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#7: Generating business leads

Last time we looked at the second key challenge – Behaviours and Attributes. This time we will look at the third one – Lead Generation.

It is very important that you can identify and then work to develop the ingredients necessary to generate the number of leads you will need to achieve your financial targets.

The first of the key ingredients relates to your Sales Process. Do you have a process that quite simply will turn strangers into cash in the bank? You will need to be able to qualify in the business you want and qualify out the business you do not want. Otherwise you run the risk that you expend too much time and energy on potential timewasters and potential bad debts.

One additional benefit is that the qualification process should remove all the reasons for not doing the deal, and so asking for the business is a less scary prospect. We will return to consider this in more detail in a later article.

The second ingredient is Routes to Market. How many do you have? You will certainly have more than one. They could include:

  • Direct – i.e. you make the contact yourself
  • Indirect – someone refers the business to you (probably in the hope that he or she would then feel motivated to return the favour)
  • Introducer – someone refers the business to you and you pay them some form of finder’s or introducer’s fee
  • Partner – you team up with someone else so that together you can win business neither of you could win on your own.
  • Networking – you build relationships either at formal networking events or trade fairs/seminars/conferences where you have an opportunity to network

The third ingredient is Networking itself. How much do you do? Is it the right events and with the right people? Can you create your own network rather than relying on those created by others? Again, we will revisit this in a subsequent article.

So, give some thought to where your leads are going to come from, as you may need more than you think to hit an acceptable conversion ratio from lead to client.

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#7: Managing change

Managing change in a big organisation is fraught with disaster. It’s not necessarily any easier in a young growing business.  If you are the founder it starts with you. How do you feel about hiring other people and letting go? Do you trust other people to do the job as well as you? How do you feel about hiring people who are smarter than you? How do you feel about the possibility of managing “on” the business as opposed to “in” it? All tricky questions, but ones that you need to address if you are going to achieve the sustainable profitable growth for which you are striving. All tricky questions that David Mellor Mentoring is prepared to help you solve.

One key issue that arises quite quickly is keeping track of everything in your own head – as the founder and “boss” you knew everything, but all of a sudden it’s hard to know personally every prospect, client, or supplier. How do you keep tabs on everything?

There are probably four areas you need to look at:

  • People
  • Structure
  • Process
  • Technology

People in a growing business

Firstly – people. It starts with you. In terms of Emotional Intelligence and Self-Awareness, how are you placed to lead by example in terms of embracing change? Can you adapt your behaviour to help others cope with change when they prefer stability? Are they as excited as you are about changes in pace, responsibility, and overall structure?

If your staff are not “on the bus” with you then it is going to be very difficult if not impossible, so how will you make it happen? Your communication with them will be vital. The failure of many change initiatives is attributed in whole, or in part, to failures in communications.

Structure in a growing business

In terms of structure, how do you need to be organised to make the business scalable and capable of sustainable profitable growth? You need to be constantly thinking about the structure you need to get through today, and at the same time the structure you need to get you to the next level. How can you become, and remain, both efficient and effective?  It is important to work back from the client perspective – how do you ensure client no. 100 enjoys the same level of client service as client no. 1?

Process in a growing business

Process is very important. You know you have “cracked it” when your key staff tell new joiners “This is the way we do stuff around here”. Processes and procedures for winning clients (sales) and making them happy (delivery) need to be documented and regularly updated.

Technology in a growing business

And then there is technology. This is particularly important if your business model is “low cost” as opposed to “differentiation” or “niche” where using technology to automate may be less critical. Technology can help you streamline tasks so that your operating margins are at worst sustained and hopefully improved.

Something we will revisit is attitude to change – how do you feel about it and how do your staff feel about it? We will come back to this in a future article. In the meantime you might want to check out PRISM – a very useful tool for assessing this for a leader, and a team. Either contact them directly, or contact me and I will explain what they do.

Posted in: Growing Businesses

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#6: Behaviours and attributes

We have looked in earlier articles at an overall framework for building a successful sole practitioner consultancy practice, which included 3 key aspects of the consultancy role, the first of which was Key Challenges. Last time, we looked at the first challenge – Credibility. This time we will look at Behaviours and Attributes.

I am indebted to Alan Weiss, who explores this topic in some depth in his excellent Book “Getting Started in Consulting”.

He highlights a number of crucial attributes:

  • Humour – can you use it to retain perspective and objectivity?
  • Influence – can you command a room and persuade individuals?
  • Confidence – can you be seen as a credible peer, as opposed to a vendor?
  • Fearlessness – can you stand your ground and turn work down?
  • Rapid Framing – can you summarise key issues very quickly so the prospect knows that you have listened well and understand his/her problem?
  • Value Generation – can you add value very quickly so that the prospect can appreciate your potential?
  • Intellect – powerful people love powerful people, so can you come over as powerful?
  • Active Listening – can you live out the doctrine of “two ears, one mouth, use in that proportion”?
  • Instantiation – can you work at the prospect’s “ground level”, rather than hovering at 35,000 feet?
  • Responsiveness – how fast can you respond to prospect, even if just with an acknowledgement; can you make them feel special?

If you can apply most, if not all, of these attributes, then you can put the odds in your favour that the prospect sees your value and can appreciate the potential benefit of an association with you. If you would like to talk about the qualities, please contact me.

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#7: Personal qualities part one: Integrity

There is a full list of suggested qualities in From Crew to Captain, but there are some traits that I consider to be particularly important.

The first of these is Integrity. Irrespective of what you call your business, you and it are joined at the hip from day one. And as in all walks of life, it takes a long time to build a positive reputation, but you can lose it in a heartbeat.

My dear old dad use to say “treat others like you expect to be treated” and that really rings true in running your own business.

Corporations talk about values and principles, and that should hold good for you; it is important that you live out your personal code of conduct in your business, and build a reputation based around trust and reliability. You do not want to have a reputation for:

  • Promising something then failing to follow up or deliver
  • Turning up late for meetings, or not turning up at all
  • Being a difficult (as opposed to tough) negotiator
  • Being a bad payer

 

So integrity is vital in my work and it will be in yours.

If you are interested in the question of integrity, why not take a ‘moral DNA test’ at www.moraldna.org

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#6: What do YOU want for yourself and the business?

As we draw to the end of this section on how far you have travelled on your journey, and what the world looks like, it is time to make sure that whatever plans you make for the business are 100% “in sync” with what you want for yourself.

A good place to start is your values and beliefs. I think it is important that the business reflects what is important to you, and checking that this is and will remain the case is an important part of you being able to live out your personal code of conduct every day.

Question one for yourself might be “what do I want out of the business”, or “what do I want to achieve”? Examples might be:

  • “I want to be financially independent in 10 years”
  • “I want to help small businesses make the right choices in their IT procurement”
  • “I want to position the business so that I can sell it in 7 years time and use the proceeds to help me contribute to a philanthropic cause that is dear to my heart”

Once you know what you are aiming for, and in what timescale, you can begin to plan how you are going to achieve your personal goals.

Question two might be “what business am I in, and what business do I want to be in?” The way you phrase your answer is quite important, and will influence the way you market yourself going forward. In my case, I never say I am a consultant, or that I offer consultancy services. Rather I tend to say that I help owner-managers make more money and work less hours, thereby focusing on the benefits I believe I can bring to them.

Question three links back to the first question, namely “what am I in business for?”. Your answer could include something internal (i.e. for you) and external (for the community) e.g. “To leverage my skills and experience doing what I enjoy most (helping SMEs develop their brand) so that my clients get measurable results they wouldn’t otherwise get; being paid fairly for what I do so that I can retire in 5 years time, and feeling fulfilled in the process. “

Question four would be about what the business stands for. You may want to capture just 3 statements that say a lot about you and what is important to you:

  • “We will always use ethically sourced materials”
  • “We will sometimes work over the weekend if we genuinely believe that in doing so we are making a difference to our client”
  • “We will never take on work where we have a doubt about our suitability to do the work”

Two final questions will complete the set:

  • “Who are our clients?” – the more precise you can be about who your customers are, the more you can fine-tune your message so that you find this audience and they hear/see what you do and understand that it is for them.
  • “What makes us distinctive?” – what differentiates you from your competitors, that makes you unique in some way, and is something that your clients value? N.B. you will need to keep this under regular review to check that your clients still value your distinctive offering.

Having addressed these questions, you are in a position to make 2 high-level statements, one about your core objective and the strategy associated with it. One of the best examples I have come across, which I have amended a little, was for a wealth management firm:

1. Their objective was “to become the provider of choice to high net worth individuals in London…..”

2. Their strategy to achieve this was “….by building trusted relationship and exceeding client expectations”

I encourage you to take this approach, and commit this to paper in the fewest words possible.

Finally, as we have already covered, the business is going to change, and your role is going to change with it. This is an ideal time to hold up the mirror and identify where your behavioural strengths are, and where you could most use help. I heard a great quote recently: ”leverage your strengths, and delegate your weaknesses”. It sums up the exercise you will need to go through quite well. PRISM is a great profiling tool to help you with this vital exercise. Take a look at www.prismbrainmapping.com.

We are now ready to start looking at how we are going to achieve the transformation.

Posted in: Growing Businesses

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#5: Credibility

At David Mellor Mentoring we have looked in earlier articles at an overall framework for building a successful sole practitioner consultancy practice. We will now begin to look at the different component parts of the framework in a little more detail.

We began by looking at the 3 constituent elements of the framework:

  • The Consultant Role
  • Selling Consultancy Services
  • Delivering Consultancy Services

We then considered the 3 key aspects of the consultancy role:

  • Key Challenges
  • Business Models
  • Success Factors

Drilling down to the next level 3 Key Challenges were identified:

  • Credibility
  • Behaviour
  • Lead Generation

In this article we will consider the first of these – Credibility.

First comes Sector Knowledge – can you establish your credibility around your knowledge of an industry sector, be it in the public, private or third sector e.g. health, education, biotech, insurance?

Second there is Product or Service Knowledge – do you have specialist knowledge around a product, service, topic, process?

Third aspect is Publishing – have you had any research, articles or books published?

Fourthly there is Commentating – are you asked to comment on issues or situations, or do you choose to by way of social media output and interaction?

Finally there is Presenting – are you invited to speak at networking events, trade fairs, seminars and so on? Or perhaps you are invited to sit on panels.

So, how do you score overall, and are there areas here where you could increase your involvement and thereby enhance your “expert” status?

Next time we will look at behaviours. In the meantime work on your credibility! Quite a lot to think about, but do feel free to contact me if you would like to know more.

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#6: Motivators

Let’s take stock for a minute. Why would you want to do this? Are we all individually or collectively mad even thinking of setting up our own businesses?

Do you really want to give up the security of a regular, predictable salary? How do you feel about having to work to a survival budget until your business is fully functional?

It might help you to reflect on some of the reasons. Let’s consider a couple of these in more detail.

  • Firstly fulfilment; something I have seen over the last eight years is that people get a massive buzz and a sense of fulfilment out of having an idea, getting it onto paper, and then proving to themselves that they can actually go and do it.

The money is almost secondary; I stress almost secondary! Proving to yourself that you don’t need a big organisation and that you can do it on your own is hugely fulfilling.

  • Secondly, flexibility. This one is very important to me. My daughter, who is now 22, was 13 when I started my own business. She is a very talented athlete. At the age of 12 she was playing senior ladies hockey; put a stick in her hand and she is frightening!

She went on to captain club, school and county; she also played at university, both at Durham and at the University of California. A number of her matches were during the week, when I could be in Singapore, or New York, but certainly not in downtown Reigate.

All of a sudden now, if I could organise my diary, I could take the afternoon off. If that meant I had to work in the evening or part of the weekend, that was my call – I was the boss!

There is no better feeling as a parent than watching one of your kids doing something that they really enjoy and excel at. It is something you can’t put a price on financially, so this benefit became really important to me.

  • Thirdly, exploiting a gap. Now most people going down this route will probably either be doing something differently or better than current providers. Occasionally you will find someone who will be exploiting a gap. From Crew to Captain includes a detailed case study of one such individual.

 Our interviews showed that these were the three most common motivators

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#5: Taking stock

So you recognise that things have got to change. But where do you begin? A good way to start is by taking stock of where you are.

You may want to start with some relatively generic questions:

  • How do we define what we do?
  • What do we excel at?
  • What do our customers value?
  • What is our reputation?
  • Who are our customers?
  • How do we define success?
  • What measurements of success do we use?

Then you could move on to take a high-level look at your headline financials, in particular the trend over the last 3 years in turnover, profit before tax, and cashflow. In terms of turnover and profit, how did your results compare to your forecasts, and do you understand the reasons for any gaps between what you expected to happen and what actually happened? In terms of cashflow, how did you fare managing your creditors and debtors?

Next would come a review of your products or services. You may want to create a little table like the one below, which will help you with your analysis. This may in due course force some hard decisions about which parts of the portfolio you keep, and which you downscale or discontinue.

DMM_01

It would be helpful to adopt the same procedure for your customers. Again, the table below may help you do this. One additional aspect you may want to consider is how profitable you think each customer is, bearing in mind your biggest client is not necessarily your most profitable. Are there any trends to analyse as far as client winning and client retention is concerned? Furthermore, did you receive any testimonials from happy clients, and did you have to deal with any complaints?

DMM_02

There are four areas left to consider:

  • Firstly, if you have any staff, how successful have you been at hiring the right people?  Are you comfortable with the interview process? What is the trend in staff turnover? Also, how would you fare in an HR Audit – would you be HR best practice, HR compliant, or worse…!
  • Secondly, who are you dependent on in terms of external suppliers, service-providers and associates; how strategically important are they to you, and how well are they performing for you? Again, this could prompt some decisions.
  • Thirdly, who are your competitors, and how do you stack up against them? What strengths do they have that you can learn from, and what weaknesses do they have that you can exploit?
  • Finally, what lessons have you learned on your journey to date?  Based on these lessons, what can you keep the same and/or develop, and what do you need to change, start or stop? It may help you to do this using a SWOT analysis – what are the top 5 Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats in your business, and what action should you contemplate based on the analysis? How good you are at Marketing and Sales might feature here.

Armed with this information you are well-placed to consider next steps, which begin with what you actually want to achieve and where you want to take the business.

Posted in: Growing Businesses

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#4: Part Four: Delivering consultancy services

In the previous article I outlined the second of the 3 constituent components of the consultancy framework, namely Selling Consultancy Services. This time I will do the same for the third constituent component, namely Delivering Consultancy Services.

In terms of Delivering Consultancy Services, you will recall that you would firstly concentrate on retaining high value clients; you would then move on to consider the importance of personal branding; and finally you would review some of the main “do’s and don’ts” of the consultancy game.

Retaining high value clients is the easiest way to create a stable, predictable baseline cash flow.

  • Your first issue would be ensuring that you follow a delivery process that creates happy clients; this in turn would increase the likelihood that they come back for more, and refer other potential clients to you.
  • The second issue is building trusted relationships; in many ways you are selling trust, which when allied to your relationship-building skills becomes a very powerful tool.
  • The third issue is having an appropriate bag of tools – toolkits, frameworks, methodologies that enable you to continue to demonstrate that you are adding value (clients have a habit of forgetting the difference you have made).

The advent of social media has made it very important that you work on your personal branding. The coherence of your image, wherever you are encountered in the real or virtual world, is critical to your success.  And this needs to be reflected in your approach to sales (and the attributes of a good salesperson) and to networking (which is about building relationships and promoting your business, not selling!).

Finally, in terms off “do’s and don’ts”, it is helpful to keep in mind some of the practical tips and hints that will be value builders in your business as opposed to value destroyers. Spend some time identifying the top habits of people you consider to be successful consultants. Also keep an eye out for strategies that clearly look disastrous. And finally retain a hunger for collecting time management tips, which will help you work smarter not harder.

As we continue to build our consultancy framework we will expand on all of these initiatives. For more information or answers to any questions you may have on this, feel free to contact me.

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#5: Finding your ideal mentor

Your mentor – it could be somebody who has done something similar to you i.e. gone into the same line of business. Therefore they know the world you are going into quite well, and can give you a great deal of sector knowledge; they may also have a useful rolodex of contacts to contribute.

It could be somebody who has successfully built a business of a different type or in a different sector; he or she can therefore anticipate what is going to happen next, and consequently help you to prepare for that as you go through the “growing pains” of developing a successful business.

“Find an honest mentor who you can talk to. Not a friend who will tell you what you want to hear, but someone that will – in a positive and constructive way – challenge and mentor you through the journey”. – Mike Teasdale

Finally it could be somebody who has a skill you don’t have.

I did a lot of work down in Brighton with early stage technology businesses, where quite often there was one founder. These people would be very technically competent, whatever their area of IT expertise was, but quite often at the expense of other skills.

One option for them was to identify a mentor who was strong on marketing and sales. Typically they had a product or service that was advanced and innovative, but they did not know how to commercialise it.

So, having a mentor who could help them figure out how they could take their offering to market and maximise it made a lot of sense.

It will be a different answer for all of you. If there is nobody that springs to mind, just keep your antennae up as you come across people and figure out who might be able to do that job for you.

As I said, I have seen a direct correlation between people who take this step and people who make the transition successfully.

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