Ultimately, this costs the company time, money and productivity.  The solution is as simple as writing down how things are done.

The benefits of writing processes down include:

• Identify inefficiencies – Once you’ve written the process down and can see it in black and white, you may notice that the process is inefficient
• Accuracy – You have processes that are accurately passed down from one person to the next
• Process improvement – You can improve the process as new information and technologies become available or simply through observation once you’ve written it down
• Process adaptation – As the business changes, you can adapt the process to meet the new model
• Cost reduction – You can determine the cost of each step in the process and find ways to reduce costs
• Process re-engineering – If there are there are failures in the process, you can identify where the failure is and take the appropriate steps to fix them
• Business process management – by keeping track of the processes, measuring successes and planning according to the business processes, business managers can ensure that the business is running efficiently, can anticipate required resources as the business goes through transitions and establish standards of productivity by individual, team or business unit.

Essentially, organizing processes in your company makes your company run better while saving it money.  Thinking strategically about the business process, how to achieve the results shown above, more has got to go into your business process than simply writing down a list of steps and who is responsible for them.  Here are seven components to business process development:

1. Set the goal – what is it that needs to be done.  The goal should be specific and be able to answer the question “why?”  For example, you might set the goal as “You want to prepare for a catering or networking event.”  Why is this important?  Because you find that there are always last-minute things that you are going back to check up on, something gets missed or overlooked or something gets done last minute and causes quality to suffer.
2. Do your research – As with anything, there is more than one way of doing things.  If you are wise, you will find that research is your friend and will help you to avoid the mistakes others have made.  It will often help you to find new ways of doing things that you hadn’t considered.  You don’t know what you don’t know.
3. Determine what the outcomes should be – specifically.  “As a result of developing this process, we should have everything necessary and in the right place in order to make the ideal presence at this event without missing anything needed for it, while anticipating the unsaid needs of our guests.”  Other examples could include development of a report, a list, completion of an employment process, etc.
4. Determine the impact of customer value – how will this process impact your customers?  Will it increase or decrease the customer perception of value?  Will you be able to charge more for your product or service because you have increase value?  Alternatively, are you damaging your customer’s perception of value?  For example, a high-touch company that switches to automate processes is going to change customer value.  By evaluating your market, you can determine what the outcomes of that change might be.
5. Determine what resources are available – This includes time, people, investments, space, transportation, brainpower, etc..  Surely, there will be things that you wish you had, but wishing is somewhat useless in process development.  Save those for process improvement
6. Create your process – write down what steps are required in order to get the job done.  Attach each step to your resources.  Keep in mind what you’ve learned from your research and keep in mind what the outcomes will be.  A couple of different ways to do this include using a Bubble Chart or Sticky Notes.
7. Evaluate – look at how the process will impact the company.  If you’ve got a great process that interrupts other processes in the company, you need to revisit the process.  Alternatively, you may find that there are  resources that can be shared, making your organization more efficient.

One more benefit to creating processes in your company is that developing processes in your company will make your company more agile – able to navigate through rough economies, the business cycle, entry and exit of competitors and industry changes.  While many of these benefits have been articulated in one way or another, business leaders must always be thinking strategically – in a competitive market, how can I make sure that I gain – and don’t lose – market share.  In a marketplace were there are so many businesses offering similar services, yours has got be Extraordinary in order to survive.

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.

One of the things we had to pick up was a coat for my son.  We went to a couple of different stores, didn’t find one and decided that we would continue looking on another day, being aware of the time and my tight schedule.  Then we had dinner at the restaurant as planned and headed for home – already running a little later than planned.

En route to the house, we passed a Wal-Mart, to which my wife said, “Oh, wow.  That’s just a Super Center.  They probably don’t have any more coats.”  It is January and retailers are blowing out old inventory and so I agreed.  However, after driving past the store, I sense that all is not right in the world, so I ask if she had wanted to go to Wal-Mart, to which she sullenly responded, “No!”  Of course, “No” actually meant “yes.”

Exasperated, I asked her, “Do you expect me to read your mind?”  She turned to me, looked me in the eye and said, “Yes.  Yes I do.”

While our customers and clients typically won’t say it, they expect us, as providers to read their minds.  They expect us to get to know them to the extent that we can anticipate their wants, needs and desires, and fulfill them, or find someone that can.  Think about it: if you are at a restaurant that has table service, you expect the server to provide you with a certain level of service.  If the server exceeds your expectations, you are quite pleased.  If the server doesn’t meet them, you are disappointed.  However, there is never an exchange of expectations during your interaction with that server.

There are seven rules that you, as a business leader, need to be aware of in order to get and keep clients.  For the most part, your customers won’t ask for them.  But they probably won’t hang around if you don’t provide them.

1. Know Your Customers: If you recall from the book, “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” by Stephen Covey, he talks about the idea that customers aren’t really interested in us or what we have to sell or offer, but rather, how we will solve some problem or need that they have.  Furthermore, Covey goes on to describe how the customers that do business with us are those who we express a personal interest in.
2. Anticipate Their Needs: Another factoid that we have learned over time is that it costs a lot more to find new customers than to keep old ones.  The customers that we have should be included in the marketing activities that we plan for over the course of the year.  This goes beyond sending gifts and doing what is expected, but actually marketing to them: making them aware of some product or service you have that will meet their present and future needs.  This means that as a company, you must continue to innovate – think ahead, watch the trends and understand what your customers’ needs WILL be.
3. Market to Them: In, “Managing the Professional Service Firm,” the author talks about the idea of dividing marketing efforts into several areas.  We tend to break it down into three – 20% of marketing goes to people who probably haven’t heard of us, 35% goes to people and companies that have heard of us, but haven’t done business with us, and the remaining 45% goes to our current clients.  This, we find, is the most efficient way of marketing, since prospects will generally move through a lifecycle that follows AIDA – Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action; our business development model follows this.
4. Customer Service: Consistent customer Service is one area that can be a point of differentiation between companies.  If you think about the difference between shops you may have frequented.  Given two that are identical, with identical offerings and prices, which would you frequent?  The one with service that meets your needs and expectations.  This means that not every customer wants to be coddled, nor will they be willing to pay extra for it.  Customers that do prefer to have a shopping experience may be willing to pay extra for the service.  The important thing is ensuring that the experience is consistent.
5. Manage Change: Managing change is an area where many companies miss the mark.  For example, NetFlix recently decided to double their subscriber pricing in order to separate their digital download service from the DVD program.  They felt that simply telling subscribers one day that the rates were going to be doubled and they had the option to opt out would be the easiest way to handle this.  The backlash from the marketplace was severe, eventually leading to the CEO, Reed Hastins, issuing and winning a spot in New York Times’ “Worst CEO’s of 2011” article.  Could this be handled differently or better?  YES!!  Absolutely, yes.
6. Manage Customer Concerns:  My wife and I were out several weeks ago.  Unfortunately, there was a problem with her sandwich so she proceeded to tell the waitress about it.  Instead of listening to my wife, the waitress began defending the cook who prepared it, the procedures that were followed and essentially made it appear that my wife was being insensitive.  My wife only wanted to be heard and a simple solution.  Many times, that is all that our customers want: a) to be heard and b) to have the problem rectified without a bunch of drama.  The alternative is to show them how they were wrong, how you operated within your expectations, how you were right and lose them as a customer for life.
7. Have Courageous Conversations:  Courageous Conversations are those that no one wants to have or looks forward.  It’s kind of like have “the talk” with your teenagers.  One of the most courageous conversations you can have with a customer is one wherein you actually apologize for being wrong.  Trust me: your ability to go to a customer and tell them that something is not going to be as promised may be a blow to ego, but could be the difference between maintaining a relationship with a client and working through the issue and being publicly sued and humiliated, should the issue come to light.  Furthermore, even if the issue is not immediately noticed by your customer or client, when they do find it, they will most likely see it as a HUGE breach in trust.  That type of press can do no good for your company.

Your business, my business, every business is dependent on customers.  In an increasingly competitive environment, it is essential that you put time and energy into these activities, and have them exist as part of the fabric of your company.  One more step I highly recommend that goes hand in hand with many of the activities I have described is to map out your value chain.  Your value chain is how you provide value for your customer at each step of the sales, engagement and post engagement process.  This starts with how you handle phone calls, how quickly and how you respond to emails and what your interactions will be like.  One way to do this is to map out each step a customer would interact with your company and write down what that interaction should look like and how you provide value for that customer.

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.

You might liken it to the routine of losing weight.  Many people who wish to lose weight plan to diet, exercise or both in order to do so.  While they have every intention of doing so, most people who want to lose weight will fail – not because they don’t try with the best of intentions, but rather, because they go about it wrong: while they are looking for a physical change and instant results, the way people lose weight and keep it off is often by a lifestyle change, which might include diet and exercise, but is more of a psychological change which often begins with answer questions that begin with “why?” starting with “why do you want to lose weight?”

In your business, change doesn’t occur any differently.  Understanding what you would like to do is only the tip of the iceberg.  The business psychology is still subject to the same psychological rules in order for the organizational change to take place.  It is not an overnight process.  It does require ongoing commitment and dedication in order to see it through.

While many subject-matter experts have written on the subject, I have discovered a path that logically makes sense in order to not just achieve the goals that you have set out for your company, but for the endeavors to be successful.  It has a lot to do with “setting the stage” for whatever venture you are planning to launch rather than the instant-gratification method of “throwing some ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks.”  As a business leader, it makes me think in terms of creating my own Blue Ocean strategy, rather than fighting to get scraps in the more popular target areas.   Keep in mind that regardless of the goal – internal or external to the organization, it has to be sold. 

Here are the seven steps:

1. Establish your goal.  This, of course is the most obvious.  What, exactly, do you want to do?  What is the bottom line result?  What will the painting look like when it is finished?  What is the destination?  Without understanding, clearly, what the goal is, it will be impossible to create a path toward it, share it with others or even stay motivated.
2. Frame it.  As the questions:
1. Does this serve our company beliefs (mission, vision, values)
2. What new knowledge/understanding are required to accomplish this?
3. Who can advise me on this?
4. Why are we doing this? What is its purpose? What is the vision?
5. What are the criteria for quality?
6. How will we measure success?
7. Will it be desirable by our end-users?
3. Make it appealing.  Make something that people will truly hunger for.  Your audiences will need to understand it and relate it back to something they already enjoy.  Only a small segment of the population will “risk” trying something completely new and untested.  You’ve got to focus on the majority.
4. Prepare to maintain it.  You already know that any time you introduce change, even if something is appealing, consumers will need to be able to “wash it down,”  so to speak.  They need to feel confident that the right choice has been made and the initial appeal needs to be renewed.
5. Do things well.  Make the experience as palatable as possible.  Think in terms of needing to repeat the activity or getting other people on board with it.  If you do it well the first time, it will be easier to get people on board the second time around and to keep those who have gotten on board to stay on board!
6. Create your consumer experience.  Anticipate needs.  Whoever will be involved with bringing the goal to fruition will have an experience with you and your company.  Having the customer experience completely “mapped out” touching on creating value at every interaction with your company is invaluable.  If your goal is to track your sales teams’ activities, you will want to put some time and energy into figuring out how to create value for them at every step of the process, versus threatening to fire them or not pay them if they DON’T follow the process!
7. Tell people about it.  Get people on board.  Get them excited about the change or about getting on board.

These seven steps can be applied to marketing, product or service development goal setting or starting a whole new company.  These avoid the time and revenue sucking “spaghetti” technique and helps a business leader thinking through the goal.  It avoids pulling goals out of thin air or creating baseless goals that some managers and business leaders use just because that is what is always done.

As you begin your journey onto 2012 and beyond, think it terms of going big.  Think in terms of being extraordinary.

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.

Many business leaders share this experience.  Because of this, most business leaders never get beyond the point where they have a few customers, earn a meager income and are never able to retire.  Think about it – if your business never gets beyond you doing most of the work, if something happens to you, the business is done and your revenue is probably flat.  Unfortunately, in the real world where there are no Golden Parachutes, matching retirement plans, etc., that means that you are in trouble.

Business leader – you’ve got to elevate your game.  You’ve got to look beyond what you are doing right now and think about how you are going to build a business that can operate even when you aren’t there.  Sure – sounds good in theory, but it requires more than simply putting your nose to the grindstone and trying really hard.  You’ve got to think in terms of being able to grow.  The foundation for growth is business development.  On one hand, you want to try to figure out how to you get more people to buy your stuff.  On the other hand, you might look at a group of people or a market and determine what within your capabilities and resources would they purchase from you.

Either way – you’ve got to put on your entrepreneurial thinking cap.  Just because you’ve built what you’ve built doesn’t mean they will come.

In order to hire other people to take over some of the daily operations that keeps your business moving from day to day, you’ve got to be able to teach other people how to do what you do.  Surely, one person might not be able to do all of what you do – this is fine.  You are probably driven to do what you do.  By dividing up the tasks among several people, you will probably find that a) there are parts of the task that YOU weren’t so good that, but overlooked because you were getting the product out to the marketplace and b) they can do the work a whole lot cheaper than you could do it by yourself.  How do you do this?

1. Know where you are headed.  There is no point in making the investment in time and energy if you aren’t sure about where your company is going.  Your commitment and vision will help to keep others motivated.  Your clear direction ensure that you make the best use of your resources
2. Make sure that you have a strategy for increasing your sales and be able to project those sales out several months!
3. Bite the bullet!  Hiring employees or contractors can be expensive.  That means that in order to grow, you might have to cut some expenses for a short time.  Think about it – this is like slowing or stopping to put the patch on.
4. Write down the steps to get things done.  This isn’t an overnight process; you are going to find that when you write your processes and systems down, that you can improve them – become more efficient, less wasteful.  You will probably even see where things can be done faster and cheaper than what you are currently producing.  If you’ve got the resources, cost out the steps and determine if it would make better sense to outsource some of the non-core activities.
5. Decide what level of expertise you need to have in order to continue operating at the level you have been operating at – or would like to operate at.
6. Cost it out.  For whatever reason, employees like to be paid.  Determine how much money you need to have every month or every pay period in order to pay for your employees.  You may consider hiring people on pay for performance, commission-based, piece-meal, part time, on call, or simply budget three months of their salary before you even bring them in.  This is called no thinking in the silo!
7. Plan to leverage your new capability/capacity.  Surely – you can keep doing the same old thing.  However, in elevating your game, you are going to quickly find that you will be able to take advantage of new opportunities.

Yes – there are some small business leaders who say that hiring employees or working with contractors are more of a pain than it is worth.  However, after having dozens of employees, empowering them to do their job, getting them to buy into a vision that was much bigger than me, I can say that employees and outsourced partners have consistently allowed me to get further in my businesses than I ever could have gotten without them.  When I think about Aepiphanni, and what I would like to do as I enter into other stages of my life, I realize that in order to create and maintain a level of sustainability, I have to step out of my current role and into a different one.  Otherwise, I am actually stunting the company growth.

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.

When we look at business development – sales and marketing techniques, are you just doing what everyone else is doing for the sake of doing it, or are you evaluating your own company, your target audiences, the products or services you are offering and designing a unique sales and marketing program to attract and connect with those audiences?  Companies that say that we HAVE to do something a certain way do so for the same reasons newspapers report bad news: to get more sales.  Think about the classic, “Think and Grow Rich.”  What if the title had been, “Strategy and Growth.”  Would it have stood out as a best seller?  Would it be something that people would pass on as a “must have?”  Are the ideas in the book really that unique that everyone who has read the book is now rich beyond their wildest dreams?  Of course not.

Expert advice and techniques are not necessarily the same thing.  Just because someone says everyone is doing it doesn’t mean that it is right for your company.  Furthermore, there are different ways to reach the same goal.

Experts in business development – those who have literally written the book – will tell you that the foundation of business development is knowing your customer, intimately, understanding their needs, letting them know that you have done so and why they should purchase it from at a price that makes sense to them, then making sure that they can get it.  Everything that we do in business development is a tool to get that message across.  Not every business will take off from their Twitter posts.  Not every business personality (think like your own personality) is appropriate for facebook and other social media.  Not every company can reach the million dollar mark through billboard advertisements, a fancy website or constant networking.

As a matter of fact, I would bet that if you looked at the cost of certain activities – consider opportunity cost (you cannot, for example, write an article if you are having a get-to-know-you coffee meeting) as well as the actual cost – versus the return on the investment, you might think differently about the investments.  Furthermore, with further evaluation, you might find that there are certain things that you do that get more response in the way you are looking to get that response!  That is opposed to striking up a conversation about migrating ducks on facebook with several of your connections.

So what are the value propositions for your business development activities?  Which activities are the most effective?  Which are the least effective?  What do you need to do differently?

I challenge you for 2012, to evaluate the investments you are making in business development, determine which ones are effective, which ones could be effective with a tweak and and which ones simply need to go, then create goals for each one, being able to suggest why each goal makes sense for you or your company.  Finally, write down, specifically, how you will accomplish each goal, taking into consideration what kinds of barriers you will encounter, and at what point you will have to consider tweaking or abandoning that particular goal.

If you jump off the bridge, make sure you are are ready to fly.  Pursue extraordinary!

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.

When working with outsourced service professionals (vendors), such as a web host, a bookkeeper, a phone company, an internet provider, an accountant or a consultant, you have to be very clear in setting your expectations – both for your company and for them.  When those expectations aren’t being met, you have got to a) find out why and b) determine what you are going to do about it and when.  For example, with Aplus.net, I decided several months ago that I was not going to renew with them and had begun looking for a new host.  The changeover to the new host will be completed in the next few months.  I decided to wait until then (at contract renewal time) because I felt that the site should remain stable until that time and I don’t want to hassle with them over money and refunds.

Notice:

1. I set my expectations
2. Found my expectations weren’t being met
3. I made a plan to remove my company from the situation
4. I set a deadline – with a reason – which is most important for getting things done, regularly

While this is common sense, this has more to do with knowing what to do and when.  As business leaders, we cannot afford to spend a great deal of time fighting fires that we pay other people to manage.  Simply the size of a company or their length of time in the marketplace doesn’t make the immune to being dropped for inability to meet the expectations that both parties agreed to.  Have a policy to simply not deal with bad service and move quickly when expectations aren’t being met.

Consider the impact that this will have on your business.  Let’s take my websites for example:

• I have had the site Aepiphanni.com up for about six years now
• I have built up a reputation on the internet, to the degree that the site shows up on the first page of Google for a number of keywords
• I have invested in marketing that will drive people to the website
• I need to upload this blog post

Now, as a result of the site being down,

• While I can create the post in a third-party software, I cannot upload it to the site. I will have to check periodically to see if the site is back up = lost productivity
• Given the frequency and volume of site visits, I have probably missed out on some business opportunities = equals lost revenue $$
• I am running a marketing campaign that drives people to the site.  When they go to the site, the information they are looking for won’t be there = lost marketing $$
• I am, no doubt, losing search engine ranking since if the web crawlers crawl my site, they are going to see something completely different.  Here’s a case in point: At one point, Aepiphanni.com was within the top 1,000,000 websites world-wide.  Because of some changes in site architecture, the site has dropped to more than 7,000,000th position = lost SEO $$

How does one put a dollar value to this?  Understand that there is no compensation for this – pursuing the issue will result in a greater loss of productivity.  Your time will be better spent finding a new provider.

What do you think?  What have your experiences with bad service/expectations mojo?  Had you been quick to change providers or did you work with them to work it out?  Did you ever have a provider whose cost was much greater than the benefit?  What did you do?

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.

Someone once said to me that people come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime.  As I thought about that – especially in relation to the businesses I have built over the years and the shaping of what has made me who I am, I began to think in terms of a much bigger picture that my individual existence.  The are several belief to take into consideration in order to follow the thought process:

• Everything that exists has a purpose for existing; no interaction or opportunity is without forethought and nothing that will happen is unplanned.  This holds true with the theory of intelligent design.
• There is balance in everything – for all that is good, there is evil, and vice versa.  For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction – Sir Isaac Newton
• Life is much larger than existence on an individual level; the contribution an individual makes may not come back directly to that individual, but rather, makes life as a whole better for everyone who exists (similar in thought to the butterfly effect.)

Given these theories, the following can be offered:

• Reason – people come through your life and make the sort of impact that is penetrating.  They aren’t in your life for a long time, but you never forget the impact that was made – whether for good or for evil.  Tornadoes have had that effect on people.
• Season – people come into your life and walk down that path of life with you for a time.  One of the challenges that many of us face is that we don’t know how to continue or to let go after investing in someone for a season – or being invested in for a season.  Many times, we are sad or disappointed by the change.  However, if we look carefully, we’ll see that the change brings about new opportunity.  If you think about it like a seed, a seed must die in order for something new to grow.  Sometimes, relationships will die…to gain from that, you’ve got to keep moving.
• Lifetime – these are the people who are with you through thick and thin.  These are your partners who help you make the world a little bit better each day.  Even if you don’t co-exist in the same place, you know that the two of you can count on one another for a lifetime.  Our parents and our children are often like that.  Know that, still, lifetimes end, often before we are ready for them to.  Nevertheless, we’ve got to keep on moving.

While change is hard, there are always things to be thankful for. There are always opportunities to be optimistic, look at things on the bright side or find the silver lining.  Just like there have been people in your life who were there for a reason, a season or a lifetime, you are in others’ lives, making the same impacts.  While you are there, make a point to make an extraordinary impact.  make a difference.  Enrich their lives.  While it may not impact your life, directly, it will certainly make the world a better place.

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.

Now that you’ve gotten your car – would you refuse to invest any more into it?  Would you refuse to put gas in it because, well, we all know that after a while, the gas will run out?  Would you refuse to do oil changes.  I mean, heck!  It’s just going to need another one in 3,000 – 5,000 miles, right?

With your car, you understand that there are going to be things that you are going to have to invest in so that the car will continue to run and serve you for a long time.  Your business is no different.  In order to keep in running, you have to be willing to make the investments to keep it running.  Sometimes, like with your car, there are going to be your simple maintenance activities – lights, phones, pay employees, etc. 

However, there are also going to be larger expenditures that you may have to find other sources of money for.  Like your car, for it to continue to operate past milestones – 30,000 miles, 60,000 miles, 100,000 miles and so forth, you are going to have to make some larger investments – that are going to be risky, in order to stay on track.

Know that your business does not operate in a bubble.  There are dozens of companies that do exactly what you do for the exact same market you do it for.  What will often give you or them competitive advantage (like investing in a turbo charger, for example) is going to what you put back into the company – advertising & promotion, knowledge, machinery, strategic alliances, etc., that make the output for your company that much greater.  Thinking that you can keep your purse-strings tight and get the results you are looking for is analogous to the vehicle upgrade that allows your car to hover above traffic – while not completely out of the realm of possibilities – pretty far fetched, at best.

IMPORTANT!!  Investing in your business isn’t a haphazard “throw some money at it and it will be all better” activity.  That only works for teenagers.  and only sometimes!

Smart investing takes into consideration both risk and return:

• What could go wrong if I make this investment?
• What could go wrong if I don’t make this investment?
• Which can I handle and how much of it can I handle?
• What benefits/outcomes should I expect as a result of this?
• In what time period should I expect these results?
• What is my backup plan if things go awry?

You’ve got to think it through – not just what could go wrong, but what could go right and how right it could go.  This is foundational for strategic planning.

As an extraordinary business leader, you cannot afford to be afraid to invest in your business.  It will not grow, otherwise.  You will simply continue to exist and never reach the potential you and your company have.

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.

Many times, as business leaders, we take the short route of gathering all that we can – thinking from a survivalist mentality.  Everything tends to be about “amass as much wealth as quickly as possible, spending as little as possible and putting as little work as possible into it.”  Seems to make sense.  Seems like that if you hook into the right program or system or niche, you will be on easy street for the rest of your life.

The problem is – it’s been done before.  People have been pitching these lame, short-thinking ideas to people for as long as people could communicate.  Consider this, every “fall of mankind” story ever read had to do with someone taking the shortcut or the easy way out.

When you move out of the space of desperation, you begin to open your mind to think about how to become extraordinary.  Simply stated – part of what makes it extraordinary is that most people won’t do it.  It will be a nice idea, an academic thought, or some lame sales tactic.  However, for those that pursue it, put the time, the effort and the work into it, the results will be so much greater than a paycheck – although foundational for the business are profitable business practices.

Some might say that this is just an example of the Protestant Work Ethic.  Perhaps this is true.  Guess what: it works.  The practice simply states that you should work hard, save money and support your communities.

Clarity for your business should be given to why you are working.  Is it actually for the money?  Is it a life style?  Certain things that are on the list above food, clothing a shelter, perhaps?  So – you are doing whatever it is that you do, you are making money so that you can gain all of these things – and suddenly things change.  What do you do?  You’ve pretty much defined yourself by what you do, what your lifestyle is, etc.

The current economy teaches us that this is short-term thinking.  It teaches us that by defining ourselves by our work or by our things leaves us without a sense of self when those things are taken away.  This is why the country is in a depression.  Most of us have nothing to do with Wall Street, when our banks closed, our money was moved to another one, when things got challenging, we made adjustments.  While it was tough, we found ways to make it through – just as our parents did through other recessions.

Thinking different says that we think about who we are, what we do and why.  We give our work and our businesses a long-view.  We don’t think in terms of “running through the city, grabbing as much as we can then getting away safely,” as an old story about a young thief describes.  We think differently: we join the city and enjoy all the benefits of being part of a sustainable community.

Be extraordinary.  Think differently.  Run an 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 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.

It isn’t until you have you have done the work – created a very specific strategy crafted to invoke a predictable response from a vast majority of a specific target audience that your tweets might make a difference.  Such as, “Free Chicken Sandwiches from Chick-Fil-A,” or “FaceBook is charging membership fees??”

Your business is no different.  Just because you open the doors with something to sell doesn’t mean that you are going to having a booming business next week, next year or in the next five years.  Organic Growth doesn’t mean that the business grows on its own.  Just like a Twitter strategy or a growing a plant, you have to do the work to create the ideal scenario for that growth.  You must also realize that there are no absolutes – things can still go wrong or not go as planned.

What we do in order to increase the possibility of success and reduce the risk of failure is to plan.  This doesn’t necessarily mean that you will have a 150 page business plan with mock growth models based on qualitative and quantitative analysis (not suggesting that models are bad – sometimes they are too expensive and impractical!  When it is appropriate – by all means, do it!).  What it means is that you take the time to understand what is going on around you – your market, your industry, your finances, goals, expectations, etc.

As a consultant, the business leaders I work with have unique products and seek to grow extraordinary businesses, in a number of different arenas.  While they have established themselves as viable from a product or service standpoint, they typically have the following gaps in their businesses:

• Lack of clear direction – they’ve gotten the product or service to market, but have no idea what they want to do next.  They often lose sight of their vision, give into the pressures of “reality” and put all of their energy into just surviving.
• No budget or financial controls – budgetary or financial controls not only tell you how well you are doing, but enable you to PLAN for purchases you may wish to make at a later time, such as investment in marketing, upgrade of equipment or engagement of a new service
• No rationale behind decision making – decisions are often emotion or cash based.  Emotional decisions are done, “because I feel like that is the right thing to do for right now.”  Cash based decisions are “let’s get the cheapest thing that will do the minimum job.”  Evaluating the situation, opportunities and the big picture may often mean that the same decision doesn’t have to be twice, which is often what happens
• Fear – Cash is often the chief instigator when it comes to fear.  Growth requires inputs.  The level of growth desired often correlates with the amount of cash put into the business.  Not suggesting that simply throwing cash at the business will result in growth, but the lack of it, limiting the businesses access to capital will often limit the business’s ability to grow.  Other fears include partnerships, tough conversations, growth, outsourcing…etc.  Fear cripples.
• No duplicate-able processes – If you do the same thing more than once, write down how you do it so you don’t have to figure it out all over again the next time you do it.  No brainer.  However, the other thing you can do if you write it down is to evaluate the process to see if it makes sense, and you can look at what components of the process you can outsource.
• No repeatable revenue generation tools – this is the biggest problem.  Getting the product to the market is usually not the problem.  Planning out how many people or companies need to be touched, how often and in what way is usually not in place.  This is like making sure that you know where the next gas station is when you are on a long trip.  If your car has a 400 mile range and the next gas station is 500 miles away by the route you’ve created, you are in trouble
• No tracking system – Tracking systems not only tell you how you are doing (give you a pulse), but they also help you to predict what is going to happen in the future, given that certain inputs remain constant.  For example, when you evaluate sales activities you can learn more about the ebbs and flows of your business, how certain marketing activities affect your sales (positively or negatively!), etc.

Fortunately, all of these can be overcome, and, once done, we can focus on building an extraordinary business.  Nevertheless, getting there – especially on a tight budget – requires a clear plan of action and taking action to make sure that they happen.  Growth doesn’t happen by accident.  Luck – being in the right place at the right time – is only part of the equation.  The other part of it is being ready.

Be Extraordinary – plan for growth.

Aepiphanni Business Consulting: The Business Strategy People is an Operations Management and Business Strategy Consulting Firm dedicated to serving the needs of small to medium sized business leaders. We specialize in helping leaders create extraordinary businesses. 

We welcome clients in the personal and professional services industries, including Creative and Design Services, Software & IT Services, Professional Services and Specialty Consumer Services.  As always, we welcome your comments, thoughts, questions and suggestions. 

If you are seeking a business assessment, or have further questions about creating your strategy or developing your vision, please give me, Rick Meekins, a call at 678-265-3908, or email us at info@aepiphanni.com.