embrace choosing, selecting and acting...

Welcome to “Conversations every business owner has with their team in July.”  It’s the start of the second half of the year and let’s forget traditional business planning and start embracing - choosing, selecting and acting now.  Here’s why...

Traditional business planning as applied by big corporations and government is bureaucratic and stifling.  An entrepreneur and business owner success requires - faster easier and flexible direction setting ways more aligned to their passion and control mindset.  Something more empowering...here’s how!

1. Choose what you want, need, must have in your professional and personal life to feel happy about your progress for the time period selected.  That’s your future.  Prioritize the list to the top two to three must haves.
2. Select what you want or must take from your past into the future.  Think of this as if you were packing for a trip and have only two suitcases.  All of your past is not required for the journey - so prioritize and select the best experiences, thoughts, feelings, relationships, knowhow to create the future chosen.  
3. Act on what and where you’ve chosen to go using what you’ve selected from your past to take into the future.   The more compelling and clear your future the harder to veer off course when the moment of choice arrives or the momentum of the day overwhelms you.  You’ll align your actions, behaviors and decisions to achieve what makes you happy about your progress.  

This approach embraces an entrepreneur's attitude of business and life by design vs. happenstance.

Now go have July’s conversation with your team and forget planning and start choosing, selecting and acting to achieve more and work less.  

Want to know more?  Let’s talk.  I’ll offer a complimentary 60 to 90 min session to understand your situation and I’ll guarantee you at least a half dozen implementable ideas to maximize your effectiveness in the 2nd half of the year.

Call me at ph:  972 291 5566 or Email:  StephenMarino@ActionCOACH.com

Let’s get started...accelerating your growth.  

How to Avoid Facilitating Your Meetings as a Lion Tamer

Business owners - want to have fewer yet more productive meetings?  

Welcome to “Conversations every business owner has with their team.”  And today’s topic is how to have your people in fewer more productive meetings without you having to be a facilitation lion tamer.  

Situation - “Another meeting, I don’t have time for a meeting.”  “We never accomplish anything.”  You get the sentiments.   Yet you must have meetings to exchange ideas, engage your group, problem solve or coordinate action.  

Let’s assume you’ve done the meeting basics - clear agenda and purpose and invited the right people to participate.

 

Here’s a simple tip to keep your group more productive and engaged at your next meeting or work session.

The crux of the solution is a large sign.  It has an arrow pointing up corresponding to constructive and a down arrow siting a destructive comment or question.  Participants ask themselves to which degree their comment or question moves the agenda forward.  You get the picture.  With these two arrows they can test whether they are about to suggest adding or subtracting from the agendas purpose.  

This doesn’t mean that important or negative views or news is not spoken, quite the contrary.  It’s saying, “Stay on the agendas topic.”  

A simple pointing to or looking at the arrows keep participants on topic.

A Hierarchy of Constructive Comments or Questions are described as:

Destructive  comments or questions are increasingly detrimental if?  

Introduce these arrows and descriptors at your next meeting, explain the meeting ‘rules of the game’ and you’ll improve productivity, increase moral and leave with clear next steps.  That’s everyone’s definition of progress!

Still having challenges making your meeting as productive and positive as possible, then let’s talk.  I offer a complimentary 60 to 90 min session to understand your team dynamics.

I guarantee you at least a half dozen implementable ideas to maximize your time by reducing the number of meetings and improving the effectiveness of the ones held.

Call me at ph:  972 709 6776 or Email:  StephenMarino@ActionCOACH.com

Let’s get started...building and operation as a high quality team.  You’ll work less and make more.

5 Numbers Every Business Owner Must Know

Business owners - what are the 5 essential numbers to grow your business?  

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1. What’s the value of your time?  This number gives you perspective on how and where to apply your talents.  It helps prioritize your tasks.  Will this task make you money or avoid losing money - how much?  Without this this number you feel at odds constantly trying to do everything and failing to be productive.
2. When do you break-even?  Knowing when your revenues exceed the fixed and variable costs gives you confidence you make a profit for your efforts.  Without it you don’t know whether you’re winning or losing.  You don’t know the score.  You feel anxious and hesitant on strategy because you don’t know where you stand financially.
3. What’s the acquisition cost of your customers?  What are you spending in marketing, sales and customer experience to attract and retain them.  Are you receiving a return on investment?  Without this number you don’t have a basis to decide how and where to apply your resources.  You feel perplexed and must guess on marketing and sales strategies.
4. What is your customer lifetime value?  When you add up what your customer buys year-over-year plus their referrals, what value does it provide the business?  With this number you’ll appreciate your customers more.  Without this number you’ll miss apply your time with low quality customers vs focusing on retaining your loyal raving fans.
5. Finally, what is the value of your business?  What if you transitioned out of the business today, tomorrow or in 3 years what value do you need it to be?  What are the leveragable variables impacting the value?  How do you best show sustainable increasing discretionary cashflow?  Avoid feeling disappointed when this pinnacle event occurs.    

Knowing these 5 numbers is important.  Knowing the direction and rate of change is equally important over time.

If you’re uncertain about what your numbers are and their trends then let’s talk.  We’ll discuss how to calculate these numbers and how to move them in the right direction.  This is a complementary session and you're guaranteed to leave with at least a half dozen implementable ideas to improve these numbers.

Call me at ph:  972 709 6776 or eMail:  StephenMarino@ActionCOACH.com

Let’s get started...know these numbers and we'll grow your business!

How to Surround Yourself with a High Quality Team - 5 Steps to a Recruiting Plan

Whether your company is recruiting for rapid growth, high grading or replacing people, knowing how to attract top talent is an essential business function.  

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Welcome to my series, “Conversations every business owner has with their team - and today’s topic is recruiting team members whether your business is expanding and adding more or high grade the ones you have.”  

Here are 5 essential steps to the recruiting process to save you time and money while ensuring a great fit for your company.

1. Define the position - skills, competencies, passion level as well as the cultural fit with your vision, mission and values
2. Attract a large pool of applicants.  In today's job environment there are nearly 90 applicants per job with a well written and placed advertisement
3. Design the recruiting process that mimics the qualities you want completed.  With a large number of applicants, you can manage the process by having applicants demonstrate their competencies and show their desire to go the "extra mile."  Allow your applicants to de-select themselves based on the initial advertisement and instructions given throughout your process
4. Allow the applicants to de-select themselves by not following your instructions.  When they deselect naturally, you’ll be left with a more manageable number.  From this remaining group, high grade again and invite several for a group interview with you and your team.  The group interview is a multi-hour session where in the first half you and your team share information about your company, the position and your expectations.  Inform them that during the second half the applicants will step-up and perform many of the essential job required tasks to your team.  Many will deselect themselves and those remaining are demonstrating their desire to earn their way onto your team.  
5. After the group interview, reassemble your team and critique the new people interviewed against your hiring criteria for skills, competencies, passion level and cultural fit.  Prioritize and select the one or two you will make an offer.

These 5 recruiting steps yield a higher probability of hiring the right person the first time, concentrates your team’s time efficiently and accelerates the new team member’s “on boarding” time to productivity.  

If you're adding team members this quarter then give me a call and let's discuss how to make this process work for you.  

Call me at ph:  972 709 6776 or email:  StephenMarino@ActionCOACH.com  

And let’s surround you with the high quality team you deserve…

Identify Why Your Marketing Leads Declined

Welcome to "Conversations Every Business Owner Must Have with Their Marketing and Sales team.  

When Marketing leads decline impacting sales, how do you to determine the cause and what to change?

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Whether you are a team of one or with several people dedicated to Marketing and Sales going through this evaluation will identify what to change.

Let's start by evaluating these 4 key areas...

1. Audience:  Start with your target audience...do you have your ideal customer, client, patient or member identified by demographic, psychographic and geographic characteristics?  These are the people that benefit the most by experiencing your products and services.  Can you describe them and determine where they are in the greatest number at the time they are most receptive to your offer?  The more you can segment this audience the more effective your marketing will be.  
2. Offer:  What is your company offering customers that fulfills a want, need, must have or unmet desire to engage them?  The offer must create an eager want to initiate their response so a conversation can start.   
3. Copy:  Does the marketing message resonate with your customer?  Is it in their language that lets them know, you know them, understand them, and demonstrate you're likable, trustworthy and credible?  Is your message delivered suitably for their communication style - visually, auditory and/or kinetically?  Is there sufficient evidence you're relating to them in their personally preference for social proof and logically? 
4. Distribution:  How and when are you reaching and connecting with your target audience?  For most businesses with less than 50 employees direct response, online, print, social media, networking and speaking are the likely cost effective choices vs. advertising.  

This evaluation identified where the likely shortcoming is.  Now you and your team can concentrate specifically on solutions and avoid the destabilizing blame, excuse and denial behavior that's detrimental to your business.  

Still stumped and want an outside perspective?  I'll offer you a free marketing and sales consultation?  Then contact me at  ph:  972 709 6776 or eM:  StephenMarino@ActionCOACH.com

Let's get your marketing and sales re-ignited so you can be more profitable and productive...

Why Calling Everyone in Your Sales Process a "Lead" is Costing You Sales

By calling everyone in your sales process a “lead” you are losing valuable sights on how to improve which results in fewer sales.  

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Here’s a conversation every owner needs to have with their marketing and sales team which starts with,

“What is the company’s acquisition cost of a client?  Is the trend increasing or decreasing?  And what specifically can be done to improve it?”

If you received vague answers then here’s what the best marketing and sales teams do:

1. Build a sales relationship process recognizing these four stages:
• Target audience - your ideal client based on demographic and psychographic data
• Suspects - those that responded
• Prospects - contacted and engaged
• Leads - qualified for your solution and can make a decision
2. Measure your conversions from target audience to suspects to prospects to leads to customers/clients.
3. Evaluate why people move and/or don't move from stage-to-stage
4. Calculate your acquisition cost at each conversion
5. Make changes in marketing and sales scripts to improve effectiveness and efficiency

Need to improve your sales relationship process?  Let's talk.  I'll offer you a Complementary Sales Assessment.

Call me today:  ph:  972 709 6776 eM:  StephenMarino@ActionCOACH.com  Let's get started...

How to Attract Top Talent...

Whether your company is experiencing rapid growth or replacing people, knowing how to attract top talent is an essential business function.  

Here are 5 essential steps to this function to save you time, money and ensure a great fit for your company. 

1. Define the position - skills and competencies as well as the cultural fit with your vision, mission and values
2. Attract a large pool of applicants.  In today's job environment there are nearly 90 applicants per job with a well written and placed advertisement
3. Design the recruiting process that mimics the qualities you want completed.  With a large number of applicants, you can manage the process by having applicants demonstrate their competencies and show their desire to go the "extra mile."  Allow your candidate to de-select themselves based on the initial advertisement and instructions throughout your process
4. Once that applicant number is manageable, then invite those selected to a group interview with your team.  Make this a multi-hour session where you share information about your company, the position and get the applicant to step up and perform many of the essential job required tasks
5. Review input from your entire team and decide 

This process is efficient and effective for you and your team because in a relatively short amount of time there is more input and insights gained to help you make a decision on selecting not only for skills and capabilities as well as a cultural fit. 

If you're adding talent to your business this quarter then give me a call and let's discuss how to make this process work for you.  This is one more capability ActionCOACH - Business Coaches have…ph:  972 709 6776 or email:  StephenMarino@ActionCOACH.com  

How to Determine Pay Mix for Sales Force - Commission vs Salary…

Which variable in your compensation package incentivizes your sales force to deliver the results desired - more clients, higher revenues and gross profits?  The consensus from sales teams globally is that it varies based on whether the salesman must find new customers or delight existing customers or both.  Since it takes at least six times more effort and expense to attract new business than it does to sell to your existing customers, the risk reward relationship favors compensation with a higher commission rate when they must seek new customers.  Here the commission rate range may vary between 50 to 70%.  For those sales consummated with existing customers, the salary percentage goes up and the commission rates goes down.  The salary rate may vary between 50 to 70%.

Of course this is only part of the sales compensation formula with further blogs coming.  If you're seeking to make your sales team perform better then let's have a discussion.  This is what ActionCOACH - Business Coaches do - accelerate your growth.

Call me at ph:  972 709 6776 or email:  StephenMarino@ActionCOACH.com

The 4 Business Principles as Powerful and Certain as Gravity...

The business-of-business has 4 timeless principles as powerful and certain as gravity.  Master them and you'll find successful, Ignore them and you'll perish.  It's that straightforward.  They work regardless of industry, size, intentions, geography, culture, economy, hard work, friendships, beliefs or intelligence.

1.   Money - what are the cash flow characteristics of the business, what is the cash gap between expenses and revenues and when and how do you break-even and make a profit?  

2.  Productivity - how effective and efficient are your systems and team delivering your products and services?  

3.  Delivery - how consistent is the business delivering your products and services on time, to spec and on budget after a sale is made? 

4.  Purpose - does the direction of the business and who it serves fulfill the vision, mission and values of the owner?

The good news is just like gravity we know how to master them.  If you are seeking faster ways to master these principles, then let's talk.

Call me at ph:  972 709 6776 or em:  StephenMarino@ActionCOACH.com

Let's get started giving you back control of your business, so you can earn more and work less... 

How to Measure Whether You are Busy vs. Productive...

There's not a business owner, operations manager, marketing or sales manager that doesn't tell me they are busy.  But the business-of-business is not busy-ness, it's productivity.  A better question is how productive are you?  And if the answer given is vague and not specific meaningful and valuable then how are you going to improve?

Here's a table of specific activities that count as productive depending upon your role.  How do you measure up?

Role		Productive Activities
Business Owner	Generating Revenue	Reducing Expenses	Improving the Team
Operations Manager	Producing and delivering products and services on time, to specification and on budget every time	Reducing Expenses	Seeking ways to systematize the routine and humanizing the exception
Marketing & Sales Managers	New customers:   Attracting, presenting and following up...	Existing Customers:  Increasing average dollar sale and number of transactions.  Increasing lifetime value of customer	Reduce the acquisition cost of a customer
Administration, Finance & Logistics	Delivering all back-office actions within budget, specifications and on-time every time	Systematizing the routine and humanizing the exception	Reducing overhead expense
Everyone	Create a customer experience such that they become Raving Fans

If you and your team are having questions about busy vs productive, then let's have a conversation.  This is one of the things ActionCOACH Business Coach's do  - improve productivity.  Call me at ph:  972 709 6776 em:  StephenMarino@ActionCOACH.com