I recently attended a workshop run by Robert Craven. The workshop was on how to make more profits. The key thing when running your own business, and what you can do to make more profits, is to be open minded about what others are doing and to really look at what works for you. As someone, who not only delivers, but also attends workshops, I am always fascinated how the same old things, when put to you in a different way can have a positive impact. Three things about this workshop that resonated with me were;

1. Scoring your Business. You score your business on 3 fronts;

• Finance
• Marketing
• Operations

Knowing something and doing something, that has a positive impact on your business in another. Robert asked us to score, out of ten, what we would give ourselves for each of the categories above. What was found that on average the score for Finance was 5/6, for Marketing was 3 and for Operations, i.e. how good you are at what you do, was about 8 (apparently modesty prevented us from giving ourselves a 10!)

So what is the point of this? Most people in business focus on what they need to do to improve their finances; however we all know, that the quality of your marketing has a significant impact on your business.  Simpy speaking the average of your score for Marketing and Operations is your Finance score. Agreeing that, you do what you say you do and that the quality of your marketing does impact on your finances, you can see how, if you focus on what you do to generate leads, the finance will look after itself. Obvious when put this way and quite logical. So now you know this what could you do to make more profits?

2. Tactics to increase your profitability. There are 5 ways

• Increase your volume
• Lower Direct Costs
• Fix the underperformers
• Raise prices
• Lower the overheads

The question was asked which of the five would have the biggest impact on your profitability. Although it was agreed that all 5 can have an impact, the one that was the top of the list was raise prices. Now the initial reaction was, well I would lose customers, or will I be competitive? What would happen if you did raise your prices? Think about who you would lose. Are these the customers you would really worry about losing? Probably not. The 80/20 principal tells us that we get 80% of our business from  20% of our customers. The ones you lose may just be the ones that only contribute to 20% of your business. On the surface raising your prices may not seem like a good idea, however when you look at the customers you will lose, and you will lose some, it may just be what you wanted.

3. Networking

The one area of marketing that everybody did agree that was useful was networking. I will talk more about networking in my other posts, however the one area that people seem to worry about is the elevator pitch (coined in the USA to signify the amount of time you have to say what you do when in a elevator, i.e. about 2 mins),  Robert presented, for me, one of the easiest and effective ways to develop you elevator pitch. By following the 5 points below you will not only produce an effective speech but also cover all that you want in a few minutes. Start each sentence with the following and complete as appropriate;

• We/I work with…
• Who have a problem with…
• What we/I do is …
• So that…
• Which means that…

So here goes for my elevator pitch.  We work with Teachers and Directors to improve their performance and reduce their stress simultaneously, who have a problem with letting ‘stuff’ like too much to do, not enough time and things outside their control, effect their performance. What we do is provide coaching and training so that they be at their best more often, which means that they have more energy, feel less stressed and improve their productivity.

Feel free to comment on this blog and let others know what your elevator pitch is.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 20th, 2008 at 11:02 am and is filed under Business Performance, Performance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.