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Welcome to the January 2007 edition of Business
Success, dedicated to helping business owners to
build a better business.
We hope your new year is off to a great start!
Many small businesses are family businesses
and the family dynamic can have both pros and cons
in the business and relationship context. Check out
our article on how a family business council can
make a positive difference for your business and your
life.
Planning for growth in 2007? See our article on
making sure your marketing strategies are working for
you.
Also, don't miss our our schedule of Teleclasses and
Webinars. Our monthly Businesses Getting Results
series is open to the public as well as Advisors On
Target clients.
| Upcoming Teleclasses & Webinars |
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Managing Your Cash Flow
Thursday, February 8, 2007
4:00 PM Eastern (3:00 PM Central, 2:00 PM
Mountain, 1:00 PM Pacific)
Hire the Right People and Get Them Productive
Fast!
Thursday, March 8, 2007
1:00 PM Eastern (12:00 PM Central, 11:00 AM
Mountain, 10:00 AM Pacific)
PACE 2007 Attendees!
How is your customer service on the telephone? Is
the first impression of your company a positive one?
Don't miss our Education Session at PACE on
Wednesday February 14 at 8:00 AM!
Phone Right!
How Outstanding
Companies use Telephone Communication
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| A Family Business Council Helps Drive The Family Business |
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It’s not too uncommon these days to find that a
family owned business has a board of directors. But
a newly emerging trend is to also create a family
business council (FBC). Just how do they work and
what are the supposed benefits to be derived from
having one?
Unlike a board of directors, the purpose of a family
business council is to provide a forum within which
issues internal to the family – but nevertheless
critical to the successful functioning of a family
business – can be aired and resolved in an open
manner. For instance, when the decision is made to
bring a family member into the family business, the
traditional relationships can change. The fact is that
the relatives will now have to deal with the family
relationship on a highly visible, continuing business
basis. Sometimes the family and business roles
become confused and blurred, which gives rise to
misunderstandings and stress.
In fact there is a whole batch of issues that can give
rise to dissension and it should be one of the first
jobs of the family business council to adopt a set of
rules that clarifies the main areas of potential
dispute.
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Clearly defining the authority and responsibility of
each family member. Set out, in the simplest of
terms, what is expected from each individual and
what authority and responsibility each will have in
the business. Get this down in writing and, where
appropriate, communicate the responsibilities and
authorities to the employees. Determine who reports
to whom and what this really means.
- Clearly determine the hours of work and vacation
time rights of family working in the business.
- Deal with office or workspace issues, parking,
furniture and other resources that will be made
available. Often these small things are taken for
granted, but they can really get to those who feel
they haven’t been treated fairly or with due respect
and eventually erupt in a confrontation between
family members.
- Clarify compensation and benefits issues and put
them in writing. It's not an issue of trust; it's an
issue of good business.
Unless there is a forum for discussing these issues
openly so that some sort of consensus can be
reached among the people affected they can
generate tensions highly damaging to a family
business.
On a continuing basis the FBC’s meetings will provide
updates on the performance and status of the
business and allow broader issues, such as who
should be the next head of the enterprise or whether
the business should be sold, to be debated.
The FBC will share many of the concerns of the
company’s board of directors, but its perspective is
strictly that of the family and it can provide feedback
to the board on how the board's decisions affect the
family.
It is a forum where the family can establish or clarify
its values and policies and determine how extensively
these need to be applied to the business. For
example, if a senior family member is planning to
retire from the organization it could be that someone
other than that person’s next of kin would be the
best replacement in the position. The council can
make that recommendation to the board of directors
as an expression of the priority the family gives to
having a successful business.
One of the key
functions of the family business council is to ensure
that younger generations have input into the
direction of the business at a point in time before
they take over control of the organization. This will
help the members of the older generation as they
work to prepare the firm for succession and give the
younger members of the family a greater feeling
of ‘ownership’ throughout the succession process.
To get a family business council formed and hold its
initial meetings it would probably be best to engage a
facilitator with relevant experience from outside the
family. This person needs to be a good organizer with
knowledge of meeting procedures and an
understanding of family dynamics. A business advisor
or consultant would be useful in this role. This first
meeting can be used to explain just what it is hoped
the council will achieve for the business. Typically
this would include:
- Provide an environment that fosters mutual trust
and respect among family members
- Provide the opportunity for the attendees to
learn to communicate with each other about
sensitive family and business issues
- Provide an opportunity for key family stakeholders
to define and share their goals for the company and
themselves, and to reconcile differences. The family
can then develop a vision of where it wants to be in
the future.
- Assist family members in learning about the roles,
responsibilities and relationships of the various
stakeholders and groups (management team, board
of directors and family council)
- Facilitate an appreciation of differences of
viewpoint among family members
This is a forum where there should be no fear about
questioning or disagreeing. If you are not able to
disagree, with some objectivity, over business issues,
you'll invariably find that the family relationship will
be dragged into the disagreement.
A family business council will help preserve the
integrity of the organization so that all generations,
present and future, can enjoy the rewards of the
hard work and dedication that grew the enterprise to
its current state.
Information in this article is sourced from RAN ONE,
Inc.
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| Planning for Growth? |
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Make sure your Marketing Strategies are
working for you!
By Linnea Blair, Advisors On Target
As I review many profit plans/budgets with my clients
in 2007 it is evident that most are planning for some
growth and many are planning for significant growth.
Of course there are many factors that go into
achieving that growth: Effective marketing and sales
to bring in additional work, enough of the right people
to produce the work, appropriate capitalization, and
the strategies, systems and monitoring to ensure
that the additional work is profitable.
One of the Four Ways to Grow your
Business that we explored at our free teleclass in
February, simply put, is to get more clients. To do
that you usually need to increase or improve the
effectiveness of your marketing efforts or improve
your sales close rate – or both.
Do your advertising and marketing efforts really boost
sales? Are you getting the best returns from your
marketing budget by targeting your media and your
audience? Or are you just taking a shotgun approach
and hoping for the best?
If you don’t have a system to measure the results of
your advertising, then you’re probably relying heavily
on guesswork. And you probably aren’t getting the
best bang for your marketing buck. You’ll only know
for certain if you measure and track the results of
your marketing strategies.
Remember the adage ‘What you can measure you
can manage’. If you can measure the results of your
marketing, you can assess just where advertising is
really boosting your sales - that is, where you earn
multiples of each marketing dollar you spend.
You may object that it takes too much time and
effort. There is some justification in that view. You
run a small business, and you may not have a lot of
time or resources to operate complicated
measurement or tracking program. But fortunately
there are some simple techniques for assessing your
advertising return on investment.
These vary according to whether you measure
advertising that has been focused on a particular
service and designed to get a sale in the short term,
or whether it was designed to work long term,
influencing buyer attitudes towards your business
and building a certain image.
You can use coupons or postcards that correspond
with special offers and then test the response. You
can test ad response through hidden offers of the
type, ‘Mention this advertisement and get 15 percent
off’, or ‘Call this number for more information.’ If you
record the number of inquiries you can get some idea
of how successful the ad has been. You can also
get newspapers or magazines to run two versions of
the same advertisement through a ‘split-run’
arrangement. Each version would carry a slightly
different offer and you could record which one got
the most responses. You could also keep records of
sales of advertised and related items in the days or
weeks after an advertisement.
Measuring attitude marketing takes a little more
stamina. You will be tracking many different
strategies for marketing and brand awareness
including not only print or other media advertising,
and direct mail, but your signs, website and Internet
marketing, networking and any other methods you
are using to promote your company.
You will need to track the results of a number of
marketing campaigns over a period of months by
keeping up-to-date records on a monthly basis to
track the number of leads, bids, sales as well as the
dollar value of the sales from each of your marketing
strategies. We use a Sales Tracking Template built in
Excel or you can create your own. This will allow
you to compare sales year to year, and judge the
individual and cumulative effect of your marketing
campaigns.
Start tracking your marketing success now for this
year, and you will be able to fine-tune your plan
going forward to use your marketing dollars wisely
and increase your return on investment.
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| Memorable Quotation |
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"The best executive is one who has sense enough to
pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-
restraint enough to keep from meddling with them
while they do it."
- Theodore Roosevelt
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Are you working your plan? |
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Do you have a plan in place for 2007?
If
you don't,
it's time to get moving before the first quarter is
behind you.
Be ready to pull out all the
stops for a successful year as the second
quarter approaches!
If this is a slower time of the year for you, now is the
time to implement some new operational systems in
your business, fine tune your marketing plan for
2007, define your recruiting needs and make an
action plan!
Then you will be able to "Spring Forward" with
renewed focus to achieve your goals for 2007.
Need a business coach to help you get moving?
Give
us a call at 858.320.8996
and let us help you get moving towards a successful
2007!
Advisors On Target has options that work for you:
- Business Performance Review
- Business Coaching
- Individual Consulting
- On Target Group Program
Find out more....
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