Your 2008-Year End Financial Statement’s, Statistical Review Checklist

Make sure that the following items below are contained in your statistical reports, including variances and percentage changes within those numbers, on the four major income statement components: top line (gross revenue); labor; controllable and non-controllable expenses, and bottom line (N.O.I. with Cash Flow), (all numbers are accumulated and may be partial quarters or years, but each are equal to one another in their respective time frames):

• Month to Date (MTD)
• Quarter to Date (QTD)
• Year to Date (YTD)
• Current Month (MTD) Year over last Year Month (Example: Oct. 08 to Oct. 07)
• Current Quarter (QTD) Year over last Year Quarter (Example: Q4 of 08 to Q4 of 07)
• Year (YTD) over last Year (Example: YTD-2008 to YTD-2007)
• Month over Month (Example: Oct. 08 to Sep. 08)
• Quarter over Quarter (Example: Q4 of 08 to Q3 of 08)
• MTD, QTD, and YTD to budget and stretch goals with remaining/declining balances to reach each of those goals
• Projected QTD and YTD numbers against budget and stretch goals
• Trailing three month average
• Trailing twelve month average
• Trailing eighteen month average
• Trailing three to five year average
• Annualized MTD and QTD numbers

Don’t forget, visually, graphs, charts, and color-coding all add to the accelerated ability to understand, pinpoint, and emphasize negative and positive trending within your statistical numbers. Another great tool is to set parameters around each line item, so an exception report can be generated and quickly identified when numbers exceed those boundaries.

http://theprofitrepairman.com/

5 Key Components of a Profitable Holiday Season

In this current economic crunch, many small businesses are feeling the weight of the hard times heavily upon their shoulders. When times start to go bad, however, there are some basic things we as small business owners can do to ensure that we have the best possible holiday season. Take a look at these five key components, adjust your business as necessary, and get ready for a great holiday season.

Check Out the Competition

This is a key component and should always be done if you are in a competitive market. Shop online and in person in businesses like yours and see what the other guys are doing. What can you do to compete with these people? Can you adjust prices and rates or offer any sort of holiday promotions. Think about what you can do to maximize profits and maintain a competitive edge.

Maintain Quality

If you decide to go down the road of lowering prices or rates, make sure that you will still be able to give the same quality and value to your clientele that they have come to expect. It’s one thing to get them in the doors; it’s another thing completely to keep them coming back.

Give Superior Service

Especially during tough economic times, people are less willing to part with their hard-earned money if you haven’t earned their trust. Superior service shows that you are committed to doing the best possible job for you’re your clientele as well as yourself. Superior service and competitive prices will certainly help you to develop a larger client base during this time of increased exposure.

Follow Through

Once you have earned the trust and come through for your customers, make sure that they are satisfied with their products or services. This can be accomplished quickly and effectively through email or a quick phone call. Email is usually preferable, as it’s the least intrusive way of communicating with people. Following through with your clients is a great way to show that you care and will leave a great impression that will have them coming back to you again sooner than you think.

Thank Your Customers

This is a very basic component of business that many people seem to forget these days. Your clients and customers could have gone to a competitor, but they didn’t; they chose your business, so you must show your appreciation. This can be as simple as saying thanks after you have finished the transaction, but could also be done with a credit on a subsequent purchase or a discount for continued patronage. Use your discretion, but remember – people like to feel appreciated, so don’t forget your manners.

By-line:
This post was contributed by Kelly Kilpatrick, who writes on the subject of currency trade. She invites your feedback at kellykilpatrick24 at gmail dot com

Stop The “What If’s, Of Why Your Business Numbers Are Down!

Instead, start taking responsibility for your own actions in all situations, even the ones that you cannot totally control.

If it happened to you, your actions, no matter how small a part that they played in the outcome, are still a part of the outcome; so take that portion of the responsibility without hesitation. Did you not market your business, thinking, if you built it, they would come? Did you not focus on client retention, when business was booming? Did you not sell value, instead of price when asking for the sale?

There are many factors as to why things happen the way they do. Some of your own actions account for it; some do not. No matter the “what ifs,” remember that sitting around and wondering about them will only displace your time and stop you from changing your situation. Stand out of the crowd, accept your situation, and stop questioning, “Why me?” and, “What if?” after you commit to an action of change to resolve the situation. Only then can you execute a plan to change within.

No matter what, you and you alone have the ability to change your situation. It may not be immediate, but change will happen with an executed plan from a person who has first accepted the reality that it is only their actions that can improve this situation. Taking responsibility for actions in your life is a big step to turn your situation into success.

The difference between success and non-success is in an individual’s ability to believe in themselves as their own element of change and the daily commitment of that individual with that knowledge of success to execute those changes.
So, are you going to take action today? Good, now finish reading and implement.


http://theprofitrepairman.com/

Was Your Friday Black This Year?

You would know if your company closed its’ books nightly!

Nightly closing of your accounting books allow for immediate reconciliation, so that you can identify and correct posting errors/miscoded items, generate net revenue/ledger balances, and create daily statistical performance metrics for a more accurate analysis.

Would you like to be able to go into your business unit and have some current gauge of the income statement’s profit position at a time frame when changes could be made to affect the final outcome, or would you rather wait for over two weeks after the month ends to find out that there was a negative bottom-line growth; after you were not able to do anything about it?

Although nightly closing of your business unit’s accounting books may not be as feasible for you as some other industries, the mind-set of it is not. Does your business unit have timely, up to date, and accurate accounting books for management to make critical business decisions when they need the information the most? If not, you need to.

Soft accounting closes are not that challenging. Just make sure that outputted numbers are taken into consideration and everyone is aware that there is some “flex” in the numbers. In my judgment, something of a current financial picture is better than none at all.

If daily conditions, factors, and circumstances are “change agents” that determine a business unit’s cash flow requirements and affect its bottom-line results, then would you not want to get some picture of how those “agents of change” are affecting the accounting statements in quicker time frames than the current ones in place now? Many of today’s accounting software programs can immediately generate some sort of preliminary statements with the push of a button, so why have you not added that to your weekly operational review checklist? Your views on how to use accounting statements must be parallel with the real world views, DAILY, because the change that is driving the supply-and-demand grid around your business unit can be viewed through these statements.

This is ground level thinking for “big picture” successful business building. You can make a difference in your business unit’s financial success by having the mind-set that your books close nightly.


http://theprofitrepairman.com/

“NO BAILOUT MONEY FOR YOU” Mr. Small Business Owner, now what? HERE’S WHAT!

Stop Doing That and Start Doing this:

Stop thinking that the end result is what matters.

Start remembering that every step you take is a step closer to your goal’s finish and that the result at the end of your goal’s journey is the total effect of all of your little steps before.

These little steps are not the cause of your success, but the reason it occurred. Put more focus on each and every step. When you do this, you can quickly identify if the steps are getting you to your goal or directing you somewhere else, making your end result a failure. Immediate correction can be taken when you focus on each step as you take it. Once you realize that your steps are going in the right direction, you can commit to those steps with confidence and be able to follow through and finish the tasks until you reach the goal. Results will only be seen when all of the steps already taken are tied together as a solid line to form the chain of events needed on each and every goal in order to achieve success.


Stop the “what ifs.”

Start taking responsibility for your own actions in all situations, even the ones that you cannot totally control.

If it happened to you, your actions, no matter how small a part that they played in the outcome, are still a part of the outcome; so take that portion of the responsibility without hesitation. There are many factors as to why things happen the way they do. Some of your own actions account for it; some do not. No matter the “what ifs,” remember that sitting around and wondering about them will only displace your time and stop you from changing your situation. Stand out of the crowd, accept your situation, and stop questioning, “Why me?” and, “What if?” after you commit to an action of change to resolve the situation. Only then can you execute a plan to change within.

No matter what, you and you alone have the ability to change your situation. It may not be immediate, but change will happen with an executed plan from a person who has first accepted the reality that it is only his actions that can improve this situation. Taking responsibility for actions in your life is a big step to turn your situation into success.


Stop wanting things to stay consistent.

Start understanding that the only consistent thing in life is change.

If you want something to happen, no matter how little of a movement it is within your life, it will never take shape if you do not first embrace the change element behind it. Change is a great catalyst with a specialty to accelerate events and make all things possible. Once you have that mind-set, you will no longer have the attitude, “Okay, what's next to go wrong with this situation?” Instead, you will say, “Great! What's the next opportunity to make, not have, success come to me?”

The flexibility for action that you have when your mind-set is changed to the latter is amazing. When you have the understanding that change is right around the corner, it will give you the edge over the competition, because instead of looking into your life as a constant, stagnant model, you are continuously looking to embrace its metamorphosis into a great opportunity.

By successfully taking the change element and working with it, rather than against it, you will be ahead of the change and its time frame, thus making you more available to capitalize upon it before others, leading to greater success. “Change gives you the ability to rise above and deliver upon command, therefore leading to more positive outcomes.” Embrace your change element today for your tomorrow’s success!


http://theprofitrepairman.com/

Got Milk?

Good, Now Understand That Your Business is More Perishable than a Glass of Milk.

For Business Owners, this is a must to understand if they are going to generate the maximum revenue potential on a daily basis. Every night that one single widget in a particular business goes unsold, that widget has lost that day’s revenue, forever. It can never regenerate revenue for that given day again, so it becomes non-recoverable potential (left on the table) revenue.

A glass of milk has a longer shelf life than an unsold widget. If you do not drink all of the milk that you purchased today, you can at least put that milk back in the refrigerator and have some of it for tomorrow. You can repeat those above steps for at least a couple of weeks, so that you have the opportunity to receive the greatest consumption relationship to the money spent, for the value of that product. Not so for an unsold widget or for whatever product or industry that you work in. Once that day is gone, you can never sell or use that moment again for revenue generation or operational efficiency gain. With that being said, it means that every business is more perishable than a glass of milk. The business unit that you are involved in must make sure that it has a greater sense of urgency regarding this principle and acknowledge its perishable nature.

Let's say that you have eight hours to make the most money on any given day. After just one hour of that day, you have lost the opportunity of making the maximum revenue generation by 12.5%. Start thinking about how perishable your product really is, even if it has a shelf life of one hundred years. Every day that you do not maximize your revenue potential or gain greater operational efficiency; is a day that is lost forever.

Is your business running? You better go catch it and make the most money with it; it is not a glass of milk!


http://theprofitrepairman.com/

Stop Thinking That You Are Equal To Everyone Else!

Stop thinking that you are equal to everyone else.

Start remembering this one simple fact: We are all equal in this world to everyone else on just one thing, no matter who we are or what we do: time.

Each of us has exactly twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and fifty-two weeks a year to make a difference. What we do with those precious moments, makes the difference between success and non-success of those goals and achievements that we want to obtain.

By knowing that you are not equal to others, except in your time constraints, you can focus on doing more with the one equal item to gain success over others.



http://theprofitrepairman.com/

Script Your Dialogue For Greater Business Success

Scripted dialogues can benefit your business unit in the following ways: consistency; professionalism; assurance that the operational and sales talking points are covered; on-boarding, cross-training associates are effectively accomplished; and objective, clear, and non-derogatory answers that can be discussed to a broad-base spectrum that can be documented and used for legality protection.

Ever make a reservation at a hotel? The reservation screen is actually a fill-in-the-blank script that the hotel uses to capture its requested reservation information. In fact, there are parts within that reservation screen that will not let the reservation agent produce a confirmation number until the required information is completely filled in and correct. Ever call an 800 number for reservations? Ever get a wake-up call from a hotel? These are all examples of scripting within the hotel business.

Now, focus on your business unit and ask yourself, “What tasks can be scripted to help send my business unit into a proactive approach to talking with the customers and converting that captured time with them into a more qualified database for mining, better close ratios, lower miscommunication experiences, and higher profits?”

Once you identify those scripting opportunities, make sure that there is some sort of ongoing quality assurance program installed and corrective action responses in place to maintain all of the benefits that a “scripted company” can yield for itself.

http://theprofitrepairman.com/

Managing Associate Performance For Your Small Business Success!

How do you manage associate performance? Just like you would manage driving a car. You need to know where you are at the start, where you want to be at the end, and a roadmap to help optimize the distance from point A to point B and receive some redirection in case you are off the path.

Managing associate performance can be in the form of written documentation for reporting the results, personal follow-up/open dialogue with that associate, constructive feedback, timely reviews, accurate assessments, direct and specific directional action tasks that have been accomplished, and what needs to be accomplished for future goal platforms.

Along with these items, you need assessment tools that determine upward mobility capabilities and strategic skills currently in place or underdeveloped ones needing attention, placement within current and ongoing organizational charts, open dialogue with direct supervisors, customer satisfaction scores (if applicable), and financial performance metrics (if applicable). By combining the information and resources above, you know where the associate is and where he wants to end up, so you are giving the associate a “roadmap” on how to get there, and he can now “drive” his own career achievement by daily, hands-on deliverance within the business unit’s success structure.

Each associate has a different want and need from a workplace environment, but by assisting each to accomplish his end results by managing his performance from the very first day of employment to the end, both the associate and business unit will see the most productive outcome. Only when a business unit focuses on managing associate performance through each associate as an individual part of the whole and manages career path/performance to those individualities; can the sum of all associates’ efforts be combined into one goal for the achievement of the entire organization.

Start managing associate performance and doing the reporting on it today, because we are all connected and dependent on one another. Your success depends on other associate’s within your business unit, and managing associate performance is one way to guide that success in the right direction. Remember, “We win as one!”

http://theprofitrepairman.com/

Have a Daily Snap Shot Report-Out To Make Your Small Business More Successful!

Do you know right this very moment what performance metrics your business unit is achieving? Use a snapshot performance (daily snapshot) report as the tool that contains the important and volatile numbers, which must be reviewed on a regular and continuous basis for you to achieve successful expense adherence and revenue projection.

What performance metrics do you want to monitor for your business unit on a continuous basis that are the most important and are very volatile for the achievement of operational and sales success? Also ask yourself what kind of precise micromanagement report you want, to whom should this report go to, and when and how often should this report be viewed when determining your businesses function and achievement ability.

On no more than a couple of 8½x11-inch pieces of paper, have a “snapshot” of the top five to ten critical statistical metrics that determine your business unit’s success available with comparisons for your daily morning review. If you do not have this report, you cannot be proactive in management. With a daily statistical data sheet, you have the ability to spot trends, and thus, small corrections in the operations or sales can be initiated to neutralize the adverse effect of any negative component. When you have daily statistical sheets that are simple, to the point, and full of the “most critical” metrics that you need, you can guide your business unit daily, which will lead to greater achievements of the business unit’s budget and stretch goals. Focus on managing your business unit today, so that today will be tomorrow and tomorrow will be your everything.

http://theprofitrepairman.com/

Pennies Really Do Add Up In Your Small Business

I remember a story told to me as a young boy. It goes like this: In a far off land, many years ago, there was a very poor man that went in front of a king of a very rich land and offered to work for the king for that day for just one penny, and if the king liked his work, the poor man would continue to work for the king every day after that first day for a total of thirty consecutive days.

The only contingency to this payment plan for the king was that for every day that went by that the poor man worked, the king would have to double the poor man’s previous days wage from the first day’s wage of one cent for thirty consecutive days. After those thirty days, the king would then pay the poor man in full for his thirty days of labor (example, day 1=.01, day 2=.02, day 3=.04, day 4=.08 and so on). Well, the king just knew that he had a sucker in front of him. He thought that he could get the poor man to do a lot of work for him without paying him very much money.

Do you know what happened next? At the end of those thirty days, the poor man made $5,368,709.12 a day and the king owed him $10,737,418.23, due in full at the end of the thirtieth day! The king forgot the exponential factor of the money doubling and never asked about what the poor man was earning daily throughout the month, because to the king, a penny meant very little and could never add up to any real amount of money.

The story ends like this: the king was broke, the poor man rich, and the moral of the story is that a penny really does add up. So focus your attention on each penny within your business unit.

If you save just two widgets a day by training the staff not to waste those widgets, and those widgets cost fifteen cents each, you would save $109.50 a year. This would be just the tip of the iceberg for savings within your business. There is a penny to save here and a penny to save there. Just look around, and when you are done, over time, that penny will multiply to thousands of dollars a year that your business unit can bring down to the bottom line, by simply remembering that “A penny really does add up!”

http://theprofitrepairman.com/

Market And Sell Your Small Business 24/7/52 To Be More Successful!

24/7/52. What this phrase means is twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and fifty-two weeks a year; this is the golden rule if you are marketing and selling your business unit's product line. Your marketing and sales efforts should never close, which means that you have 525,600 minutes a year to be open and to make sure that your business markets and sells itself in the best and most efficient way that it can, be it through on-line or off efforts.

No matter what the posted hours on the doors are for your business, you must be in the mind-set that your business is always “on, open, or alive,” 24/7/52. Think of it this way: When your business doors are closed, do potential, current, or future customers (economic decision makers) stop spending their money? Do outside and inside factors affecting your business and your competition stop, or is someone out there creating a better widget than you, ending their day when you do? No, they are not!

Obviously, many factors come into play as a big part in determining your operational hours. But when was the last time you truly looked at your business unit’s hours with a critical and objective eye and made sure that they were appropriate to make your future goals? Or are those hours just posted for “your convenience?”

If you get into the mind-set that you are always “on, open, or alive,” 24/7/52 when marketing and selling your business, you will then start to think about how to make the most out of all that “extra” time you have to increase your business’ success model.

The traditional hours of Monday through Friday, nine to five, are a very antiquated way of thinking. This is a global economy that is always “on, open, or alive,” 24/7/52. When you are sleeping, someone from halfway around the world is working.

Your business unit must have a 24/7/52 mentality to be more successful. Only when you embrace this mind-set will new ways “to do more” arise, because you are now always “open” to more success in your marketing and sales efforts.

http://theprofitrepairman.com/

Run Your Small Business Like A Hotel To Be Successful!

Do you know right this very moment what performance metrics your business unit is achieving? This kind of snapshot performance (daily snapshot) report out is what we call a “house count” in the hotel business. Within a hotel’s house count, hoteliers look at rooms rented, number of arrivals/check-outs/clean rooms, A.D.R., occupancy, and so on. Hotels see this “house count” report as the tool that contains important and volatile numbers, which must be reviewed on a regular and continuous basis for the hotel to achieve its successful expense adherence and revenue projection model.

What performance metrics do you want to monitor for your business unit on a continuous basis that are the most important and are very volatile for the achievement of operational and sales success? Also ask yourself what kind of precise micromanagement report you want, to whom should this report go to, and when and how often should this report be viewed when determining your businesses function and achievement ability.

Once you have these questions answered, installing the S.O.P. to monitor this “house count” becomes second nature to the business unit and in turn will radiate the importance and acceptance from your associates that these are the metrics that will drive their business unit to success and acclaim.

On no more than a couple of 8½x11-inch pieces of paper, have a “snapshot” of the top five to ten critical statistical metrics that determine your business unit’s success available with comparisons for your daily morning review. If you do not have this report, you cannot be proactive in management. With a daily statistical data sheet/”house count”, you have the ability to spot trends, and thus, small corrections in the operations or sales can be initiated to neutralize the adverse effect of any negative component. When you have daily statistical sheets that are simple, to the point, and full of the “most critical” metrics that you need, you can guide your business unit daily, which will lead to greater achievements of the business unit’s budget and stretch goals. Focus on managing your business unit today, so that today will be tomorrow and tomorrow will be your everything.

http://theprofitrepairman.com/

Stop Reading This Article To Make Your Small Business Successful!

Instead, start changing your life, both personally and professionally, by taking these below written words and turning them into a lifestyle, not a fad to send you into action.

"The difference between success and non-success is in an individual’s ability to believe in himself as his own element of change and the daily commitment of that individual with that knowledge of success to execute those changes. Remember, leaders lead and also make mistakes, so the element of change is profitable to a leader and their business. Change and turnover give you the opportunity to evaluate a situation and quickly correct and realign, thus strengthening the whole organization and its future. So, take action and continue your leadership-driven attitude in your life and career to propel your small and mid-sized businesses’ success."

http://theprofitrepairman.com/



Listen to this article

You are in the Service Industry, no matter what your business is!

It does not matter what your product line is, service is the key difference to your success. Service builds a value-added benefit that can increase your client’s retention rate and generate a higher asking price for your product line. From the very first sale to the one hundredth repeat sale from a satisfied, retained customer, it is the level and consistency of the service that you provide that allows your revenue streams to grow.

Even if you are working for a company and never see a single customer, are you not offering service within your task list to your own workplace, co-workers, and employer? By making each associate very aware that they have a higher purpose than just doing their task list (but instead delivering the best possible service within their task list), you create a sense of urgency in which every action that they do affects a customer. After you get into this mind-set, you can start under-promising and over-delivering on that service that you give, for every aspect within those assigned tasks.

When you lead by example and put this thought into your routine, there is a synergy that is produced; you realize that the value of the whole organization is dependent upon the service that you produce with everything you do and say. “Visualize great service—delivery first, all things possible thereafter.”

http://theprofitrepairman.com/



Listen to this article

Share-Shift Marketing For Greater Sales Growth Of Your Small Business

Share shifting is a term used to describe moving a client base from your competition, to you. Share shifting is not getting new businesses to try your product line; it is taking a current client database (clients already having needs and currently using your competitors) and moving it to your database (they use you). There are “X” dollars spent on any product line at any one time. The objective within share-shift marketing is to move more of those finite dollars spent on any product line into your business unit. You will be going for a bigger slice of the pie, but it is still just one pie that has not gotten any larger, just your portion of it has.

You need one of two things in place to sell any item: the clients either want or need your product line or a combination of both. Without a want or need from the client, you cannot sell much of anything to anyone. So, the advantages of share shifting over getting new customers/clients are:

• The want and need are pre-established

• The client is already buying, so spending habits are historic, thus forecasting can be done for pre-qualifying their future spending consumption

• Having purchased from your competitor in the past, selling strategies on your product line’s advantages over your competition can be highlighted and exploited

• A pre-qualified database for quicker sales effectiveness, ramp up/your “low hanging fruit”

• Builds revenues in a soft or downward trending marketplace

• No wasted time on “uncovering” needs in your sales stage progression. Due to this, you can move the client quicker through the sales pipeline to the purchase phase

With share-shift marketing, your top-line growth will be faster than with most other sales campaigns, due to the fact that you have an accelerated cycle built into this sales effort. So, go on out there and get a bigger piece of that market share pie, before someone else does and then throws it in your face.

http://theprofitrepairman.com/



Listen to this article

Labor Efficiency Modeling For Your Small Business Success

Getting yourself and your business unit into the mind-set of thinking about labor efficiency modeling is one of the keys to running a profitable business.

The last time you looked at your current standards was when? Do you know what the correct production efficiency from each of your job codes is, even yours? What is your monitoring frequency? Are your current efficiency modeling standards relative and timely with the current work force, market conditions, pricing structure, technology, and machinery in place? When do unacceptable results on each end of the parameter’s spectrum trigger that an adjustment needs be made?

Do you share your statistical results from the modeling output calculation with the associates, HR, and supervisors for constructive assimilation and benchmark performance managing? You cannot tell someone to do better at something if you cannot show them why and where they are not meeting standards. Are you making labor efficiency part of the corporate culture and driving performance, retention, rewards, and career paths with them? Is your monitoring on efficiency placed upon the greatest job code that will yield the highest returns? Can your associates deliver upon current standards without task saturation overcoming them and quality being affected?

All of the answers to these above questions and more, along with revenue and greater efficiency, can be generated when you apply labor efficiency modeling to your business unit. Always focus your labor efficiency modeling to the greatest payroll burden and work backward throughout your business unit as you are re-implementing your standards.

How do hotels use labor efficiency? One way is in the form of cleaning rooms, the “minutes per room” or M.P.R. that it takes a room attendant to clean a room. At the end of that workday, all of the time from a room attendant is added up and then verified that it fits within the “minutes per room” standards for all of the rooms that were assigned to them for cleaning. When these numbers are reviewed, deviations can be determined that very day, so corrective action can be taken to balance out the week’s labor efficiency model before the overages hit a profit and loss statement. Labor costs on cleaning rooms can greatly impact the bottom line of a hotel, so that is why daily monitoring of this labor cost component (labor efficiency) helps a hotel bring down the appropriate payroll percentages and budget adherence is achieved.

Labor efficiency modeling can bring great success to your business unit if implemented successfully. What are yours and how are you going to make them better?

http://theprofitrepairman.com/



Listen to this article

Location, Location, and Location Will Make A Difference For Your Small Business Success

This applies to everything regarding your business unit, not just the physical location of your operations. What if your Web site was incorrectly key-word phrased, and then no one could find a link to it with the most obvious words? What if your salespeople were making sales calls in a non-feeder city for new revenue generation? What if your copy machine was located farthest from the person who makes 80% of the copies? What if your help wanted ad for janitorial work went into the executive/management section? In the hotel business, if we placed a tropical ocean resort hotel in the middle of a farm pasture in the Midwest, would it be successful as an ocean resort hotel?

All of these above examples show that with improper location, your probability for a successful outcome decreases. Look around your business unit and ask yourself, “Does this or that belong here or there?” “The mountain must always come to the customer, not vice versa.” If you do not position your product line in a convenient location for the consumers and their dollars to spend on your business unit, your competitors will.

http://theprofitrepairman.com/



Listen to this article

Stop Pushing Yourself Making Your Small Business A Success

Instead, start utilizing your time more wisely.

We are all spacers of time, to some degree. If we were given one hour to do a specific task or job, probability could tell us that we would do that task or job correctly in just fifty-five minutes, with no reduction in quality. If this five-minute savings is true, imagine if you add up those five minutes that you just saved and multiply it by eight hours in your workday. That equals forty minutes more in a workday to become more productive.

Say you then took those forty minutes in a working day and multiplied it by five days in a workweek, which would be two hundred minutes a workweek, or three hours and twenty minutes. If we take those two hundred minutes a workweek and multiply it by fifty work weeks a year, that would equal ten thousand minutes or 166 hours and forty minutes a year of greater productivity by utilizing your time more wisely by not spacing your tasks. If you then took 166 hours and forty minutes and divided it by forty hours in a workweek, you would get 4.17 workweeks, or about one month more of time in a year for more available, more productive time available.

All you have to do for this “extra” time is stop spacing your tasks and pushing yourself and instead start utilizing your time more wisely. Worst case scenario, what could you do with two more weeks of work accomplished a year? How much more of a success could you be in your position, both financially and status-wise?

But be careful. Do not try to lower your efficiency ratio too much, or you will burn out and hit a wall of reduced results. Instead, focus on each task until the goal is completed the right way and in a timely manner, without spacing involved. Only then will you find under each task some piece of time that came from having your efficiency higher, not your pushing of those efforts, thus producing your extra “time of success.”

http://theprofitrepairman.com/



Listen to this article

Identify Express Service Potentials For Your Small Business

We live in a world driven by express services, a quick this or a quick that, and we need it “this very moment” kind of mentality. In the hotel business, it was identified that two of the largest opportunities for express services were the checking in and out processes of a customer’s hotel stay.

Currently, that express service is done at most hotels in one form or another, but what if you were the first hotel to do it, thirty or so years ago? Would you not have had the competitive advantage to grow your repeat and future guests by offering this untapped, demanded express service? Would that express service not have set you apart from the rest of the hotels and made a marketing niche available for promoting the difference in your whole product line to that of your competitors without changing the core product line?

Take a look around your business unit, listen to your associates and customers, keep abreast of market trends and your competition, and never stop asking yourself, “Is there an opportunity to convert and deliver this or any process in the operations and sales functions to an express service module?”

Demand for express services will only increase with this “time crunch” world we live in. By conducting beta testing on potential express services, examining the results, and finalizing the outcome, your business unit can develop an express service to get ahead of the demand curve within your own industry and gain market share doing it.

Once your business unit can identify and implement express service potentials, you will reap the benefits through operations, sales, and eventually monetarily. “Express”ing how your business unit is different today, than that of your competitors, will only add to your core product line for years to come.

http://theprofitrepairman.com/



Listen to this article

Stop Wanting Things To Stay Consistent For Your Small Business Success

Start understanding that the only consistent thing in life is change. If you want something to happen, no matter how little of a movement it is within your life, it will never take shape if you do not first embrace the change element behind it. Change is a great catalyst with a specialty to accelerate events and make all things possible. Once you have that mind-set, you will no longer have the attitude, “Okay, what's next to go wrong with this situation?” Instead, you will say, “Great! What's the next opportunity to make, not have, success come to me?”

The flexibility for action that you have when your mind-set is changed to the latter is amazing. When you have the understanding that change is right around the corner, it will give you the edge over the competition, because instead of looking into your life as a constant, stagnant model, you are continuously looking to embrace its metamorphosis into a great opportunity.

By successfully taking the change element and working with it, rather than against it, you will be ahead of the change and its time frame, thus making you more available to capitalize upon it before others, leading to greater success. “Change gives you the ability to rise above and deliver upon command, therefore leading to more positive outcomes.” Embrace your change element today for your tomorrow’s success!

http://theprofitrepairman.com/



Listen to this article

Building Top of Mind Awareness and Brand Recognition for Your Small Business

Billions and billions of dollars a year from every industry and various product lines are spent to perform these above functions. Do you? No, not spend billions of dollars, but do you incorporate top of mind awareness and brand recognition within every one of your sales and marketing calls?

Building top of mind awareness and brand recognition can be costly, but it can also be as simple as putting your logo and contact information on everything that a client receives when doing business with you. Go find your happy medium, but find it you must. If not, almost half of your effective message is lost the same day you deliver it to a client, and the rest of your selling message goes shortly after that.

I want you to conduct a poll for your business unit’s product line. Call your clients, vendors, associates, and some individuals off the street and ask them what’s the first thing they think about when you say “X” (something associated with your product line). Then ask them what your company does. Be prepared to be shocked, because you cannot expect to build new and repeat customer orders without having any top of mind awareness and brand recognition. Look at your sales message; is it clear, concise, and repetitive? If not, refocus the sales approach on the two key factors that can keep and attract new customers: top of mind awareness and brand recognition.

Another approach to remember about building your top-line sales growth is co-branding. How many product lines are out there in the marketplace that would be non-intrusive, complementary, or have a positive impact on the buying decision of a customer regarding your product line? A lot! All of those product lines mentioned above have a database of customers, and so do you. Why not work up an agreement between your business unit and theirs and cross promote, advertise, solicit, market, and bring visibility to each other’s product lines for share-shifting opportunities from each other’s competitive set?

Co-branding can also lower costs, offer more product line access to your clients, and prospect to a more qualified database in less time. In the hotel business, everything from the preferred credit card to long-distance service provider is co-branded. What are you waiting for with your product line? Someone to call you? Co-brand your product line today with top-of-mind awareness that has brand recognition so you can yield greater sales growth for your tomorrows to come.

http://theprofitrepairman.com/



Listen to this article

Radical Sales And Marketing For Your Small Business

The meaning of the adjective radical is “not bound by traditional ways or beliefs.” Here are the “must dos” of a seasoned business unit’s radical salesperson and marketer.

No stone goes unturned in your search for new leads and clients; no sales idea is too silly or stupid to try; you sell to everyone, every day, no matter what their size; you sell more than you market; you utilize yield management techniques; you just do not leave collateral, you collect a database for follow-up; you go down swinging and then get back up for another round; you are always in “selling mode;” you network, not just talk to people; you are “it,” no one but you can make it happen; when you fail, you succeed by learning from it; you start your day with a goal and focus on its achievement; you look for ways to sell to prospects that others are not; you carry your business cards with you everywhere; wherever you go you see a future client; no matter how many no’s they have given you, you write down phone numbers from passing businesses on the street; you see customer obstacles as an opportunity to get testimonial referrals from them by meeting their expectations; you work on the probability theory; you radiate confidence and bring direction to clients; you take ownership of your sales 100%; you are out finding new revenue generation that your competition never knew existed and selling to them before they do; you see doors of opportunities, not slammed ones in your face; you are asking for the sale every time, in all possible ways, with each client you communicate with; you are a relentless “door knocker” and grass roots marketer; you look at your sales reports for new business that purchased from you; you drive the desire and passion for each sale with every presentation; you fight tooth and nail to retain a client and make new ones every day when you come into work; you smile until it hurts just to go to bed and wake up to attack your business leads all over again tomorrow.

Are you ready for the challenge? Are you ready to become a radical salesperson and marketer for your business unit? Why not? Are you afraid to get a little emotional about your sales and marketing? Only emotional selling sells to clients on a regular basis with consistency. No one wants an order taker in their sales department; your product line is not that special to afford you that luxury. If you are not emotional about the product line that you represent, your sales will never reach full capacity.

Keep it (sales and marketing campaigns) simple (KIS theory) for the biggest bang with the fewest bucks! Oh, by the way, the above sentence is the longest sentence in this blog. Do you know the reason why? Because it is aggressive and unconventional and “not bound by traditional ways or beliefs,” just like what a radical sales and marketer for your business unit needs to be.

Go be radical today!

http://theprofitrepairman.com/



Listen to this article

Stop Looking For The Quick Fix For Your Small Business

Instead, start understanding that most good plans to success are not the winning lottery ticket.

You must always set a goal and continuously measure it with reliable statistics and logical data for comparisons, monitoring its progress, and taking corrective actions to get back on track. Achievement is like building a home. It must be pre-planned, budgeted for, executed with daily hands-on management, have managed solutions (contingency plans), and be ready for situations when other ways to achieve the end result must be applied within a finite time frame.

You must always make sure that your foundation is laid correctly and is “rock-solid” before you move on to the next phase of your “finishing schedule/plan.” Always keep a fresh visualization of what the finished product/goal needs to look like and have several benchmark signoffs along the way to make sure that you are on pace. Goal achievement does not happen overnight, and a lot of people, both directly and indirectly, come into your life that factor into your achievement or non-achievement of those goals. Depending on others to follow through or play a part in your goals must be an understanding.

You cannot go from A to Z in your goals, without “C”ing that “U-R” going to meet “X” person along the way, who will contribute to or detract from your achievement. Reaction to that exterior catalyst must be planned for, and you must understand that your goals have to unfold, like this blog, one page at a time.

“To the World you might very well be one person, but to one person, you might very well be the World to their goals and achieving them.”

http://theprofitrepairman.com/

Know What the “Joneses” Are Doing

Knowledge is power, and it must be a cornerstone of understanding for operational and sales success against your current and future competitive set. Do you know what your competition is doing right now to market and operationally produce a similar product line? Do you know what cross-selling potential your competition is aligning itself with for greater sales growth? Do you know what improvements from an operational, administrative, sales and marketing, and management approach your competition is going to make, thus shifting higher demand for it? Do you know who is going to become a competitor for your customer’s finite dollars and erode your market share? I am not asking you to predict the future, but I am asking you to take stock and know about your competition as well as you know about your own product line, from a customer’s viewpoint.

The only way to defend competition from taking your business and allow you to grow your revenue is to have a better product line, know how to market it more effectively, know your strengths and weaknesses compared to other product lines, know what changes your business unit is going to make to protect itself from a threat from the competition’s product line, know the marketplace and forecast trend opportunities, know that you truly do have an “apples to apples” product line compared to the competitors, know what changes your business unit needs to make it run more operationally and make sales more efficiently, and know what success and failures your competition is enduring. Most importantly, you must know the why to all of the above questions!

Having knowledge of all of these above issues is what is meant by knowing what the Joneses are doing. Start learning about the “Joneses” today, or be prepared to be bought or sent out of business by one of those “Joneses” tomorrow.

One great way to get with the "Joneses" and know what is going on, is a site called Alltop at http://alltop.com/. Alltop helps you explore your passions by collecting stories from “all the top” sites on the web. They have grouped these collections ”aggregations” into individual Alltop sites based on topics such as environment, photography, science, celebrity gossip, fashion, gaming, sports, politics, automobiles, and Macintosh. At each Alltop site, they display the latest five stories from thirty or more sites on a single page — they call this “single-page aggregation.”

You can think of the Alltop site as a “dashboard,” “table of contents,” or even a “digital magazine rack” of the Internet. To be clear, Alltop sites are starting points — they are not destinations per se. The bottom line is that Alltop is trying to enhance your online reading by both displaying stories from the sites that you’re already visiting and they help you to discover sites that you didn’t know existed.

http://theprofitrepairman.com/

Walk-Around, Hands-on Management with Leading by Example

Walk-around, hands-on management with leading by example is a powerful management tool. Remember, actions mean more than words and those actions speak louder than those words could ever sound. To lead associates to a business unit’s success path, you must first be given the permission of those associates to be their leader. To gain this acceptance and trust, there is no quicker, rock-solid foundation than by walking around, being in the associates’ “lion’s den,” seeing what challenges they face, and rolling up your sleeves to help them through those challenges. Leading an associate through a situation, with the correct procedure for that action, reinforces that you “practice what you preach”, and you would not ask them to do an action that you would not be willing to do yourself. You have a built-in, universal language to speak and demonstrate your expectation levels for those tasks, when you lead by example.

Once you can demonstrate to your associates that you do walk around to see what is really happening and can do, not say, actions by being hands-on, leadership platforms and directing associates can be built and allowed to grow, because your associates are permitting themselves to be led and directed by you.

Go be a leader with walk-around, hands-on management. Forget sending a memo to the associates on how to do it; show them yourself.

www.theprofitrepairman.com

Correctly On-boarding New Associates For Your Small Business

What is one of the fastest ways to increase HR expenses and create workflow stoppages? On-boarding new associates incorrectly and not having enough candidates in your HR pipeline, that’s how. “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” The precedent is set on the very first day of a new hire’s career with your business unit. Whether they are digging ditches or filling out paperwork and watching EEOC videos, the company’s professionalism, operating procedures, the employer’s commitment to its associates, and the overall workplace experience is entrenched within the mind-set of that new associate within those first few weeks.

Do you have a standardized, detailed, 0-90 day on-boarding action plan in place with performance metrics and benchmark accomplishments for correctly evaluating the progression of all new associates and transitioning them into long-term team members? Do you throw new hires to the “sharks” or provide support platforms to them in the form of training (all media and hands-on types), coaching, mentoring, monitoring, corrective actions for redirecting, S.O.P.s, support (technical and non-technical), and progress measurement indicators?

Go look at the last two years of associate turnover in their first ninety days of employment with your business unit and understand the reasons why. Once you find the whys, you can identify the missing steps of the on-boarding process. After those system steps have been reorganized, look at what steps should be created for the future to produce a better on-boarding system. Why would you do that? Because, businesses will always have new hires and turnover, so this situation is not going away. In fact, as the marketplace grows tighter and tighter for good and qualified new hires, correctly on-boarding associates is a major factor in retention, lowering HR expenses, successful integration of them into the workflow, converting them into long-term associates, and productive team members for the success of all.

www.theprofitrepairman.com

"Remember the Hook" when marketing for your small business

Have you ever been fishing or seen how fishing is done? Without some sort of “hooking” device, very little fish would be caught (most do not just jump into the boat willingly). The same is true in selling your product line. Even when you have the most wanted product around, if you do not inform customers where to buy it (the hook in this example), you will see very little quantity sold.

When you think of a hook, remember, it is to grab the client’s attention long enough for the sales process to begin between the buyer and seller. The hook is not meant to make anyone buy on the spot (but it could), rather the hook’s goal is to have the clients open up their minds and communicate (verbally and/or non-verbally) to you, “I am interested in potentially buying your product. Can you please inform me about it?” This allows you, the salesperson, the opportunity to move the client into a sales opportunity for a purchase. A hook must be deliberately directed to target the clients that you would like to sell your product line to; there is no “one-size-fits-all” hook, so you want to have multiple hooks designed for your different clients.

By having different hooks in the marketplace, your business unit increases the opportunity to produce sales across a vast number of potential demographics.

Hooks are not only for your new customers; make sure that your product is using hooks for repeat customers as well. With so many products, promotions, and messages out there for a customer to listen to, make sure that you “reel” them in before someone else does.

Happy fishing!
http://www.theprofitrepairman.com