The Boas Knows » Revenue

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Tags: 10 Questions, Bernadette Boas, business owners, CFO's, CPA's, entrepreneurs, Financial Management, FocalPoint Coaching, Profits, Revenue, The Boas Group, Wealth
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“YES, you do!” 7 Steps to big profits!

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010

yes Following my blog posting yesterday regarding creating standards, procedures and repeatable processes, I had a solo proprietor business owner contact me and ask, “I am a open business owner, do I really need to take the time and effort to create process and standard procedures?

My immediate response, in my head, was ‘Are you kidding, YESSSS”.

But my job as a business coach and advisor is to motivate, support, guide and educate. So I simply responded “Let me ask you a question; are there certain things that you do that you know take way to much time and effort to do it? Or are there things you do you would love to be able to hire someone to do it so you could focus on selling and generating business?”

She responded “Oh, of course”, and she went on to rattle off two or three things; being an online business she noted: creating her weekly electronic newsletter, posting and updating content on her website, and she did note keeping track of her expenses, budget and revenue.

I then asked “How much time do you think you spend on the weekly newsletter?”

“About 90 minutes to 2 hours” she said.

I went on to ask “Are there standard or typical things you do each time you need to do one of those activities, for example: do you use a template for your newsletter, do you have a schedule for content updates, or a filing system, book keeper and spreadsheet to track expenses?”

“Yes and No” she replied. “I really am not sure, I just do it”

I simply stated that there are two huge benefits to her one person business that she absolutely must consider: for example

If she could just cut out 30 minutes (if not more) from her newsletter update by knowing what needs to be done, what steps can be taken to streamline the work, and documenting the steps she takes each time she creates it, she could:
- Prospect and sell in the 30 minutes that she just save - generating more revenue
- Now that she is generating more revenue she could - hire someone to handle the administrative work that she is doing, so she can spend even more time selling and generating revenue.

I asked her is that made sense to her “Oh yeh!”

It is that simply….. 1) cut out administrative or wasteful time out of your daily and weekly tasks and activities and you can turn that time into revenue generating time. 2) standardize and document your processes and you can replicate those tasks and activities easily whether it is you doing it, or someone you are now able to hire due to the time savings and productivity improvements which then drove higher revenue.

It is a WIN WIN!!! So YES…… whether you are a one person business or a corporate one…. you have to allot time and effort to:

Review the tasks and activities you or your team perform in your business
Document all of the steps whether manual or automated
Look for steps that can be automated
Streamline those that cannot be automated but could be improved
Document final process and make available to team
Ensure everyone operates against those processes and procedures
Reassess and continue improving processes

Improve Productivity, Increase Revenue and Optimize Profits !!!!!

Bernadette

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Tags: Bernadette Boas, Business Coach of Atlanta, Business Coaching, FocalPoint Coaching, Leadership, Management, Procedures, Processes, Profits, Revenue, Standards, The Boas Group
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Wednesday’s Question: Entrepreneurs, what have you done to thrive in today’s economy?

Wednesday, July 8th, 2009

It has been stated by many of you that one of the key traits of an entrepreneur is ‘creativity and innovation’.

Having a ’great attitude’ is another key entrepreneurial trait, therefore I don’t usually dwell on the ‘recession’ and the strain of the current economy, as there are many businesses that are thriving. But I would like to know, as I am sure many of you who run businesses would,

What are you Mr/Ms Entrepreneur doing in your business that is allowing you to thrive the current business environment with rising revenues, customers, and profits?

RESPONSES RECEIVED……..

Invested in branding, social media, traditional marketing (direct mail, telemarketing), hiring salesperson
Daily goal and action plan created and executed on (Don N. has exceeded April/May/June revenue projections)
Revamped and expanded products offered by repackaging or creating new products and services
Bundled add on services with training/workshops to upsell
Opened up monies by looking at all expenses and adjusting monthly plans or switching vendors (phone, internet, cable, admin support, IT costs, office supplies) on commodity items

Follow the same question on twitter/bernadetteboas and several LinkedIn discussion groups.

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Tags: Coaching, Coaching Tip, Creativity, Entrepreneur, Franchisee, Franchising, Franchisor, Innovation, Leadership, LinkedIn, Profits, Revenue, Thriving, Twitter
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Are you making decisions without knowing your VALUE?

Wednesday, May 13th, 2009

Whether you are an individual sole proprietor or the head of a business with multiple (even hundreds of) employees. As the leader of your own business you need to understand your worth and value to the business in order to determine how, when, who, and why you are making the decisions you are within your business, impacting your own productivity, contribution, and effectiveness.

Let’s break this down:

Simply, there are as many tasks, chores, and activities that need to be done when operating a business. Everything from taking out the trash, calling and scheduling appointments, working on your marketing content, advertising, making sales calls, networking, paying bills, ordering supplies, filing, managing your team, handling customer service, operations, etc. We could go on and on across the spectrum of Sales, Marketing, HR, Finance, Legal, Administrative, Operations, and IT functions.

Have you yourself documented all of the various functions that your business requires in order to operate effectively? If you haven’t you should, but I degress. That will be addressed on a later post.

As a business owner, and even more so if you want to be an entrepreneur, you cannot expect to execute and manage yourself all of the things required to run a business, if you want to both do them effectively and grow your business at the same time. And your core role as the leader of your business is to GENERATE REVENUE! So you need to know when and how to manage the constant barrage of work that comes across your desk each and every day.

An easy way to doing this is to understand your actual value to the business, what I call your Hourly Contribution Rate. Knowing this single $ number provides great clarity and focus to the the decisions and actions you take in your business.

To calculate your Value or Hourly Contribution Rate to the business is to:

Take the Total Gross Revenue your business will generate this year
Divide it by the Total # Hours worked in a year (typically) - 2080 hours.
That will give you your Hourly Contribution Rate

This number is then used for every decision you make every day on where and when to spend YOUR time.

For example: say your business plans for 2009 is to make $250,000 Total Revenue. You work a typical yearly schedule of 2080 hours (which does include vacation, sick, holidays). Based on that: $250,000 / 2080 hours = an Hourly Contribution Rate of $120.00 per hour.

That is the hourly rate that your time is worth to the business in order to ensure the $250,000 in total revenue you have planned. This rate of $120.00 is then used by you to decide when and where you spend YOUR time, and then WHO should be doing a task or activity that holds a lesser value to the business than this hourly rate. For example:

You find that you are spending 4 hours a month on paying bills and updating the books, which equates to a total cost of $480.00 that you could be contributing to the business as the leader and entrepreneur of your business. Your responsibility is to decide if YOU doing the bookkeeping is worth spending $480.00 or is it more valuable to the business to go hire or outsource a Bookkeeper to do it?

Another example: you spend 3 hours per week or 12 hours per month updating your Contact Management System (CMS) with all of the business cards, follow up, and detail on the people that you are meeting and greeting with throughout the month. Those hours if spent is lost from doing any other revenue generating activities once you spend it, so you need to decide, is it worth the 12 hours of YOUR time and contribution at a total cost of $1440!!!! That is right, $1440 dollars, that could be spent on planning, preparing, scheduling, or creating what is needed for sales calls, workshops/seminars, booking appointments, and other REVENUE generating activities. Or should you be paying someone else a much lesser cost to do it for you.

One last one: you spend conservatively 2 hours per week calling and scheduling appointments, following up, confirming, and recapping partner/prospect/gate opener meetings. Total monthly hours = 8, therefore the total cost = $960.00 per month. And this task can only be done during the work week, so it is definitely impeding on revenue generating work hours.

Is it worth it to you and your goal of $250,000 to do this yourself, or should you be hiring or outsourcing this task to someone else?

Now, you may be saying to yourself, as a individual or small business I cannot afford to hire anyone? My response is, you cannot afford NOT to, or you need to be happy with just having a job, and not building a business.

As the leader of the company your time is precious and oh so valuable. You have to weigh the cost of paying third parties to delegate certain tasks too the cost of you NOT having those hours to generate the revenue ($250,000) that you have planned for the business. Your success depends on it!

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