6 months to expand your business

Here is an idea starter for you and your business. Each week, just read one idea.  There are 26 ideas so it will take you six months.  

Allow yourself to experience one of two things:

1. Let you mind ask, “How could we implement this idea in our company and industry?”

2. Let you mind use that weeks idea as a launch pad for a completely different idea that would work in your company.  Allow day dreaming or additional questions to think of new things.

Sales:

1. ·         Add sales force.  Hire more sales or marketing people.
2. ·         Reduce sales force.  Sometimes getting rid of people who are not performing inspires everyone else to do more.
3. ·         Launch new locations.  Can you duplicate what you are doing somewhere else?  Across town? In a different state? In a different country?
4. ·         Re-inspire the troops with a conference or training.  If people are your greatest asset, when is the last time you invested in them to keep them growing in skills and camaraderie?
5. ·         Increase your price.  If you could increase your price by 1% and not lose business, how much would that add to your bottom line?
6. ·         Decrease your price.  Retail companies do this every Christmas.  They offer a sale price for a set period of time to bring in more business.
7. ·         Bundle your offering with another product or another companies offering.  Can you add something else you offer or that someone else offers in attract more business?  For instance, one restaurant bundles appetizers, a main course and a dessert for a low price of $20.
8. ·         Bundle your offering with a service or another companies service.  Instead of adding more products, can your team or the team of another company add something that makes your product more valuable and desired?
9. ·         Systemize what your top performers do and use that to train the bottom 80% of the sales force.  Basically you are franchising your top sales force.  Your 80%ers will sell harder because they believe if they do what the top people do, then they will get what the top people get.  Their right!
10. ·         Engage a sales consultant or sales coach.  Invest in someone from the outside who can give you a fresh look at the strengths and weaknesses of your team and sale process'.

Marketing:

1. ·         Create a Social Media Marketing plan.  If you don't have one you are already behind.
2. ·         Create a short video.  If you go to: http://www.finishlinefloors.com/floor-finishing-ultra-durable-floor-finish.html .  After viewing it, go to:  http://www.finishlinefloors.com/floor-finishing-tile-grout-restoration.html.  You will see an example of two 90 second videos that have brought us business.  Since I systemized the general flow it made it just as easy to make two as it was to make one.
3. ·         Update your website.  It's just not that expensive anymore.
4. ·         Update your reference letters and testimonials.  Do not let six months go by without a new reference letter.  Potential customers are more impressed with a current letter than one dated two years ago.
5. ·         Hire a marketing firm.   It's just amazing what professionals can do for your business.  Don't feel like you have to do it all yourself.  And especially don't believe you can do it better than the pros.
6. ·         Write industry articles in your industry magazine.  If you want people contacting you by word of mouth, this is a great way to get it done. 
7. ·         Speak at industry conferences.  If you write articles, you are asked to speak at conferences.

Business Strategy

1. ·         Engage a business consultant or coaching program for executive team.  Same thing, don't assume you know everything or that you should know everything.  Consider fresh insight from the outside.
2. ·         Systemize repetitive processes.  Pretend you are going to franchise your business.  Write the process manuals.  This will help you recruit and train talent faster and position you to either franchise or open more locations.
3. ·         Know your financial numbers.  It's amazing how living on a budget can reduce unnecessary overhead.
4. ·         Franchise.  Not all business's can or should franchise but maybe your business can. 

                                  

Operations

1. ·         Systemize it.  I once helped a custom commercial art company systematize their systems.  If they can do it, you can do it.  It will dramatically help you control operations.
2. ·         Remove bottle necks in your process’.  Do some work flow analysis and figure out where your bottlenecks are.  My guess is you probably already know where they are.  So either remove it or add the resourced needed to open the flow.
3. ·         Remove dead weight employees.  People are people.  Just like the sales force, when you remove dead weight, the others are inspired to work hard.
4. ·         Reduce overhead.  Know the difference between luxury and functionality;  wants verses needs.
5. ·         Increase output.  As long as sales are there, what can you do to increase the output of your operations?  If sales are not there, what increase in operations create an added value to your offering?

Although any of us could just read through the list, which is what you just did, go back and meditate on one a week.  Even if you only apply one a month your business will look different by the end of the six month session.

1 Day Challenge

I was reading a book, "How to Think Like a CEO" and the author presented a "1 Day Challenge."  The idea is to manage and lead by ONLY asking questions.  No directives.  It is a great relational skills challenge.

That got me thinking about how I could challenge myself in other areas.  I thought of a couple:

1. Speed read a book in a day.                                             Intellectual Challenge
2. Only drink water.  That means no coffee.  ouch.               Physical Fitness Challenge
3. Stay at or below the speed limit for a day.                         Self-discipline Challenge
4. Only look people in the eyes.                                            Relational Challenge
5. Fast and pray during meals                                               Spiritual Challenge
6. No spontaneous purchases                                               Financial Challenge

To gain further benefit, I thought of challenges that would take a week to complete:

1. Vegetarian diet                                                                  Physical Fitness Challenge
2. Post and Reply in LinkedIn each day for a week               Relational Networking Challenge
3. Clean and organize a specific room in the house/office     Emotional Well-being Challenge
4. Experience homelessness for a week                                Relational and Financial Challenge
5. Memorize a passage or poem                                           Intellectual Challenge

 Reply below with a challenge you would give yourself?

10 Tactics to Help Negotiations

Negotiating is a key skill required if you are going to expand your business or career profitably.  Negotiations can be the reason a business or real estate investment cash flows or not.  So here are ten tactics you need to make a part of your tool box as you meet with vendors, employees, bankers, buyers and sellers.

1. Always meet with all principals you are buying from or selling to.  You waste time if you are meeting and talking with people who cannot sign the agreement.  You need to know the motivations and needs of the other party if you have to put together a creative offer.
2. Keep one of your principals absent.  You probably know the needs of your partner(s).  This tactic allows you to think about their proposals without commitment.  It allows you to commit with a contingency of your partners approval.  If the partner disapproves then you can come back to the table with more discuss.
3. Keep or create as many options as possible.  Maybe it is because I am a former Infantry Officer, but options keep you alive.  Both on the battlefield and in the investment field.  The Seller who has only one option has to take what the buyer is giving.  This is another reason to develop at least five exit strategies when you purchase a place.
4. Game plan all their possible options with your responses.  Again, this may be a fall back from my military days.  Pre-plan your options and responses based on the various directions the other person may present.  This keeps your emotions out of the negotiations and you in control.  This will also let you know when negotiations are really halted and when your creativity can keep the transaction moving forward.
5. Have the other side give the numbers and terms first.  This is why a buyer is often in a better starting position than a seller who has listed the property.  Once you have committed to a number it is hard, if not impossible, to move to a better position than your beginning one.  By forcing them to commit first you keep your options. 
6. Check your ego at the door.  Ego costs money; plain and simple.  If you go in with any ego, you immediately put the other team on a defensive or aggressively offensive posture.  Let them be the experts.  Defer to their experience, knowledge of the market or property.  Defer to their age…whatever it takes to make them feel that they know more than you.  This will endear them to you and want to help you get a good deal.
7. Be willing to wait.  There is a reason that many people become more patient as they age.  They became wiser.  Wisdom is knowing when to put the purchase agreement on the property immediately and when it is wise to wait.  Let the seller loose some options.  Realize that they can’t sell it for the terms they thought.  This makes them more flexible.  However, there are times when a property is already at 50-60% of market value and it will be gone tomorrow.  You don’t have to wait on all deals; just be willing to.
8. Know your walk away numbers and terms.  By knowing your walk-away numbers you eliminate the chance of you being swept away by the emotional excitement of the negotiations.  After we have invested hours of negotiations we feel that we “just have to get that property” to make our investment of time worth it.  That is when it costs us the most.  By knowing the worst numbers you will accept you can walk away and save yourself from disaster.
9. Keep track of all concessions made by both sides.  When we have invested time and countering offers over and over, it is easy to miss the fact that one side is giving more concessions than the other.  By writing each concession down as they are given and received, you can see if you are the only party moving toward agreement.  When giving a concession remember the phrase, “If I can do that, what will you do for me?”  That will force both parties to give at least equally.
10. Leave making them feel they won so they will work with you again.  You never know when you are going to deal with that person or party again.  The older I get the more I realize this is a small world.  What goes around really does come around.  Make sure both parties accomplish their goals in the transaction for that is what a transaction is.  A movement of both parties toward their goals. 

These are some of the top ten things you should remember when you enter negotiations of any kind.  Use them daily.  Practice them in all areas of life and you will become a powerful negotiator.