6 Steps to Supercharge Your Business in 2017 by Patrick Burke

There is a common misconception that profitable companies are also therefore valuable. Throughout my thirty-five years of experience, I’ve noticed that some businesses merely survive and provide the owner with a job, while others thrive, not only generating huge profits but also becoming extremely valuable assets. The owners of the thriving businesses are no smarter than the owners of the surviving businesses, and their products or services are not necessarily better. What sets them apart?

Most business owners fail to make the journey from profitable to valuable because they don’t know the route and they’re unwilling to pay someone who does. True entrepreneurship can be spelled ADHD. The daily trenches of running a business leaves many owners caught up working in their business and not on their business. You’ve already resolved to be your healthiest self this new year, these six steps will help you resolve to supercharge your business, too.

Step 1: Get Your Eyes Checked

Do your financial statements look more like the top line on the eye chart or the leaves at the bottom of a teacup?

Believe it or not, your balance sheet is more than just a dustcover for your income statement. Carefully monitoring your financial results and knowing how to interpret them will allow you to fine-tune your operations, thus driving profits and sustainable growth. Try exploring your industry’s key financial performance indicators with a benchmark like those found at Morning Star, then charge your management to monitor your teams’ metrics and expect them to hit similar numbers.

Step 2: Befriend Your Banker

Does your banker buy your vision or just an occasional lunch?

Trick question. They should be doing both. To share a vision, you must first have one. Bringing your banker into your confidence and having them buy into your vision is critical. No matter how great your company’s success, access to capital on advantageous terms will always be necessary to fuel growth. It is likely that the tightening of bank margins and consolidation of the industry is making your banker less accessible. However, it’s worth what may be a significant effort to develop and nurture an “inside the circle” relationship with your banker. A strong relationship will help you gain strategic input from the other larger, more successful companies your banker also services.

Step 3: Start Snooping

Are you keeping up with the Joneses or looking into their basement window?

The Joneses didn’t end up living in the McMansion on Big Bucks Boulevard by chance. They know your people and products better than you do and are calling on your customers right now with a product offering you don’t have yet. Getting essential intelligence on the Joneses will take more than smudging their basement window with your nose. Get serious—fly your drone over their new product lawn party and beat them to market with your own superior product. Much of what you need to know about your competition is readily available on their website. By knowing your competitors target marketing, pricing and sales pitch you’re eligible to win new business from your competitors’ customers. Get snooping!

Step 4: Predict the Future

If your budget were a movie, would it be Groundhog Day or 2001: A Space Odyssey?

Most business owners believe they can’t accurately predict next year’s performance; as a result, they prepare a budget based almost solely on the prior year (the Groundhog Day approach) or prepare no budget at all. Accurately predicting the future, like 2001: Space Odyssey, can be accomplished if you are willing to spend time to understand your products’ place in the market as well as the business environment and how they interact to affect your company’s future performance. Begin with a blank slate. Create a detailed sales forecast based on your sales department’s pipeline to carefully build your cost estimates. If you have faith in your sales numbers, you will accurately be able to predict your costs and often negotiate better prices with your vendors based on your willingness to order early.

Step 5: Find the Right Coach

Is your CPA more like your history teacher or your coach?

You may have had a crush on your high school history teacher, but it was probably your basketball coach who changed your life. Similarly, your accountant can completely change the trajectory of your business. He should be a financial coach who cares about your success so much that he will take the time to understand your business and your goals for it. He should provide on-target advice even when- or maybe especially when- you don’t want to hear it. If you consider your CPA to be one of the necessary evils of operating a business, you need to instead look for someone new who will be in the running for your company’s most valuable player every year.

Step 6: Make It Rain

Does your sales forecast predict a prolonged dry spell?

Like most entrepreneurs, you’ve likely nurtured your sales referral network very carefully throughout your career—guarding it like the Hope Diamond. If you’re doing nearly all of the prospecting, lead generation, sales calls, and deal-closing be weary of the burnout draught on your horizon.

Documenting and utilizing effective sales processes will transform your sales team members into rainmakers. The dance required to make it rain may not be Swan Lake, but neither is it the Twist, and although it may not seem like it, it can be reduced to a series of steps. It may be that your sales team is not able to dance like Gene Kelly; however, by following the right sales processes, they can still make it rain.

Look for ideas on implementing these processes, and more high performance questions to supercharge your business in my new book, Accelerate.

Author Bio:

Patrick Burke is a lawyer, CPA, and serial entrepreneur. As the managing partner of Burke & Schindler PLL, a CPA and business consulting firm, Patrick has been helping entrepreneurs start, run and exit businesses for thirty-five years. Patrick is a frequent lecturer and media commenter on business and entrepreneurial issues. To learn more, visit www.burkecpa.com.