What I Learned About Business In 2007
January 3, 2008
As you leave the old year behind and plan for a new year in your business, it’s good to reflect on what you learned about business in the previous year. Here’s a few things I learned last year:
1) Keep It Simple: From your pricing, to your computer system – every single part of your system should be as easy to follow as possible. It makes it easier to train people. And it’s also a lot easier to troubleshoot when things go wrong.
2) Do Only One Set of Financial Projections and Set High Goals: I used to do one set of projections and we always reached our goals, but last year, we decided to do four, to help us cope with different scenarios. It didn’t work out as well, as it also prevented us from focusing on our real goals.
3) Don’t Assume That The Same Solutions Will Work In Every Business: I took a marketing mistake I made in my last business and did the exact opposite in the new one. The result was – another mistake. It didn’t work, because it was a different type of business.
4) Don’t Change a Successful Aspect of Your Business For One Person: In my last business – we often gave a small gift to our customers at the end of a job. It went down well, so we decided to do the same in the new business. But, one customer refused the gift and said it wasn’t appropriate for plumbing companies to give gifts to customers.
So, against my better judgement, we stopped giving out the gifts. And this was a huge mistake. It’s the small things that make a customer remember you, and this year, we’ll be reinstating the gifts. Now, if lots of people had complained about the gift, then the story would be different.
5) You Can and Should Turn Down Work: Not everyone is going to be a good customer. If you have a bad gut feeling about a customer, or they give you grief before you even start the job, don’t be afraid to turn down the work. Your gut instinct will usually be spot on, and they’ll cause you far more hassle than they’re worth.
6) Don’t Change Things Every Five Minutes: Whilst it’s good to improve your system, don’t make changes every five minutes. And don’t change anything that doesn’t improve the running of your business. Introduce only one change at a time and make sure you have time to train staff thoroughly, no matter how basic or straightforward that change may seem.
7) Never Stop Marketing: No matter how busy you are – never stop marketing. If you can’t keep up, pass work to a competitor who doesn’t market aggressively. And keep the customer details on your database, so you can keep in touch with them in the future. At the time, it may seem wasteful to market for work that you can’t carry out – but you’ll be glad you did later on.
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5 Responses to “What I Learned About Business In 2007”
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Successful And Outstanding Blogger
Great post…I would add one other thing:
Great Plans don’t get in the Way of Great Success.
Every ggod plan is mallable enough to handle the 10% chaos that always comes.
Like the Marines say, “Adapt and Overcome!”
No.5 struck a chord. We got an emergency call from a company I’d quoted many years ago. Back then they questioned absolutely every item on the quote and tried to knock us down on price.
We didn’t get the work. We discovered a couple of days ago that they’d gone with somebody really cheap. And as the story unfolded, they were very cheap indeed. And they didn’t take out a service contract. So because they only had one engineer, and he was on holiday, they didn’t respond.
Now this company was down – a major server failure and 40 odd people unable to work. So we quoted our normal rate for fixing it.
They started to negotiate our normal rates down.
We refused.
Wesimply don’t want them as a customer. If we are not going to be paid our usual rate in circumstances when most normal people would stop shopping around and instead realise that every minute that goes by, 30 odd people are unable to work and it’s costing you more to simply negotiate, then it does not bode well for a good future relationship.
The job should take 3 days – possibly longer. They want us to do it in one and have booked us for a single day.
We have stuck to our guns and told them we will simply not be able to do it.
Ordinarily, the chance to win a new client is welcome. Especially one with 30 odd staff. In this case though, we don’t want their business.
Do you think this client will pay the invoice? Or will we have to chase them for work we’ve done to rescue their business?
Gut feel suggests that we’ll be at credit control stage after 30 days and after a bit of a wrangle, possibly involving solicitors letters, we’ll eventually get paid.
So it is very important to learn that not all business is equal.
On the contrary, we met another potential new client who thought our fees very reasonable. And even suggested if we were sure it was fair. They wanted to build a long-term relationship and were concerned that it was a fair one.
Now how much more responsive and enthusastic will you be with a customer that cares like that?
We always try to go the extra mile for our customers. But it’s so much easier to do so for those that make it a pleasure to do business and are genuinely nice people themselves.
So do yourself a favour and be brave enough to turn down the wrong sort of work.
Hello Catherine,
I agree with your first point…keep it simple. It makes life easier for you, for your employees, and for your clients. Anytime you try to “get fancy”, it ends up taking more manpower, which, in turn costs more money. Customers don’t care if you flash all of the latest “bells and whistles”, they just want their job done timely, and for a fair price.
I also agree with #5. In business, it is so important to “follow your gut”. What good is it to get a job, if you have to wait for your money, or worse, sue for it.
It is ironic how you often hear stories similar to Ian’s, and you look back and say “Thank goodness I didn’t take/get that job”.
“3) Don’t Assume That The Same Solutions Will Work In Every Business:”
That is very important in my book! We must constantly form new ideas to form new successes. Every business is different and will require different tactics to overcome foreign hurdles! You are totally right statement Cath! GP!
RacerX – that is so true. I get really frustrated with people who think business planning is a waste of time. I don’t know how they ever expect to get where they want to be.
Ian – I don’t blame you one bit. We have had customers just like that who will expect you to work for the same price as a company who can’t even fulful there obligations. And it is just more hassle than it’s worth.
Barbara – the first thing we did was get a customisable computer system then make it as simple as possible. When I was at Rainbow they made everything so complicated, and they never noticed problems in the system for an age, because they no longer had a prototype business. I was lucky, as I could learn from their mistakes.
Unlike Ian, we didn’t follow our gut instinct earlier in the year and the 3 bad customers we worked for wasted a lot of our time and resources. Never again!
Dwayne – that part was a huge learning curve for me, as I really thought doing the exact opposite seemed like a smart idea. And it was probably the biggest mistake I made all year!