In a previous Tuesday Profit Tip, I shared with you the first step in dramatically improving the results of everything you ALREADY do well in your business – marketing campaigns, sales processes, lead generation techniques, upsells, referrals, collections, inventory management and so on.
This system, which I call “Leveraging Your Success”, can instantly add 5%, 10% or even 20% improvements to critical performance metrics like “sales conversion rates” or shaving 10% off the time it takes to perform key tasks.
Perhaps the best part is that none of these incredible added streams of profit will cost you a dime to implement, and you will meet little or no resistance from your staff, and only praise from your customers.
Finding EASY Profits Within Your Business
The first step of the four part series, “Leveraging Your Success”, which I shared a few months back, involved taking a “Success Inventory” of everything that is working well in your company – marketing campaigns, sales processes, lead generation techniques, upsells, referrals, collections, inventory management and so on.
To illustrate the power of this simple process, a Computer Reseller client sells maintenance contracts as part of hardware and software purchases. And this provided about $50,000 a year in revenue…not bad. But can they improve their “Success System”?
You bet…Easy.
In fact, by following the Leverage Your Success system, they have increased the results by over 300%!
Step 1 involved simply identifying their successful procedures, that’s it. Often awareness alone can cause you to identify simple changes that you can make to instantly improve results.
Step 2 of the Leveraging Your Success system involves documenting the current “Success Formula” that is currently used to produce the positive results (whether in writing or not), and spot opportunities for improvement.
Now this may sound trivial, especially for those of you that are resistant to written procedures. However, I have witnessed massive transformations happen when a business simply re-evaluates the steps of a procedure…that’s it…imply re-evaluates them. Every “Successful” Procedure You Have Put in Place Continues to Perform at Peak Levels…Right?
Don’t you wish?
I was coaching one of my clients, a $25M specialty supplier, last week. We were discussing “Cementing in Change”, the fourth step of the Leverage Your Success system, because they had a realization that many of the things they implemented, which had produced measurable profit results, would often return to the old levels of performance as they switched gears and worked on the next great idea for improving the company.
Has this ever happened in YOUR business?
If so, then you can likely understand how simply revisiting ANY procedure or process, in and of itself, can result in instant performance increases.
The Power of Observation
As a CEO, I would make it a point every 3 months to spend 3-4 hours actually performing a function in the company. One time I was performing the invoicing function along with the 10 or so other invoicers in the department. As I went through the process I kept coming across opportunities to make improvements. I would ask the team, “Why do we do this step this way?” Routinely I would hear them say, “That’s the way we were taught.” Yet I knew that was not the way it was originally set up.
By the time I finished my invoicing duties for the day, I had written down a dozen simple improvements, some simply involved correcting the way things were supposed to be done and the rest were ideas the staff had come up with.
The outcome was incredible. In fact, just one of the changes that had not been followed was a price increase on a particular service type for a major customer. The run rate on this “missed” price increase was over $1,000,000 a year…in lost PROFIT!
If you have not done this simple process before you are in for a surprise, perhaps a big surprise.
ACTION YOU CAN TAKE NOW
This week, take a few minutes to evaluate a successful procedure, any procedure, which produces positive results – perhaps a lead generation process, sales conversion process, upsell process, etc.
If it is written then first read through it. If not, that is ok…for now. Next, have someone walk you through the procedure they follow (if you are a lone ranger then walk though it yourself). Note 1-2 things that you see that are either not being done correctly, or at all, or could be improved with a simple change. No hardcore evaluation at this point, just notice the obvious.
My guess is you will find a real “ah-ha” and some nice profit increases to go along with it.
Small Business Growth Club Member Access
If you are a member then you can immediately access the entire four part Leverage Your Success Series by clicking http://www.smallbusinessgrowthclub.com/members/372.cfm
If you want to learn more about this program, click http://www.smallbusinessgrowthclub.com/public/322.cfm
To your success,
Scott D Hallman
