The Government are prepared to invest £1000 in helping you improve your leadership and management skills …. details are below - at the bottom of this blog.

Over the next few weeks we are going to be sending out some great tips on how you can improve your Leadership - and the performance of your team - so at the end of this series of practical help - you will be better placed as a Leader to grow your business. We hope you find the practical help and tips over the next few weeks of great use… please let us know!

The 7 key areas we will be covering are:

1. Strong Leadership. You must demonstrate a conviction and determination to be a strong leader. I didn’t say nasty or mean - I said strong. There is a difference and we will cover that next week.

2. Common Goal. It is critical for everyone on the team to understand the goal - the big goal. Having a clear and compelling goal is essential.

3. Rules of the Game. Everyone wants and needs to know how the game is to be played and where the boundaries have been set. No more surprises.

4. Action Plan. Everyone in the business must have their own personal plan of action - what they are going to accomplish to move the business forward. If you are going to expect everyone to have a plan, then how important is it that there is a plan for the business?

5. Supporting Risk Taking and Initiative. Everyone makes mistakes and as the business owner, you must acknowledge the good effort and help the team learn from every good effort that goes badly.

6. 100% Involvement. That’s right - everyone must be involved! We’re not asking team members to simply come in and do their manual tasks. We need everyone to have their head in the game if we’re going to win.

7. Know and Appreciate your People. No matter how well you do keys 1 through 6, if you don’t get to know your colleagues and show them that you care about them, you will not win their heart. We are after their hearts - not just their brains or their muscles.

Next week we’ll be focussing on Strong Leadership so look out for our next blog

THE DETAILS OF THE LMAS FUNDING

As we are a trusted partner of Skills SE, who are running the funding, they have asked us to promote how you could potentially access to up to £1,000 to help with your leadership development to grow your business. If you would like to find out more then either download the information PDF on the right or give us a call to discuss your requirements 01453 821940.

The Government is focused on supporting businesses with the potential for High Growth and this new service is directed very much at growth companies with the ability to drive through revenue growth of 20% per year for the next three years.

WHO CAN APPLY ?

Businesses with 2 or more employees with the ability to demonstrate strong growth.

So if you are looking to achieve a strategic advantage in your market or looking to develop your sales and marketing skills take Action today.

HOW MUCH FUNDING IS AVAILABLE?

One grant is available per organisation of up to a maximum of £1,000. This is based on a matched funding criteria so for an investment of £1,000 from your business, you will receive £1,000 of funding from the Skills Funding Agency

ELIGIBILITY:

• Between 2 and 249 employees
• Based in the SW and can demonstrate that you have high growth prospects
• The great news is that the funding is available to all business who have previously accessed grants, as the three year rule has now been dropped.

HOW CAN I USE THE GRANT?

Funded Learning and Development must address one of the following areas:

• Developing a highly effective personal leadership and management style (including strategic thinking; and effective communication).
• Creating a joint enterprise culture with the workforce (including developing an innovative, creative and productive culture for the organisation; developing productive working relationships; reducing and managing workplace conflict).
• Planning and developing an effective organisation and teams (including recruitment, selections and departure; building and managing effective, creative and innovative teams; conveying vision and objective setting).
• Leading and managing employee high performance (including employee motivation and commitment; delivering value; learning and development).
• Mentoring and Coaching of leadership team

GETTING STARTED:

To find out more about how the new Leadership and Management programme  can support your personal development and improve the productivity and competitiveness of your organisation or if you are interested in accessing the grant, then email:

nigeljew@actioncoach.com or simonbuck@actioncoach.com or call us on 01453 821424

We will then contact you to arrange a convenient time to discuss your eligibility BUT do not delay, it is clear that this will be a very popular grant and given it is available across the region and is open to all business regardless of when they last received a grant - will be extremely popular.

You know almost every big business started small, in fact many of them part time from home.

And yet, so many small companies fail to ever become more than a job and a wage for the owner. They fail to become true businesses and remain forever a BUSY-ness for the owner.

And to be blunt, there’s a reason most never grow.  You see there’s a reason your first business is the hardest one.  It’s because you have so much to learn.  Not only do you have to run the company, grow it and finance it, you have to learn as you go.  It’s a great challenge, one of the greatest.

But, let’s be honest, if it were easy, everyone would do it.  The challenge is only up to those of us with true entrepreneurial spirit …

So, let’s examine how to take any small business and make it big …

Here’s my true definition of a business, a “Commercial, Profitable, Enterprise that Works, Without Me …”

That’s right, the whole aim of the game is to get it to a stage where it works, so you don’t have to.

Here’s how you need to break down the definition …

Step 1 … A Commercial Enterprise … here’s where you get the basics right.  It’s vital to build a big company that you have the ability to deliver your products and services with high quality, great service and consistent productivity of your people.  Three main areas you need to work on … money, delivery and productivity.   Money is all about knowing your numbers and knowing you are making a profit on every sale.  Delivery is all about making sure every one of your customers is served consistently and with high quality and great service.  And productivity, about getting the most from yourself and your people.  This is the first stage of business growth and one many never bother to work through.  If you want to grow it, take these first steps …

Step 2 … A commercial Profitable enterprise … Here’s where you build revenues and capitalize on the profitability you built in step 1.  There are 4 areas you will need to build upon.  You will over time build the systems and strategies you have for Lead Generation, Converting Leads into Sales, Repeat Transactions and your Average ££ Sale.  Building our business beyond a small company will need you to learn and build in these areas. 

Step 3 … A commercial profitable enterprise, That Works … Here’s where you have to build systems, systems that run the company.  As you document, record, film and photograph how everything is done in your company you take it from a business that is dependent on good people to one that is dependent on good systems.  Add to good systems, good people and you end up with a great business that now works …

Step 4 … A commercial, profitable enterprise that works, Without ME … This is all about building a team.  If you want the company to run without you, then you have to build a team and a leader to take your place.

Step 5 … Growth … Get everything you have done to work together in harmony, with Synergy and open multiple offices, shops or territories.  This is where you multiply and use the system you already have working again and again.

Step 6 … Freedom and Results … now it’s big and you can let your team build it, it’s been several years, probably 7 to 10 years of you working hard and smart, but finally you have made your small business big …

I know this seems like a lot of work, but it takes time and learning, stay with it, it will be worth it in the end.  Owning your own business is definitely a great challenge, but it truly is filled with great reward.

For more details contact me at nigeljew@actioncoach.com

With cuts in spending expected to be deep and hard hitting it was refreshing to receive an email on Monday from Business Link informing us that their LMAS funding programme has been ring fenced.  

“We are delighted that you have taken the opportunity to encourage some of your clients to access our Leadership and Management Advisory Service and use the grant to support their payment of your development programmes. We have had some excellent feedback on the impact that your input has made, and the benefits that have been felt by both the individuals and the businesses.”

“This programme continues through to the end of March 2011. Despite other Government cuts, we still have £1,500,000 worth of grants remaining to award and we are sure that you have more clients who have not yet taken advantage of this offer, but who would benefit from our diagnostic service and your expertise. So we urge you, do not delay, promote this offer whilst it is still available and help us to stimulate more economic growth in the South West by supporting the leadership and management development of more small businesses.”

Eligibility

Through the Leadership and Management Advisory Service access to a grant of up to £1,000 is now available to fully capitalise on your capabilities and talents as a business leader.

To be eligible you will need to:

• employ between 5 and 249 people in the private sector
• undertake a skills review to confirm your requirements

 The Service provides in-depth advice and diagnosis in order to provide you with an innovative and challenging personal development plan.

In the first instance, funding should be used to benefit the business owner or senior manager, but other managers can become involved through further employer investment.

So if you are thinking about 1:1 coaching, group coaching or workshops talk to us now to secure your funding before it is too late.

For more information e mail nigeljew@actioncoach.com

I know. I see the accountants saying, you have to run lean to get a decent profit, right?

That’s partly true. It’s also true you need to grow to make profit. You can’t cost cut your way to a fortune.

In business, it seems there are always two sides. For example, if you’re an owner of a retail business, you need to get product on the shelf and also get product off the shelf.

In a service business, you need to deliver the service, and you also need to manage your customer base from the sales and marketing side to build a demand for the service.

So, as an owner, faced with dealing with both sides, which of those areas should you focus on?

If you want your business to be big, you need to focus on getting the business, rather than managing it once it is brought in.

That means you have to get out of doing anything in your business that doesn’t contribute directly to both top-line and bottom-line revenue.

It also means you have to start hiring people to do the things you may be already doing – things that may be more comfortable for you than selling.

And don’t think you can’t afford to start paying those wages. Truth is, you can’t afford not to.

See, many owners hide behind the “managing” side of things, preferring that process to the sales side. They spend hours doing the books or creating spreadsheets or even answering phones in the misguided belief that “busy” equals “business.”

The reality, of course, is that sales equals business, and nothing in business happens until a sale is made. Many owners also have no idea how much their time is actually worth – causing them to engage in tasks or activities that do little or nothing to grow the business.

The way forward is to start delegating routine tasks to wage earners so you can start focusing on the top-line activities that will drive revenues. You need a plan to start, however, because delegation without a system is abdication. And for most owners, there’s simply too much abdication in their companies for anyone’s good.

How do you start? By following these five steps to make sure you are fully engaged on the “bringing in” business side of things at all times in your own company.

1. Know what your time is worth. If you should be worth £100 per hour – why are you doing things that you could pay someone £15 an hour to do?
2. Figure out where you spend your time. You may be surprised how little time you actually spend growing your business.
3. Delegate routine, administrative or basic tasks.
4. Get more training – for yourself. Take an honest assessment of your sales and marketing abilities, and if you need help – go get it.
5. Just do it. Get out and actually start to engage with your customers and potential customers.

Now, more than at any other time, it is imperative that companies seek to find growth where they can. Businesses that are innovative, motivated and optimistic will be the ones that not only survive, but come out of this recession healthier, more dynamic and with a spring in their step. But the trick is in knowing what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. As Business coaches we have enabled many companies to capitalise on the potential that definitely exists with this market.

Make a Plan

We find that one of the greatest restrictions for pro-active development is the availability of cash, particularly as many of the banks are still proving remarkably resistant to parting with any of theirs. In this situation, finding ways of generating cash within the business can make all the difference, and one effective way of doing this is to instigate an effective ‘Cash Gap Plan.’

What is the Cash Gap?

The Cash gap is quite simply the number of days between when you have to pay your staff, material suppliers etc and the day you get paid for your products or services.

What is not always fully appreciated is the BIG difference that can be made to the cash flow of a business by getting to grips with this Cash Gap.

HOW MUCH CASH COULD YOU FREE UP?

Take Business A, a food processing company with a turnover of £1.1 million. Their Cash Gap absorbed approximately £3,000 for every day. This meant that their average cash gap of 87 days absorbed £260,000 worth of funds. Putting in place a Cash Gap Plan and reducing their gap to 58 days, released £87,000 of extra cash.

All this extra money, just by putting in place an effective and efficient plan!

Imagine what you could do with that extra injection of cash into your business.

THE CASH GAP PLAN

·         Do you know how big a difference reducing your Cash Gap by one day would make?… and if you reduced it by a week? … or a month? … or more?

·         Do you know how big your Cash Gap actually is?

·         Did you know that some companies have a negative Cash Gap?

… that is, they always get the money from the customer before they spend anything out.

So, if I asked you – “What kind of a Cash Gap Plan do you have?” what would your response be?

That is to say:

What kind of a plan do you have, in place now and operated consistently on a daily or weekly basis, to:

1. collect quickly outstanding money from your debtors
2. get your customers to pay on time, and
3. improve your terms with suppliers

… so that your bank account always has plenty of cash in it?

START NOW!

If you don’t have such a plan in place, now would be a good time to develop and initiate one, and start the cash flowing into your business.

As the old Chinese proverb goes: “When the winds of change blow, some people build shelters; others build windmills.”

Without cash how are you going to move forwards and create that ‘windmill?’

For more information contact  http://blogs.actioncoach.com/nigeljew/?p=66 Nigel Jew of actionCOACH says -saving a wage is killing your business.  And, I mean that literally …

This week’s blog is focussed on personality profiling, a fascinating topic that as you read on you will I am sure identify with.

Personality profiling

As any business grows and more employees join it can be harder to communicate effectively especially as each of us has a preferred communication style. Knowing these styles and how they influence us all is vital to effective communication as well as avoiding conflict.   

Modern personality assessment models are very good indicators of a person’s preferred communication style and the most respected assessment tool is the DISC Behavioural Model.  DISC is an acronym for Dominance, Influence, Stability, and Conscientiousness, the four core personality styles the tool identifies.  Below you will find the key characteristics of each category which you will recognise but most importantly is how to change your own style to get the best out of the person you are communicating with:

Dominance

Employees with personalities that fit into the Dominance category might include managers and corporate officers.  Descriptors of this style include:  driven, demanding, aggressive, innovative, and competitive.  These people are typically goal-oriented and relish personal challenges.  When communicating to a person with a Dominance style, observe the following:

·         Speak directly and be brief

·         Focus on the task and stay on topic

·         Approach the issue logically and discuss the desired results

·         Identify opportunities, challenges, and obstacles

·         Describe win/win situations

·         Maintain space between yourself and the employee

Those who fit the Dominance category can facilitate communications by improving their listening skills, becoming more patient, and elaborating with more details.

Influence

A common job title for those who rate high in Influence are sales and customer service representatives.  These employees are charismatic, inspiring, optimistic, and personable.  These are very social people who have a need to verbalize.  When communicating to this category, one should:

·         Allow initial time for casual conversation

·         Have fun and lower the intensity level

·         Ask the person to express feelings and opinions

·         Seek their creative ideas

Influence personalities may have poor attention to detail and can appear superficial.  They have poor follow-through and will often talk “around” a subject.  Expect to exercise patience with these employees.  Influencers can improve the communication process by becoming more organized and specific in direction and praise.

Stability

This style will most likely be found among the company’s trainers, marketing staff, and administrative assistants.  Their indicators are: adaptable, systematic, patient, predictable, and consistent.  They are needs driven – both theirs and those of the people they help.  When communicating with a person with high Stability, one will want to:

·         Be patient

·         Draw out the employee’s opinion

·         Discuss facts logically

·         Be relaxed and schedule sufficient time for discussion

·         Indicate how the employee will benefit from the solution

Communications from this style may be non-emotional, indecisive, and lack assertiveness.  They will often provide too many details.  Those people who indicate Stability should work on their assertiveness and embrace change to improve communication.

Conscientiousness

People with a core style that is Conscientious are often working as accountants or engineers.  They follow rules and are very meticulous and quality-conscious, often to the point of being perfectionists.  When communicating with the Conscientious style, it is necessary to:

·         Cite data and facts

·         Examine every option

·         Stay on topic and minimize casual conversation

·         Focus on quality

·         Avoid “new” solutions in favour of proven ideas

·         Respect the employee’s personal space

Expect excessive communications from someone high in Conscientiousness.  Be patient as they must process all information and will be slow to proceed.  Conscientious people should consider improving their patience, building rapport, and becoming more accepting of differences.

By keeping these four styles in mind, managers will be able to offer information that the employee can more readily absorb, thus making communications more effective and productive.

Be x Do = Have

Be x Do = Have:  is the formula for life success – both personal and business. Most of us want to have things. A better business, car, larger house, security, happiness, it’s what makes the world go round. So in order to have these things we DO more and more – we do more work , do more calls, do get home to the family earlier, do treat our partners and families to more of our time etc etc. Sometimes DOING more does actually improve our lot in life – but more often nothing really changes. This is because we ignore the BE in the equation. The BE is the most important – this is about US. We are human Beings – not human Doings! If for example we have a business that is performing OK – nothing special – then doing a lot more might not get us the results we want. We need to work on our skills as well – the BE in the equation. So instead of just doing more – we need to work on ourselves – our BE – learn how to be better at sales and marketing, become a better leader, learn how to master our financials etc etc. In this way we give the equation a chance to work.

BE = our Thoughts and skills

DO = our Actions

Have = our Results

Let’s put in some numbers using the business as an example: Let’s say there is a need to improve our profitability – let’s give this a number – 60 (out of 100 – i.e. a fairly high need) and we are prepared to do a lot to get it – say 8 out of 10 – but we are not going to do much about our own thoughts and skills – say 5 out of 10 – then the equation looks like this:

Be X Do = Have

5    x   8  = 40 (well short of the 60 we need to achieve). So you can see we need to work more on ourselves – our BE. In this instance we need to work as hard on our BE as we need to work on doing more (8 x 8 = 64).

In summary – simply doing more is not always the answer. Ask yourself - Who do I need to be, who am I now and am I being enough to have what I ultimately want? Do I need to know more, to educate myself further to work harder on myself than I do on my business? I’ll repeat that. Work harder on myself than I do on my business.  When you work on “who you need to be” and couple it with  “what you have to do” they result in what you will ultimately have.

If you’re a regular reader of our blogs then you will know that the “5 ways” are the quickest ways to grow your business. Please follow this link to the original blog Recession - 5 ways blog

The 5 ways are in bold:

Leads x conversion rate = customers x average number of times they buy x their average ££ spend = turnover x your margin = profit.

It’s a simple and straightforward formula for business success but implementing the strategies and understanding how to test and measure the numbers is far from simple.

We have had considerable feedback from readers that they would like to understand how to REALLY work these 5 ways – and achieve increased profit. In response to this we have designed a 6 week coaching programme aimed at giving you the skills and tools to implement the “5 ways” into your business. You will work with other business owners in a group coaching environment to form a virtual board and be accountable to yourself, your coach and the wider group of peers in implementing the “5 ways” and reaping the rewards. If you want your business to fly this Spring then consider the “Accelerated Growth Academy 5 ways” 6 week programme and implement your formula for business success. The sessions will run on Monday morning’s 7:30 – 9:30 with a minimum of 8 and a maximum of 12 business owners. Full details and booking can be found at http://5waysmay.eventbrite.com/ 

If you can’t commit to 6 weeks but still want to work on your business we are running two 1 day workshops next week focussed on Sales and marketing http://salesmachinestroudapril.eventbrite.com/ and 90 day planning for growth http://90daystroudapril.eventbrite.com/