“How Do I Grow My Business” – The Big Question
Over my career I have worked with a lot of business owners, and if there is something they all have in common it is their desire to grow. There is nothing wrong with this. Growth is a perfectly acceptable thing to want for your business. In fact, you would almost expect growth to automatically happen for a good business, wouldn’t you? If the order books are looking good, and everyone is busy, then growth surely must follow. Yet one of the most common reasons people call me is because they recognise growth isn’t happening or when it is happening, it is too slow or worse still, it is a seesaw of ups and downs.
Something must be wrong somewhere, mustn’t it?
Is a lack of growth a sign of a bad business?
No, not necessarily. In fact, the opposite is often true, and I frequently find myself working with really very good businesses. One of the first things that you need to accept if you want to grow is that your business actually probably doesn’t have anything fundamentally wrong with it. Surprisingly I often find this is hard for people to admit. Maybe we automatically attribute not achieving our goals in business with failure, but honestly, they are not the same thing. If you are doing OK and making enough money to stay in the game as well as make a living wage, then clearly this isn’t about a failure in the business.
So, what is happening that is stopping those good, hard-working, perfectly functioning businesses from expanding?
What is preventing their owners from reaching their goals?
Most importantly, why can’t they seem to do anything about it?
Usually, the answer is a simple one. It is that they are not making enough money. I know, that seems glib and obvious, but my experience is that many business owners just lose track of where the money is and what it is doing.
That is where I come in. My job is to work with you to give you a solid perspective on how you can make your business profitable and then we implement it, so you make more money.
Seeing comes first
Let’s look at the most common approach to getting your business to earn more money. To be clear from the start, I work with facts. I am a very nice person (well I think so anyway) and we will work together on this, but I am not a business coach, I am not a lifestyle guru, I am not a time management trainer, and I am certainly not your mum! I am there initially to get a precise picture of where your income comes from, what you spend and what your pricing structure is. You probably already think you know all this but invariably, this part throws up some surprises that give us a good starting point.
Once I can see where the money comes from and where it goes, we can move on.
Understanding comes next
This is where I really come into my own. There is a very big difference between seeing the numbers and translating what you see into actions. Again, for clarity, I am not an accountant. They do a very different job and have a different approach to me. An accountant is looking to make your tax, VAT, balance sheet and other paraphernalia of accounting, as financially attractive as possible. The job of your accountant often ends when your accounts are completed in a favourable way. What we are looking to do is a very different approach because we want to take your current position and then look at it realistically. We are looking at your ongoing, operational strategy not the end of year summation.
Examining how your business operates is usually where the really big surprises appear. I have yet to go through this process with a business owner and not have several ‘lightbulb’ moments. This part often means a pricing review. No, I will go further, you will almost certainly need to do a pricing review.
Next, we improve things
Most managers first reaction when looking for ways to stimulate growth is to try and sell more. Selling more is only a solution if you make more money because of it. Frequently I find what is actually needed is a way to release more of the money already flowing through the business.
There is rather a lot more to it in practical terms but, in a nutshell, the last stage is to implement a plan that takes into account all our new understanding. We take all those things that are working, and we find ways to make them work better. We increase your profits; we reduce your costs, and then we implement an ongoing strategy to make sure that continues to happen.
The final ingredient in all this is a willingness on your part to engage with me. That means you need to be able to look at your business in the cold light of day and see it differently. Once you have done this, and we know exactly where the money is, we can go forward, and I can do what I love doing the most.
I can help you make more money.