Tag: Business Planning

Author: Stewart Clark

Who is your customer (or client), and 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 […]

Author: Stewart Clark

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 […]

Author: Stewart Clark

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 […]

Author: Stewart Clark

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 […]

Author: Stewart Clark

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 […]

Author: Stewart Clark

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 […]

Author: Stewart Clark

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 […]

Author: Stewart Clark

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 […]

Author: Stewart Clark

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 – […]

Author: Stewart Clark

“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”, […]

Author: Stewart Clark

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 […]

Author: Stewart Clark

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 […]