Page 5 - KZN Business Book Vol.3 No.2

KZN

KwaZulu-Natal
Business Chambers Council
THE CHASSIS UNDERPINNING YOUR BUSINESS PERFORMANCE

Trevor Clark - Putting the five new KPIs into a programmes, vehicle branding make your business a small Apply those percentage
Business and formula along with the original and strategic alliance campaigns fortune once you have identied improvements to your last month’s
Executive Coach; three (customers, revenue and yield quite impressive results. Key what it is – and that is just one of revenue and prot gures and ask
Speaker and prot), will look something like to this is tracking where our leads 52 potential strategies you can use yourself if results like that would
Global Trainer
this (I have added in sample come from so we always know to improve your score in this area. get you excited about working on
gures to demonstrate the what is working and what is not. your marketing machine today.
process): Prot Margins – last but most
Conversion Rate – our denitely not least, there are 67 ere is no silver bullet that
list covers 84 proven strategies you can potentially be transforms a business overnight,
strategies to improve using to improve your margins. but it is the hundreds of
incremental, one percent
We all understand that the higher
W hat business owners our gross prot percentage, the improvements, implemented
this percentage yet most
struggle to identify ten.
less sales we have to generate to hit
consistently over time, that yield
do
these three business metrics have When last did you or our break-even or prot goals. But true, sustainable results.
do we have a clear plan in place to
your sales team attend
in common? sales training? ere is a make sure we are consistently If you need help working out
• Number of clients wealth of knowledge improving this magic number? how to track your own numbers
• Revenue and simple tools that Measuring our actual costs, more scientically, our coaches
• Profit make the job of today’s regular price increases, putting a would be delighted to show you
professional salesperson freeze on discounting and better how – contact us today to reserve
You guessed it – all three are so much easier. Aside negotiating skills are a great place a slot at one of our upcoming
historical key performance from team training, ask to start. FREE business skills workshops.
indicators (KPIs), that most yourself if you are using We will demonstrate these
business owners only assess in the a guarantee system, sales Now – what would happen if, principles in person, and assist
rearview mirror of bookkeeping scripts and a clearly over time, the owner of our you in applying the chassis
soware or management accounts. documented sales sample business implemented concept to your business.
process for quick wins several new ideas to improve each
Another important distinction in this area. 5-Way area to a target T: 031 266 2258
is that these numbers are improvement of only 10% in each? www.mastery.co.za
durban@actioncoach.com
outcomes; results we achieved, but
they give no insight as to what Number of
caused them, or what we can do to Now we start to get a better Transactions – we have 70
inuence them. picture of our business’s chassis. strategies you can employ to get
What is under the skin? Why we your clients returning more oen,
Here are ve additional are getting the results we are and maintaining an up-to-date
questions every entrepreneur getting? Do we have a better idea customer database is central to the
should ask of his/her business – at of the weak areas to be working success of nearly every one of
least monthly. If you can track this on? And, assuming we are going them. Today’s entrepreneur can no
on a weekly or even daily basis, to measure these numbers longer store client data in a little
you are so much more in the consistently going forward; do we black book or Excel spreadsheet.
driving seat of what your business have a tracking system? is will An abundance of intuitive, o the
can achieve. demonstrate the eectiveness of shelf customer relationship
any campaign or system management (CRM) systems are
• How many leads (or sales improvements we implement in available at aordable monthly
opportunities) did my business each of these areas. subscriptions, making it inexcus-
generate? able to not capitalise on these
• How effective was I (or my sales Let’s drill down on each of these technologies.
team) in converting those ‘5 Way’ areas.
prospects into actual paying Average Rand Sale – Love them
customers? Number of Leads – our team or hate them, fast food chains are
• How often are our clients buying has identied 73 strategies to help the masters of this game. You
from us? you create more sales know the drill – order a burger at
• How many transactions did we opportunities. While obvious a McDonalds and before taking Results - ose 10%
(on average) generate per ideas include radio, television and your money, the cashier will improvements in each of the ve
customer? press advertising, social media always ask you the magic chassis areas, have given us a
• What percentage of our revenue marketing, Google Adwords and questions, “Do you want fries cracking 46% improvement in
is le for the business, once all hiring more sales people, we nd with that?” or “Can I upsize your revenue and a 61% improvement
costs of sale and expenses have that oen-overlooked strategies order?”. I can guarantee that there in prot!
been deducted? such as systemized referral is a supersize question that could

RISK: ESTABLISH THE CONTEXT

organisations into serious they come across such statistics. environments. Failure to do is the stakeholders. ey can play a
Helper Zhou introspection and applying A better approach is evident in worst quicksand upon which a crucial role in helping top
themselves to discovering all there adopting a deliberate risk company can run its operations. management to consider factors
is in the risk world. But on the ip management process to deal with which may be overlooked and yet
side it can trap organisations into adverse events. is stage aects new start-ups present subtle and costly threats to
answering the question in brief, and also established businesses the organisation.
exposing them to some of the e most important thing to when they consider various
most obvious dangers and appreciate in developing a risk growth strategies like adding new e next step will be looked at
critically leaving them exposed to management plan is to note that sub business units, carve-outs or in the next instalment.
unexpected events. no step is more important than spin-os among other expansion
the other and there is no short cut options. Sigma International
Tel: + 2731 201 0788
According to Riskviews (2016),
to achieving a risk management
he T in the past 20 years, globally more plan. However, the rst step of the is rst stage allows the Mobile: +27 73 176 5014
Email: helper@sigmaintl.co.za
Web: www.sigmaintl.co.za
company to dene its key
process is to establish the context.
than 50 large corporates have
and the organisation’s risk
concept of risk management can failed or suered signicant loss e main pillar of risk objectives, articulate its risk prole
due to poor risk management.
at times sound daunting for many Interesting to note that of the management lies in the appetite. e identication of all
organisations in dierent sectors. more than 80 main risk drivers; organisation’s ability to establish possible risks will in turn play a
e major contributor as to why poor assumptions, poor risk the context of its business crucial role in establishing the
organisations nd the concept culture, governance as well as operations. As such this step standard against which these risks
‘scary’ can be traced back to an unpredictable risks dominated the should be thorough as it involves will be assessed. While this phase
understanding of ‘what is risk’. risks that resulted in failure of developing a clear understanding was traditionally done at the top
is question may be a double these large corporates. Many of the company’s primary, (strategic level), now organisations
edged sword, provoking some businesses tend to panic when secondary and other (indirect) should be careful to include all

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