Posted by SteveSmith on June 8, 2010 under Business Coaching, Management | 
Most business owners today aren’t happy with the amount of revenue their business is generating. They’re working longer hours, applying greater effort, spending more for marketing and receiving lower revenue. So what’s going on?
If this is happening to you, it’s important to remember that those results are in direct proportion to the actions you’ve been taking? If you want different results, then you MUST take different actions.
So if that’s all that’s required, why don’t business owners just do that? The answer may shock you. They can’t stop repeating their past patterns of behavior. Their past patterns have become ingrained into their subconscious mind and have established themselves as habits.
How This Works:
Have you ever listened to art experts accurately identify a recently discovered painting as belonging to a specific artist such as Rembrandt? How can they tell who painted that picture? Patterns… that’s how. Even though the painting may look completely different than all the others that artist painted, his or her patterns, sometimes referred to as their “style,” continuously comes through with each and every painting.
The exact same thing happens to business owners as well. All of us have been mentally conditioned to perform our daily activities in a certain way. These activities have become habits through constant and daily repetition. The problem is that the majority of these habits… more than 80% of them… are non-productive. They simply don’t contribute to the generation of revenue for your business.
Imagine Your True Potential!
Imagine what would happen to your revenue if you could reduce that 80% down to 60%. If you replaced that 20% with revenue producing activities, you would DOUBLE your income? Do you know how easy it is to reduce that 80% down to 60%… or even down to 40%… which doubles revenue again? Exciting, isn’t it?
So, what is the cost to you and your business if you fail to change this behavior? What if you could devote more time and take action on more revenue producing tasks?
What if you could remove the mental barriers that may be sabotaging your success?
What if you could get laser-focused on your highest revenue -producing activities?
How can you learn to do all of this? Join me on my upcoming webinar ‘Change Your Game in 2012’ and have your best year ever! I’m going to show you what to look for that’s holding you back and preventing you from having the kind of business success you truly deserve. I’m also going to show you how to establish a systematic way of running and growing your business so 2012 doesn’t end up being a repeat of 2011!
Why am I doing all this and not charging for it?
My past 25 years of management, marketing and sales in some of America’s most successful companies has given me a wealth of experience (and hard knocks) on how to effectively and profitably build a business and sharing it with committed business owners is the least I can do to support the small business community.
If you want to participate, simply follow this link http://bit.ly/ChangeYourGamein2012 and register. I can only accommodate a certain number of people, so sign up today. Additionally, you will receive my e-book on the 17 tops ways to grow your business just for registering for the webinar.
Originally posted 2011-12-16 00:27:54. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
Posted by Cash Miller on under Accounting, Business Planning, Management |
Running a small business often involves creating a number of different plans and projections to see where you plan to go and how you’re going to get there. But an often overlooked method of planning is what is sometimes termed as revenue planning. To help explain what I’m talking about I’ll start off by telling you what revenue planning is not. It is not financial forecasting and it is not an estimate of future cash flow. Revenue planning is in a category all by itself.
Now I’ll explain what revenue planning is at least as I see it and to make it easy I’ll provide an example. At one time I ran a manufacturing business that catered to the needs of casino’s and restaurants in Las Vegas, Nevada. We had a large established clientele with a constantly evolving work schedule. At any one time we had dozens of job orders that needed to be fullfilled. Being that I am a very visual person I have always used multiple white boards to help me keep track of things. If it’s in front of my face I’m less likely to forget something. Typically I had 3 or 4 white boards always hanging on the walls of my office and one of them was always dedicated to my monthly revenue.
Every month I had two number I worried about the most. The total value of the work orders we had lined up and the amount we actually were able to bill or clients by the end of the month. The first number told me if we had enough work lined to reach our sales goals and the second was our finals sales for the month based on work we had completed. The first number though represented our revenue plan.
So our revenue plan was the total amount of potential billings we had for a certain period of time and also where the work was coming from. On my white board I would write our monthly goal at the top. Underneath I would list each client that we had a work order from and the amount in dollars of work we were projected to do for them and at the bottom would be the total of projected work we had lined up. This was a running total that would usually change on a daily basis. But what it always told me was how much our final sales for the month could be if we stayed on schedule.
This was our revenue plan or revenue projection. For a manufacturing or service business it can be a good way of keeping track of your potential billings. You set your monthly, quarterly or yearly goal and then you see if you can determine exactly where the sales are going to come from. If you’ve been in business for a couple of years and have an established clientele then you’ll have an idea of how much each client spends with you each year. This information will help you project your revenue using solid figures and not just assumptions.
For myself this was always a worthwhile exercise as it helped me make sure we stayed on track and we were more easily able to hit the goals we had set for the business.
When revenue planning ask yourself a couple of questions.
1. What is my goal financiallt for the month, quarter, or year?
2. What work orders do I already have lined up?
3. How much is each of my customers worth?
4. How many of these work orders can we reasonably expect to fulfill during the current month?
5. And how much is my current work load worth?
Trust me when I say that this little exercise will help you tremendousley when it comes to hitting the financial goals you have set for the business.
Originally posted 2010-04-08 05:44:12. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
Posted by SteveSmith on under Business Planning, Management, Marketing |
If you are dedicated to your business, you are probably surrounded by minutia on a daily basis. It’s the little things that are easy to do, fun to do or provide a hideout from the more important things that must be done. However you define it, minutia is the bane of every small business owner that struggles to grow revenues in a marketplace that has kicked the traditional forms of marketing to the curb.
Why is minutia such a detestable yet comforting area to occupy ones time? It has to do with the feeling of overwhelm that is created when the subconscious has too many things to juggle. Your brain is the largest, most powerful computer on the planet and its memory access is unlimited. So when the list of tasks gets out of control, the mind takes over and begins retrieving everything associated with your list in an attempt to get you to focus on the things you need to do. The only problem is the mind has no way to prioritize the list, so everything gets equal weight which means everything needs to be done NOW! Feeling overwhelmed yet?
When business owners start feeling this way, the first reaction is to protect the sanity and focus on easy tasks that bring immediate reward- the minutia. Unfortunately, focusing on the simple, probably unimportant areas f your business simply reinforces the fact that these are important to your subconscious, thereby perpetuating this cycle, over and over again. Instead of making progress by the end of the week, the list is even longer and there’s even more important stuff to be done.
Recognize that the only way to resist the comfort of spending time on small, unimportant tasks is to actively focus on the big stuff. And, do not assume that you must handle it all yourself. If you are going to stay ahead of the daily operations of your business, you must learn to assign the list; either to others or to a specific time slot when you will do it.
One way to gain control over this debilitating behavior is to write down everything that needs attention. Go ahead, make the list as long as you like. Just record the actual task; nothing else. Then, go back and tag every item that can or should be done by someone else. Don’t worry if you don’t have ‘that certain someone’ to do it, tag it as such.
Next, identify all items that have to do with producing revenue. These activities need to get the highest priority. Everything else falls in the minutia category and should be sidelined until your top revenue producing tasks are completed. If some of the minutia are things only you can do, set aside brief periods throughout the day (no more than 30 minutes) and knock off a few at a time. Then get back to the heavy lifting!
Practice this technique regularly and you will train your brain to focus on the important things and resist the need to run and hide when your business starts to overwhelm you.
If you would like to watch a free video on how to ‘Change Your Brain to Change Your Outcome’, click this link and select webcast #1. http://www.businesscoachingthatworks.com/OrangeCountyCaliforniaBusinessCoachingResources.html
Originally posted 2010-04-05 16:35:26. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
