The following Tip of the month was presented by our mentor John Spence Thomas at this week’s CCIQ Noosa meeting…
One of the problems faced by anyone running their own small business is lack of time. This often leads to reacting only to the issues of the moment and losing sight of the real priorities. There are four main drivers of any enterprise, which if kept in the forefront of one’s mind, can help you to ensure that you and the business stay on track. These are:
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The scope of the activities that you undertake in order to provide the level and range of product/service that your customers seek
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Your goals for the enterprise
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Your competitive advantage
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Your basis for growth
You can measure how well you are going in terms of these through the following:
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What is your business? That is who makes up your core customer group, what precisely are the products and services that you need to deliver to them and what range of activities do you need to undertake to be able to do so?
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What do you hope to achieve with your business and why are you in it? How big do you want to be, what markets do you want to be in, what level of profitability do you want? Are you building the business to sell it, support a life style, give you a job, allow you to retire with a good income, leave to your children or what?
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What are your core values in regard to the way you do business? What are the one or two behaviours that are absolutely not negotiable in your view? Are they about safety, value, relationships, integrity, quality, service or a combination?
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What is it that will enable your business to survive when so many others don’t – your competitive advantage? This is usually made up of a combination of elements and needs to be sustainable so continually improved.
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What is your core market? Where are the areas of opportunity that will allow you to grow the business? Is your future growth to come from a bigger share of your current market, new markets, new products or some combination?
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What are the barriers preventing you from achieving the goals that you have for the business and the level of growth that you aim for? These may be internal as well as external. What are you doing about them?
While as the owner of a small business you will rarely have as much time as you would like, if you stay focused on these four things, understand them, think about them and measure against them, you will rarely go wrong.