Ethical Business Builder’s Weblog

Blog about ethically buying, building, and selling businesses.

How to fix your business FAST – Part 1

Posted by ethicalbusinessbuilder on November 10, 2009

A friend of mine asked me today about what I would do with a business that isn’t doing very well in this economy. Actually with 5 different businesses in 5 different industries… So I told her. My blog about how I doubled the profits in my business in the first year covers much of what this and the succeeding blogs will, however without the details or direct application to all other businesses that these blogs will provide.

Firstly, by “fixing” I simply mean increasing profits and cashflow (yes, they’re different). The bottom line is that the number one goal of business and its reason for existing is to make a profit (and a healthy one at that).

Secondly, you need to determine the time frame for your fixing. In other words, do you need cash by next week or month to make payroll and pay bills OR are you simply looking to increase the value of your business to sell in a year OR are you looking for a way to have your business provide the income and freedom that you desire for the next 40? Granted, some solutions will overlap but the plan of attack may be different. Since she was looking for IMMEDIATE solutions to improve the business we’ll look at that first.

Before we go any farther, though, as a business owner and/or leader you need to get 2 things situated right away

  1. Work on the Business – If you’re a plumber and you’re out plumbing while your business is going down the tubes it’s a lost cause. Of course I’m assuming you have a team and aren’t a one-man operation. The point is if you have a team to take care of the work of the business, your work needs to BE the business. If it’s not, then the business will never improve. Make the commitment to spend time daily on improving your business.
  2. Make a list – Actually, lots of them. I’ve done enough consulting to know that if your goals aren’t in writing they get forgotten and pushed into oblivion. Don’t fall into that rut. If your business needs to change, you need to change. As we go through these blogs, make a prioritized list of the improvements and don’t stop working on the list until it’s done! Personally, I’m still working on a list of 10 things that I made at a conference in February. 7 out of 10 are checked off, but the list won’t be thrown away until 10 of 10 are taken care of.

Again, our goal is near immediate improvement so here’s what you can do:

  1. Know your numbers – In my experience this is the biggest mistake business owners make. They know things like their gross and net profit margins, number of customers, and total revenue, but have no idea how or why those things are down. Customers, revenue, and profits are not answers to problems, they’re simply questions. All they can do is tell you what question to ask but you have to dig deeper to find the answer. If you stop digging there, you’ll never locate the problem or come up with a way to devise a fix. Some of these numbers were covered in my blog on weathering the economy.
  2. Cut Costs – If a business exists to make a profit, it’s breath of life is cashflow. Assuming you have sales and customers already, the quickest way to increase profits and cash in the bank is to cut costs. You cut $1,000 in costs and you add $1,000 to the bottom line. Don’t ever forget that.
  3. Improve Efficiency and Productivity – You already have a team, though if money is tight you may have to start cutting. Before you do that, you need to do some simple analysis to determine the effectiveness and productivity of each person in your organization. Again, you need to know your numbers. If you don’t know your daily break-even per income-generating job position AND for the entire business, you’re shooting in the dark. If you can go back to the “good old days” and compare your profit per person back then to now, you’ll quickly know if you have to cut positions.
  4. Improve Marketing and Sales – There is a reason this is so far down. If you need immediate cash, this is often the slowest response. You have to develop marketing, you have to get your marketing out and wait for a response. You then have to review your process for acquiring, handling, and converting leads to customers. You need to track the effectiveness of each marketing campaign because the first one might not be successful and determine through testing and measuring what marketing provides the best Return On Investment. This is obviously important long-term, but generally can not immediately get you cash. That being said, this should be done concurrently with the items above.
  5. Build recurring revenue – This one is often most challenging because it can require a cash investment up-front.  Cash that you obviously don’t have if you’re business is not doing well. Then again, there are ways to generate immediate and recurring cash with no up-front investment and you’d do well to develop some of these in your business.

That’s the 5-step process for fixing a business quickly. Now that I’ve reviewed this list, there’s only a few things I would change if you’re looking long-term versus short-term.

  1. If you’re making money and not looking to sell any time soon, the costs are less important. Obviously $1,000 saved is a $1,000 more in profit. However, if you’re happy with your income and perks and those provided for your team, then this doesn’t become an IMMEDIATE necessity even though it’s ALWAYS beneficial.
  2. If you’re looking to sell soon, cutting costs to increase profits is extremely beneficial as it will increase the value of your business. Any “perk” you can’t reasonably classify as an ownership perk and therefore a seller add-back should be cut immediately. For instance, if you have a lot of meals and entertainment expenses and tried to do a seller add-back on those and I’m buying your business, I’d argue all day long that if they weren’t necessary for business you wouldn’t have them on your books and I wouldn’t accept them as an add-back.
  3. Knowing your numbers, efficiency, productivity, sales, and marketing are as important today as they will be in 40 years so work on them constantly. For the long-term owner, these systems and numbers are what will allow you to manage your business remotely and with minimal input.
  4. Recurring revenue can either require up-front cash or not. Recurring revenue that costs nothing up-front (or is break-even very quickly) is well worth the investment short-term as it will produce cash and increase your business’ value. Recurring revenue that requires an up-front investment in sales, marketing, equipment, and installation/service is not a good short-term plan but can be an amazing long-term one so don’t neglect it.

So there’s the quick and dirty overview… In the next few parts to fixing your business I’ll dissect each of the 5 pieces and provide real-world examples, suggestions, and solutions for each.

To your business-fixing success, Bryan

 

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The fundamentals of Buying, Building, and Selling a business

Posted by ethicalbusinessbuilder on October 30, 2009

Since my primary business is now officially on the market after 18 months in my ownership, now seems like a great time to recall the most important parts of my blogs and experience in buying, building, and now selling my first business. Since my business hasn’t been sold yet, I’ll have to update this blog as necessary for the summary while creating new blogs to chronicle new lessons.

To my knowledge, there is no other blog or book or lesson or presenter who shows someone the basic pieces necessary to generate wealth with real world experience as I will. It’s the nuts and bolts of the whole buy, build, sell process.

There are basically 4 steps:

  1. Preparing – What you need to know prior to getting started.
  2. Buying – How to find, value, negotiate, and purchase a business.
  3. Building – What you can do quickly to increase the value of the business.
  4. Selling – The ins and outs of selling your business.

Preparing

Ironically, as my most recent blog has pointed out (it’s ironic because it took me 18 months to write the blog that I should have written first), the most important part is your mindset and your attitude. Next, you’ll also need to take the first 3 steps to becoming wealthy including, always spending less than you earn, understanding the difference between where you are and where you want to be is education, and framing your goals into  Do x Be = Have context. Possibly most importantly, you need to have a clear motivation for being an entrepreneur (even if it’s different than mine) and you need to appreciate that the ethical route is always the most profitable. And make sure you’re able to get over your fear of failure in trying new things.

It’s important to understand that there’s no better, quicker way to go from very little money (let’s say less than $5,000) to a lot of money. You can even take it to the next level and setup a business to generate $1,000,000 per year if that’s your desire. Recently, as part of another blog, I’ve outlined a basic plan for how someone can go from $5,000 or less to $1,000,000 primarily through business. To stress the point even further that buy, build, sell is the best way to generate wealth for the average individual, review my suggestion to skip getting your MBA and just buy a small business for your business education.

Buying

In the buy, build, sell strategy, the part that will have the greatest influence on your profit is the purchase price so learn as much as you can for this stage.

First, you’ll want to know some basic questions to ask the seller about their business and maybe even what questions to ask about any given business idea. Then you’ll have to understand how banks value a business in case you need to go to them for financing and also how EBIDTA can tie into business values (since sellers and business brokers may reference it). As you start looking for businesses, you need to have some ideas of where to find businesses for sale for little money down and how to deal with the business brokers once you find one you’re interested in.

Before you start making any offers, it’s very important that you get the seller (or broker) to like you since then they’ll be more likely to accept your business valuation. It’s very simple to turn someone down you don’t like anyway. Once you’re ready to make an offer, make sure you only purchase the assets and then put them into an LLC filing as an S-corp. If you do that, you won’t have to spend nearly as much time fighting with lawyers. But since you may need one anyway here are a few tips for getting the best rates from your lawyer.

When you’re just starting out you may be considering a partner but make sure you don’t take on a business partner unless absolutely necessary.

Building

In the building stage you’re going to need to know what to do your first 2 weeks onsite at a business you’ve just purchased. If you don’t already know the difference between profits and cashflow, I’m sure you’ll learn very quickly.

Immediately you need to work on polarizing your company’s culture, improving teamwork, and communicating effectively. Right out of the gate you need to start setting up your business for running without you through the effective use of technology, incentives, and empowering your team. If you don’t do that immediately, you’ll soon be asked to do lots of things “in” the business that will take away from you working “on” the business. This is vitally important because if you’re not working on the business you’re not taking the time necessary to double profits, improve marketing, teach your team the importance of NLP, create systems, processes and scripts, or improve closing ratios. In other words, your primary focus for building value in your business is going to entail 3 parts:

  1. Increasing Sales – through new and improved marketing and better conversion rates. In other words you have to make sure your system for taking a lead and converting it to a customer is top-notch. Don’t forget that your back-end sales (sales to existing customers) will always be your most profitable business. With that in mind, if you can buy an already profitable business that’s horrible at back-end sales you can quickly increase its value.
  2. Cutting Costs – look at all of your expenses and simply cut those that aren’t needed. We reworked our accounting and phone costs alone to save thousands of dollars per year.
  3. Improving Efficiencies – this is primarily about scripts, systems, and processes for every aspect of your business.

Don’t make the mistake I did and wait until cash gets tight to realize that cashflow is king and then start building recurring revenue while looking for quick, easy, cheap ways to generate immediate cashflow.

Chances are you’re going to run into some issues with team members so it’s helpful to know the proper way to fire someone without having to pay unemployment and effective ways to get your team members to do what they do best.

As you’re building your business you need to work on getting it to achieve critical mass by, in particular, hiring or training the 3 leaders every business needs to succeed.

In summary, you need to have a game plan from day one including an exit strategy or else you might end up like one of the 300 businesses in NYC who failed because they failed to plan for success.

Selling

Since this blog is getting long and selling isn’t much different than buying I’ll keep this short. You need to basically understand 3 things:

  1. How to value your business just the same as discussed in buying so you can justify your price.
  2. Where to list your business which is again the same places where you’d go to find a business for sale (such as bizbuysell.com)
  3. How to foster relationships so that when it’s time to sell, you have a few personal contacts in mind.

With regards to the 3rd, you may want to get to know other business owners in your area who have complimentary (or even competing businesses). You may also consider hiring a leader who would like to take over and own their own business some day. If you have a franchise like mine, you will also want to stay in touch with owners in other areas as they might want to expand their operations.

The goal with this post is to organize and direct the many varied posts I’ve written about my adventure buying, building, and now selling my business over the last 18 months. As I add more posts I’ll try to keep this summary updated so you can always reference it for new material.

To your generating-wealth-through-business success, Bryan

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The most important life lesson… and the key to success

Posted by ethicalbusinessbuilder on October 27, 2009

For as long as I can remember my father was always imparting axioms and witty sayings on me such as, “your life is what you make of it”, and “you can’t control what other people may do to you but you can control how you respond”, and “you’re the only one who can choose what your day is going to be like every morning when you wake up.” Obviously those were all paraphrased and there were certainly dozens more.

He continued my education with tapes and stories from Zig Ziglar, and Dave Yoho, and Tony Robbins and eventually Brad Sugars. Somehow he would come in contact with stories of people overcoming impossible odds to better themselves. Quite literally this started in early elementary school for me.

There’s a reason books like Think and Grow Rich (#1466 on Amazon.com) by Napoleon Hill, The Richest Man in Babylon (currently ranked #5094 on Amazon.com) by George S. Clason, and How to Win Friends & Influence People (currently #151 on Amazon.com) by Dale Carnegie are timeless classics.
There’s a reason why movies like The Secret (Extended Edition) (#92 in DVD’s on Amazon.com) are so popular; creating an almost cult following. (Granted I did laugh out loud when the older gentleman said we don’t know how electricity works.)
There’s a reason why Brad Sugar’s spent more than 1/4 of his training on how to Buy, Build, and Sell businesses at his Entrepreneur’s Masters Class simply on having the right mindset.

And the reason is simple: The difference between those who are successful and those who aren’t is first and foremost their mindset. As one guy from The Secret pointed out, “Thoughts become things.”

“If you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re probably right”, is in fact, a cliche’ and yet it’s still true.

As I talk to friends and family about success, making money, building businesses and living an adventurous life, I make sure they know the most important part in their success is their mindset. If you truly believe you have the ability to do something you will do it.

This mindset has created 2 personality traits in me that everyone who knows me are abundantly aware of:

  1. Confidence – some might even mistake it for arrogance
  2. Fearlessness – or in other words, they believe I’m completely averse to risk

It’s important to understand that I was not born with either trait. In fact, as a child I was very cautious and always calculating before attempting anything new. If I wasn’t certain I could do it without getting hurt (physically, emotionally, or intellectually), I wasn’t going to do it. Though I always did well in school I rarely raised my hand and even if I was the best athlete on my sports team I would always feel as if I wasn’t good enough. Actually, high school athletics are what taught me that my biggest weakness wasn’t lack of talent or skill, but simply lack of confidence in my abilities. My point is these traits can be learned.

Every successful person has incorporated these 2 traits into their lives.

Confidence – At some point it occurred to me that absolutely no one will believe in me if I don’t. More importantly, if I believe in myself, others will as well. That’s what confidence is. Having the guts to take on something you’ve never done before, but know you can learn. Taking that risk of getting ridiculed, embarrassed or harassed by leading instead of sitting back and waiting for the safe move. If you’re going to be successful in business, in your family, as a teacher, or doctor, or builder, you have to lead someone somewhere and no one follows a person without confidence. As a coach of 5 year olds, I can assure you that even children won’t follow someone who isn’t confident in what they’re doing.

Fearlessness – This is simply a byproduct of confidence. School trains you to do what you’re told. Sports teach you the same thing (I can still remember getting yelled at for putting the basketball behind my back in a high school game). Your parents teach you to listen to authority. Throughout our lives, we are taught first how to obey and then, if we’re lucky, how to think and use our imaginations. Not being afraid to leave home, or move across the country, or buy your first rental property, or invest in the stock market, or buy a business (when you’ve never run one before), or write a book, or race a motorcycle, or stand up in front of an older group individuals and have the audacity to claim you can teach them something new is not done out of a lack of fear. It’s done because of confidence in one’s ability to succeed. Though I’ve told many people (inaccurately) that I don’t fear anything, what’s most important is that I don’t fear failure. No successful person does.

The very first step to being successful at anything you choose, is having confidence that you can succeed and getting over the fear of what might happen if you don’t.

Confidence and fearlessness are not natural traits for most people. Unfortunately, our youth teaches us to trust in authority more than ourselves and to fear the repercussions of what will happen if we don’t coalesce with the rest of the group. However, don’t use that as an excuse not to be confident and fearless. Use it as motivation to prove those people wrong.

My father knew that no matter what I decided to be in life (astronaut, paleontologist, NBA player, engineer and businessman were all on my list), my mindset and attitude were going to define whether I was truly great at my profession. What my father did not know, was that the foundation he was building for my mind would be echoed by my oncologist when I came home from college before the beginning of my sophomore year. Seven years ago Dr. Earle told me that the most important thing in determining my success in overcoming cancer was my attitude.

To your success in becoming confident and fearless, Bryan

Posted in Business Psychology, Leadership | Tagged: , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Intrapreneur and Entrepreneur – The common ground

Posted by ethicalbusinessbuilder on October 26, 2009

In my last blog, we reviewed the 2 most basic types of people in any organization. Of course there are more specific and scientific personality tests and reviews along with detailed methods of how to best communicate with the 27 personality types, however who is ever going to remember 27 personality types let alone how they best interact with your own type? Moreover how are you going to remember exactly which person fits which type?

In contrast to that, my idea is simple, quick, and easy and though it won’t get you a perfect result every time, it’s certainly better than lumping everyone (including yourself) into one category.

That being said, in Marcus Buckingham’s book First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently, he lays out the exact 12 things that every person requires to be effective at their job. I have probably recommended that book half a dozen times in my blog and if you’re a leader or manager for any business you need to read it. So let’s get a quick and simple review of what Buckingham’s exhaustive research points out. All team members require the following:

  1. Vision, Mission, Culture guidelines – What’s the big picture?
  2. Job Description – Obviously this will be very detailed for intrapreneurs and more flexible for entrepreneurs. Absolutely no one can
  3. Positive Reinforcement – Do not underestimate this power.
  4. The right tools to get the job done – Nothing can be more frustrating. Intrapreneurs will have more tactile tools while the tools of an entrepreneur may just be pointing them in the right direction.
  5. Someone at work they can trust – this is universal
  6. Progress reports – everyone wants to know how they’re doing and how they can do better. No one wants to suck at their job.

He has 12 items on his list. I cut it down to 6 overall so read the book to learn how to determine if your business is setup for maximum profit and productivity. The point of this exercise is to point out that no one can manage themselves. No matter how entrepreneurial someone is, if they have a boss, they need direction. Period.

Another commonality is goal-setting, though the way that goals are set can be different. According to a Yale study from 1953, the 3% of graduates who had written goals had amassed more wealth than the other 97% of classmates years after graduation. So regardless of your personality, written goals are extremely valuable.

Everyone should have written, measurable, time-sensitive goals. Those goals should include levels of education, income, savings, type of work, family matters, travel ambitions and everything in between. I’ve gone as far as to make a list of all of the motorcycles I’d like to own in my lifetime. Several are already checked off however the list seems to be growing faster than I can control at the moment. :-)

Now most people have a general “big picture” idea of what they want. Things like, I want a family, I want a job that I love, I want my kids to respect me, I want to retire at 65 with $2 million dollars, I want to see Paris, etc. etc. etc.  Now if you have all of that written down and you reference it often that’s a BIG step in the right direction. However you can do better. Here’s a quick 3 step process to setting goals:

  1. You need to put everything into Do x Be = Have perspective.
  2. You need to assign time frames.
  3. You need to take into account your entrepreneurial or intrapreneurial tendencies.

The 3rd item is what we’ll address right now. As an extreme entrepreneur, my goals have time frames, but they are honestly relatively vague. For instance, in my lifetime I want to own at least 5 businesses, become a “young millionaire”, and write at least one book (though I have 4 in mind at the moment). As an entrepreneur, my immediate goal is to always find the best opportunity right now. That means in the next 12 months, I may write the book, buy another business, or get more schooling to help me learn more of the things that millionaires might know that I don’t. My point is, that my personality thrives on making the most of the moment. So instead of saying “I want to write a book by 2011″, I work on all of my goals at once and then go after the opportunity that’s best today, this month, or this year. In 2010 that may be writing that first book, or it may be visiting all the countries on my goal list, or it may be the next business. I’ll be working on all 3 and choose the path that is best at the time.

So how is that different than an intrapreneur? Intrapreneurs are more of the details individuals. They need specifics and they need specific time frames and they need a specific way to get there. Whereas I just need a “big picture”, an intrapreneur needs smaller goals to help achieve the larger ones. So if we take the same example of becoming a “young millionaire”, the successful intrapreneur will have a more specific goal list to achieve those goals.

For instance, their sub-goals to achieve the goal of becoming a millionaire might look more like this:

  1. Buy a business with vendor financing in the next 12 months that has the potential to double in profits within a year with only the $5,000 I can drum up from selling my stuff and from savings. I must pay no more than annual cashflow plus assets for the business. It must have the possibility of paying me enough to live on while I’m growing it.
  2. Build the business for less than 12 months and relist it on the market. It must have the potential to make me $100,000 profit when sold.
  3. Reinvest the $100,000 in another business under the same criteria but with the ability to potentially sell for $300,000 profit within a year.
  4. Of the $300,000, put $50,000 into down payments on cash producing real estate, $50,000 into the stock market and the other $200,000 into another business with the potential to be sold for $500,000 profit within 1 year.
  5. Reinvest as much as necessary into a business that can either produce sufficient cashflow to make me a millionaire within 2 years of can be sold for $1 million in profit. The rest will be split between additional real estate and securities.

Why does the intrapreneur need so many sub-goals? Because something vague like “become a millionaire” seems so daunting an unattainable however when you break it down into small steps with specific time frames and details it becomes a whole lot easier for them to accept. Entrepreneurs can often feel much more comfortable and in-their-element with goals that are more vague. The exact details can at times make us feel trapped. That being the case is a detailed list bad for an entrepreneur? Of course not. As long as he can appreciate that it’s a guideline and the numbers and time frames will never be exact.

So my last question is, how does this help leaders better lead their teams?

As leaders, it’s our responsibility to provide progress reports, to develop job descriptions, and to help develop goals for team members within your organization. By now, I hope that it makes sense that those job descriptions, review sessions, and goal-setting meetings might be quite different for the 2 basic personality types.

To you success in providing the foundations of the common ground, Bryan

P.S. If you’re curious why my steps to becoming a young millionaire are primarily contingent upon buying, building, and selling businesses check out my blog on the topic.

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Intrapreneur vs Entrepreneur… The 2 types of people every business has…

Posted by ethicalbusinessbuilder on October 24, 2009

Every business is comprised of 2 basic types of people.

Entrepreneurs and Intrapreneurs… Those who want risk, reward, challenges, and the excitement that comes with that and those who want stability, direction, consistency and the security that may come with that. Of course there are also those who just want a free ride and try to skirt responsibility, cut every corner, and get away with the highest pay for the least amount of effort, responsibility, or risk – but we’re going to skip over that lesser type and focus on the positive parts of an organization.

Before we delve into these 2 types, keep in mind this is an exercise in simplicity. It’s helped me determine and target which individuals I need to hire for which positions and it’s also helped me tailor, structure, and respond to those already on my team. Probably more importantly, it’s given me a greater understanding of my own requirements, desires, and motivations so that I can keep myself passionate and effective.

So which are you and how do you identify those around you?

Intrapreneur - These are the 9-5ers. The team members who don’t want to come earlier than starting time or stay late (though sometimes they may). They want to know exactly what they’re going to do that day, and know that next week, next month, and next year their paycheck will be there. For these types of individuals it’s very important that your leadership is consistent, fair, and direct. They want detailed, specific training. They want all the right tools and they want to know how to address any situation. These individuals are risk-averse and generally prefer repetition in their tasks so they know they’re doing what they do best constantly.

Entreprenuer – According to dictionary.com, entrepreneur is “a person who organizes and manages any enterprise, esp. a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk.” Within your team, whether they are leaders or not isn’t significant. They’ll naturally gravitate to the leadership positions and get people to follow their lead whether they’re given the title or not. They want excitement and a challenge. They are proud of their creative talents and want a forum to showcase them. Responsibility and appropriate reward for their risk-taking is very important. They hate being stagnant. If you aren’t helping them get better, faster, and smarter constantly, they won’t stay. Appropriately these are the traits of entreprenuers who venture into their own businesses, however with an environment that provides them the benefits of self-employment these individuals can thrive within an organization owned by someone else.

So why understand these classifications? As I mentioned above there are 2 main reasons:

  1. To identify for yourself which one you are so you can understand your own strengths and weaknesses.
  2. To identify which your other team members are so you can structure your communications with them to meet them on their level.

Let’s look at #2 first. What would be the difference between an Intrapreneur and Entrepreneur as far as appropriate compensation? The following video discusses some science that helps us better understand how to answer that:

The ROWE work environment is GREAT for entrepreneurial individuals. The studies he mentioned demonstrated that with those type of individuals working in complex, changing, challenging environments where “thought” is the primary value of the team members, compensating based on performance is counter-productive. However, intrapreneurs, who value consistency, will respond much better to simple tasks with compensation tied directly to their performance. Which is why in my organization, I work hard to incentivize those simple tasks.

So let’s jump back to #1 so we can better understand how introspection and clarification can help us perform at our peak. This is broken down into 2 sub-categories:

  1. Our interactions with other team members.
  2. Our goals for ourselves.

Let’s take a scenario and see how it might differ based on the circumstances. Let’s say you’re the leader and you’re implementing a new, exciting product in your business. Since your team members are in front of customers all day every day you have to get buy-in from all of them so how do you present it to an intrapreneur and an entrepreneur?

The intrapreneur will require a LOT of hand-holding. They want instructions, scripts of what to say, Frequently Asked Questions with the appropriate responses and all the benefits listed out so they can reference and recite them.

Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, need excitement. If they believe in the product and are excited about how it can help them and the customers whom they interact with, they’ll figure out the rest. They’ll learn how to answer the tough questions and the best way to present it in a way that’s comfortable and yet effective.

How do I know this is true? As one example, in my business we just started Platinum Care Plans which are simply extended warranties including all necessary maintenance. My entreprenurial individuals ran with it. My intrapreneurial individuals, at best, have started mentioning it to customers but have not sold one Platinum Care plan. Why? Because I didn’t present the information that they needed in the way that they appreciated so that they were comfortable enough to sell it.

Now here’s the real kicker, considering that I’m the entrepreneurial type (squared), is it any wonder that I presented the information in a way that was more digestible for the entrepreneurial team members??? Of course not. Which is exactly why we must understand how we fit into this scope. Next time I’ll do a better job of helping my intrapreneurs right from the start of a new product.

More importantly, understanding our own basic tendencies can help us more fully understand how to structure our business and personal goals. For instance, if you’re exceedingly entrepreneurial, at some point you’re going to want to go out on your own. You’re going to want your own business or be in charge of your own team with minimal oversight and you’re going to structure your education, contacts, and career choices to get you closer to that goal. If you’re exceedingly intrapreneurial, you’re going to generally look for a skilled trade and a reliable, predictable business where you can work. Now that skilled trade can be computer programming, accounting, or plumbing. It doesn’t matter much, you just want stability and the comfort that comes along with that.

Since this post is getting long, I’ll continue my next blog with more clarifications on what BOTH intrapreneurs and entrepreneurs have in common and require from their leaders.

To your success, Bryan

Posted in Business Psychology, Leadership, Team Building | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Scientific Advertising

Posted by ethicalbusinessbuilder on October 7, 2009

I finally finished Scientific Advertising by Claude C. Hopkins this past weekend and HIGHLY recommend it. The whole book is around 75 pages and can easily be read in a little over an hour.

There are 2 primary concepts that literally jumped out at me as I was reading. The first blindingly simple, yet profound, teaching of Claude C. Hopkins, that I originally attributed to Brad Sugar’s since he was the first one I’d heard say it, is simply:

“Your object in all advertising is to BUY new customers at a price which pays a profit.” (my emphasis added)

Did you hear that? Just like when you go out to buy a car, or parts, or insurance or anything else for your business you expect (even demand) to get something in return for your money, your marketing is no different. If you’re not verifying that your marketing is cost-effectively buying you new customers, then you are most likely just throwing money away. The second point that Claude makes is really just a further clarification of the above statement. On the last page he highlights the fact that pretty soon all advertising agencies will only get paid based on the results they deliver. Is that how you pay your advertising agency?

“The time is fast coming when men who spend money are going to know what they get. (hahaha, if only that were true in marketing today) Good business and efficiency will be applied to advertising. Men and methods will be measured by the known returns, and only competent men can survive… Enormous advertising is being done along scientific lines… We (advertising agencies) shall be prouder of it (advertising) when we are judged on merit.”

Does that describe your advertising agency??? Now it may be fair to assume that with the advent of new tracking methods such as Pay-Per-Click, Click-Thru-Rates, custom 800 numbers for each direct mail piece, etc. etc. that advertising agencies are indeed moving in that direction. I would tend to agree, except…  Scientific Advertising was published in 1932! Now do you see why it’s so important to understand the concepts of “Scientific Advertising” that he promotes? For 80 years we’ve been able to track the results of our advertising dollars in terms of the cost/lead and cost/sale and yet we still aren’t demanding that from our advertising agencies (or from ourselves if we handle our own marketing).

It seems to me, however, that times may be changing. Yesterday I was speaking with a gentleman who does sets primarily for commercials. He’s done it for over 30 years and has done sets for commercials, movies, TV shows, and music videos and so seems to have quite a range of experience. In his personal opinion, TV advertising rates have dropped off so much over the last few years he imagines it will nearly disappear entirely within the next few. Obviously I questioned him on that, but he insisted that, whether it’s simply a byproduct of the economy or not has not been proven yet, but if not, TV commercials are on the way out. Could that be because businesses are finally demanding results from their marketing or dropping it altogether?

As an engineer I love numbers, so in practical terms this is how you hold your advertising agency’s feet to the fire.

  1. Track the following:
    1. Cost of advertisement
    2. Number of people who inquired because of it
    3. Number of people who purchased because of it
    4. Lifetime value of each customer
    5. Profit Margins
  2. Calculate the following:
    1. Cost of advertisement/number of people who purchased because of it – This gives you your “cost/sale”
    2. Lifetime value of customer x Profit Margins – This gives you the profit you’ll make off of each customer or “profit/customer”
  3. Compare the following: your “cost/sale” to “profit/customer” – If the “cost/sale” is higher than “profit/customer” drop that marketing project or figure out a way to improve it in a jiffy.

Let’s throw in a few numbers to make the point clearer.

  • Cost of advertisement: $1000
  • Number of people who inquired because of it: 10
  • Number of people who purchased because of it: 4
  • Lifetime value of customer: $2000
  • Profit Margings: 15%
  • Cost/Lead = $1000/10 or $100
  • Cost/Sale = $1000/4 or $250
  • Profit/Customer = $2000x.15 or $300
  • Our Profit/Customer ($300) is greater than our Cost/Sale ($250) so we keep the marketing

Keep in mind that you should always be improving your marketing to be more cost-effective. In other words, even though we’ll make $50 profit on that advertising program, if we can improve our marketing or sales process to increase the number of people who purchased based on the same advertisement to 5 (an increase of 25%) our profit would double (increase of 100%) to $100 per customer. As the saying goes “the devil is in the details.” In our instance, “the profit is in the details.”

To get some practical ideas on how you can better track your lead sources to determine your cost/lead and cost/sale be sure to check out my blog about why Asking your customer “how did you hear about us?” is a waste of time and what to do about it…

To your Scientific Advertising success, Bryan

Posted in Business Accounting, Business Books, Ethical Marketing | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Are you putting yourself out there for criticism?

Posted by ethicalbusinessbuilder on September 20, 2009

When you want to get better at something, there’s a big difference between tracking your own personal performance and exposing your strengths and weaknesses to your peers openly and publicly. That’s why all business owners should make a habit of exposing all the details of their operations to their colleagues. Why? Because no one runs their best race, plays their best game, or builds their best business behind closed doors. The pressure, the crowd, the feedback, and most importantly the competition always makes us better.

Granted, if you’re like me, your toughest competition is yourself and no one demands more of you than you. However, that’s not the point. The point is if you’re good at what you do you should share that publicly with others for 2 reasons:

  1. It will force you to be great.
  2. It will help others who have potentially helped you.

Now what do I mean by exposing yourself to the public? Do whatever you have to to make your ideas, best practices, and systems public. For instance:

  1. Give a speech.
  2. Do training for your colleagues
  3. Write a white paper on something for which you are an expert and pass it out to everyone you know who knows more than you.
  4. Write a blog.

You get the point. If you can’t receive feedback and criticism (maybe even praise if you really are good) than it’s not good enough. You have to be able to fail for this to be effective.

Let me give you an example of what I’m doing (in addition to this blog) and how it’s helped make me better.

Recently I’ve partnered up with my previous employer – a software company that provides niche software for my business – to host a training seminar for other businesses in the industry. The training is about a month away however knowing that I’ll have to expose my business and also provide value for all of those in attendance has put some pressure on me to produce something great. So this is what I did:

  1. Reviewed my biggest headaches. – Quite simply these are personnel and cashflow problems. Sound familiar?
  2. Reviewed my biggest goals. – Increase profits and limit the business’ dependence on me.
  3. Reviewed my plan for dealing with those headaches and goals. – Determine areas of weakness through efficient analysis of business benchmarks and then come up with a list of ways to improve each area of weakness.
  4. Developed a “system” for continually monitoring and improving my headaches and goals so it can be taught to others. – This is the hardest yet most important part. If I can’t break down my game plan into an easily taught system my business will never run without me.

Number 4 is really the only one that needs further explanation. My “system” was actually quite simple once I sat down for a few hours and thought it all through. It basically started with the big picture of my business – which just so happens to be the same big picture for every business – Brad Sugars’ Business Chassis as he teaches about in The Business Coach. He breaks down the 5 parts of every business that determine the profit of that business. You NEED to know these 5 numbers in your business to know where you’re doing well and where you’re lacking. The next step was to figure out how to use the software to determine those 5 numbers. Finally, I organized some ideas and suggestions on how to improve those numbers for each department in my business. My goal isn’t to provide all the answers on how to make each area better, but to help business owners understand how to find the areas of weakness so that they can then use their own knowledge, experience, and skills to make the most effective improvements.

Now the question that’s bugging me is why didn’t I come up with this game plan 18 months ago when I bought the business? I have no idea. It really only took me a few hours to plan out and it will certainly help guide my business (and hopefully others) in the future. Though I will never know the answer to that question, I do know that I finally took the time to lay out this detailed, systematic, and repeatable game plan because I was forced to prove to others that I am indeed an expert at my business.

The point of this blog is not to explain exactly what my training will encompass, but to encourage you to step out and take a risk by exposing your business acumen to the world and trying on the label “expert” for a few days to see if you can live up to it.

To your success as an expert, Bryan

Posted in Business Books, Business Psychology, Leadership | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Why Not?

Posted by ethicalbusinessbuilder on September 4, 2009

No matter how a self-made person has become successful, every single one of them has one thing in common – at some point they asked “Why not?”, couldn’t come up with a good reason to not do it, and took a chance trying something new.

This is the hardest part in becoming successful for most people. Taking that risk, that chance, and not knowing if it will work out.  Ironically, for some people, like myself, taking that leap into the unknown is the best part!

So let’s look at 2 different aspects of risk-taking:

  1. Why everyone, at some point in their life, needs to go out on a limb and do something for which they can’t guarantee the outcome.
  2. How to take that leap while hedging your bet to ensure success (while accepting failure).

Why we all need to take a flying leap.

Because that’s what makes us human. Nothing great was ever accomplished with out risk and effort. Nothing. I can’t even begin to count the number of times I’ve told myself (and others) that we’re all given one life, it’s up to us to choose if we’re going to live it. What does that mean? That means that you need to take that spontaneous trip this weekend not next. That means you need to write that children’s book you’ve always wanted to. That means you need to learn to paint or how to speak another language or how to fly an airplane. What? I thought this blog was about business? That’s exactly what I’m talking about. Why go through all the headache, heartache and hassles of buying, building, and selling a business if it doesn’t give you the freedom to live your entire life as you wish? Here’s an even better reason. When you learn to live your life in such a way that you regularly take small risks, the fear of  taking that step toward not knowing where your next paycheck is coming from will be so much easier.

If that all sounds like the prescription that can only work for an adrenaline junky, consider this – there are no guarantees your next paycheck will be there anyway. With 9.4% unemployment in the US, massive layoffs, and over 120 banks closing in the US in the past year, even our most “secure” businesses can fail. At least with your own business you have the ability to control your own destiny. Beyond that, guess who’s going to be the last person to get laid off at your business? Obviously you. If your business currently supports 10 or 20 or 50 people, that can be quite a buffer for when times get tough. After all, it’s your choice who stays and goes.

But we don’t need to do it without a parachute.

When you’re ready to take that next step in your life you shouldn’t do so so recklessly that you guarantee and invite failure just for the adrenaline rush, battle scars, and the ability to say “well at least I tried.” So here’s what I’d recommend (and what I’ve done with my “risks”).

  1. Have a detailed, written, milestone and goal-oriented plan in place before you start. In other words, if you’re buying a business, know exactly what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it to improve that business. Before it’s ever acquired you MUST have an exit strategy (and probably 2 or 3 in place). Granted, the plans never work out exactly as anticipated but that’s not the point. The point is when the world is falling in around you and you’re so overwhelmed by working IN your business, you can always pull out that list to help you get back on track. From personal experience I can say this step is invaluable. After all, this is the reason 300 businesses failed in NYC. You can learn a bit more about what questions entrepreneurs ask to formulate that business plan.
  2. Have liquid assets for a rainy day. Whether it’s to make that mortgage payment on your rental property when you don’t have tenants or because you can’t cash your paycheck until the next payment comes in, when you’re living on the edge you always need a cash buffer. Even if you are so good (or lucky) that you never have to use it, you’ll never regret having enough cash on hand to survive for at least 3-6 months with no income. This is one of the keys to generating wealth.
  3. Have a backup plan. As a matter of fact, have no less than 5 backup plans. 10 backup plans is probably better. Why? Because I can’t predict the future and neither can you. Just as in effective marketing, only the customer can tell you what’s the best ad, the same is true for any idea. If you’re quitting your job to go out on your own, you probably want to be working on a few ideas at all times. Of course we have all heard stories about the guy working from his mom’s basement for 3 years with little to no income to build a business (my grandfather did just that), but realistically, if you have a good business plan, and you’re working hard at marketing, and you have a good product or service and you’re not making money pretty quickly, you probably should do something else. Big public companies like Amazon.com and Ebay who lost millions before making a dime are exceptions to the rule and the complexity of structuring a public offering to generate enough capital to cover those losses is way beyond the scope of my simple blog. :-)
  4. Accept and Expect Failure – That doesn’t sound real positive now does it? Why would we want to ever consider that? Aren’t we then programming ourselves for that exact failure? No, and here’s why. Expect and visualize being successful in your business or whatever risk you take at all times. However you must understand that no one successful did it on the first try. We all make mistakes and have a lot to learn. We all get rejected and one or 2 or 20 of our “bright ideas” fall flat on their faces. Whether that’s the marketing project that’s going to skyrocket your sales or the team incentive that’s going to double productivity, we’re going to miss the mark (and be all the wiser for it) at some point. Actually we’re going to miss the mark at a lot of points. As I always say, if you make a mistake and learn from it, it’s never a failure. Supposedly Edison failed over 6000 times at making the light bulb viable and remarked on the failures by saying “They taught something that I didn’t know. They taught me what direction to move in.” Entrepreneurs know there will be “failures” along the way and yet we know those lessons are just as valuable as the successes.

My last thought on the subject is again, Why Not? What’s the worst that can happen? You burn your time, energy, and cash reserves and then have to go get a job again? If you hedge your bet with the 4 suggestions above, even that would be unlikely but so what? Worse things have happened to far better people. Take that risk. Take that chance. Take that flying leap. Carpe Diem!

To your risk-taking success, Bryan

Posted in Business Psychology | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

The quickest way to $1,000,000 – Stock Market? Real Estate? Business?

Posted by ethicalbusinessbuilder on August 22, 2009

Unless you’re a doctor, lawyer, or work on wall street most people will never be able to become millionaires without one or more of the above methods for generating wealth. As a matter of fact, less than 12% of millionaires get that way by virtue of their “jobs” according to The Millionaire Next door. So what’s the easiest/best path to becoming a millionaire?

The most important concept to understand is leverage. The goal is always to do more with less. Whether that’s make more money with less invested or more money with less time, the more you can leverage your current assets the more quickly you’ll be able to acheive millionaire status. Now which option – stocks, real estate, or small business provide the greatest leverage?

In reverse order:

  1. Stock market – Once you acheive $1,000,000 in your bank account you can put that into a CD at your local bank for 5% and live comfortably off of your $50,000 per year in interest. Also, once you acheive a net worth of over a million with income of over $250,000 your stock broker can get you access to buying public shares at wholesale prices. In other words, the more money you have to invest the cheaper your per share investment will be. The problem with stocks is that you have to have money to leverage the stock market. Unless of course you can convince a bunch of other people to invest with you in which case you can leverage their money. However if you did that you would no longer be an investor you’d be in business. ;-) Typically a stock market investment prior to becoming a millionaire might look something like this. You invest $5,000 after doing your thorough research on EBB LLC and after a year manage a 20% return. That’s a VERY ideal situation but if you did that you’d cash out in a year with $6,000 or $1,000 profit. Not bad but not a whole lot of leverage there. If instead you invested $20,000 and you’re the next Warren Buffet who can sustain a 20% annual return for 21.5 years you’d be a millionaire. That’s before taxes of course.
  2. Real Estate – If you’ve been around real estate at all you’ve heard the often touted “statistic” that “real estate makes more people millionaires than anything else.” I say “statistic” because I’ve never seen hard evidence to back this up and even if someone produced it, I believe they’d be showing that people are paper millionaires. In other words, on paper their real estate is worth $1,000,000 if they sold it for a $1,000,000 but they don’t exactly have a million smackers in the bank. Real estate is beneficial however in that it gives you much greater leveraging power than the stock market. For instance if you buy a $100,000 property with $5,000 down (which would be tough these days) you would then have around a $600/month mortgage. If you then rent the property to someone else for $1000/month you now have a positive monthly cashflow of $400. Now here’s where the leverage comes in, if the property appreciates 5% in one year and then you sell it (by yourself of course since a realtor would take your profits), you would cash out with $14,800. Let’s say after insurance, maintenance, taxes and other expenses you actually walk away with $10,000. You invested $5k to begin with so you made $5,000 or a 100% return on your investment. Obviously this is an ideal situation however I’ve personally done nearly 100% in less than 22 months so it is definitely possible. If you were able to maintain a 50% return on your real estate investments every year by acquiring positive cashflow rental properties (with the first one worth $200,000) that appreciate at 5% annually you’d be a millionaire in a little less than 10 years. As a matter of fact, in Robert G. Allen’s book Nothing Down for the 2000s, he proposes just such a strategy to help you become a millionaire within 10 years. It’s actually a very good book that I personally credit for inspiring me to buy my first rental property at 21 while enrolled in engineering school. Obviously real estate offers quite a bit more leverage…
  3. Small Business – Here’s the bottom line, with around $5,000 out of pocket I’ve structured a business purchase that has yielded me in perks and compensation more than a 14 fold return on my investment within 12 months. That’s right, a 1400% increase on my initial investment in less than 12 months. Keep in mind, that’s on my very first business purchase and that’s without even selling the business yet. Since I’ve nearly doubled the profits in the business in my first 12 months, I would tend to think that my ROI will actually be well in excess of a 20 fold increase on my money. To make the math a little simpler, a 20 fold increase would be like investing $5,000 and getting back $100,000.

Now to make the comparison more accurate we need to take into account 2 more crucial pieces:

  1. Time
  2. Taxes

The only time I ever made money in the stock market required me to invest a lot of time in research before investing. Once I make those investments I should just be able to stick with them for years and so very little “maintenance” is needed. However that’s the get-rich-slowly method since we have little to no leverage of our money. So if your time is very limited this may be what’s best for you. However with capital gains around 35% your actual profits will be much smaller since when you cash in your stocks you’ll be taxed around 35% on the profits. There are creative ways to reduce that number but in the interest of simplicity we’ll leave it as-is.

When I had my rental property while studying engineering I was able to sufficiently manage my house, classes (while averaging over 21 credits per term), and racing so, though the time investment was constant and sometimes unexpected (like the time when the toilet exploded when I was a state away), it shouldn’t take over your life. Once you get 10-15 properties that’s a different story. As for taxes, real estate actually can be a great tax shelter however if you’re making money and your properties are appreciating you’re probably looking at close to 30% in taxes. I say that because capital gains on your profit will still be 35% however you have more deductions and, if you run it like a business, you can give yourself perks like business travel, laptops, mileage reimbursement, etc.

My business nearly consumes all of my time. Ironically, at the same time, I have more freedom now than I’ve ever had before as either a student or under the employ of someone else. In other words, I may have to trade a Saturday this weekend for skipping out next Friday for a long weekend but I don’t have to ask permission to do so. Overall my business is a full-time job that could still afford me the time for stock market investing and real estate speculation, but could not afford me (at this point) time for a normal full-time job. With 1-3 rental homes it’s very possible to have a normal full time job. The tax benefits of a business are so many and varied that I pay less than 20% of total income in income taxes.

If we take all of those into account here’s how our returns actually look:

  1. Stock Market – (after taxes and assuming a normal full-time job) $650 or 13%
  2. Real Estate – (after taxes and assuming a normal full-time job) $3,500 or 70%
  3. Small Business – (after taxes and deducting the salary I’ve been offered as an engineer) – $18,000 or 420%

So even after taking into account both my time investment (which wouldn’t be nearly as flexible working for someone else as an engineer) and tax consequences, investing in a Small Business as your first step to generating wealth is the best one because it offers by far the greatest leverage. Don’t forget that my ROI for Small Business still assumes that I make absolutely no additional profit when I sell the business. Obviously I don’t plan on that happening. ;-)

To your wealth generating success, Bryan

P.S. My original out of pocket expenses for my business purchase were all lawyers fees that were reimbursed by my new business shortly after buying it which meant my inital cash investment was tied up for maybe 90 days versus the entire year for both stocks and real estate.

Posted in Business Accounting, Business Buying/Selling | Tagged: , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

Shopping yourself – The best way to improve your business’ conversion rate?

Posted by ethicalbusinessbuilder on August 11, 2009

By shopping yourself, I simply mean determine exactly what your customers experience, record it, and review it to determine areas for improvement.

Paco Underhill actually wrote a great book titled, Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping, that talks about much of what he has learned through his Mystery Shopper business. His book and experiences are all geared toward improving retail closing ratios or conversion rates. In other words, he wants to figure out how to get the highest percentage of people to buy the most often. He doesn’t help with marketing or lead-generating in the sense that he helps get people into the stores, his business simply specializes in converting those people who have made a trek to your store into customers (or repeat customers).

Why do you NEED to invest so much time and money into your conversion rate? Because leads are expensive! In my business, leads cost around $78. In other words, to get someone to call me and be interested enough in our products to provide their name and contact information costs me $78 per call ($159 per call for Yellow Page contacts).  To convert those to sales costs me around $268. So right now I’m converting 1 out of every 3.5 prospects who call me into customers. As you’ll learn, these numbers are never perfect and this doesn’t include people who call me for service of existing equipment or to purchase ancillary products. This is simply the people who don’t have anything I offer right now and want it.

Now what do I stand to gain from increasing our conversion rate? Potentially thousands of dollars in revenue and profit. Since some of my new customers are rentals (or equipment leases) and some are sales it’s hard to get an exact “average dollar sale” of my new customers however here’s how it breaks down for new customers in 2009:

  1. Average new sale – $3798
  2. Average new monthly rental/lease – $52.78

Roughly 24% of new customers are rental/leases but let’s ignore that for a minute to keep the math simple. If I can increase my conversion rate for sales by 10% so that 1 customer buys for every 3.15 people who call (instead of every 3.5) that would have added about $32,283 to my business this year. In addition, though my cost per lead would remain the same at $78, my cost per sale would drop to $249 ($241 if I assume a 10% increase for both sales and rental/leases). To say that an even simpler way, increaseing my conversion rate by 10% results in a direct increase in gross profit of 10% on all of my sales. Not bad. And don’t forget we just increased our top line revenue at the same time so my actual Net Profits just increase by much more than 10%.

In the past I’ve reviewed how to increase your conversion rate. Since I’m always looking for new ways to do that, I’ve bumped into Paco Underhill’s book and into a company called teleXpertise. teleXpertise does the same thing that Mr. Underhill’s company does except they do it over the phone. They’re phone mystery shoppers and I must say they’re very good. Their recorded calls with your sales people will tell you a whole lot about the efficiency of your sales process. My business model requires onsite inspections before quoting prices so our process can be quite lengthy from the first call to a closed deal. Keep in mind that every interaction with the customer is a potential step where they can be lost forever however each step does not result in a sale… So each and every step has to be improved. To clarify what I mean by “steps” you’ll want to check out my blog on increasing your conversion rate.

Let’s talk a bit more about how they can help you increase your conversion rate by evaluating what I’ve learned. Keep in mind that I have my sales phone calls scripted and have gone over individual training with all of my team members on how to handle sales inquiries and the following still came up:

  1. Answering questions that we didn’t know the answer to. (though we thought we did)
  2. Not asking for the caller’s name or contact information (including email).
  3. Answering questions that we shouldn’t (because they’re based on what information we gather from an onsite inspection)
  4. Quoting exact prices over the phone
  5. Not using proper NLP techniques
  6. Didn’t always ask about what prompted them to call us

And what we did right:

  1. Cross-sold products (i.e. they called asking about X and we told them about Y)
  2. Tried to set the appointment with the customer (several times)
  3. Returned the customer’s inquiry within minutes (our lead catchers don’t set appointments our sales people call the customer back to set the appointment)
  4. Upsold products (i.e. they called about a service we didn’t offer and we suggested a better alternative)
  5. Differentiated ourselves from our competitors

So you can look at this information in 2 ways.

  1. After all that training we still did more things incorrectly than correctly so we suck (me in particular as the Team Leader).
  2. After all that training we still did more things incorrectly than correctly so just look at how much more money we could make if we always did things correctly!

Obviously I focus on the latter. It’s one thing to do the right thing by training and scripting, but it’s just as important to constantly train and improve. What was most surprising to me was I didn’t tell a single person on our team that we were using mystery shoppers until after they were done.  When I did tell them their conversations were being recorded they weren’t at all mad about it, they were actually excited to hear themselves. This may be partially because I set the bar for myself to constantly improve so I’m not asking them to do anything they haven’t seen me do over and over again and I stressed that before I told them what was going on. I also let them know how much we pay for leads so they can get a grasp of just how valuable each and every call is. The best part, however, was that they were very receptive to improvements and looked forward to doing better next time. That’s right, I assured them their would be a next time… ;-)

To your increased conversion rate success, Bryan

P.S. As an additional note, if you’re buying a business you should definitely Mystery Shop the business ahead of time. If they did more right than wrong you may want to look for a different business. If they have a LOT of room to improve that might be the perfect business for you. Keep in mind that you prefer to buy businesses that just need to tweak the front end.

Posted in Business Accounting, Ethical Marketing, Leadership, Team Building | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

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