In business as in life, you’re either growing or you’re dying

IT’S THE PLIGHT of many a business, sales are steady, things seem good but over time there is a case of the disappearing profits. It’s enough to drive you nuts.

Why does a company that is going well, keeping its best customers happy, and retaining good employees seem to be going slowly under?

It’s pretty simple actually.

Retaining customers without increasing prices, keeping employees who get pay rises, staying with suppliers even though prices may rise 1% or 2%. It all adds up, and your profits magically fade into thin air…

So, what can you do about it? Well, there are solutions and to be blunt, one very important solution… focus on growth.

In business as in life, you’re either growing or you’re dying. Take a look at your garden, the trees can’t stop growing, or they wither and die. You have to think of your business in the same light – growth or death. And given that death is probably not a viable option, let’s go for growth.

So, how do you ensure you’re always in growth mode?

Before we get to the top nine ways to keep growing, remember that it doesn’t just have to be sales growth; it can be growth in many areas of your business…

• Top line revenues growth – always a favourite, getting more sales and revenues flowing makes cashflow positive and really gets the team fired up.

• Bottom line profits growth – my personal area of passion, getting more dollars in the top line doesn’t seem as much fun if there isn’t more left over for the owners.

• Product or service lines growth – often seems harder than it really is…

• Team or staff growth – so often new people bring new ideas and new business to handle growth in other areas…

• Geographic growth – opening new territories again leads to other growth…

• Other growth – so many other areas that you can open yourself up to… Whatever the growth focus you have, remember the simple story of the tree, either growth or deterioration. So, my top nine strategies for immediate growth in companies I start coaching…

1. Raise your prices – Simply put, if you haven’t done it in the past year, you need to. Most business owners are scared stiff of moving prices, but the reality is, very few customers ever complain or even notice a 10% shift. The ones who complain are already complaining about your prices. Just test it on a certain range if you don’t believe me.

2. Add on sell or package – You never get to leave McDonalds without the obligatory ‘would you like fries with that?’ Learn from their systems, what can you add on, or how can you package your services and products together to get people buying more every time they do business with you?

3. Debt collection – I know it’s not really growth, but too many companies have no debt collection system in place. Make the letters, calls and emails happen on a set schedule so people know to pay on time.

4. Newsletter – Just a simple monthly few quality pages is where it can start and eventually turn into a masterpiece. People love to know how to buy from you again and again, teach them what’s happening right now so they stay in touch and see you often, even when they are not in your store.

5. Entire range – You’ll be amazed how many times a business owners hears,“Oh, I didn’t know you did that,” from their customers. Make sure you have a marketing piece or strategy to keep every customer or potential customer on your database (yes you need a database of every customer) aware of everything you do or sell.

6. Sales training – Probably the biggest area of growth potential for any company with a salesperson or two. Doctors, sports stars and almost every other profession needs constant training, so too do salespeople; keep them learning and closing more and more deals.

7. Referrals – Most companies make it so hard to refer people, how can you make it simple?

8. Test and measure – you cannot manage what you do not measure. You’ve got to know your numbers, everything from how many new leads you got today down to your break-even numbers. Learn your numbers and you’ll be far more in control and far more profitable.

9. Follow up your prospects – every time I go shopping, it blows me away how many companies never ask for my details, never call me back, never send me anything. You think that is too pushy, you’re right, but the so called ‘pushy’ companies are the ones getting the clients.

No matter what, put growth on your agenda. Set new goals, sales targets and challenge yourself and your team. Ask big questions and the chances are you’ll get big answers.

Success is more than just having skills

Two hamburger joints open back in ’67 … we’ll call one Bob’s Burger Shack. Great hamburgers! The other shop is McDonalds. The rest is history, yes?

Were Mickey D’s burgers really that much better than Bob’s? I mean, really … how hard is it to get a burger right? Even Ray Croc himself admitted this to eager business school students he lectured in his lifetime. He’d ask them,‘How many people in here can make a better hamburger than McDonalds?’Everyone would raise their hand because everybody’s made a tasty burger before, at least tasty by their own standards. But then he’d ask, ‘How many people make more money than McDonalds?’ Naturally, all hands dropped.

It’s a simple yet eloquent demonstration that it doesn’t matter whether you have a better idea, a better product, or a better service. In business, the only thing that matters is getting that product, idea, or service out to as many people as possible, and/or at as much profit as possible.

It’s the learning curve of the entrepreneur—amassing the skills necessary to take what you have to offer to a mass audience profitably, which anybody can learn how to do, but it also takes a nerve and determination that most people just don’t show when it comes to taking control of their financial future. That kind of moxie can be the rope that saves you instead of binds you in stagnation after a big failure.

Few people have the kind of moxie that Karl Eller has. He’s a legend in Arizona but a giant in business period. He started out in billboard advertising; was one of the founders of the NBA Phoenix Suns basketball team; president of Columbia Pictures at one point, which he helped merge into Coca-Cola—amazingly successful businessman.

But he had a major setback, to say the least. He built another company called Circle K—a kind of convenience store—into the second largest chain in the U.S. during the 80s. Under his leadership, the company grew from something like $750 million in sales to $3.4 billion!

Then the company filed bankruptcy in the 90s, due in part to just a bad turn in business. He was forced to leave with $100 million in personal debt! Can you imagine being $100 million in debt? Not your company … you, personally???

Instead of declaring bankruptcy, though, Eller dug himself out by going back into what he knew well: outdoor advertising. Eller built another media company and merged with Clear Channel Communications for a then-record $1.15 billion!

And he did this when most people are retiring.

His track record is elegant proof that the question isn’t what type of business you want to go into—or at least that’s not the essential question. You’re going to find your niche, and you’re going to be better at that particular field of interest than others—whether we’re talking about burgers or billboards.

The essence of success in business, I believe, is the intangible quality that means having integrity no matter what the situation—win or loss—not being afraid to take risks, and your ability to bounce back after tremendous setbacks.

What do you think? What do you consider to be some of the intangible qualities of business success? 

How to attract quality people for your business/team

I REMEMBER WHEN I was 25 running one of my first team and I stood there complaining to my friend about how hard it was to get good players.

His answer totally floored me. And, if you’ve ever said or even thought something similar I bet it gets your mind racing as well. He bluntly said, “You get the people you deserve.”

Now, given he’s extremely blunt, that’s all he said, no explanation, no nothing. I was furious, “what do you mean?” I thought, I deserve better than these people who aren’t motivated. I deserve more than two people calling when I run an ad. I deserve more and better. I was mad.

It took me a few hours to calm down and then give some serious hard thought to what he had shown me. Finally I did work it out. I almost came to agreement with him, well almost. You can’t admit your friend is right when you’re 25.

It took me a few years to really master getting good people… so, here’s what I think he was trying to show me.

If you run a great company, you get great people. If you are a great leader, you attract great people. And vice versa, run a bad operation and you attract bad people. I’ve seen this in good times and bad, when there are lots of people to employ, and even now when it seems like there are none.

A word of warning first: building a great team of people is not for the faint of heart. If you recruit great people, you will have to be ready for growth, ready to really perform, they will push you as hard as you push them.

Here’s the top seven points I’ve learnt over the years on how to attract great people to work in your company or partner in your business.

1. Have a solid vision or goal for your company. Great people are attracted when they get to join a company that is going somewhere. You need to have a group of people shooting for a goal, rather than just coming to work for a simple pay packet.

2. Be a strong leader. Again, great employees are looking for a mentor, someone they can learn from and with. Someone who will help them grow and succeed in their work and their life. Every great team at one point had a great leader to build the team.

3. Build a winning culture. Call it a culture, or as I do, your rules of the game, either way you need to put in writing just how you expect people will behave when they are a part of your team. Think of it this way: it doesn’t matter where the fruit is in the bowl, as long as it’s in the bowl. Great people want to know what the boundaries are, but they also want the freedom to perform inside those boundaries.

4. Start with the end in mind. You’ve got to get clear on who it is you are after and what you want them to do. Making a list of their job requirements or complete position description is just the start. It’s more important to decide what personality profile or behavioural style would fit the position and your team.

5. De-select rather than select new recruits. I have now for many years run group interviews and picked the top 10 or 20 candidates to come to an information evening about the position/opportunity, showing them the company’s history, its future and our culture statement. This makes people choose to leave or really choose to stay. I make it hard for people to get the job so people take themselves out of the running, making my job easier. 

6. Rewards and recognition outweigh remuneration. Great people will work for money, but they perform for recognition and rewards. It could be as simple as a thank you, or as complex as a team reward structure. Either way, yes, you have to pay a little more (generally on bonuses) to great people, but personal recognition goes even further.

7. The domino effect. Hire one great person and they attract another. It’s a culture that you build. A great team attracts more great team members; look at any sport: people want to join winners. So, whether your company has one person or 100, a great team starts with you as the leader.

A great leadership lesson!

A couple years ago I saw an  interview on Charlie Plumb, who was a U.S. Navy jet pilot in Vietnam. I learned a very valuable leadership lesson that I’d like to pass on to you here.

Charlie flew 74 consecutive successful combat missions. However on his 75th mission his F4 Phantom fighter plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile. The plane exploded with some 12,000 pounds of jet fuel, flipping the plane topsy-turvy, end-over-end, down toward a rice paddy below. Charlie was forced to eject. The only thing between him and imminent death was his parachute that he prayed would open…

Then finally he felt the opening shock of the parachute. During the 90 seconds of descent he was being shot at. “The audacity of this enemy,” Charlie said, “they just knocked down my multimillion-dollar airplane and now they’re trying to kill the pilot!”

Charlie made it down to the ground alive, but was then captured and spent 2,103 brutal days as a prisoner of war in a communist Vietnamese prison camp.

Many years after being repatriated, Charlie, his wife and another couple were sitting in a little restaurant in Kansas City together before going to a theater show that night.

Two tables over was this guy who kept looking at him. Charlie would look back but didn’t recognize him, but he kept catching this guy staring at him. Finally the guy stood up and walked over to Charlie’s table and pointed at him with a sort of a stern look on his face and he said, “You’re Captain Plumb.” Charlie looked up at him and said, “Yes, I am Captain Plumb.” The guy said, “You’re that guy. You flew jet fighters in Vietnam. You’re a fighter pilot, part of that ‘Top Gun’ outfit. You launched from the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk, you parachuted into enemy territory and you spent six years as a prisoner of war.”

Somewhat dumbfounded Charlie looked up at the guy and asked, “How in the world did you know all that?” The man chuckled, smiled and said, “Because I packed your parachute.”

Charlie was speechless. The man grabbed Charlie’s hand and pumped his arm and said, “I guess it worked” and walked off.

Charlie laid awake that night thinking about all the times he had walked through the long narrow room, below sea level on the aircraft carrier, with the tables where the men packed the parachutes. How many times he must have walked past this man without even saying “hi,” “good morning” or “good job” or “I appreciate what you do.”

“How many times did I pass the man whose job would eventually save my life… because I was a jet jockey, a Top Gun racing around the sky at twice the speed of sound. Because I was a fighter pilot and he was just a sailor.”

Think about this for yourself. How many times in life do you pass the people who help you out the most? The people who come out of the far corners of your life just when you need them the most and pack your parachutes for you? The people who go the extra mile, the people who don’t look for the kudos or the accolades or the achievement medal or even the bonus check—the folks who are just out there packing parachutes?

So here’s what I want to challenge you to do. Look around your organization for the people who might not be the ‘Top Guns’ of your organization, the loud and brazen leaders, but the ones who support the system that enables the Top Guns to fly. And if something goes wrong it will be because they did their job that no one gets hurt or a customer doesn’t go neglected.

This week find 5 parachute packers in your organization and tell them how much you appreciate them and how important are the things they do for the organization. Because, in the end, it might just be them who save your life or your business, or at least save the day.

After you have acknowledged your 5 people, I would love to hear about your experience. Please share them with the rest of us.

Do you know how to NARROW your target client group?

This is how every business works out:

10% of your clients (or client type)
generate 90% of your profits.

BUT, the other 90% of your clients
give you 100% of the headaches.

The solution?Spend 90% of your time focused on the 10% client type.
Then create systems to manage and service the other 90% (that’s for a later blog post).

This requires you to NARROW your target client group.

If you understand this next statement, you will have made money by reading this blog:
The key to greater profits is rarely capturing MORE clients.The key to greater profits is capturing more VALUABLE clients.

Your objective is to indentify your BEST BUYER.

There is always a smaller number of Ideal Buyers versus All Buyers.

ONE BEST BUYER can be worth 100 times the average buyer.

Resulting in… HALF the clients 
(reducing tons of headaches, time commitments, and support and service expenses)
producing DOUBLE the profits(aka…twice the freedom!)

Don't Sell - Help!

There are another three components that are critical to website success—besides avoiding the pitfall of focusing on product before knowing who your target market is and where they hang out.

The first is help, don’t sell. By helping you will sell. The second is build credibility and rapport through educating.

You’ll go to a sloppily put-together webpage and get these annoying boxes that come up asking if you want something you weren’t thinking about before but are certainly too annoyed by now to entertain considering.

When you’re marketing online, remember that people don’t shop online. People research online.

Most people go online for research on how to buy a new car, or increase their business, or to learn about raw foods, or whatever it may be. So your website has to be designed around helping, not selling. Informing, revealing, educating.

If you sell, you will fail. By helping you build credibility and rapport. People will believe in you, and because of that, you can show them the value in your product or service. And they will buy from you. It’s absolutely critical to what you do online.

Everything on your website—every button, every graphic, every word you put on the page has got to be built around helping, not selling. Make it most appealing to researchers, not to shoppers. Save the two-page sales letters and the paper. Whatever it is you’re the expert in, whatever you do, they want more information. They’ll call you, email you, or order right off the website.

The mindset of the online researcher-pre-shopper is, “What’s in it for me?” That’s the first question you want to answer on your website. If you can’t answer that question at the top of your webpage, change it or you’re going to fail. Why should anybody stay there? They’ve got hundreds of websites to go look.

Don’t have a mission statement at the top of your page talking about who you are, what you do, how great and fantastic you are, and how you have a Ph.D. Nobody cares about that.

They care about what you’re going to do for them. That doesn’t mean not making available credentials and testimonials, but it all goes back to writing headlines—something that will make them stay. Suck them in. Make them feel like they’re going to be learning something they didn’t know before.

Nearly the same marketing rules still apply. Walk a mile in your prospects’ shoes. Empathize with them in plain language. Pharmaceutical ads are written and spoken so that children understand them. Use simple and/or precise language (depending on the uniqueness of your market) as your keywords—the words prospects would be typing into Google or Bing to find you. If you’re selling cow juice but everyone calls it milk, you better call it milk too because people don’t search for cow juice, they search for “milk.” If you get stuck, there are writers at reasonable prices who can do it for you.

It’s not how well you know your product that is going to determine the level of your sales and your success; it’s how well you know your customer, so that you’re ready for them when they visit your web page.