Posted by Martin Harshberger on Mon, Apr 05, 2010 @ 09:44 AM
I've been saying that accountability is absolutely necessay for better bottom line results. I've also been preaching that accountability starts at the top. I ran accross an article written by a collegue that says essentially the same thing. It's nice to see some support in this area.
Follow the link to the article.
http://www.leadershiparticles.net/Article/The-ACCOUNTABILITY-Challenge-for-Today-s-Business-Management/816
If you found this article helpful you may want to download our free whitepaper, "How to Recession Proof Your Business".
Posted by Martin Harshberger on Tue, Mar 16, 2010 @ 03:52 PM
I know this sounds obvious, but I’m working with four clients at the present time that have flat or decreasing sales over the past three years. While there are great economic reasons to justify slow or no sales growth it doesn’t change the equation.
Fuel costs, utilities, health care costs, are all rising, if sales don’t rise in the form of price increases or increasing the top line the only thing left to do is reduce internal costs. This is not an infinite source of dollars however and sooner or later you hit critical mass and cost reductions are no longer an option.
The clients I’m working with have all done a great job of reducing internal costs and have thus far weathered the storm. Now it’s time to put the focus on using their recently developed efficiencies to drive sales.
In an expanding economy it’s much easier to increase sales, dollars are flowing and everyone’s buying. How do you increase sales in a slow economy?
Remember the equation above doesn’t care if the economy is slow or not, so when you reach the point where you can no longer cut costs you either increase sales or go out of business. What do you do if the economy isn’t optimum?
You have to get innovative. You need to offer more value for the price than your competitors. Customers today are more knowledgeable and better informed than ever. You need to use this fact to your advantage.
Your sales strategy must be an integral part of your overall strategy, it can’t sit out there on it’s own and be low price one week and high service level another.
Decide who your customer is, what niche you will serve and align your internal cost structure, your compensation, your human resources to best support that niche. Become the subject matter expert, the obvious choice for your goods or services.
You need to be able to answer the question “with all of the goods and services available to my customer, why would they buy from me?”
Better sales results start with better strategic planning and are supported by marketing and execution.
If you found this article helpful you may want to download our free whitepaper, "How to Recession Proof Your Business".
Posted by Martin Harshberger on Sat, Mar 13, 2010 @ 03:14 PM
I had a very interesting conversation this week with a potential client about risk. This person was an entrepreneur in the true sense, in that he had built several businesses successfully, and ultimately failed at one. He went through a personal bankruptcy, started over working in a sales position, made a small fortune and recently quit the lucrative and secure sales job to work full time in another startup that he is currently self funding.
Since we both had the pleasure and experience of laying it all on the line through personal guarantees and risking our entire net worth on startup ventures multiple times we had a common platform from which to access risk.
His comment to me during the discussion was “most people could not live with the level of risk we accepted”. I thought about that afterward and he’s probably right. Most people are content working for someone else and letting them take the risk. However most small to mid-sized business owners and CEO’s accept risk as part of the price to play the game. How they deal with that risk however varies greatly.
Personal guarantees on bank loans and lines of credit are a fact of life for the small to mid-sized guy. Often between cash invested in order to satisfy other investors that you have “skin in the game”, and guarantees to lenders to “insure you’re committed”, they have most, if not all, of their net worth on the line.
Thinking back over my 35 years It seems that the successful ones are those that develop an attitude that they cannot fail, and do whatever is necessary to make the business work. Those that fall by the wayside are those that are slow to move and deal with issues, sometimes even the obvious ones. They both often have the same level of stress and risk they just deal with it differently.
The successful ones met issues head on. Even when they didn’t know how to resolve them, they asked for help, tried different things and ultimately figured it out. They seemed to accept the old adage “bad news doesn’t get better with age”.
They seem to have figured out that dealing with stress effectively is a direct path to better bottom line results.
It seems the unsuccessful ones dealt with stress and risk differently. They often ignore obvious problems and stay busy with the day-to-day things they can control.
They hope these issues will go away on their own. They are reluctant to ask for help because many are afraid that accepting change means they were wrong in what they were doing. As I thought about this further I reflected on experiences I’ve had with clients and can think of numerous specific examples of these two scenarios.
How is your business doing? Are you satisfied with the direction you’re going and the results you’re getting? Take that question one step further how are you dealing with the stress associated with the risks you’re taking? Then ask yourself what am I going to do about it?
If you found this article helpful you may want to download our free whitepaper, "How to Recession Proof Your Business".
Posted by Martin Harshberger on Wed, Nov 18, 2009 @ 03:02 PM
My first book, “Bottom Line Focus” has just been added to Amazon. It should be available from them in about a week. It took me well over a year to complete and it’s something I’ve wanted to do for years. I have experienced much over my career and I really feel strongly that many of today’s business issues are common among businesses and industries. I see the same things over and over, if I can help a company succeed and save jobs it really will have been all worth it.
My thoughts are we as a society are losing our leadership edge. There certainly aren’t many positive examples being shown us on a daily basis, but it doesn’t change the fact that leadership starts with each of us. Before you can lead others you must effectively lead yourself. Accountability and results start with each of us.
If you found this article helpful you may want to download our free whitepaper, "How to Recession Proof Your Business".