Business Growth Coaching
for
SMEs
your
Gap
Stage 1: Find your Gap
What does Find you Gap mean? This is where we start to understand:
- you and your business
- where you want to get to
- where you are now
- the difference between here and there (your Gap)
- what you need (financially, personally, practically and in other ways) to bridge your Gap
- a crystal clear goal
- a sense check of your goal (is it even possible?).
How does following a Business Growth coaching program benefit your business? It does this:
- gets you to focus on (or gets you back in touch with) your goal
- reminds you why you set up your business in the first place
- clarifies what you want to achieve overall
- gets your business to where you want it to be.
What are the effects of following a Business Growth program on you? They are that you:
- remember why your business is important to you
- keep your goal front and centre
- work more on (rather than in or for) your business
- make more money.
If you don’t define your goal, you’ll end up somewhere else.
the
Basics
Stage 2: Do the Basics
What does Do the Basics mean? This part of business growth coaching is where we identify and put in place or modify the basic requirements of a successful business.
It’s important to remember that it’s your responsibility as the business owner to get and keep more clients/customers. If you don’t do that, your business will fail.
Most business owners don’t understand the direct link between rhythmic business growth activity and the rhythmic acquisition of clients/customers.
Instead, they are reactive and wait for the work and say that “everything will work out fine”. Or they do some “spray and pray” marketing, but don’t follow up. Or they stop altogether.
So we focus on you becoming a (more) professional business person so that you:
- introduce, develop, monitor, refine and leverage systems that result in leads, prospects and clients/customers
- know your numbers (such as how much does it cost to get a client/customer? What is the lifetime value of a customer? What are my gross and net margins? What is my most profitable work?)
- act and think like an investor with a plan to exit your business a few years’ time.
The basic requirements for a successful business include a marketing assets audit; activating Google Business; following up clients/customers; re-marketing; prices; getting reviews; publishing content in social media and other places; and having arrangements that capture enquiries.
Once you have the basics, all you need to do then is monitor and refine them every so often. But getting the basics in place is often overlooked.
your
Message
Stage 3: Define your Message
What does Define your Message mean? This part of business growth coaching is where we focus on how to market your business (whether it comprises a product or a service or a mixture of both). The result is that you:
- understand the perfect buyer of your product or service
- present your business in a way that makes it memorable and needed
- explain what your business does
- think like a potential client/customer – why should they care about your personal circumstances – your product is more important than you are
- establish your business as the place to go for your product or service
- create an offer that a potential client/customer would be silly to resist
- assess and work out the most effective marketing pillar(s)
- follow up
- don’t focus on selling – focus instead on others buying.
Marketing and messaging doesn’t have to be “sales-y”. All that it involves is supplying information to people who are already looking to buy something.
They key point is to do this in a targeted way. Then do it again. And again. And again. That then creates a rhythm, which creates a habit, which makes marketing easier, which results in business growth.
your
Numbers
Stage 4: Know Your Numbers
What does Know your Numbers mean? This part of business growth coaching is where you learn how to identify, understand and know how to manipulate your management financial data: it’s Business Maths…
Most small business live from week to week / month to month / year to year and then send their data to their accountants to get their annual accounts done. But they (i.e. your accountants) only process your data – they don’t understand how their business works.
Many small businesses are OK if there is enough money in current account to pay for overheads, remuneration, tax and some contingencies.
Some small businesses have no idea of the numbers that would let those businesses flourish and profit. These are some of things that many small businesses don’t know:
- how much money did you make in the last 12 months?
- how many clients/customers/sales did you add this year?
- how much does it cost you to get a new client/customer/sale?
- how much is your average client/customer/sale worth to you?
- what is your most profitable work (i.e. which takes you least time and effort to produce the highest profit)?
- which bit of what you do or provide creates the most profit for the least effort?
There are also 12 key numbers you need to know. These are:
- your leads;
- your lead conversion rate;
- your prospects;
- your prospects conversion rate;
- your sales;
- your average order value;
- your total revenue;
- your gross margin;
- your gross profit;
- your overheads;
- your remuneration; and
- your net profit.
Whatever your business, these are important data to know. They let you know how much money you need to spend to make more profit and how effective is that to bridge your Gap.
Whether you know these data will determine whether you focus on “busy-ness” or whether you are a business person. You need to know your numbers. If you don’t know the score, you won’t know your status.