Ric will be in Melbourne CBD on Wednesday 21 March 2012 and has some available time.

If you would like to meet with him during his visit, get in touch by telephone or e-mail and we can arrange a mutually convenient time around his schedule for the day.

Telephone: 07 3395-1050

E-mail: ric@executivewisdom.com

In preparation for creating your marketing strategy here is a checklist of questions required to make the process efficient and valuable. Have you thought these questions through in developing your marketing strategy?

• Who are your customers?
• What services do you provide to them?
• What proportion of your time is attributed to genuine marketing and sales efforts?
• What percentage increase could your business handle without significant capital expenditure or increases in your numbers of employees?
• How much growth or otherwise have you experienced in the last twelve months?
• What growth do you expect this (financial) year?
• What do you anticipate will contribute most to this growth?
• What do you ultimately want out of your business and how do you plan to get it?
• What are your customers biggest frustrations?
• What problems are they solving when buying from you?
• What is your biggest marketing challenge?

 

Before you spend money on advertising, social media, business networking events, corporate golf days, business breakfasts, etc., consider what should be your strategy. Implementing marketing tactics before you’ve established your strategy is fallowed.

The marketing tactics need to underpin and support the strategy.

 

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Ric Willmot
Improving Organisational Performance
Providing Strategy Consulting & Mentoring

 

HR appear driven on utilising psychometric tests and analysis in the workplace. Mostly, I believe this is to explain away behaviour rather than attempting to improve behaviour. HR ought to be focusing on:

• Creating alignment among every position and corporate strategy.
• Marrying succession planning to career development and ensuring “bench strength”.
• Proactively helping line management with greater efficiencies and productivity.
• Optimally focusing resources on the product, the service and the relationships with customers.

Ideally, no one should have a career insulated in HR. I recommend to CEOs in my Mentoring & Coaching Program that they routinely rotate HR into other areas of the organisation so that HR gain first-hand knowledge and experience of what the staff face in their specific roles. Of course, the colour usually drains from the faces of HR people in the room when they hear me say that to their boss.

 

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Ric Willmot
Improving Organisational Performance
Providing Strategy Consulting & Mentoring

 

Life balance is not only about play, family, fun and alike. Life balance means having an excellent working life, as well. To achieve a positive, fulfilling life balance you must ensure that your work is sustaining your enthusiasm and zest.

What do you need from your work to generate high levels of enthusiasm and zest for what you do?

• An A-Class client list?
• A preponderance of high-level, quality projects?
• Access to the tools, resources and support you require to do good work?
• Highest standards requested, expected and embraced by all members in the business?
• Organisational brand and repute that helps the individuals within the firm reach the marketplace?
• Working with like-minded professionals who share the same drive for quality, ethics, mutual support, collaboration, cooperation and values?
• Intelligent and energetic colleagues?
• An organisation driven by principle, not expediency?

 
What would you add to this list for you personally?

How do you and your firm measure up?

 

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Ric Willmot
Improving Organisational Performance
Providing Strategy Consulting & Mentoring

 

Which target do you have in your sights?

How professional services firms interact with their clients will determine how well the business relationship develops. Accountants, lawyers, financial planners, business coaches & consultants, recruiters, et al believe they need to become ever more technically better to attract more and/or better clients. But that’s not always what the client is seeking.

The relationship between client and professional is about two people working together as peers, mutually evaluating the worth of one another in the partnership. If developed in a positive environment of improving the client’s condition, there will be a bond that is created that will weather the test of time and competition.

Open, honest two-way communication is required by both parties; yet in many instances, good communication is absent.

Accountants, lawyers, financial advisers, recruiters and alike sometimes lack the ongoing, proactive communication their clients would appreciate to build an ever stronger bond. In my consulting life, large numbers of professional service firms seek my counsel in improving their marketing strategy, business development and fee/revenue growth.

During the initial enquiry analysis and research, I commonly discover similar results:

The professional services firm is exceptionally good at clearly explaining their costs and methodology, supported by qualifications, skills and experience. What is not so well done is articulating the results and outcomes for the client (both tangible and intangible) in language common to the client.
Professional service firms are in an age of relentless competition. Pressure to continually lower prices comes from the clients. Pressure to continually raise revenues and profits comes from the principals and partners, while pressure to reduce costs comes from CFOs and Practice Managers.
Professional service firms can rise above the mire to stand out from the crowd by focusing on service, quality, innovation … a broader approach.

This can be achieved by speaking to the client about what interests them, in a language the client can understand. What’s important for your client? Being in a better position today than what they were yesterday because they had you working on their behalf.

So, what target do you have in your sights? The technical issues? The fees and prices? Your qualifications? Or the results, value and outcomes to be achieved for the client? Hit the mark and watch your business grow.

 

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Ric Willmot
Improving Organisational Performance
Providing Strategy Consulting & Mentoring

 

A leading business university undertook research into their graduates. It was discovered that their past students were successful during the early part of their careers after graduating, but ten years on, they were superseded by a more street-wise, pragmatic group.

The professor who undertook this research explained that the education the graduates had received was in “problem-solving”. What was more important was the ability to recognise opportunities.

Innovation trumps problem-solving.

Pragmatic thinking beats university degrees.

Action is the only precursor to success.

Are you looking for the opportunity in this current economic environment? Honestly?

I shared coffee with the owner of a business consultancy firm bemoaning the terrible circumstances that have decimated his business revenues. He was worried, distressed, more distressed than a consultant should be faced with such slight contretemps.

I also had coffee with the partner of a mid-tier accounting/auditing practice who relished in dissevering himself from the doomsayers. “Ric, we’ve been using your approaches to pricing, marketing and client-evaluation. Just yesterday, an existing client called to explain one of our competitors had proposed to do their audit at half the price we’ve been charging and would we reduce our fee. Remembering your advice, I calmly reiterated our value, our expertise and the significant levels of service delivery we provide which equate to greater ROI for the client. They stayed with us. Overall, we are 40% ahead of budget for this year.”

In the current business environment, there is an absurdity in the gap between the pragmatic, opportunity-thinking of successful professionals and the trivial reasons others adduce for failing.

Opportunity is knocking … do you hear the sound?

How can you answer it?


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Ric Willmot
Improving Organisational Performance
Providing Strategy Consulting & Mentoring

 

Greek philosopher and mathematician, Plato, dictated that the circle was the perfect form for celestial movement. So, then for the next one-and-a-half millennia, astronomers said that the planetary orbits were circular even though their observational data suggested otherwise.

Even Copernicus utilised circles in his heliocentric model, explaining the universe and its relationship to the planets. Finally, it was the German mathematician and astronomer, Johannes Kepler who described the planetary paths around the sun as being elliptical.

We all have extrinsically-imposed shoulds and values that influence our views, opinions, decisions and thoughts. And, this is many a time, the reason why we are unable to get out of the dog house and enjoy the mansion.

What dogma is holding your thinking back from breaking conventional wisdom? What could you let go of that would allow you to challenge current beliefs and discover an alternative path to Executive Wisdom Blog?


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Ric Willmot
Improving Organisational Performance
Providing Strategy Consulting & Mentoring

 

Power your business to better results with Ric Willmot’s Five Keys:

1. Keep raising the bar – be innovative, focus on growth rather than cost-cutting or problem fixes, and expect more of yourself and those in your employ.

2. Always work towards results and outcomes – being busy doesn’t make you good, producing results does; means are less important than ends.

3. Empowering people is positive – power does not corrupt but powerlessness creates bureaucracy and roadblocks to positive productivity.

4. People believe what they see – influence is more likely through being an exemplar more than hanging motivational quotes on the walls.

5. Perception informs your reality – your perceptions may not necessarily be fact but they do inform your sense of what is real … to you. Walk in the other person’s shoes to get a sense of what may appear real to them.


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Ric Willmot
Improving Organisational Performance
Providing Strategy Consulting & Mentoring

  

The story goes … upon completing a highly dangerous tightrope walk over Niagara Falls in appalling wind and rain, ‘The Great Zumbrati’ was greeted by an enthusiastic supporter, who urged him to make a return trip, this time pushing a wheelbarrow, which the spectator had thoughtfully brought along.

The Great Zumbrati was reluctant, given the terrible conditions, but the supporter pressed him, “You can do it – I know you can,” he urged.

“You really believe I can do it?” asked Zumbrati.

“Yes – definitely – you can do it,” the supporter gushed.

“Okay,” said Zumbrati, “Get in the wheelbarrow ….”

No doubt, you’ve heard many times a supervisor or manager say, “You can do it” or “Make it happen”. These words are very easy to say but the trust, belief and commitment that it can be done are much more difficult to earn.

Will you get in the wheelbarrow?

We wouldn’t hesitate if we were confident that Zumbrati was well trained, experienced and motivated; that the wheelbarrow was of the best design and materials; and that the tightrope was securely fastened and recently inspected.

As leaders we ask our people to do many things in support of the organisation. Many of these tasks are complex, intensive, very demanding and some even ambiguous. So how is it that your people might do such great things every day – and enthusiastically walk that tightrope?

A major reason will be if they have trust and confidence in the leadership. Their beliefs do not come easy, but must be earned by the supervisor or leader.

You can start by understanding exactly what you are asking your people to accomplish. To do this you have to be ready and willing to get “down in the trenches” and see what is really happening. Often, this is the only way to accurately assess training, equipment and processes as well as identifying any potential roadblocks to mission performance.

You need to know your team’s capabilities and when it may be more appropriate to say, “No, we can’t do that.” This might be for many good reasons such as a lack of staffing numbers, training or equipment. Whatever the reason, making this decision is not easy and goes counter to the “can-do” attitude most of us have in leadership positions.

However, this is a key component of earning trust from our staff. As we move into the future we will continue to have great challenges. As leaders we have to be sure we cultivate this trust by showing our confidence in our people and that we ensure they have the best training, equipment and experience to accomplish the organisational objectives.

If you succeed in this endeavor, your people will walk any tightrope you ask, and you will have the confidence to get in that wheelbarrow with them!


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Ric Willmot
Improving Organisational Performance
Providing Strategy Consulting & Mentoring

 

Research undertaken by the Society for Executive Wisdom during the first quarter of 2011 collated the results of what Australian organisations felt would be their greatest business challenges for the financial year July 2011 – June 2012.

Here is a snapshot of the results in order of magnitude:

1. Cost-cutting strategies to maintain profitability – 38%
2. Faster financial growth – 35%
3. Government threats through policy and taxation – 29%
4. International competition caused by weaker Australian government regulations – 27%
5. Low-cost competition via internet – 26%
6. Competitor threats to market share – 22%
7. Requirement to expand into new markets – 17%
8. Requirement to launch new products and services – 15%
9. Requirement to refresh senior management – 11%
10. Coping with market changes – 9%

These results were obtained by interviewing 143 business owners or CEOs of Australian-based organisations with a turnover of more than $1M p.a. and more than 5 years in operation.

• What are your top business challenges?
• How will you handle these challenges?
• What resources do you have on hand to assist you?

Business is constantly changing and evolving, especially in these globally-volatile times, currently. The organisations that have identified what specific challenges they will face, have developed strategies for these tough times, and have managed the necessary resources required, as well as eliciting guidance and mentoring from internal and external points – are the organisations that will not only survive but in fact, prosper.

Are you lighting candles or cursing the darkness?


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Ric Willmot
Improving Organisational Performance
Providing Strategy Consulting & Mentoring