Archive for the ‘Business Growth’ Category

Synchronised Marketing and Sales

Thursday, October 26th, 2023

Does “Sales” lead “Marketing” at JP Morgan or “Marketing” lead “Sales” at ? Does it really matter? In businesses large and small across the planet that conversation is being had daily, and the answer is, stick with what works best in your organisation and your ideal customers.

What fundamentally doesn’t work is when marketing activities assume every buyer is your ideal buyer and the ability to connect marketing investment with attraction of ideal buyers, conversion, implementation and expansion, is opaque. If it is not discernibly moving conversations forward with your ideal buyers to your ideal destination, it is not working. Don’t blame others, look at the robustness of your system, the people undertaking the work and the relationships you need to build, cultivate and retain.

Value Partners

Tuesday, May 16th, 2023

I am tiring of early stage and high growth entrepreneurs, who desperately need greater help in attracting their ideal partners (capital, distribution, and so on) for their business growth but refuse to invest upfront in their own success.

They have money, whether it is supporting existing payroll and benefits or their own personal lifestyle expenses (private schools, mortgage, holidays), they just don’t trust their own judgement in parting with it to resolve the increasing ambiguity and complexity within their businesses.

The visible lack of confidence in their own future and poverty mindset, is precisely what is turning off their ideal partners. If they won’t accept and change their own behaviour, why should others underwrite the risks that they are taking in their entrepreneurial businesses?

8 Contemporary Business Issues

Monday, January 2nd, 2023

Are you talking about the issues your clients, investors and business partners need to be thinking about or those issues that are dating quicker than a cold slice of turkey? Here is a primer:

  1. With every “market squeeze” (energy, supply chains etc) a “market glut” follows, as day follows night. Are you prepared?
  2. With interest rates ranging between 4-5.5% this year, expect in sectors with heavy private equity investment much greater talk about the consequences of rising Debt-to-EBITDA and Fixed Charge Coverage ratios
  3. When major suppliers of PE credit financing such as Ares are demonstrably much more cautious expect growth capital financing of new deals to be much longer and trickier to navigate. The knock-on consequences for Sellers and those in M&A professional services.
  4. 3 or 5 year business plans are as redundant today as they were in April 2020. Businesses need a laser-like focus on the next 12 months and maximum reassurance that Plans B and C are in place for key strategic facets of their businesses (capital, people, customers, distribution, technology, markets and so on).
  5. Taxation is going to have renewed focus, as the countdown to key elections come into view in the US, UK and other major trading nations. What is a “fair share” and who precisely should share the burden?
  6. Governments are going to offer greater financial and non-financial incentives to start new businesses and expand into new markets in order to spur growth but volatility and ambiguity will remain high. A delicate balancing act.
  7. Huge efforts (re-skilling, new training etc) will be made to encourage those over 50 years of age, who have taken early retirement or are considering it, to return to or remain in the workforce. What does that look like for your business or clients’ immediate future?
  8. In previously highly fragmented markets in financial services, insurance, business services and so forth that lent themselves to simple “buy and build” PE-backed consolidation, the game will move onto superior organic growth-driven business growth. Expect the consolidation of the consolidators to become a recurring theme, where businesses have no other option or ability to pull the organic-growth lever.

G.S.I.

Tuesday, June 7th, 2022

Get stuck in (“GSI”) is a piece of advice I often tell my clients hesitant to proceed at a pace that will reap them maximum reward.

“Pilots” and other dipping your toe in the water techniques, are really suggestions around the boardroom table favoured by those, who are fearful about the consequences. If you don’t confront that “fear” at the outset, often linked to emotional and pyschological issues of the people undertaking the work, you will increase, not decrease risk and the probability of failure.

Death Trap

Tuesday, February 22nd, 2022

There is an increasing number of enterprise technology businesses (colloquially, known as “Deathtech”) intent on turning the fragmented and cumbersome end-of-life experience into a far more pleasant one. Yet look harder and a great many are simply playing at the margins (symbolic changes). Time, money and energy. If you cannot see as a next of kin, beneficiary, employer or trustee meaningful improvements in those areas, don’t get trapped in the hype.

Tunnel Vision

Friday, February 4th, 2022

When you cannot see the light (future prosperity) has it ever occurred to you that your stubborn reluctance to think and act differently, is actually the problem?

Come Together

Tuesday, October 26th, 2021

Are you configuring your marketing approaches around the people you’d ideally like to attract and convert as clients and avatars for your business or insistent on putting people into pre-disposed boxes and processes? Square pins in a round pin socket.

Many service businesses, who seek to serve those with the greatest freedom, the ultra high net worth individual, still insist in driving them back into a construct, which blatantly puts the organisation’s self-interest, ahead of their client or prospect. How is that an incentive to do business with you?

If you are in an entrepreneurial business, why wouldn’t you start with a genuine intent to address the client’s reasonable needs (improved conditions, time, trust, freedom, privacy etc.), and make “legendary” efforts, to personalise for the highly-prized and their avatars? Rory Sutherland talks about people today wanting to be “free-where”, “free-when” and “free-with whom” to come together and pursue common interests.

To suggest that you cannot successfully build a UHNW service business around impressive customisation presumes that you have never stepped beyond the pavement of Avenue Princesse Grace, Sloane Street or Peak Road.

Risk-Free Growth

Monday, August 23rd, 2021

Why do you insist on approaching mid or low-level individuals in an organisation when in all probability only the CEO or Managing Partner can approve or sign off your agreement? You should be first asking why am I making this so risky and complex? Confront those “issues”, resolve to eliminate risk and complexity, and move on.

Priorities

Wednesday, May 19th, 2021

I am regularly amused by managers and executives, who have the time to religiously post “drive-by” comments or self-congratulatory announcements on LinkedIn but not the routine discipline to return calls or email or follow up, as agreed.

When you confront them, they tell you that they have been “rammed”.

They don’t respect you and are poorly organised.

Are these your ideal clients, prospects or business partners? In most cases, “no”. So why are you pursuing them?

Fake Prospects

Wednesday, May 12th, 2021

Occasionally, I am referred to individuals, who at first sight have a genuine need for immediate “help” in my areas of expertise, and substantial means and volition to pay for it but for inexplicable reasons they then disappear into the ether. The non-response to an agreed call or meeting time or exchange of information, is often the first signal.

As we re-emerge into booming economies with increasing demand for our expertise and time, these individuals need to be ruthlessly culled from prospect lists. Let’s be intellectually honest, there is zero respect for your time and they are worthless to your business. To think differently flies in the face of what you are seeing.