How have you always thought about your company’s financial strength? As a function of ongoing cash flow? As cash in the bank? As your available line of credit? As your debt to equity ratio? As intimately inter
I am a huge fan of goals. I believe, to reach its’ potential, every small business needs a detailed annual plan. A plan is similar to a budget, but different two very important ways. A plan is all about goals and it has built in accountability.
The ideal of a solo warrior going into battle to beat the competition is past. Now is the time for partnering and collaboration. Partner promotions have existed forever. But social media has turbo changed them.
What is your value meal? Because of the COVID virus and its related economic impacts, change has become the norm, not the exception. As a result, the ground is fertile for experimentation. One easy strategy to test out new ideas that will grow your
“The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The next best time is right now.” Resilience is the ability of a substance or object to return to its original shape after being bent, stretched, or pressed. Revenue resilience is the ability of your revenue stream to recover after an unexpected economic event. Resilience gives you the capacity to survive unexpected events, so you can thrive when the recovery comes.
Friction is anything that makes it harder for someone to buy from you. As you recover revenue, how can you reduce friction in your sales, marketing and production processes? Think Amazon one click. Find what you want, one click and it arrives at your door. How can you embrace technology to make it easier than ever for clients and customers to buy what they need, from you? Examples of simple new technology tools that reduce friction are proposal software that gives instant and consistent feedback, calendar software making appointments easier to set up, auto billing software, content sharing and management tools, sales engagement, and of course, communication and conferencing software. Begin looking for places to reduce friction by mapping your process from marketing to sales, to production. Determine the current cost and time in each bucket. What is your 80/20 here? What 20% of your marketing, sales and production process is dragging 80% of your cost and increasing time and friction? Begin here as these are your most significant drags on profits. Gather a cross functional team and begin to deploy new ideas and technology. Keep asking, what makes it easier and faster for clients and customers to work with us? Right now, change is easier. With social distancing and business closures, everyone’s life has been impacted in some way. Change is no longer slow, it is fast, and constant. Your clients and customers are expecting change. And they are more willing to forgive you if things don’t go well the first time out of the box with a new change. For retailers, most bars, restaurants and entertainment venues, the journey from a customer’s home to your location is friction. If this is you, health and safety may be your biggest challenge in reducing friction. Over communicate and make your safety process front and center to the client experience. Spend a few minutes right now to capture your first thoughts on areas of friction in your process. Who are the best team members to gather for your cross functional team? Make notes now while things are on your mind. Set a time line for getting started. Join us next for a look at Resilient Revenue. Mackey
Recovering revenue runs the spectrum from regaining your customers trust in terms of health and safety so they feel safe continuing to do business with you, to completely reinventing revenue as you now know it today. The old idea, “this is the way we do it here,” must go. Along the way, attempt to rediscover your passion
The 2020’s were already shaping up to be the most disruptive decade in our history. Accelerating technology, increasing impacts from climate change, generational wealth transfer on a massive scale, as well as a global leadership vacuum, were setting the stage for an accelerating pace of change… before the novel coronavirus came into our lives. With COVID, it’s like we all boarded the Starship Enterprise, just as it was moving into warp speed.
