Having all the time in the world

Richard Branson has 24 hours in the day. Did you know that? Yes I know it’s a rhetorical question. Everyone has the same hours in the day. Yet Richard Branson (and others) accomplish so much with the same finite amount of time as you. Do you wonder how they do that?

A client of mine is a small business. I started helping them about 15 months ago. At that time they were worried about having enough work. They were turning over $8m and the booked forward work was very slim. 

Fast forward to today. Their turnover is $17m and growing. They have so much work that they actually turn away jobs. And this was achieved through COVID lockdowns.

This appears like an impressive feat. To more than double your revenue must take a huge amount of effort. They were working hard before. The level of work they did stayed the same. 

Before we get into what they did to dramatically change their ROE (Return on Effort), lets talk through the key areas of business.

There are really only 4 categories of activity that a business needs to do. Yes there are lots of different functions but they all fall under these four categories. Here are the categories in reverse order. 

Fourth category is Administration. This is all the stuff that needs to happen to make sure the business stays together. Bookkeeping, HR, IT fall in this category. If you are a solo operator, add in checking your emails, organising your desktop and things like that. 

While this category of activity is needed for the successful operation of your business, it won’t grow your business. Adding more bookkeeping, HR and IT will make your business bigger and cost more to run. Doing more of this activity will not grow your business revenue. It only increases cost.  

How many times have you started your day by reading emails, organising your inbox and many other administrative tasks? Administrative tasks are reactive to tasks that grow your business. The time spent doing these tasks needs to be proportionate compared to time spent doing the other categories. 

The third is operations. This is all the things needed to be done to deliver your product or service. For manufacturing business its the equipment, personnel and skills to source the raw materials and convert them into a product. Service business needs skills and training to ensure the service delivered meets the expectations of the business and the customer. 

Operations can be tricky. It’s a constant balance between the resources needed to deliver the right quality, without spending too much money delivering elements that add little extra value to the client. 

Next in line is your second category. Marketing. Many people confuse marketing with generating income. Marketing is about building brand awareness using a systematic process that results in leads. You are sharing content about who you are, what you do and the problem you solve. 

Creating your website, running ads and sending out emails all fall under marketing. Where a lot of people find frustration is that they spend a lot of time on marketing activities and don’t see much of a change in their revenue. This is no surprise. Marketing builds awareness. By itself it does not result in extra income. 

To increase your income you must do the first category of activity. Sales. The leads you generated with marketing are then nurtured and converted into sales. You closely identify the customer needs and the problems they are facing. 

You talk more about the total cost of ownership. This includes price but price is not the main focus. To make the sale the whole of life needs to be considered. You need to address deliveries, warranties, support, training and the other contributing things that are delivered as part of the purchase. 

Really good sales is about engaging with customers to understand their risks faced when making a purchase. When you understand the risks of purchase, then you can structure the deal and position your business to offer a risk free solution.

Remember, sales is the only activity that increases revenue. 

You need to understand your customers' risks of purchase. Only when you do that, can you structure what you offer in a manner that will appeal to your customer. Once a customer trusts that you will deliver what you say you will deliver, then you will make the sale and grow your revenue. 

Richard Branson was able to rapidly increase the Virgin empire by spending the right proportion of time on sales. Of course he spent time in the other business areas. Virgin is known for challenging the status quo and shaking up markets. This falls under Operations and Marketing. 

Virgin companies also have great sales departments. It goes to great lengths understanding its customers risks of purchase. It also has great systems in place to structure deals so that they overcome the risk of purchase. 

My client was doing the opposite. It was spending lots of time on administration, operations and a little on marketing. These activities are needed but won’t grow income. Only sales grows revenue. 

Many of you are probably experiencing the same thing. You come to work and check your emails, you revamp your website. You refresh your logo. You rebrand your business. You try to get operations running smoothly. 

Read through those items again. Be honest. How many of those will help your client overcome their fear you won’t deliver? They won’t show your client that you understand THEIR risk of purchase. 

The change that enabled my client to go from $8m turnover to $17 though the middle of the COVID pandemic was very simple. 

I said, "Get on the phone to key current and past clients and ask them how they are going. Find out what their business is doing. What problems they currently have." 

Once this was known, we simply structured this information to be presented in a manner that showed the client’s problems would be solved. 

This doesn’t happen in one phone call. It took a couple of months to start getting any results. This is expected. People are creatures of habit. Habits take time to change. But they do change. 

As the risk of purchase was overcome, the sales started to grow. This then built on itself. Other people heard my client could be trusted to deliver, so they called with their problems, which my client solved. 

That’s the situation you want to be in. You must overcome your client’s risk of purchase so well that by reputation the sales come to you. 

The most important thing you need to remember is that you only have 24 hours in a day. After you sleep, spend time with loved ones and have time for yourself, there is a short amount of time to do what you need to grow your revenue and profit. 

That is the key word. 

Need. 

The task you 'need' to do to grow your revenue and profit is ‘Sales’

Make sure you structure your day around overcoming your potential client’s risks of purchase. Only after you do that, do you check your emails, sort your desktop and refresh your website.

When you do this you will find having more income will never be a problem. 

Your problem will be how to manage delivery of all the sales being generated. 

And that is a good problem to have. 

If you want to learn more about how to shift the focus within your organisation to growing revenue and profit, my Exceptional Effort program is designed for you. 

Feel free to contact me for more details.