Extraordinary business breakthroughs can be elicited by intelligent questions.

1. Who and what are your targets? Do you have any unique targets of focus that share certain common characteristics?
2. What do your targets need and want? What outcomes and results are they seeking?
3. Where will you find these targeted buyers?
4. Who or what influences your targeted buyers? What’s their ecosystem? — People or places that influence how they think, what they do, and how or what they buy?
5. How do your targeted buyers want to engage with professionals like you? How do they like to interact that makes them most comfortable?

It is understood we all want answers; my challenge for you is to seek the best questions.

 

Tweet

__________

Ric Willmot
Improving Organisational Performance
Providing Strategy Consulting & Mentoring

 

“Hello Ric, Alan from Sydney here. Trevor from PwC said you could help me. I’ve had a great business for ten years but the current economic climate has really knocked us around. How can we get through this?”

– What’s different from before?

“Clients are cutting back on recruitment costs, new job orders have almost stopped and the ones we do get are arguing about our fees. It’s murder out there.”

– What’s your business?

“We offer specialist recruitment services where we do psychometric testing of all applicants, then we fully research …” He went on much more than this but I have no idea what he said. I had to interrupt.

– You try to find applicants for your client’s job vacancies?

“Well, we’re different to most other recruitment firms, but that’s essentially it.”

– How are you fundamentally different?

“Like I said, we do psychometric …” Life’s too short, I interrupted, again.

– There are a plethora of fine recruitment firms delivering all of those services and value-adds. And, Alan, if it takes you as long to explain your value-offering to prospective clients as you have to me, you’re losing their attention fairly quickly.


Lesson learned: we must articulate how we provide value and a return on investment for clients. Why else would they want to engage us? No matter what your profession.

1. What are the three most important reasons people are buying (and should continue to buy) from you?
2. How will your clients measure the ROI you provide for them? And, how can you show this to them so that your offer is so compelling they must invest in you, right now?
3. Is your communication style clear and concise?

Any business can make money in the good times. The best businesses are the ones that will continue to grow and thrive during the tough times.

1. Articulate your value proposition in the form of a business outcome.
2. Show your clients the ROI in having you on board.
3. Continue to market. It’s not your client’s job to remember you, it is your obligation to ensure they don’t forget you.

 

Tweet

 

__________

Ric Willmot
Improving Organisational Performance
Providing Strategy Consulting & Mentoring

 

Here are 8 strong reasons why clients will engage with you. How many are you actively developing and regularly marketing through your Willmot’s Whirlpool?

1. Repute & common ground
2. Genuine value
3. Showing a real interest in them
4. Circumstance & proof
5. Point of legitimate difference
6. Appealing to their self-interest
7. Inference of benefit by the client
8. Appreciating that they will learn, benefit, or gain an advantage because they have you

It’s not enough to know you’re good, you have to understand why you’re good and have your market-space acknowledge it to be true.

 

Tweet


__________

Ric Willmot
Improving Organisational Performance
Providing Strategy Consulting & Mentoring

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.

 

Twitter Tweet

 

__________

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?


Tweet

__________

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.


Tweet

__________

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?


Tweet


__________


Ric Willmot
Improving Organisational Performance
Providing Strategy Consulting & Mentoring

 

When was the last time you were sitting in a conference room with the obligatory mints and bottled water, when it happened? That flash of brilliance where you were inspired to innovate and you generated new ideas that catapulted the performance of your business over the next six months.

How often does that happen?

Not a lot, really, does it?

Then why do it?

Inspiration, innovation and successful business ideas come out of the blue. Most times when you least expect it. They fly in from the edge of consciousness and delightfully startle us. They are random, sometimes the result of wrong turns, errors, mishaps and misdirection. They don't naturally and regularly occur when we're forcibly confined in the staleness of another conference room that emits a musty odour of damp carpet.

If you're looking for inspiration, innovation and successful business ideas you need to be having fun. Drop the qualitative thinking. Don't invite the devil's advocate. And, ignore conventional wisdom and practicality.

Inspiration, innovation, blue ocean ideas do not evolve from conservative thinking and approaches. They come from having fun and being excited. Let's do it! You know it works.
 

Tweet

__________


Ric Willmot
Improving Organisational Performance
Providing Strategy Consulting & Mentoring

 

A new Australian Defence report slams the quality of terrorism studies in Australia and overseas, saying the field is dominated by self-proclaimed experts who are inexperienced, do little primary research work in the field and have rarely met with genuine extremists. The study concluded there were common deficiencies in much of the writing on terrorism issues.

Similar charges could be laid against the preponderance of recent business and management texts. Most are shoddy and tawdry, fallowed and simplistic. Again, the business consulting field, like the terrorist field, is dominated by self-proclaimed experts who, once you research their backgrounds properly and fully, are inexperienced, do little primary research work in the field of business management and have rarely met with or consulted to significant and successful CEOs of major organisations.

Be careful whose advice you buy. First, check their credentials, thoroughly. Have they successfully achieved what you are wanting, and what they are telling you to do? Have they the experience or are they simply a theorist who has read a book or Googled a topic? If you go diving on the Great Barrier Reef you want the guidance of an experienced instructor who has swum that reef, not someone who has simply read a diving instruction manual, otherwise you might just drown. In Australia at the moment there are many self-proclaimed experts consulting to the accounting, coaching, legal and recruitment professions, who themselves actually failed in the same profession - although they are unwilling to admit it.

As the Sunscreen Song suggests, "advice is a form of nostalgia". But for you, right now, in this economy, you want your advice to come from those of us who do the research, are experienced, and engage at the highest levels. And, so should you, to ensure that you deliver exceptional value to your clients and guarantee them a substantial return on their investment in you and your professional advice.

We don't need any terror experts around here.

__________


Ric Willmot
Improving Organisational Performance
Providing Strategy Consulting & Mentoring

Tweet
 

The number of business coaches, trainers and speakers in my Mentor Program who work from home are growing exponentially. The excitement and trepidation rise as you take your seat at your desk realising you are independent, answerable only to yourself, free to manage and prioritise your time, efforts and schedules. Many consultants, trainers, coaches and speakers are escapees from the corporate world; relishing the freedoms afforded self-employment and entrepreneurialism.

However, the transition is not always trouble-free, uncomplicated or stress-free. Friends will telephone while you are working, assuming you have an abundance of time to chat. Others will call in mistakenly believing you have ample time for socialisation as well. You may also consider that you may have the discretionary time to quickly complete some household chores during your productive work time.

Establishing a business from your home premises is not always as liberating as it sounds or imagined. The abundance of distractions competing for your attention can destroy your concentration as well; young children, dirty dishes and television can be daunting challenges for home-based entrepreneurs attempting to establish, grow and develop a successful business.

There are a number of measures you can implement to support and assist your efforts to be successful as a home-based entrepreneur. Here are Ric’s Tips:

Formalise your working environment.

The temptation can be to treat working from home informally, especially considering you are your own boss and answerable to no one (excepting maybe your bank manager). Specifically, formalise how you will manage and prioritise your procedures and operations of working from home. This can incorporate scheduling of regular tasks, such as, telephone calls to clients, report-writing, invoicing, and so on.
It will benefit you to clearly understand how you will handle various scenarios which may impinge upon productivity, like: drop-ins by friends and relatives, interruptions by family members during important telephone calls, or children illnesses requiring they remain home from school. You might consider designating scheduled appointments for household chores, family errands, and recreational activities that you might otherwise be tempted to slip in to your working day.

Maintain balance.

For many of the professionals in my Mentor Program, there is a preponderance to work far too hard, and not nearly smart enough. Be realistic and be kind to yourself; emotionally, physically and creatively. Your success or otherwise will have less to do with the number of hours you work and more to do with the results and outcomes you produce.

There is no reason at all why home-based entrepreneurs could not be sitting by the pool at two in the afternoon, reading some journals, magazines or a good book. (See my article: “A martini by the pool.”) Thereby having no guilt at dropping by the ‘office’ at nine at night for an hour to do some emails and write a report. Just because you have your office at home does not necessarily require you work ‘office’ hours. But it is incumbent upon you to be disciplined to do what is needed, when it is needed.

Pronouncements for the home.

Just because you are clear about your patterns of work and priorities determined, it is negligent to assume your family and friends have the same clarity. There is no valid reason why you cannot close the door to your home-office as a simple indicator to your family that you cannot be disturbed and/or you are on important telephone call and quiet is important. Explain the measures to your family in advance, and then use those measures as needed, but only as needed so that they are not only understood but respected by others in your home.

Location, location, location.

Where your office is located within the confines of your residence will play a big role in the potential distractions and how enticing those distractions may become to you. Ideally, your office should be away from the busiest areas of the home; not in the thoroughfare of life. Neither should it be in your bedroom! It does need a door … that closes.

It is imperative that you maintain a separate and dedicated business telephone line that nobody else in the family answers … ever! And it is preferred that you have your own office equipment that is not for family use. Computers, printers, scanners and alike are tools of your business. Let the family have their own in another area of the home.

Achieve more by doing less.

Whether it be home duties or business needs, where it makes sense and is readily done with minimum supervision, outsource tasks. Get a housekeeper, have the lawns and gardens handled for you by a contractor, hire an external bookkeeper, use a virtual assistant; you get the idea. Utilise others to quickly accomplish tasks that distract and unenthused you so that your creative and productive energies remain focused on bringing in the high-premium business results.



Being a work from home entrepreneur has as many challenges as it does rewards; whether you profit from the opportunities it affords you, is a matter of choice. The level of efficacious productivity will be solely determined by the decisions you make. There is a rising tide for home-based entrepreneurs, unless you wish to be a victim of the water.

Tweet

__________


Ric Willmot
Improving Organisational Performance
Providing Strategy Consulting & Mentoring