Consolidate your Things To Do Lists

Over time I have gathered a number of things to do lists.

• I have them on paper
• I have lists I have created while at conferences
• I created a list on evernote.com
• I have Things to do on my Iphone notepad
• I have another one on my I-pad notepad
• I have some recorded ones on the phone voice recorder app
• I have about 3 different format lists on the computer

The time has come to get ONE total combined list – but how and where?

I decided that the best option was a list on Excel that I could sort in various orders was the best option. (use the menu item Data >> Filter on the column heading cells)

And so it could be seen from anywhere on computer. I-pad or phone the best place for it to live was Dropbox.

Now my life is a picture all in one place …… if only the list was not so long!!

Culture in two words

Getting the culture right in your business can have a dramatic effect on the business and the happiness of those within it. If all the team know the underlying ideals of the business and what it is trying to portray then it becomes easier to make judgement calls about whether actions, marketing, attitude, presentation and other things fit the mould of the business.

One of the fun little exercises we did recently was to get the team to define our culture in just two words.

They arrived at “cool and funky”.   And they are!  Their lunchroom has a make-up table – complete with lights around the mirror. Their sliding floor to ceiling filing cabinet has been wrapped with a huge print of a fishtank and in their reception… not only is there a full 6 head coffee machine but now just in time for summer is also a complete working slushi machine…. Now that’s cool.

What 2 words would you use for your business and what in the business backs them up?

Make your wallet skinny

It seems every business has a card to issue you with and you end up with a wallet that gets very fat. It then gets so fat that the only solution is to decide which cards you cannot carry around and leave them somewhere else.

Then the way life works is that when you need a card it is one of the ones in the pile that is at home or in your car not in your wallet when you need it.

A solution is at hand.

It comes in the form of a clever and Free App called Stocard.

You simply photograph each of your cards and it creates a barcode on your phone that is scanable by the store. You can also take a photo of the card to label each one. It is pre-loaded with hundreds of stores already and it is available for android or i-phone.

Check it out in your next app-store shopping trip.

The Flow of a Sales Presentation

The art of selling is to lead the prospect along a path of discovery so that at the end the only  logical conclusion they can draw is that they are better off with your offering than they are without it. Great selling is not persuasion.

To design one of these pathways is the challenge. Here is how you do it. Write each of these headings on a separate page in this order.

1. Establish rapport and gain trust (an agenda for the presentation)
2. Gain a clear understanding of the prospects problem
3. Understand the prospects desired outcome
4. Identify any roadblocks to moving forward at this time
5. How your offering will provide a solution
6. The benefits that your solution provides
7. Differentiating your solution from other ones available
8. How the cost benefit justifies your offering
9. The next steps to moving forward
10. Agreement

Now write bullet points on each page about what you will discuss at each step.

Next make a presentation document that shows minimal words and lots of inspiring graphics.

Finally, practice the presentation using the presenatation document as the prompt to read your notes. Roleplay until you are proficient enough to present without your notes.

This practice all leads to the concept of “They see [the page in the presentation] and we say [the relevant points on the script]

Diversification for profit

I have recently been dealing with a couple of businesses with very stable or even declining sales because the markets they work in have been declining. When we thought about their plight we realized that they had very good distribution channels.

In one case we had to diversify the products and in the other we could keep the same products but offer them to a wider audience.

So we built a plan based on the simple premise – Where can we get a decent chunk of extra profit using what we are already good at?

A funny thing happened. We realized in both cases that once we thought up one answer to this then others emerged. For example one business now has 5 diversification projects that should each deliver an extra $30,000 in profit in the next year. Even if we only get 4 of them off the ground it will still be a great result (and one is already working).

So if your business has fallen into a pattern maybe it is time for some lateral thinking. What attributes do you have that could be extended? And don’t get scared to expand – a new business module may need a new dedicated sales person, but if they rapidly become cost-positive and you have the cashflow to fund one, then why not?

Return of the Mystery Flights

A few years ago airlines would sell “Mystery Flights”. They were cheap fares of $99 and used to fill up empty seats on aircraft that were scheduled to make a trip whether full or half empty.

For businesses that are owned or run by a married couple or a couple of partners these flights provided a great opportunity. You could get a notepad, board a Mystery Flight and have a great lunch at the destination before returning home, all in a day.

The benefit for the business was that invariably the topics of discussion were the business and the notebook came home with a wealth of great ideas, improvements and actions written in it.

In the last couple of weeks two clients have independently raised these types of brainstorming with me in separate discussions. So it seems like the mystery flights could be making a re-emergence.

Here are a couple of websites I found that offer them:

http://www.mysteryflights.com.au/

http://www.mysterytrips.com.au/MysteryFlight.aspx

Have you ever wondered where they come from?

Think how interesting it might be to see where your customers come from plotted on a Googlemap. Or where your suppliers are, or where your staff live, or any set of addresses.

It’s easier than you think – even I was surprised how easy.

Here is the link that shows you how in about 3 easy steps to plot addresses from any spreadsheet onto a google map. It even pops up with the other information in your spreadsheet as you scroll over each dot on the map.

It’s just another handy thing to know about – you may not use it today but when you need it this tool is valuable.

How to Plot Multiple Points on a Map

Follow the instructions in the link below:
https://support.google.com/fusiontables/answer/2527132?hl=en&topic=2573107&ctx=topic

Remember your business when….

It is nice sometimes to capture memories and remember times and events in the past. As one of my clients celebrates being in business for 50 years one of the things we are doing is to gather up old photos and compile them.

This will be a great history of the business but also a special present for some of the long term staff who have loyally built the company.

The photos and documents will be turned into a photobook using a great website called albumworks – www.albumworks.com.au

The book will also be handy when visiting new potential clients or even showing other  business people about the business  such as banks and key suppliers.

Your business may not be 50 years old yet but most have some history stored on a few photos in an envelope or computer directory somewhere. If you don’t have any photos consider taking some – even on the i-phone, or get a professional set done every couple of years (www.Carolgibbonsphotography.com.au can help with this).

What is on your scoreboard?

Each business has a few key results that show the score. A very powerful motivator and driver of delivering to target is a simple scoreboard. Select 3 or 4 things that will tell the tale of success in your instance and turn them into a scoreboard.  Here are some examples

Sales Organisation	No of Pitches or presentations given	The number won	Dollar value of new sales
Retail Business	Daily Customer Count	No of Sales	No of Upsells
Professional / Consulting	No of chargeable hours	New clients won	Total monthly Billings
Manufacturing	Units Made	Sales Orders	Inventory Value orlabour hours

When you have selected these key drivers you can track them easily and even graph them

This visual history shows up patterns – such as low sales results this month = tough cashflow next month. It also creates an interesting history of your business growth.

Time to think about 2014 Financial Year Budgets

If you don’t have a target you can’t hit it.

Creating a budget in most cases takes less than an hour.

It provides a chance to think about what your financial model will look like for the next year and also an opportunity to evaluate and streamline your expenses.

The easiest way to create a budget is to use a simple spreadsheet as the working document. It is the most basic of excel files so even if you are new to excel or not a gun operator it’s still easy. Once you have developed the budget you want you can input it to your accounting software – MYOB or Quickbooks in a few minutes.

Each month when you print your accounting reports you can also print one of actual reports against budget to see how you are going against your estimated target.

Early June is the usual time to create the budget for next year.