Why do most larger companies have a board of directors. The role of the board is to hold the management team accountable for executing strategy, clearing out obstacles, provide feedback on critical issues, mentoring and providing business coaching to the president and other critical management team members.

Some coaches excel at helping you  improve people skills. Other are more experienced at  building an effective team. Still others are more effective at  growing sales.

Study after study have shown the effectiveness of  business coaching and  business coaching programs to help you and your company is useful, if you are open to being coached. It is impossible for you to be an expert in all areas of business.

SCORE states that 70% of all businesses that fail do so because they do not know when to ask for help or ignore problems when they happen.

Do not be one of the 70%. If nothing else a good  business coach will provide feedback and accountability to move you forward. And the good news is if they do not perform you can fire them.

Find someone to help you.If you have a business coach and they are not helping fire them.

Ron Finklestein
Ohio Business Coach
330-990-0788
RON@AKRIS.NET

According to SCORE, businesses fail for many reasons. I listed the top eight below.

Lack of a well-developed business plan  78%
Not pricing properly  77%
Being overly optimistic – sales, money  73%
Not recognizing, or ignoring, what they don’t do well
 and not seeking help from those who do  70%
Ineffective prioritization  66%
Denying problems exist  65%
Minimizing the importance of marketing  64%
Insufficient business experience  63%

Not having a business plan is the single biggest reason a small business fails and it drives all the other reasons a business fails.

Let’s translate what will happen when these problems occur:
1. Can not grow sales
2. Can not improve people skills
3. small business marketing suffers
4. can not build effective teams.
5. not reaching out for help – especially business coaching

A business plan has four primary objectives:
1.Defines what you do and why others will buy from you and your firm
2.Define the markets, companies, people, etc who can buy from you and how to reach them
3.Defines the road map to making money, where you need to spend your money (i.e., marketing, Internet, computers, fax, telephones, etc)
4.Defines weaknesses where you should be looking for help or areas to you need to address

A business plan is essential. You would not try to build a house with blueprints. Why would you start or run a business with the same type of blueprints.

The strange part is that if you don’t know how to do a business plan you need to ask. Number four above, really should be number one. If you don’t know what you don’t know, how do you know you don’t know it? How do you know to ask for help?

A business plan, depending on its purpose, can be a short as one page or more than 100 pages (venture capitalists want to know everything).

Just going through the exercise of writing a business plan will tell you more about what you don’t know about your business than any single exercise.

A business plan is a living document that should change as you and your business change. I will give you seven simple questions that you need to answer as part of your business plan:
1. Why are you in business? If you are not really passionate about your business, you will have trouble during the hard times and, most like you will lose interest and fail.
2. What are you selling? What problem do you think your product or service solves for your target market?
3. What is that one thing you do better than anyone else in my market? It could be as simple as free shipping to a lower price point using a new production break process.
4. Why would your target market care about what you do? Put yourself in their shoes and ask yourself “what’s in it for me?”
5. Why would your prospects buy from you? Even if you are the best, will people buy form you and if so why?
6. How much money do I need to get started? Do not underestimate.
7. How will I make money and how long with it take before I am profitable.

I do not expect you have these answers to all these questions immediately (except #1). The answers to these questions will changes as you mature as business owner and you gain in understanding about your marketing, your industry, your products, your customers and your services.

The important part of this plan is to test everything. Ask your prospects and call your competitors, do research.  If you spend some time up front answering these questions, you will save yourself much pain and suffering.

Call me if you have questions and a free consultation.

Ron Finklestein
303-990-0788
ron@akris.net

At work

1.     Ask questions so you understand

2.     Listen so others feel hear

3.     Do a lunch and learn on a topic of interest to all parties

4.     Be clear on your expectations

5.     Treat others the way they want to be treated (The Platinum Rule)

6.     Build relationships with people the way they want to build relationships

7.     Let others be right

8.     Let others ask questions

9.     Build an effective sense of team

10.  Be a leader and create a vision for people to rally around

11.  Ask for feedback

12.  Give deadlines

13.  Define roles and responsibilities

At home (create a great marriage)

1.     Get your wife a cup of coffee in the morning before she gets out of bed

2.     Tell your wife how beautiful she is at least once a day

3.     Wake your wife up with a kiss every day

4.     Load and run the dishwasher

5.     Load and run the washing machine

6.     Give her a hug when she gets home every day

7.     Watch TV with her – even if it is a chick flick

8.     Cook a meal so it is ready when she gets home

9.     Clean up after you cook the meal

10.  Gas up her car

11.  Just listen and do not try to fix

12.  Get her oil changed for her

13.  Let her sleep late

Ron Finklestein

330-990-0788

ron@akris.net

1.     Improve people skills. We call all get better in this area.  

2.     Improve your people/leadership skills

3.     Develop the people skills of your managers  

4.     Hire a personal executive coach to get an outside perspective and to hold you accountable

5.     Create effective communication training so everyone in the organization knows the rules for communicating

6.     Manage people and their performance  

7.     Teach people to support performance management

8.     Perform activities that support building an effective team

9.     Understand workplace team building and its impact on your business

10.  Create a team building challenge

11.  Attend management negotiating skills training to create win/win opportunity 

12.  Provide negotiation skills seminar for your team so they can create win/win opportunities

13.  Learn presentation skills tips to improve your effectiveness when delivering your message  

14.  Implement a business coaching program to receive ideas on implementing these 17 actions

15.  Attend a business advisory board to gain feedback from your peers

16.  Take time to communicate & coach communication skills you want in the organization

17.  Celebrate your small business success stories. This keep morale strong. 

This is a long list but the good news is you do not have to do them all at the same time. Pick any three and get started.

Ron Finklestein

Small Business Coaching

330-990-0788

ron@akris.net