As I’m reading Adam Penenberg’s book Viral Loop: From Facebook to Twitter, How Today’s Smartest Businesses Grow Themselves, 2 main themes have caught my attention. Firstly, the power and consistency of creating a viral loop for your business. Secondly, though the item I’m blogging about first, is how differently businesses can be valued.

I’ve written regularly about valuing small businesses based on the mantra “it’s all about profits”, and yet have learned of dozen’s of businesses worth hundreds of millions to billions of dollars with little to no profits to back that up. Penenberg references HotorNot, Hotmail, Paypal, Ebay, Bebo (even though they didn’t use their venture capital money), Myspace, Facebook, BirthdayAlarm, Netscape, Ning, Twitter and others that almost universally had substantial losses each month when venture capitalists started investing millions or 10′s of millions of dollars into these businesses. A good friend of mine, and MBA student, had argued with me many times that business is all about getting customers. I always countered that you can have a million customers but if you lose $1/month on each one, that’s not a good business. It seems, however, that both of us weren’t looking at the entire scope of business.

So when we value businesses, there are basically 3 primary groupings to consider:

1. Small, closely-held businesses (which is what I most often write about)
2. Internet Businesses
3. Public Companies

In small, closely-held businesses, I am right. It’s all about profits and your business should be valued on that. If you’re buying one of theses businesses and it has a loss, you may just want to offer to take it off of the seller’s hands for them so they don’t continue to incur the losses. These are your every day “main-street” (pardon the cliche’) businesses that you find for sale on Bizbuysell.com and other websites. Theses businesses are generally your first step toward wealth creation.

Internet Businesses open up an entirely other ball of wax. These businesses rarely have any income and certainly no profits early on in their life-cycle, however manage to attract anywhere from hundreds of thousands to hundreds of millions of dollars in investment capital before turning a profit. Does that mean it’s not about profits for these businesses and that’s not their top goal? Of course not. That’s just crazy talk. The difference is simply this. These investors appreciate that their is profit potential when you’ve captured the daily attention of hundreds of thousands or millions of internet users. One particular story that caught my attention was the start of Hotmail. Initially Hotmail had no users, no website (didn’t even have the hotmail.com domain name) but they had an idea and managed to raise $300,000 for a 15% stake in a company with no customers or income or profits, in return for being the first company to come to market with webmail. About 2 years later, that initial $300,000 investment from the venture capital firm was turned into $60 million dollars as Hotmail was sold to Microsoft for $400 million dollars. Without going into the details, the power of a viral business model made this all possible. So our question is, how did the venture capital firm decide that a 15% stake in JavaSoft (which eventually became Hotmail) was worth $300,000? Negotiating. The only thing JavaSoft had was an idea. Through negotiating they decided the idea was worth $2 million and so 15% was worth $300,000. For the dozen’s of businesses I’ve mentioned above that have followed a similar trajectory, obviously there are hundreds that failed. Beyond that, Microsoft, has certainly profited far more than their original $400 million investment in Hotmail in the last 10 years so don’t ever lose site of the importance of profits.

Public Companies can potentially bring another set of rules. Firstly, you can’t buy a public company for less than it’s stock is worth. In other words, if a stock is trading for $10 and there are 100,000 outstanding shares, the business is worth $1 million dollars ($10 x 100,000) and you can’t pay less for it. In theory, the company’s stock price should be based on it’s profits (generally called earnings) however many public companies have price to earnings values ranging from 5:1 to 50:1 or higher. This simply means that the business is “worth” anywhere from 5 to 50 times more than its profits. If a business is currently losing money, it’s price to earnings ratio effectively doesn’t exist. So, for instance, if the business above had $100,000 in profits, it’s PE or Price to Earnings ratio would be $1,000,000 to $100,000 or 10:1. Make sense? So the natural question is, what determines a business’ stock price? And the answer to a great degree is the same as with an Internet Business. It’s based a lot on speculation. More specifically, if a bunch of people think a business is a great business, and so buy a lot of stock, the price of that stock will go up regardless of whether the business has profits or not. In theory, over the long-term the stock price will match the actual value of the company which is how guys like Warren Buffet have made billions investing in companies that are undervalued.

So what does this mean to us? If you have no profits but can convince a bunch of people you have a great business anyway, you can make a lot of money.

The reality is actually, if you can convince buyers, venture capitalists, or investors that your unprofitable business has the potential to return remarkable profits in the future, you may just be able to throw EBIDTA out the window and value your business on whatever feels right at the  moment. In other words, no matter where or what your business is, your business is worth whatever you can convince someone to pay for it.

To your success, Bryan

P.S. If you’re looking for a real-life argument between a small business “profit is king” entrepreneur and a “customers are king” large business builder, check out Perry Marshall’s blog.

Have you ever hit a game-winning shot, scored the game-winning goal, or converted the game-winning touchdown?

How about setting a new Personal Record for swimming, running, biking, car, quad, or motorcycle racing while taking first place?

It feels good, doesn’t it? As a matter of fact, there are few things in life that will ever rival those feelings of accomplishment and the adrenaline rush that ensues. For the rest of your life, those moments will be remembered and often relived as you just love to tell those stories. Athletics have the power to evoke such an amazing feeling because they bring together a few main things in one place:

1. Competition – No one is letting you win or succeed. Actually there are plenty of people hoping you fail so that they can win instead.
2. Recognition – When you have the ball, or the wheel, or are on the track, it’s up to you. All eyes are on you whether it’s because you’re doing well or failing. When you succeed, they’re all cheering for you!
3. Public Pressure – You are not behind closed doors. As I pointed out in my blog asking Are you putting yourself out there for criticism? public pressure forces us to be good or embarrass ourselves trying.
4. It’s not easy – By definition, if everyone could (or even wanted to do it) there would be no competition. You worked hard to acquire the skills and talents you have, that brought you to that moment of victory. In other words, you’re doing something you are good at.
5. Exclusivity – You’re in front. Everyone else is behind you. Only 1 person can be in that position.

So what does that have to do with employee motivation and business building? Everything. If you can understand and appreciate that feeling and those emotions, you understand what motivates people.

Though I used sports as an analogy there are parallels to this feeling of accomplishment throughout our lives. Here are just a few other ones so you can see the universal appeal of accomplishment:

1. Getting the girl (or guy) – Especially if you had to take a risk to do so by approaching a stranger and your buddies were watching.
2. Closing the sale – Especially if you’re paid on commission and you’re in competition with either yourself to do better or to be the best in your group.
3. Buying a house or car or something of great value – Generally this provides a major sense of accomplishment as not everyone has the ability to do this (except for a few years during the mid 2000′s when anyone could get financed).
4. Winning a competitive bid – You proved that you are the best and it felt good.
5. Making a profitable stock transaction – You bought low, sold high, beat the market odds and beat all the “experts” while doing it.
6. Getting recruited – Instead of being “hired”, someone actively and aggressively sought you out because of your talents.

The list can go on and on… My underlying point is simply this – If you, as a leader and manager, can find a way to bring Competition, Recognition, Publicity, Exclusivity and a Challenge to your business, most people will rise to the occasion and LOVE their jobs because of it.

If you can remember back to those 2 hour practices, or twice a day camps in the summer (3 runs/day at cross-country camp), it was not always easy, fun, or painless. As a matter of fact, the majority of the time it wasn’t fun at all. However, human beings are generally willing to sacrifice and struggle through all of those obstacles because the rewards of success, particularly the feelings that come along with it, are worth it.

Again, though I use sports as my analogy, this lesson certainly isn’t limited to the sports arena so don’t let that prevent you from getting the point.

The other day in my office, I started to ask some of my team about their experiences with sports. Even the ones who “sat the bench” understood what I meant by that great feeling of accomplishment at hitting the game-winning home-run. Ironically, the one who admitted to being the bench-warmer instantly latched on to our current inter-office competition. Every day she gets so excited about it she tells me about every single customer she signs up for this program and then “trash-talks” me for not getting as many as her. She’ll even walk into my office to receive a high-five to commemorate her latest score. Talk about fun and excitement at work! What may be most impressive, is that for all intents and purposes, her job is “secretarial.” Something most of us would never consider to be competitive or exciting.

Let’s take this concept one step further. According to Marcus Buckingham in his book “First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently,” the primary motivator for most people at their job is not how much they make. The primary reason for someone leaving or staying at a job is their relationship with their direct superior (remember that coach you hated or loved?). Take a moment and recall some of your favorite stories about your life. How many of those were directly related to your income at that time? Even your stories of accomplishment at work are rarely simply “I got a raise.” The accomplishments you made to get that raise are what makes for a great story and the true sense of accomplishment. The raise was simply the reward (i.e. winning the game) for showcasing your talents.

So to take this concept full-circle, compensation should be tied to these competitions and other measures of success. This is why I’m not a fan of an hourly wage. An hourly wage does not incorporate a single one of the 5 items that motivate people to make sacrifices for success. Admittedly, several of my team members are at least partially compensated hourly. The biggest problem with this is obviously that it breeds complacency. Once you’re used to getting that $10/hour, you are no longer motivated to keep working hard to get it. It’s a given; it’s guaranteed; all you have to do is show up.  What kind of motivator is that???

Great coaches, great leaders, and great managers find ways to motivate their team members to do their best by rewarding them for their talents.

To your “motivational” success, Bryan

P.S. Since you’re the coach of your team, make sure your competitions and motivators encourage both individual and team performance. ER9Y2V4W6YK5

There are 3 reasons to build recurring revenue to fix your business:

1. It can generate immediate cash.
2. It will generate consistent cash over time.
3. It will increase the value of your business if you’re looking to sell.

Since your business is struggling, building recurring revenue by offering payment plans for your equipment and services is not what we’re focusing on right now. At the moment, we need to generate cash today with little up-front investment, which I covered in detail in my blog on this topic. For that reason I won’t spend any more time on it again. Since August 2009, my business has created an additional $314/month in recurring revenue. That doesn’t sound like a lot (and it certainly isn’t considering our potential), however we’re just starting this program, everyone is still learning how to sell it, and our up-front costs, for a predictable $3768/year, are very close to nothing. Our goal is to have $500/month by 2010 and $3000/month by 2011.

In reality, the idea behind building recurring revenue and improving your sales and marketing is the same. Your goal at these last 2 steps is to develop a way to create consistent cashflow. Whether that means you need to sell something new to your customer again and again, or you need to bring in new customers regularly, a great sales and marketing system will generate predictable income for your business. I would venture to suggest that if you had a sales system in place during boom times, you wouldn’t have nearly the problems you do now in a slow economy.

So let’s summarize once again what it takes to fix any business in trouble (and though I write passionately for small businesses, nearly everything can be applied to Fortune 500 companies):

1. Change yourself - By making a commitment to do so, particularly by working ON your business instead of IN it, and making by making lists.
2. Know your numbers – If you don’t know where you are, you have know idea where your problems lie and can’t develop a plan of attack to fix them.
3. Cut Costs – As drastically as necessary based on your current circumstances.
4. Improve Efficiency and Productivity – Since your business is not doing well, your profit per person is obviously lower than it needs to be for you to succeed.
5. Improve Marketing and Sales – Though this is number 5, you need to work on it along with the rest to make sure you always have money coming in.
6. Build Recurring Revenue – Make this a priority. It can help you through the next tough time.

Several times I’ve mentioned the importance of lists, systems, and procedures. These items are not just for your team members, they’re for you (and me). You need your checklist to fix the weak links in your business systematically without losing focus. You also need a daily schedule to block off your time for each of the 6 items above. You literally need to block off time for each one without any phone calls, emails, door knocks or other interruptions.

My final bit of advice is 3-part:

1. Steal the best ideas you can. This can be from your competitors, other similar business, businesses you see on TV, from reading books, asking people who are doing well, taking classes, or almost any other business related source. Granted, there are a lot of people who don’t provide much “meat and potatoes” advice, however when you find a source that does, learn as much as you can. As I like to say, “It’s always better to learn from others’ successes than your own mistakes.”
2. Apply the pareto principle. 20% of what I’ve covered in the last 5 blogs will give you 80% of the results. The trick is determining which 20%, right? Well if you know your numbers this isn’t that tricky. Your numbers will tell you where you have the greatest potential for improvement. This is how you will prioritize everything.
3. Know when to cut your losses and move on. If you’ve legitimately done almost everything we’ve reviewed over the last 5 blogs and you’re seeing little to no improvement, you need to move on. Don’t be the guy who holds onto GM’s stock thinking “they’ll never go bankrupt.” Salvage what you can and sell either the whole business or the assets and move to the next project. No amount of money can ever buy you more time, so if your time isn’t being invested in a business that’s moving forward and making your life better, you need to get out of that business.

In less than 5,000 words we’ve reviewed literally dozens of directly applicable things you can work on today to improve your business. Take action and make the improvements.

To your success, Bryan

P.S. If you’re looking for a business to buy, find one that does very few of the things reviewed in the last 5 blogs yet is still making money.

For most businesses I’ve encountered, the greatest improvement in marketing would simply be to start tracking your ROI. In other words, you need to know your cost/lead and cost/sale for each marketing project. I address this concept in detail in my blog on Scientific Advertising.  Keep in mind that simply asking your customers “how did you hear about us?” can be somewhat futile (though it’s better than nothing). Michael Corbett suggests simply watching your sales to see if they go up with your current marketing or stay flat. To me that seems like a rather unscientific approach since that doesn’t tell you which marketing produced the results and there are  more factors than marketing alone that can affect sales.

There are a handful of marketing books in my Recommended Reading section, in addition to My Life in Advertising and Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins, so I’m not going to directly address the difference between good and bad marketing. After all, no one knows exactly what will generate the best response until it’s tested and measured.

That being said, here are a few marketing pointers in addition to knowing your numbers:

1. Have a Unique Selling Proposition that sets you apart from all of your competitors. In other words, create a niche only you can fill.
2. Know and understand your target audience. You can have the best offer, and the best advertisement in the world, but if it’s directed to the wrong audience you’ll get zero results. Spend the most marketing time on getting your message to the right people!
3. Keep a detailed customer database so you can cross-market constantly. If someone has bought from you once before, they are MUCH more likely to buy from you again. If you don’t have a database (or your not using the one you have) change that immediately!
4. Offer a guarantee. If your products are either more expensive than most, or can’t be touched by the consumer prior to purchasing (such as with internet sales) you MUST have an iron-clad guarantee to assuage their fears. This must demonstrate that you’re the best and the customer has nothing to risk.

Since we’re looking for quick fixes, I’m going to stop the list there. If you do those things, you’ll notice results almost instantly.

On the sales side, you need to again, learn your numbers. Am I getting that point across fully yet? Whether you realize it or not, in your sales cycle, there are many steps. Let’s take a retail clothing store for example. What are the steps a shopper takes?

1. Window browsing – How do we get them to actually walk into the store? A lot of retailers put up blinds behind the window manequins so people have to actually walk in to see what else is available.
2. Entering the store – How do we get them to spend time looking around? Depending on your clientelle, music can make a huge difference as to whether they hang around a while or not.
3. Perusing certain racks or aisles – How do we get them to see the most we have to offer? Most retail stores put the clearance and discounted rack at the back so you have to walk all the way through to find the great deals.
4. Trying clothes on – How do we get them to go to the dressing room? Keep in mind, people can only try on or buy as much as they can physically carry. Make it easy for customers to carry more with helpful sales associates and people will buy more. Paco Underhill addresses this in magnificent detail in Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping.
5. Buying – How do we get them to come back? Are we getting their name and email address for our database?

So why do we break that up into so many steps? Because if you don’t, you have no idea which steps you need to improve. I’ve heard of a retail store that learned that around 80% of people who try something on will buy it. So they didn’t work on directing people to the cash register, they worked on getting potential customers to the changing rooms.

Every business has a series of steps in their sales cycle. You need to learn and track each of those steps for your business and then systematically improve the conversion rate for each one.

That was  a retail environment, so let’s consider a service based business. What possible steps do we have for them?

1. Inquiry – via phone, web, or walk-in
2. Service Pitch/Presentation – Are you skipping this step? If people call your plumbing business and ask what it costs to unclog a toilet, do you just tell them or do you first tell them why you are their best option with your guaranteed time, flat-rate billing, and professional staff?
3. Price Quote/Estimate - Are you building value along with this quote (particularly if it’s in writing) to back up your pricing?
4. Commitment to Purchase – If the commitment isn’t made immediately are you leaving them PLENTY of information to convince them you’re their best option? My business has a 24 page “leave-behind” packet for just such instances.
5. Delivery of Service – Are you delivering exactly what you said? Particularly if you only get paid once your service is complete.
6. Payment – Do you have simple payment options and are you asking for payment immediately upon completion so as not to tie up your office staff trying to collect money?
7. Follow-up – Did you get their name, phone, address, and email for your database? Did you call or visit them again after completion to make sure they were completely satisfied? Did you ask for testimonials or referrals?

As you can see, there are a lot of steps in this process as well and at any step along the way you can lose potential clients. That’s obviously why tracking the number of customers who make it to each step is so important!

A couple of things you can do to help improve each step in the process:

1. Have excellent training for each person involved in sales including detailed scripts, role-playing, and NLP training.
2. Incentivize and develop some competition. People like to know someone else notices that they are the best at what they’re doing.
3. Have an outside company shop your business and report back what they find.
4. Record phone calls, conversations, and customer interactions (after checking with your lawyer of course) to look for opportunities for improvement.
5. Provide on-hold and/or in-store marketing over the speaker system. I know the “blue-light” specials weren’t enough to save Kmart, but I’m not claiming that’s all you need to do for your business either.
6. Create your story portraying your commitment to customer service, quality, community involvement, and excellence. Make it available in your store, restaurant, business, and on your website. People love buying from places where they feel a part of something.
7. Include testimonials everywhere! Put them in your store, on your website, in your marketing, on your thank you cards… heck, you can even put them on your receipts.

In my experience with over 100 small businesses, I don’t know of anyone, myself included, who is doing all of these things well. In my defense, I do know what I have to do and one-by-one I’m crossing them off of my list.

We’re on Part 4 right now so you should have quite a long To-Do list written down, right? If not, go get a piece of paper and a pen, review my last 4 blogs and start writing. After I post my last blog on this topice (Part 5) you’ll now have a complete list that you can prioritize and start addressing.

To your sales and marketing success, Bryan

On the face of it, cutting costs sounds pretty simple. In reality, if you know your numbers, it is rather simple.

Here are some ideas to evaluate for potential cost-savings in any business:

1. Insurance – whether it’s commercial, auto, or health insurance, if you haven’t shopped around in a few years, you need to. This area alone has saved my small business $9,000 over the past 2 premiums with slightly better coverage. Granted, it took a lot of time and energy to get to that point, but how can you argure with that level of savings?
2. Telephones – cell phones and land lines can both be EXTREMELY over-priced if you don’t shop around. Make sure you have the best group or individual or combination of the 2 for all of your cell phones. For land lines, if your internet is reliable enough, you seriously need to consider VOIP. VOIP stands for Voice Over Internet Protocol and simply means using internet data lines instead of phone lines for your phones. In my business this would save us about $250/month IF we had reliable internet. Our internet is very spotty, has little competition, and relatively slow so we’ve tested with VOIP several times and just can’t make it work. :-/
3. Vendors – When was the last time you renegotiated with current vendors OR shopped around to make sure you’re getting the best rates? Through buying in bulk, group purchases (with similar businesses), shopping around, and good old fashioned renegotiating (particularly on things like fuel charges and freight expenses) you should shoot to save 5-10% on all of your purchases. While your at it, double-check your retail price list and make sure your mark-ups are sufficient. We found a handful of items on our price list going for little to no mark-up as we performed this exercise.
4. Pre-payment discounts – While you’re calling to renegotiate prices with your vendors, be sure to find out if they offer pre-payment discounts. Those are simply discounts for paying early which could be within 10 days, or 10 days after the end of the month, or whatever their terms are. If you consider those discounts can range from 1% to 5% this can be VERY significant. If your business buys $200,000 in products each year, at 1% you would save $2,000 year or$167/month just by paying a few days earlier!
5. Meals & Entertainment – and all other “discretionary” spending. Are those meals, trips, expensive hotels, etc. etc. etc. really necessary? If they’re an integral part of your business recruitment strategy then fine. But make sure your deducted-meals are actually legit. Meals are only allowed for documented business purposes (i.e. names, place, and business discussed all have to be available to the IRS) and overnight travel. Even then, only a portion of those meals can be deducted. The upper-management of Walmart and Sam’s Club are still required to fly coach and book modest rental cars when traveling just like their founder always did.
6. Shop around for cheaper services – Every business needs the help of other businesses to get things done. This could be your IT firm, your accountant, lawyer, bottled water delivery company, tire and oil change business, uniform company, or even your payroll company. I’m well aware that it’s very hard and expensive to find a lawyer you trust, so if that’s something you already have, I’d leave that one alone, however the others can be done with relative simplicity. Just changing our payroll from Paychex to Quickbooks has saved us over $100/month (though QB prices have just gone up slightly so the gap is lessening).
7. Improve Efficiency and Productivity – This is probably the most important of all of them which is why I put them as a separate step in a separate category for fixing your business. This all boils down to basically 1 thing: Paying people for the results they deliver.

In a nutshell, that’s what an efficient, productive business will consistently do. It will pay people for their work. What a novel concept, huh? Now you need to determine if your business is a better model for a Results Oriented Working Environment (ROWE) like I discuss in my blog on Intrapreneurship and Entrepreneurship or whether your business simply needs to get away from paying everyone an hourly wage with no incentives.

Here are the steps to take to increase productivity for every employee in your business:

1. Make job descriptions – If your people don’t know exactly what their duties are, you as a leader aren’t even giving them a chance to succeed. Everyone needs a job description and possibly even a daily, weekly, and/or monthly checklist to make sure they’re taking care of all of their responsibilities.
2. Create processes, procedures, scripts, and checklists – This goes hand-in-hand with a job description. If you don’t have scripts to teach people how to handle customer inquiries, procedures for how to track those inquiries, and checklists to make sure nothing has gotten missed you will never ensure a consistent customer experience. Making this fundamental throughout your business is the key to successful franchising. If you want a successful, universally applicable, consistent business, this is your foundation. This will also help you determine who on the team needs to stay and who needs to go.
3. Know your numbers – My last blog dealt with this in detail so to just make the point quickly… If you don’t know the income and profit per person on your team it’s very hard to develop benchmarks, set goals, and recruit new people who you believe can achieve those goals.
4. Remove temptations to “cheat the system” – In my business this comes in 2 major forms. No temptation to play on the internet for the office people, and no temptation to take extra long lunches or sneak home early for our service guys. The first is temptation is removed but letting everyone know their internet usage is tracked and will result in dismissal if internet use is inappropriate. GPS systems on our service trucks take care of the latter temptation. Very rarely do I ever analyze either item. Basically it’s just there in case a problem develops.
5. Incentivize and create healthy competition – I still credit the doubling of our profit/day/technician in large part to converting a portion of technicians’ income to commissions. Find ways to incentivize everyone on your team to do their best.
6. Get rid of those who don’t stack up – If you’re the kind of guy who hates to let people go and so cuts everyone’s pay instead of just letting the weakest link go, you need to change your practice immediately! There is nothing worse for morale then to have everyone “punished” with lower pay when the low-hanging fruit needs to go (and everyone but you knows that). If you really feel that bad about letting an unproductive employee go, cut your income first before any one else’. To keep costs down, review my blog on how to let someone go without paying unemployment.

Keep in mind, that the more drastic the situation the more drastic the cost-cutting measures required. Act quickly and decisively and move on. If you make a mistake in that process, learn from it.

To your cost-cutting success, Bryan

The world lives and dies by numbers. Granted I am an engineer by education so I may be a little bias…

Even more importantly, the world gets answers to questions by the correct numbers. If you’re looking at the wrong numbers, you’re never getting answers to your questions. Let me give you a quick analogy. In the world of internal combustion engine building we’re all looking for a few major numbers – namely horsepower and torque. So we hook an engine up to a dynamometer (a device that measures the power output of an engine) and now we know the horsepower and torque numbers. So what? How do I improve those? Well to do that you have to look at a lot of other numbers such as bore and stroke, number of cylinders, 2 or 4-strokes per cycle, manifold pressure, air-to-fuel ratios, cam lift and duration, ignition timing… And the list goes on and on and on… Without knowing how that engine is currently configured, I can’t possibly tell you what to “fix” to help it make more power.

Your business has 3 “big” numbers, they are # of customers, revenue and profit.  Those are your horsepower and torque. All they tell you is where you’re at right at this moment. They don’t tell me how we got there or how we’re going to make more power (profit) the next time around. Even if you don’t know a single thing about engines, I’m hoping that analogy makes sense. The bottom line is, you have to know your numbers and they have to be the CORRECT numbers.

Let’s break your numbers down into a few basic categories (you’ll notice these are the same as I reference when talking about the 3 leaders every business needs):

1. Finance/Accounting
2. Sales/Marketing
3. Service/Operations

Finance/Accounting – These are the numbers you get from your bookkeeper.

1. Profit & Loss
2. Balance Sheet
3. Current Receivables (along with the aging)
4. Current Payables (along with the aging)
5. Cash in the bank

These are the numbers that provide questions, but no answers. Your bookkeeper only knows enough to start asking a few questions. Things like,

• “I see you spent $40,000 last year on marketing, what was your return on that?”
• “Your cell phone bills average $115/person, have you shopped around for a cheaper plan?”
• “You have $6,000/year in Meals & Entertainment, is that necessary or can that be cut back?”
• “It appears that sales are down 20% but costs are only down 10%, why is that?”
• “15% of your receivables are more than 60 days past due, what are you doing to collect money?”

As you can see, none of the reports under Finance/Accounting provide any answers except maybe to the question, “Do we have enough money to cover next payroll?” That doesn’t mean we don’t look at these numbers because this is where we measure the results. If we add a turbocharger to an engine, ultimately we want to see that reflected in higher horsepower and torque. The same is true for your business.

To start answering the questions about why your business has less customers, less revenues, and less profits, you need to use Brad Sugar’s business chassis. Buy his book Instant Cashflow, learn the chassis, and use it.

Sales/Marketing – Now we’re getting into the fun stuff. Here’s a quick list of the numbers you should know in this realm:

1. Number of New Leads (daily or weekly, though some establishments will even look at this by the hour of day)
2. Conversion Rate (i.e. the % of leads who become customers)
3. Number of New Customers (how many people have bought from you?)
4. Average Dollar Sale (revenue/total # of transactions)
5. Average # of Times a Customer Purchases from you Each Year (total # of transactions/total number of customers)
6. Cost per Lead (for each marketing project)
7. Cost per Sale (for each marketing project)

Do you see where we’re going with this? If our sales are down, now I can pinpoint if it’s because we’re getting less leads, converting less leads to customers, selling a lower dollar amount per transaction, and/or because our customers aren’t coming back as often. Now we’re getting somewhere! With these numbers you’ll even be able to pinpoint that you’re getting less leads because that radio ad you started 6 months ago is no longer making the phone ring. In the next few blogs, when I get to the step about Improving Marketing and Sales, we’ll look at specific ways to improve each of the numbers above.

Service/Operations – This is your back-end. Once you’ve sold a product, this is how you deliver it, service it, restock inventory, order more inventory, schedule service, and everything else that’s in essence “behind the scenes”. The important numbers for Service/Operations can vary quite a bit from industry to industry however the concepts are the same so make the proper adjustments for your industry.

1. Profit per income generating person – this could be per plumber, electrician, waitress, sales associate, barista or anything else. If a person on your team has the ability to generate income, you need to know this number.
2. Income per income generating person – this is important because often these individuals have more control over the income they generate than the costs they incur. That doesn’t mean their choices don’t affect the costs of the business, I’m just saying that a plumber can’t much affect the cost of gas or the distance to his job or the markup for parts or the hourly rate.
3. Turn-over – how long does it take between buying something for inventory and selling it. Car dealerships look at “average days on lot”, retail stores look at “average day on shelves”, service-based businesses might look at “number of days from inquiry to finished service.”
4. Profit-margins – In other words, the mark-up of each product or service. If you’re a service-based business you need to determine the cost/hour for your billable people to determine your profit-margins.
5. Customer Complaints – You might be surprised how close your customer complaints as a % of customers served mimics your net profits.
6. Uncompleted Work – For retail or restaurant style businesses you don’t really have an equivalent for this. People walk into your business, they buy something, you provide it immediately, and your work is done. For service-based businesses, however, this information is crucial. If work isn’t getting done, or you’re getting behind, or customers aren’t being notified of delays, you’re going to have problems. You need to know how many outstanding work orders, quotes, and return phone calls are out there so they don’t ever slip through the cracks.
7. Free Work – This means you screwed up an order and gave someone a free meal, or a free hour of labor, or a free part, or a free legal consultation, or you had to go back to their home or business to fix a problem you didn’t fix the first time. You screwed up and had to make amends and the cheapest way to do so was to do it for free.
8. Daily, Weekly, and Monthly Break-Even – In other words, do you know exactly how much you need to sell today, this week, and this month to break-even. Some businesses will even break this down to per shift if there are multiple shifts within a day.
9. Lost Customers – Since my blogs have talked quite a bit about recurring revenue, you need to have a very close watch over your recurring revenue customers. If one of them calls to cancel services, you better have someone trained to try and save that account. This is almost impossible to track if you have a retail style business.

Those are your numbers. Obviously there can be more, however those are the most universal and the ones I’d look at for just about every business from a law firm to a candy store to a hospital.

To you “number-knowing” success, Bryan

P.S. If you’re wondering how you track all of these numbers, the simple answer is with industry-specific software. If you don’t have any, make it a priority to purchase or lease some right away.

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 these will have much more detail and be much more specific.

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 you’re going to start 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 2009. Currently, 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 put 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 are 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 won’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