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Business Profitability: Discover The Secrets
Are you an entrepreneur who wants to increase business profitability?
Do you dream of being able to treat yourself to life's little luxuries like the Lamborghini in the picture?
This lens is designed to help you to build a bigger, better business with increased profitability using the eight pillars of business prosperity.
It will help you to become a customer focused entrepreneur or custompreneur committed to succeeding by helping your customers to succeed.
Together We Can Make This A Great Resource
By working together we can make this a great resource to help you to increase the profitability of your business now and in the future.
Most of all please tell me how I can make it a better source of business profitability information but remember I do have plans to write detailed lens on each of the eight pillars.
As well as my own ideas, I have tried to help you by packing this page with free reports, articles and my favourite business books and audios.
Towards the bottom I have a little survey on why people buy or don't buy business advice. It would be great if you could vote on your reasons. Thanks.
Guide To Improving Business Profitability Contents
The following sections are included in this guide to increasing business profitability.
- Your Business Profitability Goal
- The Eight Pillars Of Business Prosperity
- Using The Eight Pillars Of Business Prosperity To Reach Your Business Profitability Goal
- What Is The Biggest Business Problem You Have?
- Where Are You Now?
- Where Do You Want To Go?
- How Do You Get From Where You Are To Where You Want To Go?
- Your Favourite Business Guru To Increase Business Profitability
- LInks To Resources To Help You To Increase Business Profitability
- Why You Should Sign Up To My Partners For Profit Newsletter
- How To Get From Where You Are To Where You Want To Be And Increase Business Profitability
- Free Reports To Increase Business Profitability
- I Used To Think These Reports Were Too Good To Give Away Free
- The Best Books To Help You To Increase Business Profitability
- The Best Audios To Help You Increase Business Profitability
- Business Books: Want To Read More But You Don't Have The Time?
- The Latest Business Profitability Advice From My Business Coaching Blog
- Your Stories Of Successfully Increasing Business Profitability
- I Would Love To Receive Some Feedback On This Business Profitability Lens
- Please Remember to Rate This Business Profitability Page
- Selected links from the business coaching blog
Your Business Profitability Goal
You have to set a business profitability goal and then take purposeful action towards achieving that goal.
However I believe that profit is the reward for providing great value to customers and therefore, to achieve your business profitability goal, you need to become a customer focused entrepreneur (or custompreneur).
The Eight Pillars Of Business Prosperity
Each pillar gives you opportunities to improve your profit and move you closer to achieving your business profitability goal.
Poor performance in any one pillar could be holding back your business. It would be like driving your car with the handbrake still on. Every forward step you take would be harder and more difficult than it should be.
- Your key numbers - the way you measure your business performance and react to the issues revealed.
Good performance on this pillar allows you to identify opportunities and problems quickly so that you can take the right action. Poor performance leaves you guessing about what is working and what is not and where you concentrate your time and attention.
... - Your vision for your business and the way that vision is translated into goals and priorities that control how you manage your time and the time of your team members.
Good performance on this pillar gives you laser like focus on where you are going, what you should do and how you allocate and manage your time. Poor performance leaves your drifting and unsure what to do next.
... - Your distinctive market position. What makes your business different and better than your competitors and more appealing to your target market.
Good performance targets the right prospective customers and clients with the right offers at the right time. Poor performance leaves you unsure who your best customers are or what they want so you send out infrequent marketing messages with little direct appeal leaving you to appear average and bland.
... - How you generate more leads for your business.
Good performance creates high qualified leads eager to buy your products and services. Poor performance generates little interest and few responses.
... - How you improve the rate you convert leads into paying customers.
Good performance makes the selling process easy and highly profitable. Poor performance leads to high costs, sales staff with low morale and as a result high staff turnover.
... - The way you persuade customers to buy from you once you have made that first sale and buy more from you in the future.
Good performance gives you delighted customers who will buy from you again and recommend you to their friends and associates. Poor performance leads to little repeat business and holds back your profit like a massive lead weight. Get this pillar right and it is like finding the key to the treasure chest filled with gold.
... - How you lead your team to achieve your business vision.
Good performance means happy, motivated and successful staff working tirelessly to build the company you have always wanted. Bad performance means life is hard and tough and you can't trust anyone to do what you want, when you want to the right level of performance.
... - How you systematise your business so that it works well without you.
Good performance means the business operates like a well oiled machine delivering high quality, consistent, predictible results that delight customers and puts cash into your bank account while you do what you have always wanted to do. Poor performance means the business depends on you to be there or on call every hour of every working day. There is no escape. You and your business are chained together.
...
Using The Eight Pillars Of Business Prosperity To Reach Your Business Profitability Goal
Where are you now? This looks to answer the question "How is your business currently performing?"
Where do you want to go? What do you want your business to be in the future?
How you get from where you are to where you want to be. To move quickly you need to identify the priority areas that need action taken and apply the right skills which you either have, you learn or you outsource.
What Is The Biggest Business Problem You Have?
This is your chance to tell me which of the Eight Pillars Of Business Prosperity is giving you the biggest headache. What is the biggest constraint to you increasing business profitability?
Where Are You Now?
Too many business owners struugle with business profitability problems because they don't know how their business is performing.Instead of manageing for the business based on facts they try to manage based on feelings, emotions and opinions.
I find it very revealing when I see what is measured and how often.
It tells me how results oriented the business owner is, how well the business owner understands his economic business model and to what extent the entrepreneur controls what happens in the business.
In fact it tells me whether the owner is managing business profitability or allowing profits to be whatever they will be.
Just as fascinating is the answer to "what do you do with the information?"
Too often I see performance information and management accounts produced too late, to a wrong level of detail and full of irrelevant data.
It discourages action to imprve business profitability.
The tendency is to hope any problem is a blip and has got better by itself. It saves making a decision and taking action.
Sometimes this approach works and the problem does go away. More often the problem has become worse and more money is wasted.
If you think measuring performing and understanding the drivers of business profitability is busy work then see what Bill Gates has to say:
"How you gather, manage and use information will determine whether you win or lose."
This is why establishing a clear focus on your key numbers is covered in Pillar 1 and involves understanding your business model and establishing benchmark performance levels.
I have created another Squidoo lens to help you concentrate on Pillar 1 and Measure Your Performance which explains How To Use Key Performance Indicators although it still needs its content extended.
Where Do You Want To Go?
Without a clear direction, business can become a matter of day to day survival rather than building a profitable business for the future.Entrepreneurs can lose the original vision and the dreams they had when they first started.
But it is that vision which created the passion and enthusiasm to start the business and it is an essential part of being able to continue to drive the business forward towards increasing profitability.
As the saying goes "If you don't know where you are going, any road will do."
Clarifying your vision is the topic of Pillar 2. When you have a clear vision and direction for the future, you should set goals to establish a pathway with milestones from the present day "here" to the future "there".
For example you may set your vision to be the largest specialist retailer in your area in five years time and you decide that to achieve your vision, your goal is to grow from sales of £400k per year to £5 million. It is ambitious but if you aim low, you may achieve even less.
By breaking down the goal into milestones
Year 1 0.6 million
Year 2 1.0 million
Year 3 2.0 million
Year 4 3.5 million
Year 5 5.0 million
it forces you to focus on the changes which must happen in your business if you are to achieve your vision.
Those goals drive the priorities for actions that need to be taken. These important priorities need be introduced into your normal working week so that the day-to-day urgent tasks of running your business don't drive out your important business building actions.
How you manage your time is a primary driver of the profiyability of your business.
How Do You Get From Where You Are To Where You Want To Go?
I am in the process of creating additional, more detailed lens on each Pillar but it will take time.
At the moment I am not sure whether it is better to produce one definitive pillar on performance measurement or the skeletons of all eight pillars and add to each as inspiration arises.
Perhaps you would like to share your thoughts on this dilemma in the feedback box. Whis are do you feel you most want and need extra advice on to increase business profitability?
Your Favourite Business Guru To Increase Business Profitability
This is your chance to cast your vote on a favourite business guru who has had the biggest impact on your business success.
LInks To Resources To Help You To Increase Business Profitability
- The Business Coaching Blog
- My main blog with more of my ideas on how to increase business profitability and the news and thoughts of my eight business development superstars - Jay Abraham, Michael Gerber, Jay Conrad Levinson, Chet Holmes, Brian Tracy, Peter Thomson, Rich Schefren and Scott Hallman
- Small Business Success
- A great website for owners of small businesses.
- Business Opportunities & Ideas
- A very interesting business blog by John Crickett.
- Sample of my Better Business Focus Newsletter
- Are you tired of subscribing to newsletters that have more hype and sales than helpful information?
If so download a free sample of the Better Business Focus newsletter (January 2008).
I believe that you will find it very different to the newsletters you normally see and I hope you think it is much better. - Rich Schefren & Strategic Profits
- Rich Schefren is guru and business coach to most of the Internet marketing gurus. His blog often has some interesting ideas and there are some great mind maps.
Why You Should Sign Up To My Partners For Profit Newsletter
As an immediate signing on bonus you receive two special reports to help you increase business profitability:
How To Win Profitable Business Away From Competitors - one business adviser who signed up emailed back and said I should be charging £10 for this.
Marketing Secrets For Small Businesses - a little introduction to the thinking of Jay Conrad Levinson (Guerrilla Marketing) and Jay Abraham.
You also get to receive news of selected highlights from my Business Coaching Blog (Google's #1 for the last few months).
If you still don't believe me, go up to the section of links above and download the sample of Better Business Focus which I send out with my newsletter.
- Sign Up To Newsletter
- Remember you get the free reports, I don't pass on your email address and the most emails I send out in a month is four.
How To Get From Where You Are To Where You Want To Be And Increase Business Profitability
The remaining six pillars concentrate on how you can get from where you are to where you want to be.(I am in the process of creating separate lens for each of the pillars - please be patient.)
Pillar 3 is about your business and market strategy and in particular how you find your unique position that differentiates you in the eyes of your target market while operating from a low cost base.
The more you stand out from your competitors in ways that are valued, the more loyalty you will create. The more customers will be prepared to pay a premium price and the more reasons they have for buying from you rather than your competitors.
This "marketing strategy" issue of correctly positioning your business is a key ingredient to increasing business profitability but it is often over-looked in the rush to attract customers, any customers.
Pillar 4 looks at how you generate leads in your business in terms of the different ways you create attention, interest and desire and in the cost effectiveness of each route to market.
Jay Conrad Levinson, author of the best selling Guerrilla Marketing series of books has now identified 200 different Guerrilla Marketing Weapons, many of which are free or low cost.
Pillar 5 examines the way that you convert leads into customers.
To some extent this is controlled by how you use the lead generation ideas to target in to your ideal buyers who you and you alone can satisfy. If that happens, the sales cycle is effectively done for you although you are still in a position to lose sales.
Most of us don't target such a tight niche to make us the only possible solution so there is work to be done to convert a lead into a sale.
I don't believe in hard sell so my techniques can be seen as helping the customer to buy, if but only if, the product or service is right for the customer.
Any business that aims to smooth talk customers into buying unsuitable products is storing up a heap of trouble and is being extremely short sighted.
Pillar 6 looks at turning a one time buyer into a regular customer.
You will have heard it before but it costs about six times less to sell to an existing happy customer than it does to a new prospect.
The profit from any customer relationship is in these back end sales and this is very much Jay Abraham territory.
But. as well as looking at marketing, Pillar 6 also looks at the topic of customer service. For a customer to keep buying, they have to be very pleased with the value of the products and services they receive.
Pillar 7 shifts focus from the outside world of customers and competitors to what happens inside your company and in particular the way you recruit, manage and lead your team of employees.
It is virtually impossible to deliver great customer service without having a happy, committed and motivated team.
Pillar 8 recognises that however good your team is, they need the right systems, processes and resources to work with.
I am in the process of creating detailed lens for each of these pillars to help you find the best ideas and information.
Free Reports To Increase Business Profitability
I hope that at least one of the free reports listed below is in a category where you need some new ideas.
- 101 Ways To Promote Your Business
- You know about advertising, direct mail and telemarketing but the 101 Ways To Promote Your Business could introduce you to some new ideas.
Some are a bit wacky but take the example and think about how it could apply to your business. - Attitudes & Behaviour That Create Small Business Success
- Discover how your attitudes can impact on your business success.
- Gaining Competitive Advantage Through Your Marketing Audit
- Take the opportunity to stand back and look at how all your marketing fits together in a marketing audit.
- Getting PR For Your Business
- A guide to help you to generate free publicity to increase the awareness of and interest in your business.
- How Small Businesses Can Cope With Cash Flow Problems
- Tips to help you improve your cash flow without running to the bank to increase your overdraft.
- Six Steps To Online Business Success
- A 64 page free ebook by Derek Gehl, CEO of the Internet Marketing Center.
I Used To Think These Reports Were Too Good To Give Away Free
But I have changed my mind and I am starting to release the best I have but there is one catch - you do have to give me your email address.
- Pricing: How To Price What You Sell
- For many businesses this is the number 1 lever to get more profit because so many people don't know how to price. This 21 page report lets you in on the secrets and tells you how to learn even more about pricing for extra profit.
- Presentation skills
- Learn how to make better presentations with this free 15 page report. Improving your ability to present can help you throughout the sales process, help you lead your team and help you to involve your employees when systematising your business and improving the processes. In short better presentation skills are a key skill for improving your profit.
The Best Books To Help You To Increase Business Profitability
So many business books, so little time.
Here are my top tips for the books that I recommend you do make the time to read.
Getting Everything You Can Out of All You've Got: 21 Ways You Can Out-Think, Out-Perform, and Out-Earn the Competition by Jay Abraham
In my opinion Jay Abraham has the finest mind for more...1 point
The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber
Groundbreaking book that explains why most small b more...0 points
E-Myth Mastery: The Seven Essential Disciplines for Building a World Class Company by Michael E. Gerber
Skim read Part 1, the gold is in part 2 as Michael more...0 points
Guerrilla Marketing, 4th edition: Easy and Inexpensive Strategies for Making Big Profits from Your SmallBusiness by Jay Conrad Levinson
I was won over to Guerrilla Marketing with one sen more...0 points
The One Minute Manager by Kenneth H. Blanchard
Short, easy and quick to read. Suddenly managing more...0 points
The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey by Kenneth H. Blanchard
This great little book stops you making a fundamen more...0 points
The Best Audios To Help You Increase Business Profitability
I really think this is a great way to absorb improvements tips to help you increase business profitability.
The MasterMind Marketing System
Jay Abraham's great audio that converted me into a massive fan - a master at increasing business profitability.
Amazon Price: (as of 05/16/2008)
The Best-Kept Secrets of the World's Greatest Achievers - Do what great achievers do so you can have what great achievers have!
Every month for more than ten years Peter Thomson has interviewed a great achiever and this audio course compiles the lessons and includes some of the interviews. Tips for personal improvement and business profitability.
Amazon Price: (as of 05/16/2008)
Close the Deal
An introduction to the Sandler Sales System which takes a different approach to many traditional sales systems. As well as being informative it is also great to listen to for its entertainment value if you are involved in any sales activities and extra sales usually mean increasing profits.
Amazon Price: (as of 05/16/2008)
Business Books: Want To Read More But You Don't Have The Time?
This means that you can get the best ideas about business and increasing business profitability for a fraction of the time it usually takes.
I find that are times when I want to read the entire book but often the summary tells me all I need to know.
- BusinessSummaries
- This is my personal favourite summary services because of the free trial and because BusinessSummaries give you access to their back-catalogue.
The more recent summaries come in a wide range of formats, pdf, audio, powerpoint, mindmaps and more.
This is a great way to keep up to date with all the new ideas for improving your business.
The Latest Business Profitability Advice From My Business Coaching Blog
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byYour Stories Of Successfully Increasing Business Profitability
Please share your success stories of how you have improved your business profitability.
Do you have a particular tip to pass on to readers of this lens that made a major difference to your business in one of the pillars of business prosperity.
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chefkeem
I'm glad you commented on my "diary of a small business owner" lens, so I could find you! I will come back and browse your lenses. You seem to provide tons of very useful business info. Thank you! 5*s Posted April 23, 2008 |
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seowebdesigntips
Nice, informative, interactive. Thanks for sharing it! Posted March 15, 2008 |
Love your highly informative lens! Lots of info. I've met Jay Abraham and heard much about his work.
I LOVE Seth Godin's writing and insights. So much to do...so little time! I have written a bestselling book and would love to send you a preview. I'm using Seth Godin's "Unleashing the Idea Virus" concept to get my book, STOP SITTING ON YOUR ASSETS, out to everyone for no cost: To get a free copy, just cut and past this link:
http://www.coauthor.biz/ca/SSOYA-FreeNCA.exe
You can also read about it at my hubpage to see the link at:
http://hubpages.com/hub/thin_credit_file
Love your info above. It is really valuable.
Posted March 10, 2008
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thomasz
Interesting lens. Nice info. Posted February 12, 2008 |
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Your_Profit_Coach
Thanks Engi for being the first to comment on this lens. Posted February 02, 2008 |
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engi
Very educational. I am trying to create my own internet business but not very business minded. This lens has provided me with some useful info. Posted February 02, 2008 |
I Would Love To Receive Some Feedback On This Business Profitability Lens
Please let me know what you think and if you love it, don't forget to vote.
I hope that you like my Squidoo lens explaining how to improve business profitability.
I appreciate feedback, both praise and constructive criticism. It all helps me improve the lens to help you and people like you.
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Tom_Antion
Great lens! Love the information. Please visit my The Great Public Speaking Shoppe right here on squidoo. Get great deals for all my stuff on eBay and be the best speaker you can be! -TOM Posted March 26, 2008 |
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NatChar
A great lens! Lots of resourceful information that a persons needs to follow and structure in their business. 5 stars! Posted March 01, 2008 |
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Your_Profit_Coach
Evan Posted February 15, 2008 |
Hi,
Your site seems to have lots of good information - althought there is the usual hypey-ness. This is especially funny when people like Rich Schefren (do you think that is really his first neame?) try to use non-hype as the latest spin on hype.
I am wanting to build a successful and profitable blog. My main motivation is not money. Most business stuff is not oriented to the cottage level that I want to work at. I don't want a big team. If I can keep it to me and outsource tech stuff and do advertising or get a marketer so that there is two of us that's best by me. Best would be just me. As you can see I'm not in the usual entrepreneurial bag - the values and approach of some of the people in this world are quite repellent to me. Some of them seem to think that being wealthy makes them admirable - these are sad people.
So, if you can provide business stuff for pepole starting out at may level who want to go where I want to head this would be fantastic.
Posted February 14, 2008
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howdidyouloseweightfast
Hi, really amazing lens,i like this lens because it has a massive information which i need .The bottom line goal of any business venture is to make a profit. Computing business profitability is the key to understanding how well this goal is being met.I have a lens based on how did you lose weight fast,this lens as a lot of valuable information which would be really helpful to all. Thanks. Posted February 12, 2008 |
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Your_Profit_Coach
Carla, thanks for the comment and you are right I should have included Napoleon Hill since he was the first to really study success. He has been added so that you can vote when you return. Posted February 10, 2008 |
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CarlaFox
My favorite Business Guru is Napoleon Hill. He wasn't in the list, but I had to give him props. I'm going to have to favorite your lens and come back for more. Thanks for the info. Posted February 09, 2008 |
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Your_Profit_Coach
Thanks for the comment. You have an interesting insight which I hadn't considered before. Posted February 07, 2008 |
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BFuniv.com
It seems your 8 pillars require two different types of people; one for measuring and number grinding, the other to manage human interactions. Great material, and for those of us that don't wear both hats comfortably - a nice resource for deciding what we need to hire or outsource. Posted February 07, 2008 |
Please Remember to Rate This Business Profitability Page
All you have to do is go back to the top and highlight the number of stars you think it's worth.
This rating process helps to promote the good Squidoo lenses and effectively punishes the not so good (either by a bad rating or no rating).
If you like the idea of the Squidoo pages (and I love them) you may be interested to take a look at the Social Networking On Squidoo
Business Coaching for customer focused entrepreneursBusiness Development Advice - third party business development products reviewed
Your Profit Coach is a trading name of Planning & Control Solutions Ltd, a company registered in England No 3897173
Registered office, 2nd Floor, 3 Brindleyplace, Birmingham, B1 2JB
Copyright 2008 Planning & Control Solutions Ltd
Selected links from the business coaching blog
- Valuing differentiation with premium prices
- If you differentiate, make sure you charge a premium price.
- Business book reviews 1
- Compendium from the Business Book review blog
- Online business success 4
- Compendium from the Online Profits blog
- Online business success 3
- Earlier compendium from the Online Profits blog
- Marketing to the emotions
- Free report to help you to market to the prospective customers emotions.
- Understanding financial statements
- Introduction to the finance for non financial managers training
- Hierarchy of customers needs
- Looks at how customers needs move from a generic solution to a preferred brand
- How to be a complete and utter failure
- Review of Steve McDermott's excellent audio program
