Managing For Prosperity and Performance

Diving straight in, it’s important to note that I believe the whole mindset of “profit” in agencies and businesses needs to change. All too often, good revenue or sales performance fails to translate to the bottom line; profit is too often seen as a dirty word and something that gets in the way of creativity.

It acts as a stick and not an enabler.?

To start this shift in thinking, you need to focus on two other ‘P’ words - prosperity and performance; this then makes it about the collective success of all stakeholders, not just the success of the shareholders.?

So how you do achieve this shift? I recommend that you:

• Create a focus on performance optimisation through profit planning, sales engine enhancement and data driven decision-making.
• Tailor strategies to empower your business to maximise profitability, improve commercial understanding and foster sustainable growth.
• Focus on building long-term stakeholder value and a solid financial foundation.?

The whole team needs to recognise that prosperity does not just happen; it must be anticipated and planned for.

This performance plan needs to run across the whole business. You need to establish what is practical and possible for the business in any given year. It should be challenging to management but not excessively optimistic.

There are six key elements to a good performance plan:

1. Make performance a key responsibility.?The responsibility for this must be taken across the business. Different people will come at it from different perspectives, so there needs to be ownership at the top but also down the business.

2. Understand how you charge.?Your rate card?should reflect the full operating costs of the business. You need to set clear utilisation targets and track against them.

3. Tightly control resource management.?The phasing of revenue and people costs must be matched as consistently as possible. Importantly, project management should not be an ad-hoc activity.

4. Set clear new business objectives.?Businesses need a clear new business model with strategies and tactical plans for both?existing clients and new prospects. Consider both reactive and proactive initiatives.

5. Measure revenue confidence.?Conduct account reviews each month. This will make your forecasting more accurate. It will make account leaders responsible for the projections they’ve provided in prior months.

6. Regular performance reporting.?Businesses should measure both revenue activity and operating performance regularly. Develop a clear dashboard that consists of the metrics and KPIs needed to run the business. Measure and communicate performance regularly and clearly.

It’s important that a performance plan (or profit plan if you do really prefer that term!) is not just a document. It’s a culture and mindset where every action and decision are considered in the context of its impact on the company’s prosperity.?

You will then see that by focusing on prosperity and performance, vs profit, the difference it makes in the thinking and, critically, the actions.

Want to chat through this some more? I?can work with you via a practical session to provide insights into why some businesses achieve good performance year on year, and the importance of viewing profit as an objective, not a consequence. Just let me know if you’re interested.