Commercial Readiness

LATROBE’s Commercial Readiness portfolio helps business owners make their businesses more effective, more efficient, and more profitable. This is a great time of year to consider these things because 2018 is around the corner, and by setting your business goals now, you’ll be able to hit the ground running. So if you want to grow your business, here are some things to consider.

Plan

It’s common for business owners to go into business without first deciding what they want to accomplish and how they plan to accomplish it. Instead, these business owners—and I may be describing you—simply hope to sell their products and services and make money, and while this is a common business practice, it’s hardly an effective one.   

Business success requires planning, and you need a strategic plan, which lists your goals and explains how you will accomplish them. Your strategic plan includes strategies, and there is a comprehensive (overall) strategy for your business and strategies for each area of your business. Each strategy has accompanying goals, with short-term strategies (1 year) and long-term strategies (3 to 5 years).  

Your strategic plan keeps you focused on what’s important. You’re faced with a never-ending list of tasks to complete every day, but by keeping your goals in mind, you’ll know which activities will help you meet your goals and which will not, so it will be obvious which tasks you should spend time working on. Your strategic plan will answer questions like this:

• What are my profit-margin goals?
• What do I want to do next month? Next year?
• What is my sales goal?
• Which customers am I pursuing?
• Which customers provide the biggest profit margin?

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Nearly every small business (more than 96%) is run by one person: the owner. These are single-person businesses. The remaining businesses (less than 4%) are employer businesses, which means they employ at least one person in addition to the owner. Here’s why it’s important that you scale-up and become an employer business.

Annual revenue for single-person businesses averages $18,000; for employer businesses it’s $1.5 million. Scaling-up and expanding your business capacity simply means you’re not doing everything yourself. It’s not possible for you to go out and sell and market—and be the face of the business—then be expected to do all of the work. You can only do one thing at a time, so when you’re working on one task, another task isn’t getting done.

Do what you do best and get others to do the rest. If a business owner is an introvert, is it a good idea to have them make presentations before groups of people, with them sweating and stammering because they’re nervous? Or would it have been better for them to have spent that time doing what they’re good at while having a polished speaker make the presentations?  

If you want to grow your business, your strategic plan might have questions like these:

• How do I scale-up to become an employer business?
• What talent or expertise do I need on my team to offset what’s lacking?
• Who do I need on my team to help me accomplish my goals?

Conclusion

If your business strategy is selling as many of your products or as much of your service as possible, you don’t have a business strategy; and if you take pride in being a jack-of-all-trades, you’re probably not making much money. As 2017 comes to an end, create a 2018 strategic plan and assemble a team. Your business will need both to realize its potential.

Finally, have you ever said you’re going to take your business to the next level—but don’t know what level it’s on now? We can help. Few business owners view their businesses objectively, but in order to grow your business, you have to do just that. FLITER^® is a business operations and management assessment we administer that will assess where your business is and show you how to take it where you want it to go. To learn more, visit http://www.fliter.biz or  https://www.latrobellc.com/services.html.

A Vision of Good Works

Where there is no vision, the people perish:

(Proverbs 29:18)

 It is spring time. In the business community, it is also a good season for strategic planning. Strategic planning is evaluating the current business plan and developing long range goals for future business expansion. In other words, it is defining the business direction and making decisions on how resources will be allocated to successfully accomplish the strategy.

I started my small business based on a strategic plan. Like many corporate-minded people, I based the plan and allocation of resources on past experiences in order to project initial expectations. As I started looking over the portfolio and the initial business plan put forward in 2010, so much has changed. There are some areas that exceeded expectations...and then there are other areas where I question what I was even thinking… Nor could I fathom that in 2013 that we would still not have fully recovered from pre-2009 levels. All I can say is that as a result, I’m stronger, I’m wiser, I’m better, and most importantly, I’m still here. I made it through because as an entrepreneur, I was graced to change and evolve, based on customer expectations. And that's what business is, providing goods and services that customers need and are willing to pay. Going through this process also revealed that it is time to update our infrastructure, so that customers know what we offer by our website, telephone, marketing material, and messaging.

Through this process of operating a business and walking this journey of faith, I have learned the power of devine revelation of His word, His Spirit, and His Providences. My spiritual guide to strategic planning comes from Habakkuk 2:2-3:



>>> Write down the vision, make it plain on tablets,
>>> so that anyone who reads it will understand.
>>> The vision is for a future (appointed) time.
>>> There will be delays, but patiently wait.
>>> In time, the vision will be fulfilled!

From a natural perspective, customer responses sometimes drive business strategies into new directions. Today’s customers want to know what they get by doing business with you, instead of your competition. What does your company, or brand, promise? After completing my new strategic plan, I was so excited that I immediately contacted my marketing guy and requested that he begin thinking about the creative  pieces needed to communicate the evolution. I am standing on the promises that the vision for Latrobe will be fulfilled!

Strategic planning is not just for businesses. The same processes can be applied in your community and in your family. What long term goals to you want to accomplish and impart change? Do you need a process or provoking thoughts to get you started? Consider this illustration of The Cascade of Strategic Choices presented by the Monitor Institute.

If this process is beneficial, please share your story on how you used it to develop your vision of good works by strategic planning. If you like these blog posts, please share and invite others to share!