Anyone who has purchased anything in the past probably has experienced buyer’s remorse – the sense of regret after making a purchase.  When working with your outsourcing partner, that is the last thing you want.  Therefore, you must set and manage expectations, and like you would with your employees, review their work, praise them for their accomplishments or take the appropriate action for not meeting your expectations.

Keep in mind – your outsourced partners are to bring their expertise to your business to enable your businesses to achieve some success or factors of success that you could not achieve otherwise.  Therefore, it is your responsibility to ensure that they live up to it.  Here are five ways to ensure you are managing your partners appropriately.

1. Managing Expectations – you set your expectations before hiring your outsourced partner.  When you begin to “let things slide” or have to make their problems your problems, you are beginning to lose hold of your outsourced partners.  Good outsourced partners won’t make their problems yours, and will ensure that whatever needs to be done is done consistently.  The more vague your expectations are, the more leeway there will be with your outsourcing partner.
2. Regular review – your outsourcing partner should be very interested in getting feedback from you.  If you provide them with feedback, and do so using the expectations list you’ve created, there will be no surprises.  By scheduling them regularly, perhaps quarterly, you will ensure that the regular reviews are done, and that your outsourcing partner is well engrained into your company and company culture.
3. “Praise and Pinch!” – Like you and your company, companies benefit from recognition of great service.  It typically encourages more of the same or higher level of work or service.  At the same time, you need to be very clear about the areas that aren’t meeting your expectations and what you intend to do about it.  If you feel that the relationship must be terminated, do so.  You will probably find that avoiding ending the relationship will cause you greater stress and your business greater harm.
4. Financial Review – Your outsourced partner is a firm whose goal should be to help your business achieve some success or factors of success.  Therefore, you have to look at the return on your investment.  Certainly, some efforts take longer to present themselves financially, such as marketing or sweeping the parking lot.  However, part of the review would be to work out what the alternative might look like.  How NOT having that partner would impact your business, or how having a different partner would impact your business.
5. Strategic Review – Consider how long or what indicators exist that tell you how long the partner should be involved in your company.  Is it for a short term project?  IOs it managing through growth stages?  Is it until your company has enough volume to hire your own person or team to take over for that outsourcing partner?  Understand where your company is in that dynamic and don’t end up so “needy” that you cannot make the right decision at the right time.

Maintaining a strong relationship with an outsourcing partner should be taken no less lightly than you would take that of an employee.  As the company leadership, it is your responsibility to set your expectations, manage them and take the appropriate response as necessary.  When you don’t, you could ultimately hurt the entire company and all of its stakeholders.

Aepiphanni Business Consulting: The Business Strategy People is an Atlanta, Georgia based Operations Management and Business Strategy Consulting Firm dedicated to serving the needs of small to medium sized business leaders. We help business leaders DESIGN| CREATE | BUILD extraordinary businesses.  We support our clients with financial management, product and service production and delivery, outsourced services management, sales & marketing and business growth.  We provide them with a number of flexible solutions to help them reach their goals.

Join us for a 30-minute complimentary Coffee & a Consult, to learn more about Aepiphanni and how we might help you move your company from existing to extraordinary.

The goal of outsourcing is to take have someone or some firm take over the responsibility of some activity or activities in your firm.  This could be anything from manufacturing to product design to bookkeeping, marketing, etc.. As a result of outsourcing, your firm should be able to state some gains such as:

• Lower startup costs
• Lower manufacturing costs
• Greater efficiency
• Higher quality of work
• Greater capacity
• etc.

In order to take advantage of these opportunities, businesses need to go through a process of sourcing their outsourced partners.  What this means is that you will plan before you start looking for what need you have to fill.  Using the example of bookkeeping, you might make a list like this:

• Make sure that my QuickBooks is always up to date
• Make sure that all postings are accurate
• Reconcile statements
• Provide reports on how my business is doing
• Tell me what the reports mean
• Make me aware of any concerns I should have about my finances
• Make sure that I am tax compliant
• Make sure that I am not wasting money
• Participate in strategic planning sessions
• File my taxes
• Have great customer service
• Be accessible 24×7 to answer questions

From this list, you want to separate out your “must haves” from your “nice to haves.”  “Nice to haves” are those things that aren’t essential to the business operations, but make life easier.  “Must haves” are those things your business cannot do without.  Your expectations must be clear so that you don’t end up getting into a relationship with someone who is performing below your expectations.  You want, in fact, someone who is going to invest their energy and resources in your business so that both of you are better off as a result.

Next, you will want to decide on a budget.  Again, you will want to do this before you start.  Keep in mind that you will want to understand what outsourced partners for your needs will typically charge.  Many times, if you come in below the market rates, you will end up with experience, expertise or services – and thus, results -  that are equal to your investment.

Think about how you expect to interact with the firm.  If it is a software as a service solution, do you need to be able to pick up the phone and reach someone, or is email or Twitter adequate?  Is there a training and/or integration component that will make the relationship a go/no go?  What kind of time and/or resource investments will you need to make to ensure that the relationship will have solid ground upon which to be successful?

Think about how you will “inspect what you expect.”  Is it monthly reports?  Product samples?  Increased sales?  You should be expecting a return on whatever investments you are making, and you need to put that in writing, making the incumbent aware of the expectations so that there is no confusion and so that they can price their services appropriately to have the resources to meet your needs.

Now, you will want to begin looking for your firm.  While looking in your network or getting referrals can be smart, understand that your network may only reach a percentage of what is in the marketplace.  So, in addition to leveraging your network, take the time to do some research on  firms outside of your network.  We will typically do an RFP and put it out to a number of providers both in and out of our network.  This helps to broaden our network and allows us to find new talent that we hadn’t approached.

When possible, take your time.  If you have identified the potential need in your strategic plan, you know ahead of time that at some point, you will need to find this firm.  Don’t wait until you are desperate; begin the process of sourcing immediately.  Keep in mind that if you choose poorly, the investment you’ve made in sourcing, integrating and training will have been a waste, which could have been avoided.

Aepiphanni Business Consulting: The Business Strategy People is an Atlanta, Georgia based Operations Management and Business Strategy Consulting Firm dedicated to serving the needs of small to medium sized business leaders. We help business leaders DESIGN| CREATE | BUILD extraordinary businesses.  We support our clients with financial management, product and service production and delivery, outsourced services management, sales & marketing and business growth.  We provide them with a number of flexible solutions to help them reach their goals.

Join us for a 30-minute complimentary Coffee & a Consult, to learn more about Aepiphanni and how we might help you move your company from existing to extraordinary.

“Outsourcing is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re gonna get,” could have been a line from Winston Grooms’ 1986 novel “Forrest Gump.”  While businesses consider the idea of working with outsourced partners, many don’t know how much they should be paying for what they are receiving and how to ensure that they are getting value for the money they are spending.

Your job, as a business leader, is to increase your company’s profit.  Bottom line.  That means that your best interest is in focusing on the things that move you closer to profitability, which is the production, sale and delivery of profitable goods and services.  When you have to focus on other things, such as administrative tasks, marketing, etc., you are effectively taking your eye off the ball.  If you are a growing company, you know how essential each moment you have is; time is not forgiving and wasted time cannot be refunded.

To focus on business growth, you must get non-business critical activities off your plate, such as bookkeeping.  T do so, you have two options, known as “make or buy.” Make or buy means that you will either have the books done by someone in your company by an existing staff member or one you hire, or you will outsource it to a firm whose competency is in bookkeeping. 

If you “make” your bookkeeping, you will train someone on your staff to do the bookkeeping for your firm. This may work for your firm, if this person exists.  However, that person will be limited by what you (remember to) teach them.  You will still need to check their work, make sure that deadlines are met,and ensure that bookkeeping records will be handed over to a CPA who is not involved in your daily operations and may not completely understand your business.

You could, of course, hire someone just to do your books.  If you hire a CFO, they should be able to meet all of your financial needs, provide the company with direction from a financial perspective, help avoid or plan for changes in the tax laws, etc..  However, this is not without a cost, which according to payscale.com, could come to the tune of $61,000 – $264,994.  Your business may be too small, at the moment, to justify this expense.

The second option would be to “buy” the services, typically at a fraction of the price through an outsourced agency such as B2BCFO, CFOWise or any number of other firms.  Buying the services would (should) relieve you of the hassle of having to train someone (make) and should give you the assurance that you are getting the level of service you need without paying a price that will hurt your business.  (DO expect to pay an hourly rate that is higher than you would pay a staff member, but keep in mind that you will use fewer hours to get the same work done.)

Choosing to make or buy, then, is a conversation around quality, budget and expectations.  By starting out with the end in mind and creating your expectations up front, you are in a better position to choose the appropriate source to fulfill your company’s needs.  Choosing the first company that comes along or the cheapest company you come across may, in the end, cost you more.  You are looking for a long-term strategic partner that will help you (by the work they are doing) grow your extraordinary company.

Aepiphanni Business Consulting: The Business Strategy People is an Atlanta, Georgia based Operations Management and Business Strategy Consulting Firm dedicated to serving the needs of small to medium sized business leaders. We help business leaders DESIGN| CREATE | BUILD extraordinary businesses.  We support our clients through advisory services in the areas of management, strategy and outsourced services in order to help them set, pursue and achieve extraordinary goals.

Join us for a 30-minute complimentary Coffee & a Consult, to learn more about Aepiphanni and how we might help you move your company from existing to extraordinary.

Since Aepiphanni opened in 2005, I have had a lot of time to evaluate the small business marketplace.  I’ve heard a lot of talks, attended workshops, read articles and the like on lead generation.  Many people have told me that there are certain, specific things that have to be done in a very specific way that everyone is doing and therefore, I should do it, too.

My frustration has always been that “if everyone else is doing it, there is nothing unique about my approach, therefore, my results cannot be more than mediocre.”  It appears like fishing for trout in a shark tank – everyone is trying to get the trout – including the sharks, so success has got to be dismal at best.

Simply put: this method isn’t sustainable, so I “went to work.”

The first thing I did was to begin looking, closely, at my target market.  Sure – no brainer, there.  But I also looked at how they purchase and what I needed to do in order to get in front of them when they are ready to do so.  What I mean by that is:

• Will they make an impulse purchase, or will they need time to think and massage an offering to make sure that it fits with their goals.  (Think about the level of investment – money, time and resources!)
• What is the typical company culture – which gives me insight into the first question.  Like people, companies have personalities that are often an extension of the leadership’s own personality.  So – of my target market, what types of companies have the type of culture that would match best (complimentary in my case) to Aepiphanni’s culture?
• What kind of revenue does the company need to have to afford my services?  This is a question I often ask service providers: Essentially, what is the minimum investment a client can make in order to have a successful engagement, and what percent of their revenues (or gross revenue) can they afford to spend?  This type of info can be gathered from a list service, such as Leadsplease.com, infoUSA.com or Zoominfo.com.
• What unique identifiers will help to narrow down that target even further?  Is it that they are in growth mode, wherein you see press releases, job offers, etc., from their company?  Could it be nearing tax time, a holiday season or a certain point in an industry’s season?  Might they have posted a complaint about an issue via social media that you might help them overcome. 
• How do they receive their communications, i.e., how do you make them aware of your offering and how do you get them interested in talking about it?  I’ve heard people talk about a lot of different strategies – networking, targeting people and companies on LinkedIn, etc..  Well, from my perspective, there are two types of communications for your consideration:
• Mass communications, where you use advertising and PR as your bait and attempt to real people in.  This tends to work well if you offer a commodity (something that someone can get anywhere and usually purchase on price rather than value) have a strong marketing program, and solid budget and your offering is for a wide audience.  Coke (lots of cola companies), Target (lots of discount retail clothing stores) and Subway (lots and lots of places to eat) benefit from this type of communication.
• Direction communication, where you target specific companies, and specific individuals at specific companies where you can fill a specific need that they may or may not have.  This works best if you have done the work described above.  That said, the more you get to know these individuals or companies – aided, perhaps, through networking and/or social media – the more likely your endeavors will get you results.
• What language do they speak?  Certainly, their verbal and cultural languages come into play.  It is vital that you are aware of that.
• How do they communicate?  What will it take for you to create an interest?  Is it bottom line benefits?  Is it crafting an interesting story?  Setting up a dialogue?  Do they purchase with their eyes?  Do they like to see what everyone else says?  The simple answer is YES!  Which means that I needed to communicate in all of the ways mentioned above in order for my campaign to be successful.  Depending on one method of communication would cause me to miss out on opportunities.

While all of this requires a significant amount of background work, I have found, consistently, that this method allows me to keep my pipeline filled, and moving prospects through my sales system.  It works so well that even weeks that go by where there is no external activity, there is a direct impact on the company’s bottom line.

Of course, as a business leader, you can keep doing the same things everyone else does the same way that they do it and get the same results that they do, or you can step out of mediocrity, do the work and build an extraordinary business.

Aepiphanni Business Consulting: The Business Strategy People is an Atlanta, Georgia based Operations Management and Business Strategy Consulting Firm dedicated to serving the needs of small to medium sized business leaders. We help business leaders DESIGN | CREATE | BUILD extraordinary businesses.  We support our clients with management consulting, operations management support and outsourced services sourcing and management.

Give us an opportunity to know you.  Join us for a 30-minute complimentary Coffee & a Consult, where we can learn about each other and see if we can help you move your company from existing to extraordinary.

According to Dave Kahle, of the Kahle Way, a sales system is “a set of principles, processes, strategies and tools that are put into place to bring the company results day-in and day-out.”

Essentially, what this means is that the company has a specific set of steps to find, nurture and convert leads into sales.  The problems that many businesses face are two-fold:

1. They have no specific process or tools in place to do get sales (no sales system) and all of the sales people do seems is right in their own eyes
2. They use a single tactic to find and pursue leads

By not having a specific process and set of tools in place, it is very difficult to predict what your sales might be and to tell what is actually working.

For example:  You might be to go to every networking event in town, send out email blasts until everyone ignores or unsubscribes from your list, periodically ping people on LinkedIn and other social media, add giveaways to your website, add squeeze pages to your website and sign up for every free social media site on the planet and syndicate all of your posts.

Only using a single approach can also yield very low results for the effort used. A typical example might be to

• Go to a networking event
• Meet some people, ask them for a follow-up meeting (or not)
• Send a follow-up email or card (or not)
• Hope the person responds

With either of these approaches, while you might fill your database up with people you vaguely know, those who just want you to send them qualified leads and those who want you to purchase services from them, you have no way to gauge how successful your results will be over time.  The key, here, is not to suggest that the specific tactics are unrealistic, but rather, to suggest that by creating a process and using multiple tactics, results are measurable and your sales team is in a better position to gauge what works, versus what doesn’t work.

A sales system is a set of tools and steps you use to bring people from the initial awareness stage to the point where they are writing you checks.  If you take into consideration AIDA, the sales & marketing acronym for Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action, it makes logical sense to create your sales system to lead people through this process.

• Awareness – this can happen through a number of measureable activities, such as sending an email, networking, advertising, connecting through social media, etc.  The challenge is that this must be effective, it must present the proper message and should make some type of impact.  This means that you will need to use more than one tool to create awareness.  Furthermore, you need to make sure that you have a way to measure how successful the tactics are so that you can make changes or change strategies as necessary.  Businesses have traditionally used campaigns and offers to create awareness in a new market.
• Interest – this is the whole point of the elevator speech with the  question, such as, “Have you ever considered building an extraordinary company?”  Because extraordinary is ambiguous – there doesn’t seem to be a clear, measurable definition of what it is, it begs the question, “what is an extraordinary company?”  By presenting the idea, its benefits and advantages interest is created in what your company does.
• Desire – Is making that prospect want what only you can offer them, on multiple levels.  Pitch experts often recommend telling stories that create desire for listeners to “get on board.”  Here’s an article on Microsoft’s website called “Pitch an idea with a Great Story.”
• Action – once people are on board with the idea, concept or sale, it is time to lead them to taking action, whether that is signing a proposal, writing a check or even joining you at an event where you can give them more information.

In order to get people through all of those steps, assuming you aren’t working with one prospect at a time, requires a database– typically a CRM or pipeline management tool to manage them effectively.  A combination of execution, timing and follow through are required at each step, especially with respect to those businesses with longer sales cycles.  Think about it: have you ever been pursued by a vendor for business for years where, somehow, they have managed not to get on your nerves?  They probably don’t have your picture on their refrigerator…they are using some software to remind them to ‘ping’ you over time.

Essential to the sales system are timing (connecting with your prospects on a regular basis, without being annoying!) and measurement.  You could be doing the wrong things with perfect timing, which is just about as effective as doing the right things with terrible timing.  Creating a rhythm for bringing your clients through the process will ensure that you are tagging all of your prospects at the proper time.  Measuring their responsiveness (or lack thereof) will help to gauge the effectiveness of your tactics.

Don’t leave your sales system up for grabs.  Build an extraordinary Sales System.

Aepiphanni Business Consulting: The Business Strategy People is an Atlanta, Georgia based Operations Management and Business Strategy Consulting Firm dedicated to serving the needs of small to medium sized business leaders. We help business leaders DESIGN| CREATE | BUILD extraordinary businesses.  We support our clients with financial management, product and service production and delivery, outsourced services management, sales & marketing and business growth.  We provide them with a number of flexible solutions to help them reach their goals.

Join us for a 30-minute complimentary Coffee & a Consult, to learn more about Aepiphanni and how we might help you move your company from existing to extraordinary.

Increasing sales is nearly always a topic of conversation when we work with business owners.  Business leaders constantly seek out ways to connect with their audiences in such a way that people are willing to buy.  With the recent recession, many consumers’ buying habits have changed.

Customers purchase based on a number of criteria; pricing and promotion are not the sole drivers of sales, except in the commodity markets where there is little differentiation between products and mass marketing is the norm.  Typically  companies will use techniques such as the loss leader – a product priced artificially low to get you to come to a store and hope that you will purchase other items while there, coupons, sales fliers, unique products such as high quality store-brand products, etc..

Looking at your own business, it is up to you to decide how the market views your business, what their needs are and how you can connect with those needs.  No brainer, there.  Where the challenge lies is in determining what it will take to get in front of your particular customer, getting the message to them in a clear compelling way, transferring that message in such a way that they see an opportunity to have a need met or how to accomplish a goal that they have and a value proposition that they feel is equitable to the amount of money they will have to pay.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that there is a tried and true formula that works for every business every time.  Mass marketing helps.  Direct marketing helps.  Offers help.  Networking helps.  Relationship marketing helps.

What has to happen in order to get people to open their checkbooks and send you money is typically going to be a combination of efforts that match your particular, unique offerings to a need they have.  Because what will compel them might differ from person to person and from company to company, developing a sales program needs to have a strategic approach.

The most important tool you will need in order to determine how your approach is working is some sort of tracking device that will track time, effort, response, steps and correspondence, typically known as a CRM or customer relationship management tool.  Some of the more popular include Salesforce.com, Goldmine, Act! and Maxmizer.  Of course, you could probably set up any database, series of spreadsheets or forms to help you manage, although the amount of data and double entry will probably prove to be difficult if not impossible to manage effectively after a certain point.

The system we have recommended and implemented for a number of our clients is called Work, Etc..  We find it to be a tool of choice because it integrates a number of tools for a small business of up to about 100 employees, in order to get a 360 view of the customer and client relationship, beginning with prospecting, through the purchasing processes to the final deliverable and relationship management.  It is highly customizable and relatively low in cost.  It incorporates CRM, Sales management, email campaigns, project management, A/R and reporting into one umbrella.

Regardless of the solution you choose, it is an important step in making your sales process efficient and effective and give you the tools to determine how effective you campaigns.

Aepiphanni Business Consulting: The Business Strategy People is an Atlanta, Georgia based Operations Management and Business Strategy Consulting Firm dedicated to serving the needs of small to medium sized business leaders. We help business leaders DESIGN| CREATE | BUILD extraordinary businesses.  We support our clients with financial management, product and service production and delivery, outsourced services management, sales & marketing and business growth.  We provide them with a number of flexible solutions to help them reach their goals.

Join us for a 30-minute complimentary Coffee & a Consult, to learn more about Aepiphanni and how we might help you move your company from existing to extraordinary.

The pace of business is maddening.  This is nothing new, certainly not an Aepiphanni.  The question is: knowing that the business marketplace is so dynamic, how do you make sure that your company is dynamic enough to meet those needs, to stay competitive and to stay afloat?

This is the challenge faced by many, if not all businesses.  Those at the top stay focused on staying at the top.  Those right below those at the top constantly strive to reach the top.  (The top could be top of their market, industry, niche, geography, etc.; whatever is most appropriate for your business.) Being at the top means that not only are you able to change, but you can predict or perhaps even create the changes in the marketplace.

However, even market makers (those that shape the marketplace) face the challenges of continuing to innovate to stay on top.  Look at FaceBook, Google and Apple.  While these companies have created phenomenal products, there has been no time when they have sat back on their laurels and said, “okay…enough.  We have arrived.” 

The challenge many businesses face is not necessarily in the realm of ideas, but rather, in the realm of execution, which is often bungled by not creating an environment that embraces innovation.  Businesses must be dynamic by design, not by accident.  Otherwise, the business will be a one-hit-wonder; a company that does something really great for a while, then disappears as new innovations take the spotlight.

Business architecture is the practice strategic planners use to design business models to take advantage of a particular way of operating.  It helps business leaders determine the types of technologies, facilities, resources, etc., will be necessary to reach a strategic goal for the organization.  Similar to building architecture, it works within certain frameworks and is designed to withstand certain changes, to be effective and efficient with respect to operations and growth and is functional within a budget.

For example, your company finds that in order to grow successfully while maintaining the same level of customer service it has become known for.  In order to do so, it must be prepared to handle a higher volume of work, which means that you need to determine:

1. what the potential volume of calls and other customer service activities will be required,
2. how many people will be required to handle the increase,
3. what resources they will require in order to do their job
4. how performance will be managed
5. who will manage performance
6. what the potential budget is over time (startup, growth, maintenance)
7. shelf-life – how long the solution will be applicable

When looking at this through the lens of innovation, you would think in terms of how ideas might be processed, tested, financed and launched within a relatively short time period.  You might think in terms of how to get the product or service to market as quickly as possible, while ensuring that the product or service meets your company’s criteria for quality and support.

Success is a goal that is rarely stumbled upon.  Building an extraordinary business requires planning and commitment to ensure that the business stays on track, stays nimble, dynamic and ready to meet the next challenge.

Aepiphanni Business Consulting: The Business Strategy People is an Atlanta, Georgia based Operations Management and Business Strategy Consulting Firm dedicated to serving the needs of small to medium sized business leaders. We help business leaders DESIGN| CREATE | BUILD extraordinary businesses.  We support our clients with financial management, product and service production and delivery, outsourced services management, sales & marketing and business growth.  We provide them with a number of flexible solutions to help them reach their goals.

Join us for a 30-minute complimentary Coffee & a Consult, to learn more about Aepiphanni and how we might help you move your company from existing to extraordinary.

Imagine you were driving around town with family members with your convertible top down, zipping in and out of traffic, maneuvering brilliantly around slower moving vehicles and taking hairpin corners with squealing tires and flying gravel.  Does that sound like fun to you?  Imagine the exhilaration – the adrenaline rush – your heart pumping…just a complete thrill to those who love to drive!

Now…imagine what your more conservative passengers might be feeling.  What if they are scared out of their wits?  What if they are hanging on for dear life, praying for “terra firma?”  What if the shear terror of riding with you makes them never want to enter a vehicle with you at the wheel again?

This is what can happen with our businesses when we focus on one or two things, and don’t pay attention to the “big picture”: how the decisions you as a business leader make affects your primary stakeholders: your customers, employees, shareholders and your community.  The simplest illustration being that if you disregard the way customers feel about doing business with you, and you offend them, they just won’t do business with you.

How many times have you been upset by the way a customer service representative treated you or the level of service you received from a company versus what you expected?  You probably didn’t do business with them again, or at the very least, you thought long and hard before you did.

As business leaders, we tend to focus on one thing: the financial component.  However, when developing new products or services, making changes in the way we deliver them – or the way we position the company, these decisions directly impact our stakeholders.  This being the case, we would be justified in asking them what they think – not just doing things and hoping for the best.  This is why so many companies invest in test marketing, customer feedback, town hall meetings and other ways to communicate their thoughts and ideas before launching them to the general public.

Is there a cost associate with this?  Yes.  There are tradeoffs.

1. You could create as many products/services as possible, push them out to the marketplace, market them, use partnerships, etc., and make some sales.  Some sales are better than none.  However, time to market is relatively quick.  You can sometimes make changes on the fly.  You can bury the product if it doesn’t meet the performance requirements you have for it.  We’ve seen this in the Android tablet market.  Imagine the cost associated with developing, marketing and distributing products that ultimately fail.
2. You could work with your shareholders to develop and deliver and extraordinary product that the marketplace has a need and interest in and a willingness to pay for.  This will probably result in ongoing sales and company loyalty from the shareholders who invested time and energy into helping create the product or service.  It will take longer to develop.  It will cost you more up front for a number of reasons.  However, we have seen companies such as Starbucks become wildly successful as a result of making these investments.  On the other hand, I am certain there are many more companies that scrapped project ideas and saved large amounts of money, company reputation and stakeholder value from the same investments.

Does that mean that every product or service brought to market will be the next Facebook, iPhone or Kleenex?  Of course not.  But it does mean that you will avoid some of the mistakes many companies have made on their way to success or failure.

Don’t just watch the road; value your stakeholders.  Build an extraordinary business.

Aepiphanni Business Consulting: The Business Strategy People is an Atlanta, Georgia based Operations Management and Business Strategy Consulting Firm dedicated to serving the needs of small to medium sized business leaders. We help business leaders DESIGN| CREATE | BUILD extraordinary businesses.  We support our clients with financial management, product and service production and delivery, outsourced services management, sales & marketing and business growth.  We provide them with a number of flexible solutions to help them reach their goals.

Join us for a 30-minute complimentary Coffee & a Consult, to learn more about Aepiphanni and how we might help you move your company from existing to extraordinary.

Tim McLellan, CPA and partner at B2Bcfo.com recently posted a newsletter that talks about the changes that are going on in the marketplace, with respect to small businesses and the baby boomer population.  Here is the article.  Definitely worth a read.:

In 2012, the first wave of more that 66 million baby boomers become 65 years old and will begin to draw Social Security.  By the end of 2012, 10,000 people a day will be turning 65 years old.   Many of these baby boomers own their own Company.  What will happen to these businesses as the owners continue to age?

Recently, Jerry Mills, the founder of B2B CFO®, was interviewed by Morningstar on this upcoming Small Business Tsunami      See video here

Jerry noted that of the 12.5 million American businesses owned by baby-boomers it is estimated that 8.4 million of them will undergo some kind of significant ownership change.  Other estimates say that most small business owners have 80 to 90% of their personal wealth tied up in their business.  Those are staggering numbers.

So what is a business owner to do?  The answer is to make a resolution.  Resolve that you will position the business for sale long before you want or need to sell it.  In his book, The Danger Zone, Jerry suggests you think like a buyer.  Here’s how you do that:

• Make sure you have a robust financial infrastructure in place. You should be able to produce accurate and timely financial statements that not only stand up to the scrutiny of third party audits or reviews but also serve as the credible basis of future projections.
• Make sure you are current in all tax jurisdictions where your business operates.
• Be sure the procedures to build the goods or deliver the services are well documented.
• Bring your information technology up to current industry standards and be absolutely sure that you have proper backup and recovery procedures and no illegal software.
• Ensure that customer relationships are not dependent on the owner remaining with the company.
• Assemble a top-notch management team in key positions within the company.
• Make sure that all warranty and contingent liabilities are identified and quantified.
• Take all steps necessary to protect and document the company’s intellectual property.

When the day comes that you are negotiating with a potential buyer there are two additional things to remember.  First, do your due diligence on that buyer to make sure they have the financial capacity to follow through on giving you the full value of your business.  Second, do not become emotionally tied to your business or to your potential buyers.  Step back and be objective.  Listen to your advisors.  That’s why you hired them!

A tsunami watch has been posted for American small business.  Take precautions now to prevent financial injury when the wave comes crashing.
 
A B2B CFO® can help you survive the sale of your business.  Putting all of the above processes in place is a 12 – 24 month process.  The process needs to start well in advance of the date that you would like to sell your business. 

Feel free to contact Tim and learn more about B2B CFO at 404-915-5539.  B2B CFO works with the business owner to create financial and goal clarity.  They try to understand the overall goals that their clients want to achieve, then help them create financial clarity to achieve those goals. 

Aepiphanni Business Consulting: The Business Strategy People is an Atlanta, Georgia based Operations Management and Business Strategy Consulting Firm dedicated to serving the needs of small to medium sized business leaders. We help business leaders DESIGN| CREATE | BUILD extraordinary businesses.  We support our clients with financial management, product and service production and delivery, outsourced services management, sales & marketing and business growth.  We provide them with a number of flexible solutions to help them reach their goals.

Join us for a 30-minute complimentary Coffee & a Consult, to learn more about Aepiphanni and how we might help you move your company from existing to extraordinary.

Is your company doing well?  Are you profitable?  How much longer will it be until you are?  Where can you cut expenses?  What are your most profitable products or services?  Which are the least profitable?  What the shelf-life of a particular product?  How effective is your marketing strategy?

As business leaders, this type of information is the type of information that we need to have on hand in order to make decisions about the company.  Planning solely on what is in the bank, or focusing only on one aspect of what makes your company a) successful or b) keeps it out of closing is a very poor way of operating.  This is pure tunnel vision.

If you consider, for a moment, two tools that are widely used in the business world – Porter’s Five Forces and the SWOT analysis, you’ll notice that part of the analysis is based on things that impact the business – are outside of the business’s control.  As business leaders, you know that strategically, this cannot occur just in exercise, but must exist in the way that you do business.  Monitoring, making adjustments and acting must be an ongoing mentality if your goal is to build an extraordinary business.

Several recommendations we have made to clients include:

1. Understand what questions you want to answer.  Here are some samples:
1. How do we know when we can purchase a new building or expand capacity
2. How do we know how effective our sales people are
3. How do we know how effective our marketing and other business development activities are
2. Understand what kind of data you need to collect in order to make your decisions.  Typically, these are going to be things such as your financials – sales, cost of goods sold, expenses, profit, investments, interest and taxes, your business development activities, manufacturing costs and rates, etc.
3. Determine how to collect the data – including what is feasible.  Take into consideration how you operate – does it need to be mobile? does the information need to be housed in a cloud?
4. Determine how the data needs to be delivered.  If you have a ton of data and like to drill down from “high level” analysis down to the details, perhaps you want something more visual.  If you like to play with the numbers yourself and run scenarios, perhaps you like to play with the raw data.
5. Decide how much your level of investment.  Consider this:
• No Investment – If you don’t get the data to make decisions, the likelihood of success is minimalized.
• Your Time – If you collect and mine the data yourself, what else could or should you be doing to build or grow the business.
• Your Resources – You could have a qualified employee collect and mine the data for you. 
• Your Money – You could invest in a software solution – be it customized, off the shelf, or a combination of the two – that could collect the data.  We have used and recommend a product called Work, Etc., to centrally house most transaction that occur in the business in order to give us a single data-collection source.
6. Research solutions that will work best for your company, considering the factors we pointed out above.  You may consider other factors that are specific to your company, such as the ability to sync with certain existing solutions or the ability to be housed on a centrally located or remote server, etc..  May companies look at Open Source solutions such as xTurple or SugarCRM.  Despite your choice, consider the total cost of ownership of the solution before investing in it.
7. Determine how the solution will be implemented and how training on the software will roll out.  This may mean hiring a consultant, going to a class or classes, investing in an online training solution or spending time with tech support for a self-install.  Consider the different types of investment.
8. Plan to re-enforce the need to use whatever solution is recommended.  Change takes time.  Habits take time.  By providing some structure, you will increase the likelihood of success.

Your company’s ability to collect and decipher the data from the activities in and around your company can be the determine factor between a series of successful ventures and a series of hit-or-miss activities.  Even the simplest data-collection activities should help you determine your company’s path.

Aepiphanni Business Consulting: The Business Strategy People is an Atlanta, Georgia based Operations Management and Business Strategy Consulting Firm dedicated to serving the needs of small to medium sized business leaders. We help business leaders DESIGN| CREATE | BUILD extraordinary businesses.  We support our clients with financial management, product and service production and delivery, outsourced services management, sales & marketing and business growth.  We provide them with a number of flexible solutions to help them reach their goals.

Join us for a 30-minute complimentary Coffee & a Consult, to learn more about Aepiphanni and how we might help you move your company from existing to extraordinary.