Business Builder Programme

Do you suffer, or more importantly, does your business suffer, because you suffer from one or all of the following:

• Self-Sabotage
• Imposter Syndrome
• Entrepreneur’s Guilt

If your business is not achieving ‘the dream’ (he dream is the vision you had for your business when you set it up) the chances are you’re suffering from one ,2 or even all 3 of the above and you’ll be the last one to know it.

These problems are very common in all but a very few owners and to realise it and develop strategies to overcome them is the main component of success for a business owner.

The mindset/Mental Health session will explain the above 3 conditions and you’ll recognise any symptoms within yourself and set about some remedial actions. You’ll hear about the 8 tools which will help strengthen your mind and provide you with the drive and resilience to embark on the journey to realise your dreams.

Company values are the heartbeat of any business.

Does your business have published and well communicated values? Your core Values shape your company and impact your business strategy. All decisions made within a company should be trested againt the value set. You should recruit, conduct appraisals and develop staff using them, so why is it so hard to come up with them.

You have to live out your values to set the right example for your staff. It’s the only way to build trust wityhjin the team

In this session you will learn what values are and how to create your personal and business values, and more importantly you will learn how to best share them with the team.

Does your team bring the very best of themselves to work everyday?

Here are some stats about staff engagement:

1. 85% of the Global Workforce Are Not Engaged at Work
2. 93% of Employees in Non-profit Work Are Engaged
3. The UK Has an Averagage Employee Engagement Score of Just 45%
4. Organisations with High Employee Engagement Out¬erform Those with Low Levels of Engagement by 202%
5. Highly Engaged Companies Result in 21% Greater Profitability
6. 37% of Engaged Employees Are Either Open to, or Looking for New Opportunities, Compared to 73% of Actively Disengaged Employees
7. Disengaged Employees Have a 60% Higher Error Rate
8. Disengaged Employees Cost the UK up to £70 Billion per Year in Lost Productivity
9. 53% of HR Professionals Say Employee Engagement Levels Rise with Improved Onboarding
10. The Real Estate Indus¬ry Has the Highest Levels of Employee Engagement (32%)
11. The Technology Industry Has the Lowest Employee Engagement Average (15%)
12. Managers Account for a 70% Variance in Employee Engagement
13. 1 in 5 Employees Is Highly Engaged and at Risk of Burnout
14. 35% of Leaders Say Focusing on Employee Engagement Is a Distraction from Getting “Real Work” Done
15. 85% of Leaders Say Employee Engagement Is a Priority, but Only One Third Make It One

So the key question is how to engage your team, how to give them a clear sense of purpose, a reason to come to work and give of their best. This session will guide you in creating your Core Purpose and how to best communicate that to the team. The benefits of this session will be quickly realised once the strategies shared to engage the team are employed in the business.

Why do the majority of business owners not set target and goals foir their business performance? Even the majority of those who do fail to share them with staff, and stakeholders.

This session will explore why Goals are so difficult to set and even harder to realise. Once understood setting SMART goals is fun and rewarding if set correctly so we’ll look at the common mistakes made when setting goals and targets.

Just Imagine what would the business have to look like in 3 years time for you to look back and feel you’d had an amazing 3 years.- This is goal setting.

So you’ve set a goal – but of course if you always do what you’ve always done – you’ll typically end up with the same results. So utilising the 5 P’s – Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance its time to plan your marketing. Starting with a marketing strategy. This will consist of the 3 M’s.

We’ll explore the 3 M’s – Message, Media, Marketplace

The primary aim of a marketing strategy is to introduce prospects with an interest or need for your product or service to your business. So we’ll create your message which is essentially your Value Adding Proposition (VAP) in all the niches you operate in. We’ll then define your target market within those niches to fully understand their needs and desires and then we’ll look at the best media to use to deliver your message to your target market.

These routes to market can include:

• Advertising
• Press Releases
• Public Relations
• Sponsorship Deals
• Joint Ventures
• Networking

The emphasis will be to adopt free or low cost channels. Where investment is required its essential to test and measure and be able to report a positive return on investment.

Do you have a set of promises (or Client Charter) on what you’ll deliver to your customers?

Do you have a Team Contract? – A set of behaviours and attitudes which the team will be required to operate under in order to deliver on the client charter.

Creating these documents will take your customer service to a whole different level. It will be easier to collect great feedback from totally satisfied customers. It gives a framework for continuous improvement.

It sets a high bar of performance that will become the standard. This performance level will be maintained using the appraisal process and so the team will self select as to their choice to operate at the required performance level or decide their career lies somewhere else.

Are you getting the best from your team when it comes to problem solving?

Why does identifying and solving problems take up far too much of your time?

As Einstein said – it takes a different level of thinking to solve the problem than the mind that thought it up. Most business owners think it’s their responsibility to identify and solve all the problems within a business.

Therefore we’ll strip back that myth and put the power of the team to work.

You’ll be introduced to the good HOST principle which delegates ownership of the problems identified within the team to be owned by the team.
You’ll understand a powerful workshop methodology which creates engagement in not only identifying the problems but also in creating long term solutions which the team will have bought into. It may be that the team will The team will engage with some of the bigger picture challenges for the first time.

Another problem too many business owners suffer from is knowing what to do but not actually getting it done. You’ll be given a 4DX programme – 4 disciplines of execution process to ensure you can tick off the items from your to-do list.

And finally – you’ll benefit from a good feeling having created your to-stop list.

You have decided to take a 3 month sabbatical and take a round the World trip – just to keep track of your business you ask your number 2 to send you the figures every week.  However, you want to be able to see that the business is healthy within just 2 mins.  The figures you have requested are your key performance indicators KPI’s.  My question is do these exist for your business now?  And if so are they comprehensive  and complete.

As per the Hawthorne effect – “What gets measured gets managed” – Peter Drucker   You will be on top of your data when you disperse the companies numbers down to the point where everyone has a meaningful, manageable number to guide them in their work. This number will enable you to create clarity and accountability throughout the team.

8  Advantages of everyone having a number: (Note 3)

1. Numbers cut through murky subjective communication between manager and direct reports
2. Numbers create accountability
3. Accountable people appreciate numbers
4. Numbers create clarity and commitment
5. Numbers create competition
6. Numbers produce results
7. Numbers create teamwork
8. You solve problems faster

This session will validate/create your KPIs and make the sabbatical possible.  You will create a “number’ for every team member and watch the business performance increase.

As Michael Gerber states in his book the E-Myth Why small businesses fail and what to do about it the difference between success and failure can be defined by a business which operates to a set system of processes.  As businesses grow they often create their own way of doing business which builds in the heads of the experts within the business.  The problem with this of course is that you are vulnerable to that knowledge leaving with the staff who can take it with them.

The key is to identify the processes and systems required to operate the business and therefore employ the lowest possible skill level for the role concerned.

Each business may have a unique set of processes but most will require the following:

1. The HR Process
2. The Marketing Process
3. The Sales Process
4. The Operations Process
5. The Accounting Process
6. The Customer-retention Process

The best people to document the processes are the experts who are currently employed in those roles.

The key is then to ensure these processes match reality and test them on members of the team not employed in that area.

The result is a highly systemised business which is resilient and able to operate efficiently and cost effectively.

John Adair defines leadership as being able to balance the needs of the individual, the team and the task.  In this session we’ll explore the role of individuals in terms of strengths and weaknesses and then look at the role they play in the team.   We’ll use 2 models:

16 Personalities – 16 Personalities is a great model for understand people and their strengths and weaknesses – using this tool you can ensure we are utilising their strengths and not stressing them out in areas of their weaknesses.

Belbin Team Roles – A team is not a bunch of people with job titles, but a congregation of individuals, each of whom has a role which is understood by other members.  Research showed that the most successful teams were made up of a diverse mix of behaviours.  Dr Meredith Belbin and his team discovered that there are nine clusters of behaviour – these were called ‘ Belbin Team Roles.

Each team needs access to each of the nine Belbin Team Role behaviours to become a high performing team. However, this doesn’t mean that every team requires nine people! Most people will have two or three Belbin Team Roles that they are most comfortable with, and this can change over time. Each Belbin Team Role has strengths and weaknesses, and each Team Role has equal importance.

By using Belbin, individuals have a greater self-understanding of their strengths, which leads to more effective communication between colleagues and managers. Great teams can be put together, existing teams can be understood and improved, and everyone can feel that they are making a difference in the workplace.

Writing copy (the words used in any advertising/marketing material) is not a skill everyone possesses, however, the difference between poor copy and good copy makes all the difference for a business.

This session is not designed to turn you into a copywriter (although many have successfully gone on to do that) but it is designed to help you brief a copywriter, and recognise effective copy from just words on a page or screen.

The secret to writing good copy is to be able to walk a mile in your customer shoes and give them what they want/need.  You then need a simple process to follow, by just answering a few questions, from your customers prospective, and voila – powerful copy is produced.

We’ll open up AICDA the model, which is the template we use to create powerful copy:

Attention; Interest; Credibility; Desire; call to Action

Learn how to quickly assess any sales letter/web page or blog and be able to recognise effective copy form mediocre copy. 

Understand the difference between features and benefits and the little know secret of how to simply turn any feature into a powerful benefits designed to create emotion in your target market thereby encouraging them to take action.

So you’ve got enquiries, you’ve got the phone ringing, visitors to your website, email address of prospects, but is your conversion rate as high as it should be? People buy from people they know like and trust – so you’ve introduced yourself (or the business), established some sort of rapport and now its about creating that trust. Social proof is one way but what if that’s not appropriate or available. Providing Guarantees is a great way of building trust and thereby increasing conversion rates. However, risk reversals, are like guarantees on steroids.

Your customers will make a decision of whether or not to buy from you based on 2 simple factors:

1. The degree to which your product or service will solve their problem
2. The level of risk associated with their purchase.

So we’ll explore the 3 ways to reduce risk:

1. Money back guarantees
2. Better than money back guarantees
3. Satisfaction guarantees

The better your guarantee, the stronger the message to your customer telling them that you are so confident in your product or service that you’re willing to stand behind it with an iron-clad guarantee.

Therefore in this session you will create (or test) your guarantee with the group and refine it to be best it can be which will impact conversion from the start.

As a bonus we’re share a script that was used by one company to increase conversion rates from x to y (Look up the coach company figures). It’s a process which can work in any company and can transform conversion in a single shift.