Category: Planning & Management

Whether you are an enthusiastic entrepreneur who has just formed their business or at the helm of a corporate behemoth, your business could face an array of challenges. Whether those challenges are just starting to emerge or a distant speck on the horizon, you should learn how to tackle them.

Fortunately, many other businesses have been in the situations that your own could soon encounter. Here are five examples of common corporate risks, plus ways that you could help to counter them.

Skipping too many legal obligations

Your company has a broad array of responsibilities, some of which might even be enshrined in law. For example, in the UK, it isn’t legally palatable to spurn employers’ liability insurance. This sheds light on the importance of looking for business insurance quotes from a reliable source, like a broker.

Sadly, while companies tend to be stringent in complying to operations, they are typically slacker with employee-related compliance like wage and hour laws, Inc. observes.

Neglecting to develop operational infrastructure

If your company is a relatively young one recording rapid growth, you could be so overcome with excitement that you forget to implement the operational infrastructure necessary for sustainable gains. Don’t forget to assess and, if necessary, revise your planning and decision-making processes.

You should also be careful not to make the blunder, to which many senior executives are prone, of confusing “infrastructure” with “overheads”. Put customer care at the forefront.

Drops in product and service quality

Failing to pay prolonged attention to that operational infrastructure can risk your products and services faltering in quality. As soon as this happens, your business willbe negatively impacted.

You might have become obsessed with the philosophy of “growth for growth’s sake”, but you need to break this paradigm to get out of the rut.By preserving standards, you can foster customer loyalty – a strategy five times less expensive than reaching out to new customers.

Sacrificing integrity

You can be under heavy pressure both on a company level – for example, to meet estimates with quarterly earnings – and on a personal level, such as when a big bonus is being dangled before you.

Given these pressures, you might be tempted to cut corners. However, in acting on that temptation, you could cultivate a culture of unscrupulousness in your workforce. If employees become more prone to a little lying or stealing, this can undermine trust previously built up within the company.

Recruiting the right staff

You can likely easily comprehend the frustration which many business executives experience when looking for suitable staff. Even on occasions when there is a large pool of unemployed people to pick from, you might still struggle to find candidates who seem a good fit for your firm’s culture.

Forbes advises that, to overcome this challenge, you “learn how to deal with different personalities, figure out what drives each individual team member and tailor your management accordingly.” If your firm is still small, even just one poorly-chosen worker can hugely hurt the corporate harmony.

If your business isn’t growing, or it’s stagnant, I find it’s usually down to one (or more) of these six reasons.

I speak to clients all the time who are frustrated and overwhelmed because:

• Their business isn’t growing;
• They don’t have any clients (or very few clients);
• And their income isn’t where they want it to be.

And after having many such conversations over the past few years, and hearing their frustrations at their lack of business growth, I’ve discovered that there’s usually a theme to the reasons why their business isn’t growing in the way they want it to.

I’ve identified SIX key reasons why they’re not seeing the results they want to see.

Read through these reasons and see if you can identify with any of them yourself … you may have more than one!

1. No Clear Strategy or Vision. When you’re not clear on why you’re in business or the results your business is delivering, it’s very hard to grow it – you don’t know what direction to go in; what to do next etc. etc. and chances are you easily get distracted and get off track by following those bright shiny objects (in the form of the latest hot marketing strategy or product). It’s a bit like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle when you don’t have the box in front of you to show you what the end result should look like.

2. Focusing on the WRONG Things. Related to point 1 above, when you’re not clear on what you’re doing then chances are you’ll focus on the wrong business building and/or marketing activities. And then you’ll be disappointed with the results you get. This is because you either don’t fully understand the activity but you’re going ahead with it anyway. Or you don’t know how the activity relates to your business so don’t know how it’s going to help you build your business.

3. Lack of an Automated Marketing System. Without the proper automated marketing system in place, it’s very difficult to follow up with new subscribers (that’s even if you have a system for capturing new leads in the first place). If you don’t have a system in place for following up with your new subscriber, then how can you expect to turn them into a paying client or customer?

4. Lack of Systems. Forget about the automated marketing system, you don’t have any systems in place at all! You’re surrounded by paper piles; you can never find what you’re looking for; you have no idea of your business finances – these are all symptoms of a lack of basic business management systems. And this itself is a core reason why your business isn’t growing.

5. Not Clear On The Results Your Services Deliver. This again goes back to point 1 above, but it also means that if you’re not clear on the results your services deliver, then your marketing message is not clear either. Which means you’re not attracting your ideal clients (if any clients) and your business isn’t growing.

6. Not ASKING! This is a big one. I see it happen so many times. You’ll do anything and everything not to have a sales conversation with a client and ASK them to work with you. And this could mean not even asking them to have a strategy session/initial call with you so that you can find out more about one another. You really do need to start getting into the habit of ASKING people to work with you and create a system for consistently ASKING to have those conversations.

Which of these reasons can you relate to? Is there more than one? Post your answer in the comments below; I’d love to help.

Time management is the bane of every solopreneur’s life!

There is so much to do in your business on a day-to-day basis that it’s very easy for time to run away with you. Before you know it an hour has disappeared and you’re not much further forward.

Let me share with you today a tool that I use regularly to help me manage my day-to-day workload.  It’s a simple tool … and everyone has it — including you!

And my tool is … SPREADSHEETS!

They have so many more uses than just calculating figures. They are also a great tool to help you manage your time effectively.

As a busy soloprofessional you are not only working for your clients, but you have to work ON your business too. Effective time management is crucial for developing and growing your business, as well as income generating activities.

Below are my top 3 tips for effective time management using spreadsheets.

1. Create a Work Schedule

When I started to get busier I realized I needed a system that would allow me to anticipate or schedule in client’s work. I designed a really simple spreadsheet with the weeks along the top and the client’s down the side. I encourage my clients to book work with me in advance so that I can put this in my schedule. For regular clients I can book in so many hours for them each week, and because my spreadsheet totals the number of hours booked each week I can see what my commitments are and what I have left.

I find that it’s really working, not only because my clients can get ‘booked in’, but when I get an enquiry for new work I can look at my schedule to see if I can meet their deadline.

This system works well for me!

If you find yourself having time management issues with your clients, then give my system a go!

2. To Do List

How do you manage your day-to-day tasks? Do you have a notebook for your To Do lists and cross out each one as you go along? Or do you have little yellow post-its stuck all over the place? Is this really the best way of managing your daily tasks?

Spreadsheets are a great way for you to organise your To Do list. Set up headings in the first row and add your tasks below. You can then sort your list by any column that you choose, making it an interactive To Do list. And best of all, your list is contained in one place.

Create a shortcut to your To Do list and place it on your desktop so that you can access it easily, or just keep it open and minimise your screen each time you’re not using it.

Make your To Do list even more interactive by filtering out those tasks that have already been completed. How? Use the AutoFilter built into Excel!

3. Plan Projects and Activities

How do you keep a track of what needs to be done and when?

The answer’s simple — set up a spreadsheet!

Spreadsheets also accept date formats and this makes them a great tool for tracking projects or planning activities. You can easily use AutoFill to create a date timeline too. Use the column headings for your dates, and the rows for your activities.

Use the cell where the date meets the activity to enter notes, To Do, or anything else relating to your project or activity. Once an activity is complete you can use the strikeout feature to cross it off!

As you work along the timeline, you can hide the columns with past dates, showing only those columns for current and future dates. And if you want to be really creative, use different colours for the cells to represent different activities, i.e. blue cells = to be done; red cells = overdue etc.

Follow these 3 time management tips, and you will soon be using more time more wisely!

If you’re struggling to get more clients, there are three simple strategies that you can implement that will help.

But, more importantly, taking consistent, daily action is the real answer to getting more clients.

I’ve had many conversations with business owners these past few months who are, quite frankly, really struggling with their businesses:

• They have little to no clients.
• They’re not making the income they need just to pay the bills.
• They’re barely keeping their heads above water.

When faced with this situation, there’s really only one thing they can do – and that is focus on getting new paying clients.

Maintaining a good cash flow is at the heart of building a successful business; therefore your focus needs to be on getting more clients who are willing to pay for your services.

The only way you can do that is to work with clients who will pay you for your one-on-one services.

Therefore you should forget about:

• Updating your website.
• Spending your time on launching a new product or program (if you’re struggling to fill your practice with one-on-one clients, you will struggle to fill your programs).
• Putting together a telesummit or other major list building event.

Yes, these are all great things to do, but short-term, the focus really has to be on getting more paying clients – this is the single, fastest way to improve your cash flow.

So put all of that “busy” stuff aside, and instead focus on these three simple strategies to get more clients.  You can easily implement each of these strategies so that you can get new clients in the next 30 days — aim for a goal of 3 new clients:

1.  Follow-up with past clients. If you’ve had some success in your business and have worked with a few clients over the past 12-18 months, then take some time to:

• Check back in with them and see how they’re doing.
• Ask them if there’s anything they need any help with.
• Update them on what’s happening in your business.
• If they’re local, offer to reconnect over coffee.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make in your business is to forget your past clients and not touch base with them again.

2.  Connect with “warm” leads. How about those conversations you had with potential clients that said “no” or “maybe” to your services? Go back to them and, following the example above, reconnect with them.

Chances are they’re in a different place than they were when you last spoke and they may be ready to work with you this time around.

3. Attend in-person networking events. Connecting with people face-to-face is one of the best ways to meet new clients/potential clients.  Whilst the person you may be speaking with may not be an ideal client you never know who they know.

So when you meet someone at a networking event, never try to sell to them. Get to know them first, build the relationship, and make sure the conversation is about them. And ask them, “who do you know who…” and see if they can offer you any referrals.

When you take consistent steps, day in day out, that’s when you’ll start to see results in your business, i.e. getting more clients.

And these steps I’ve shared with you are all very simple to implement – no complicated technology involved!

Action Step: Create a daily action plan outlining exactly what you’re going to do every day for the next 30 days to get three new clients.

And work that plan!