Tag Archive for: Business Planning

Business Strategies for Christmas and New Year: A Guide for Small to Medium Enterprises

As the festive season approaches, the small to medium business sector (SMBs) face unique challenges and opportunities. The period leading up to Christmas and the New Year is crucial for maintaining momentum, managing resources, and ensuring a successful transition into the new year. This article outlines essential areas that SMBs should focus on to position themselves effectively for both the silly season and the year beyond.

Must-Do Strategies for Christmas

1. Manage Cash Flow

Cash flow management is paramount during this period. Increased consumer spending can lead to higher sales, but it can also strain your finances if not monitored
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Unlocking Growth: The Importance of Customer Market Focus

Who are your customers & what do they want from you?

These are two simple questions which many businesses struggle to be able to define.

If you don’t know who your customer is, then it is impossible for you to maximise your business potential, because you won’t fully understand their needs and you could be leaving sales opportunities on the table.

Even worse, if you don’t understand your customer type, then you are oblivious to the fact that they may be on the path to extinction – which means….that your business may only be a few steps behind.… Read More

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Navigating Business Risks in the Festive Season

As we take the run into Christmas, most business are focused on getting things finished so they can wind down for a bit of R ’n‘ R over the Christmas & New Year period. Naturally, those in Retail are still geared up until after the post Christmas sales and Hospitality, will run hard until the holidays finish, but….there is another group who are gearing up for a busy holiday season.

This group, would officially be on the “naughty list”, as this group have only one objective – to rob you.

What’s normally left off the pre-Christmas “to do … Read More

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Beyond the Easy Option: Why You Should Consider More

In a world where speed appears to be everything, often the compromise that is made is to take the generic or easy option. This has become so common in business, that the generic option is often the only one put forward – whereas there is generally many ways to skin a cat.

Now whilst I have no issue with a simple, cheap option when you can get it – the critical point is ensuring that it’s the right option.

When you are next looking for a solution to a problem or need – pause for a moment to … Read More

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A 9-Point Test for Evaluating Viable Product Ideas

We have all had them, the “business epiphanies” or “golden ideas” which come to us over the weekend whilst swinging a golf club, doing laps in the pool or just mowing the grass. In the moment….. these new product or service ideas are the perfect combination of simplicity, profitability and marketing brilliance.

By Monday morning these moments of creative thinking have….started to tarnish….with some more considered thought seeing a gap or two appear. By Wednesday, most of these ideas have been discounted and by Friday, are all but forgotten.

Would we have been better off not having … Read More

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Clear Business Process + Strong Execution = Great Savings

Regardless of whether you are selling burgers to a young family with three tired kids or producing “O” rings for the space program – there is always a cost when your process fails – it’s just the magnitude that varies.

For a minute, let’s consider the more trivial of these two examples and look at the world through the lens of a parent with three children under 10. It is a warm day, the kids have been running wild all morning and at 2pm, it’s going to be a late lunch.

You place your order at the local fast food … Read More

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When Good Times Go Bad: Navigating Challenges in Business

How much risk are you carrying in your business – do you know……and what are you doing about it?

Someone once explained Operational Risk to me as the classic, ‘good times gone bad’ situation, where one or more of the things which have made the business successful, suddenly go wrong – and often….very wrong!

Perhaps a clearer or simpler description of operational risk is; a failure in the people, internal processes or systems of the business, or an external event that could have financial or reputation impacts.

For a typical SME business this could look like –

    • Poor password
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Navigating Business Growth Costs Effectively

Often the objective of most businesses is SALES GROWTH, but it comes at a cost…. so the real question is – how growth ready is your business?

A basic principle of business is to generate sales (product or services) to return a profit. The natural flow on from this is to generate more sales to achieve a greater profit – but…what does this take and how prepared is your business for growth?

Listed below are five key ingredients required for successful sales growth;

Personnel

Increasing sales invariably requires more of your personnel, whether it be in the creation, … Read More

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The ‘One More Thing’ for Achieving Business Success

Whether it be in sport or business, the difference between success and failure can often be simply doing one more thing than the competition. The extra phone call, one more prototype, another sales approach, an additional quality check, a larger focus group, an extra tier of service etc etc…..any of these can be the secret ingredient to business success.

A few qualifiers;

– know your competition as this will provide some form of benchmark. This is not to say that your competition is setting the right pace, but as a minimum it provides a starting point.

– work from … Read More

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New Year’s Resolutions for Business Success in the Coming Year

The start of the new year is traditionally when we pledge resolutions for the New Year ahead – resolutions around how we are going to do things differently…do things better and often…..change a bad habit from last year.

So in lifting the bar for a better outcome, why not make some positive differences for your business at the same time – by making some New Year Business Pledges. 

But where, how, doing what?

Over the past year we have met and worked with many different businesses – small ones, large ones, ones with only a couple of staff and then … Read More

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The Importance of Having a Business Plan: Avoiding Failure

“Fail to plan is planning to fail” – Winston Churchill.

Even though this well used line receives universal acceptance in conversation……. few businesses “walk the talk”.

If fact, based on a number of recent business reviews it’s obvious that more planning goes into an overseas holiday, than many business owners put into planning for the success of their business.

Few businesses were actively “not planning”, with the majority either not having the time or seeing it as a low yield activity. This finding did not just apply across business planning, but equally to marketing, employees, sales and cashflow … Read More

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Identifying Surefire Business Killers: Strategies for Prevention

Operating a business has its challenges due to the many and varied issues drawing on the owners time – people, product, sales, collections, just to name a few. Thus it’s no wonder that many business owners operate “in” rather than “on” their business – which has its dangers.

Heading the list of dangers is the loss of sight of the “whole of business” picture, because as the business owner, you are too close to just one element. It’s like falling in love with the look of a shiny red sports car because that’s all you see – whereas if … Read More

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Playing Business Decisions Forward Three Hands: A Strategic Approach

Many strategies and decisions are made “in the moment” – considering only todays issues with little thought given to the flow on effects or impacts.

Consider for a moment what this could look like in a practical business context;

Problem: Business is going well with a large volume of short term contracts driving the existing business resources very hard.

Solution: Hire some additional staff to do the excess work – problem solved!

At a high level the problem is solved, as the problem of having too much work for the existing staff has been covered by bringing … Read More

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