Guiding entrepreneurs and small businesses to success through business coaching and personal commitment
Starting and growing your profitable business
Determine the best course for your future...what do you want and how do you get there? If you’re in the start-up stage, we’ll do feasibility studies, determine the best location or Web address, and find your best target market. If you’re in a growth stage or retrenching, it’s time to review your goals, inventory your staff’s abilities and interests, and set achievable milestones.
Creating and reviewing business mission statements, plans, and goals that give strategic direction
Why are you in business? What do you want to accomplish? We’ll clarify your goals, create a meaningful mission statement, and develop a business plan that describes your assets and how you will use them to achieve your goals. But don’t worry about making a 140-page business plan. Some can be only a few pages in length if they are just to provide direction to your company. Of course, lenders want more and you might, too, as you discover unknown resources, gaps that expose your organization to risk, and opportunities for new income streams when you develop the plan!
Defining milestones to achieve goals
After goals are set, you’re ready to list the steps and timelines to reach those goals. Without these milestones, goals often remain dreams. We’ll discover the most efficient way to break the steps into measurable milestones with realistic time allotted to complete each one. During implementation, we’ll review the progress and make any necessary changes to keep on course.
Conducting a SWOT analysis
This is one of the best ways to quickly see where you stand. We’ll look at the strengths and weaknesses of your organization—what you are good at or what resources you have (strengths), and what you don’t do well or lack (weaknesses). Then we’ll examine the external environment —what your competition does not do well or untapped markets, services, or products (opportunities), and what your competition does well or markets, services, or products they serve that you don’t (threats). Based on the SWOT analysis, you will be better prepared to know what you need to do to reach your goals and to seize the opportunities available.
Marketing to properly position your organization
With goals set, milestones listed, and the SWOT analysis done, it’s time to move to marketing your organization. Each organization is unique so the marketing is unique, too. We’ll investigate different target audiences to find the best way to communicate with each—print, radio, TV or Internet advertising; Web site content and design; public relations and publicity; logos and marketing materials. The most cost- and time-effective methods will be put in a marketing budget and an associated marketing calendar.
Determining the best allocation of your resources to maximize ROI
Unfortunately, few organizations have all the resources needed to do everything they would like to do. How do you decide which resources to put where? If an activity moves you toward your goal, it should be checked for the return on investment (ROI). We’ll look at the value versus the cost, the expected return, and the urgency and create report describing the advantages and disadvantages for each activity and the resources needed for each, including staff time, money, equipment use as well as opportunity