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Your 90-day Action Plan after Buying a Business

May 12, 2012 1 Comment


The actions you take in the first 90 days after you have purchased a business are crucial for its long-term success. We showed what things you need to take care of in the first 30 days after you buy the business. I asked you not to take any major decision in that time, but to learn and document everything about the business by asking questions and observing. By the end of 30 days you should have a plan of action to improve the business in the coming days and months. The plan of action needs to fall in two categories – short-term tactical improvements and long-term strategic direction.
Your focus in the first 90 days should mostly focus on short-term improvements. The idea is to get quick benefits by taking advantage of “low hanging fruits”, while at the same time keeping long-term direction in mind. These steps you take in the first 90 days will position your business well for coming months and years.
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Creative Perks that Keep Employees Motivated

March 4, 2012 2 Comments


For many employees, the lines between work and their personal lives are blurring. They’re seeking balance between the two, and are finding value in the ability to choose the specific benefits that best meet their needs at this point in their lives. And employers are learning that, when chosen and implemented effectively, benefits can demonstrate leadership’s concern for the well-being of employees, reinforce cultural values, and foster deeper employee engagement.
According to James Berkeley, Director of Berkeley Burke International, however, there’s still a disconnect. “The decisions made regarding what benefits to offer are often based on subjective viewpoints, viewpoints that are far removed from the actual needs of employees.” Rather than assuming you know what your employees want, Berkeley suggests you ask them. Though answers will vary, many people are interested in more benefits in these areas:
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4-Step Approach to Deal with Difficult Employees

November 6, 2011 1 Comment


Every business owner encounters difficult employees – commonly referred to as jerks – in the course of running his business. These difficult employees are easy to spot in an organization. They complain about any task you give them, spread around rumors, slack on their jobs and bully their peers and subordinates. In general, they drain lot of energy from everyone, particularly the managers and business owners.
How you deal with them can help you minimize the impact on you and your business. As a business owner, avoiding them is not an option for you, as much as you would like. This will only delay the problem for later and make it even more challenging to address. Rather than avoiding them it is better to nip the problem in the bud and address the situation head on. From our own experience and after talking to fellow business owners we have come up with a 4-step approach that can help you deal with this problem in an appropriate manner.
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Framework for Deciding What NOT to do

September 28, 2011 Leave a Comment


In the previous post we highlighted that the most difficult decisions you will ever make are the ones where you decide NOT to move forward. By focusing your resources and energy on narrowly you can achieve number of benefits and get higher return on your investment of time, money or effort. We mentioned how Apple has succeeded to become the most valuable company in the U.S. by applying this principle, while GM had floundered by spreading resources over multiple brands with lot of overlaps.
You should use this approach in decision making every step of the way. If you take a step back and think about the decision in terms of cost vs. benefit of the current choice and evaluate it against alternatives you can improve the odds of making the right choice. You can use this principle in number of different areas as shown below.
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15 Simple Cost Reduction Techniques for Small Business Owners

August 21, 2011 2 Comments


In the previous post we showed a systematic approach you can use to reduce cost in small business while still keeping your foundation intact allowing you to take advantage of the upturn in economy when it happens. We suggested that you should take surgical knife approach to cost reduction as opposed to using machete.
By applying this approach your business may come up with tactics that will be different from some other type of business. You have to tailor the systematic approach to your business and situation. However, there are common tactics that can be employed by almost all types of businesses. Below we describe those techniques categorized by stages in the cost reduction approach.
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7 Steps to a Great Customer Service

May 22, 2011 3 Comments


A business cannot sustain competitive advantage for long time based on product and price alone. Competition eventually will find a way to beat you on that game. Competitive advantage built on customer service, however, cannot easily be copied. For proof look no further than Zappos.com. Here is an E-commerce company that sells shoes, of all the items, on the Internet. However, with a laser like focus on customer service it is selling a billion dollar worth of them annually!
After consulting with number of small business owners over past several years we have come up with a 7-step process that companies need to adopt to achieve the success enjoyed by Zappos. It will not be easy to follow these principles all the time and success will not come overnight. However, when you do master them you will have a lasting success that your competitors will find difficult to beat.
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How do you overcome Buyer FUDs when selling your business

May 12, 2011 Leave a Comment

In the previous post we discussed two biggest fears your potential buyers have when they are considering purchase of your business. We showed how you can help buyers overcome these fears and make the sale of your small business go through quickly and smoothly.
In addition to the two fears related to business finances, there are other operational FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) factors that buyers, particularly those who have not owned small business before, are likely to have. With proper planning you can help alleviate these FUDs and make the selling process go faster. After all, it is in your best interest to shorten the sale process as much as possible. The longer it takes for sale to complete the more chances of something going wrong and the sales falling through.
Based on our experience with both buying and selling business, we have come up with several questions that are likely to surface in buyer’s head when he is going through due diligence. The sections below document those questions along with our advice on how you can deal with them.
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How Can your Employees Help Improve Sales

March 16, 2011 Leave a Comment


It is our belief that your employees can help improve sales at your business by more than 20% if you help them help you. Most business owners don’t really think of their employees as ones who can help them improve sales; however the front line employees – the ones that interact with customers – can make a big difference in improving your business. These employees are talking to and interacting with your customers all the time. They are responsible for making your customers come back by providing great customer service. In short, they are representing your brand and your business.
So what are the specific ways in which your employees can help improve sales? In our experience of running business for 5 years we have come across multiple opportunities.

  1. They can make your existing customers come back by providing excellence customer service.
  2. They can also help bring new customers by word-of-mouth from existing ones.
  3. They can help you up-sell and cross-sell at the point of order taking and payment.
  4. They are aware of where opportunities exist for improvement in customer service and operations.

It is your responsibility as business owner to make this happen. You have to provide them with the necessary resources and incentives that will motivate them to give their best in front of customers. We have identified below several areas that you need to address.
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How to succeed in running absentee business

March 13, 2011 1 Comment


Small business owners run their business absentee for variety of reasons. Some owners are still holding full-time job while starting a business. Others have more locations than they can handle themselves. While still others just don’t want to spend their entire time on the business. Our estimate is that while majority of small businesses are owner operated, there are number of businesses that are run absentee for the reasons mentioned above.
While it is possible to run and succeed in absentee owner business you need to be aware of the problems that arise when you are doing so. Ignoring these problems can lead to deterioration and even disaster for your business. The most common issue in running the business absentee is that you may not be aware of what’s going on with your business or at least not to the same degree as when you are present 24×7. Even if you come to know about the issues it may be too late to act on. The issues can surface in all areas of the business ranging from operations, quality, purchasing and customer service.
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How to plan for employees leaving without warning

February 28, 2011 Leave a Comment


For small business owners employee attrition is a fact of life. It is estimated that the annual attrition runs as high as 100% for some types of small businesses; particularly the ones that employ hourly workers! This means that you will not have the same set of employees at the end of the year as the ones you started with. This kind of turnover not only increases your cost in the form of hiring and training; but it may also reduce sales by affecting the quality and customer service.
While you can try to keep your employees motivated and use these techniques reduce turnover; the fact remains that the employee turnover will remain high if you are in type of business that employs hourly workers. My brother, who owns a coffee shop, complains that he always fears a call from an employee who will call him to say he is not going to show up for work because he has found another job. It always happens when he is not able to find any replacement on a short notice forcing him to rush to the business from wherever he is.
While you will not be able to prevent your employees from leaving on a short notice; the next step is to try to mitigate the impact on your business as a result by taking certain steps beforehand. Below we have outlined some steps you can undertake that will help you take care of business even when your employees leave suddenly.
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Filed Under: Employees, Management, Operations Tagged With: ,
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