Accountants, Corporate Attorney’s, Consultants, and other business professionals will learn how to use the Business Performance Analysis Engine to pinpoint SMB client weaknesses and how to convert those opportunities into additional billable hours and new consulting revenue.We’re going to show you how to:
   – compare your client’s business operating performance against other companies in their industry, worldwide;
   – identify the specific business challenges each of your clients is struggling with;
   – convert each client’s challenges into additional revenue opportunities (i.e. more billable hours);
   – project more credibility and expertise with your clients by having a complete set of holistic & comprehensive set of diagnostic data and management metrics;
   – get access to SMB operating performance data available no where else.This webinar features actual case studies and a complete introduction  to the Business Performance Analysis Engine (BPAE) from Mentoring Success Group LLC.
  
Register for a session now by clicking on this link: Webinar Information 
 
Once registered you will receive an email confirming your registration
with information you need to join the Webinar.
 
System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server
 
Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.4.11 (Tiger®) or newer

Hi Everyone,

Many people that stop by here are business owners and managers of businesses struggling to survive in a rough economic environment.

You’re probably feeling alone, frustrated, perhaps a bit of desparation and discouragement, and don’t know what to do next.

Two pieces of advice for you…first, in the words of a famous basketball coach, Jimmy Valvano, “don’t give up.  Don’t ever give up.”

Secondly, I’m strongly advising you to head over to Mentoring Success Group.com and get a FREE Baseline Analysis.  That’s right, I said ‘FREE’.

Here’s why you want to do this analysis:  Many business turnaround situations have multiple issues confronting the business owner.  Which ones are life threatening? Which ones are a lower priority?  What are my strengths that I can build on?  What opportunities am I missing?  What are the root causes for the problems I’m currently coping with?  It’s a lot like going to the doctor’s office for your annual physical, except in this case, its your business that’s being evaluated.

Until you get the answers to these questions, putting yourself in the position to make informed decisions going forward, the best you’re going to do is continue to spin your wheels and perpetuate your ongoing problems.  Make the decision now to break free, and take action to truly solve problems, not merely cover them up.

Mentoring Success Group actually has two options for the Baseline Analysis…

You can just do the analysis and take the results to your favorite accountant, advisor, or consultant to plan future strategy.  Go here for your Business Diagnostics Baseline Analysis.

If you’re truly alone, and don’t have an accountant, advisor, or consultant, and want some structured content to guide you as you move forward with your Baseline Analysis results, then go here.  (And then go get an advisor or an accountant).

Please Note: I’ve been told that this is a limited time offer and may expire at any time without advance notice.

Good Luck!

3 Steps You Need to Take Right Now.…if Your Business is Struggling to Survive

1.  Stop pretending things are fine.  They’re not.  Be honest with yourself and others around you.  If you have employees, they probably have a better grip on the seriousness of the situation than you might appear to have.  And when you wear the ‘brave face’ around them, they inherently begin questioning your leadership, wondering if you even recognize that Rome is burning.

This ‘honesty’ permits you to ask for help and suggestions from other people, your employees, advisors, peers, family, etc.  They can’t, and won’t help if you aren’t honest about the situation. Just like anybody else, you’re not expected to have all of the answers, just the ability to ask for advice.

2.  Dealing With Your Business Challenges.   Nearly always, your business finances are a reflection of problems and issues buried deeper within your organization.  Is cash flow bad? Then start asking questions and getting answers.  Why is it bad?  Are people not paying my bills?  Are my expenses too high?  Are we not selling our products/services?  The objective is to identify the specific root causes for each problem.

Once you begin identifying and isolating the specific challenges your business is facing, you’ll find it easier to conquer them one at a time.  The old cliche is appropriate, “How do you eat an elephant?”  The answer is, “One bite at a time”.   Identify the root causes of your specific problems, then begin solving them, one ‘bite’ at a time.

3.  Dealing With Your Personal Challenges. It’s so common for business owners to look up and wonder why their personal life has gotten out of balance over the years.  Many times we begin our business to chase that illusion of freedom and independance…working when we want, financial freedom, personal fulfillment, etc.  Then, after years of working 80 hour work weeks, we look up, and realize that our kids grew up and left home with barely an acknowledgement from us.  It’s so easy for us to get sucked down that black hole of “I’m doing this for me and my family”, when in reality, we – and our families – have been deprived of the one thing they’ve needed most….us.

When one aspect of our life gets out of whack and overtakes other aspects of our life… it’s kinda like washing your jeans in the  washing machine, and they’re a bit unbalanced….thump, thump, thump. How many thumps do you need before you take action to turn things around in your personal life?

Survival is the most basic of all human instincts.  But it requires positive action and decision making on your part.  Take advantage of the adrenaline rush from your own personal ‘flight or fight’ syndrome.   I wish you all the best!

As the economy shows some early signs of improvement, it’s a great time to review your  sales performance data and focus on the aspects which continue to lag behind our expectations. Implementing a sales turnaround plan for your company is actually quite straightforward.  Here’s how…

The first task is to analyze and discuss the sales data and the sales processes with each key manager in your company, and not just from the sales and marketing department.

• What specific strategies can we do to improve our sales?
• Are there customer segments or marketing segments that we are overlooking?
• How can we focus the entire company around implementing sales improvements?
• What are the easiest and most rewarding opportunities that we have (the ‘low hanging fruit’)?
• What are the obstacles that currently confront our sales team which need to be eliminated or removed?
• Are there sales territories or customer / market segments that are underserved or overlooked?
• Where are our best opportunities and how profitable are they?
• How are our sales teams aligned to best capitalize on those opportunities?
• What is the individual performance of each of our sales people?
• What corrective action are we taking with sales people who are not meeting established sales expectations or quota?

Effective sales and opportunity management is the key to improving results. A lot of companies struggle with identifying and prioritizing the best sales and marketing opportunities for them. Best in class companies do a great job at sales opportunity management by continually analyzing their pipeline, analyzing each customer opportunity, and prioritizing the allocation of resources to focus on the best opportunities.

A quick way to organize your best sales prospects is to consistently maintain and update a top ten opportunity list for each of your sales reps.  A simple spreadsheet which is updated once a week by your sales reps and reviewed by management is a great way for you to do a top ten account review. Have your reps focus on those ten accounts every week.

Make sure that you’re consistently and regularly holding your sales team accountable for achieving progress with each of their top ten accounts. They need to quickly articulate the sales plan and goals for each of their top ten accounts.

Get each sales reps to realize that they need to focus their time and energy on the best opportunities, as opposed to just churning out the sales activity. Many sales reps can get overwhelmed by the volume of activity that they need to generate in order to do their jobs effectively and achieve the necessary results. They quickly get lost in the volume of activity and soon begin equating activity with productivity. Being productive in sales means being able to qualify your best opportunities and focus your time and attention on moving those opportunities forward.

You know your business is in trouble when…you anticipate each phone call is more likely to be a creditor than a customer; you’re walking around completely stressed out, with a knot of fear in your stomach; when you find yourself in complete denial about your current situation.

My past experience is that many entrepreneurs and small business owners are generally very good at their personal core competency, like designing and manufacturing a world class blue widget for example. But when other parts of their business, such as cash flow, human resources, sales and marketing, areas where they have limited prior experience, begin slipping out of control, most small business owners respond by going into denial. Somehow, magically, things will turn around next week, next month….and so on.

If your business is struggling for survival right now, and who isn’t, here are five action steps to help you get your ship of commerce pointed back in the right direction.

Assess your situation candidly.

You absolutely have to be realistic – stop living in denial. Things won’t get better until you take immediate positive action. Quickly identify a short list of root causes then keep asking questions – drilling down, until you have developed a list of specific action items to turn your business around.

• • • lack of sales – why? What happened? What changed?

    • Decreased profit margins – have costs increased? Sales dropped off?

    • Cash flow issues? Can you afford your current customers, or do you need new ones that pay their bills on time? Can your current customers begin paying you earlier?

    • Poor service/product quality? Have your previous cutbacks hurt your business? Have refund requests increased lately? Why?

    • People problems – decide now if you are in business to operate a ‘non-profit’ social services organization or if you are in business to make a profit; people either clearly demonstrate a tangible contribute to the overall solution, or they need to be working elsewhere – NOW!!

Let’s face it. You can’t solve your critical problems, unless you know what they are. Get information, then make the appropriate decisions.

Calculate your finances literally to the penny.

Make an itemized list of your fixed monthly expenses. Calculate the absolute minimum that it costs each month to stay in business, to keep the doors open, and the lights on. List everything like…

• • • rent

    • electric

    • telephone / communications;

    • other fixed expenses that you are obligated to, or required;

This list should identify the expense, the amount incurred each month, the payment due date, and the amount that is currently past due.

Identify any item on this list that you can renegotiate for lower fees and costs or even to defer certain expenses such as your rent. Explain your situation to your landlord, and show them how they can help you during the next 6 months, in exchange for extending the lease, and/or increased payments later on.

Pay only these priority bills first before any other expenses. Develop a realistic plan to avoid falling any further behind on these expenses, and to begin bringing these obligations current. Let’s face it, you identified these expenses as those required to stay in business. Consequently if you divert these payments elsewhere, guess what happens.

Carefully manage your outgoing cash payments. If it isn’t one of your ‘required’ payments, slow down the payments. If you have been paying your bills in 30 days, begin paying on a 45 day. Hoard your cash with religious fervor.

What’s your monthly breakeven? Are you consistently generating enough sales / profit margin to pass your monthly breakeven? If not, make the adjustments as soon as possible.

Plan for your financial recovery. You aren’t in business merely to recover from a financial setback. Plan for success, not merely survival. If your sales and profit margin are consistently passing your improved monthly breakeven point, then your projected profit identifies how quickly you can catch up on your overdue obligations. For example if your past due obligations is equal to $20,000, and you plan to generate a monthly profit of $2000, it will require ten months to pull back even again.

What do other people owe you?

You need to immediately age your receivables (assuming you have receivables). Review your credit terms. If you grant 30 days credit to your customers, begin tracking your payment status at 20 days out. This is your money; go get it – RIGHT NOW!! Better yet, offer a prompt payment discount AND ASK FOR QUICK PAYMENT!!

This may seem counter-intuitive, but stop doing business with customers that give you a hard time about paying their bills to you. DO NOT TAKE THEIR ORDER. You can’t afford to. If your clients are stretching your payments out 60, 90, or even 120 days, and yet your vendors are expecting to be paid in 30…well, you need to make a fundamental decision about whether you are in the business of financing your customer’s business, or if they should find another source of working capital.

It’s quite likely you’re in financial trouble because clients have slowed down their payments, causing a disruption in your cash flow. You can’t allow this trend to continue and stay in business. You won’t solve your cash-flow issues by perpetuating them with poor, financially weak clients.

Communicate regularly

It’s absolutely imperative for you to communicate with everyone that is impacted by your business. This would include your advisors (attorney, accountant or financial advisor), your creditors, and your bankers or lenders.

There are two crucial concepts when it comes to communicating with your advisors and creditors; honesty and credibility. Remember, if you don’t communicate, and you lack honesty and credibility about your efforts to turn things around, these people will develop their own plans to deal with your situation, and they won’t be soliciting your input. Do not develop a ‘bunker’ mentality and go into hiding.

Pay those taxes.

If you are located in the US, be absolutely positively certain that your payroll taxes are paid. The US federal government has absolutely no sense of humor about payroll withholding taxes that aren’t paid. They can, and will walk through the front door and shut your operation down without notice, changing the locks on the door.

Once your business assets have been siezed, there is no further need to spend any effort trying to save your business; its done and over with at this point. The only thing left to do is to hold the funeral.

Even if your business is legally incorporated, they will still come after you personally. Your home and your family’s assets are at complete risk. Not paying this obligation nothing more than a very, very bad idea.

Summary

The single most important piece of advice is that in order to survive, you have to stop ignoring the warning signs. Don’t live in denial or ignorant bliss. If you and your business are in trouble, TAKE ACTION!! NOW, not later.

Get the information you need to make intelligent decisions. You might not be an expert at human resources, or marketing problems. But if you keep asking questions you will get to a point where the decisions you need to make will become obvious to you.

I’ve just skimmed the surface of a strategy for managing a business in trouble. If you need some hand-holding, a listening ear, have a question or you’d like some preliminary advice, you can write to me at tomt@MentoringSuccessGroup.com

About the author

Tom Tubergen is the President and CEO of Mentoring Success Group LLC based in Detroit, MI. His company operates an online software application assisting successful entrepreneurs and small business owners worldwide to carefully monitor every part of their business operation. The sophisticated monthly analysis monitors everything from design engineering, finances, personal leadership, sales and marketing and 19 other aspects of running a successful business. Visit www.MentoringSuccessGroup.com for more information.

The author, Eugene Rembor is CEO of Rembor & Partners management consultants. http://www.remborpartners.com