Who Is Your Audience?

Hello and welcome...?to our weekly newsletter, where we share 3 things weekly to help you become a great FBP.

This week those 3 things are:

- Who Is Your Audience?

- Use Big Numbers

-?10k Followers!!!

And don't forget, theFBPteam is here to help you develop a highly engaged and commercially?strong?finance team that other functions want to work with.... book in a call to see if we can help at...

www.calendly.com/andrewjepson

Who Is Your Audience?

One of the biggest transitions finance professionals need to make when they become a finance business partner is the change in audience with which they are working.

Traditionally in your finance career your audience is exec teams, boards, investors, etc. People who are "up & out" of the organisation and not involved in the day to day

And to cater for this the data, reports and information you send to them needs to cater for the fact they are "up and out"

It needs to be complete. It needs to have a reporting rhythm to it (ie monthly/quarterly) And it needs to explain what has happened and why. Why? Because they are not in the business to know this and need a mechanism to find it out. So they turn to finance for it.

Pages and pages of everything, with commentary explaining every variance they can see.

When you transition to a business partnering role though the audience changes. And so to do the tools we should use to cater for a different audience.

Your audience is no longer "up and out" they are "in and down" - people or managers at your level or thereabouts, and are working in it daily.

And guess what, they generally know what has happened and why. And they generally are not as financially savvy as boards, execs, investors who intimately understand P&Ls, Balance Sheets and Cash Flows.

So you need to adapt your communication to them.

Tables and tables of detailed data with every variance explained doesn't work. Because they already know what's happened.

It needs to be driver/activity led focused on the activities they are performing each day

It needs to be the "best bits" so you can direct them to what's important and discuss it via conversation - not the detail so all their questions are answered or filtered through a CFO.

By keeping this in mind you will quickly change the way you present everything to your business partners. You will improve your communication and your relationship and they will see you as more valuable, not more confusing.

Make Your Numbers Big

Here's a dirty little secret for finance - nobody outside of finance likes numbers in a table.....ever.....its why they dont read dashboards that are tables.

When you start showing numbers to people who are "in and down" in the organisation, always remember your goal is to show them the "best bits" not everything

If they want everything they will ask. But often they won't so...

Direct them to where you want them to go, by providing them with what you want them know

And the easiest way to do this is to take one number, make it big and make it count.

Steve jobs used to do this all of the time when presenting numbers.?

Just one number, nice and big so everyone could see it. And nothing else so everyone could remember it.

Banks do it - with interest rates

Telecommunication companies do it with their monthly rate

Investor Relations do it on nearly every page.

The key stats, nice and big and then some commentary next to it to explain.

Try it out next time you have a meeting with your business partner.?

Take the detailed tables along as an appendix but place on the main pages one big number - and see which ones they choose to talk about.

??

10k Followers!!!

Normally in this space I would discuss our upcoming programs and client wins.

But I had a connection mention to me his week that I had reached 10,000 followers on Linkedin - and thought it?more appropriate to thank everyone for your support instead, so...

Thank You for all of your support?

Number of followers is not typically a metric I take too much interest in measuring.

I don't do what I do to satisfy my ego.

Hence why I didn't even notice it.

But on reflection it is something worth celebrating, recognising and to?be thankful for the support

For those who do continue to follow me I appreciate that support. And also hope you gain some benefit from my insights

And for those that don't follow me....well they aren't reading this anyway so.....just tell them they should.

I look forward to many more years of sharing my newsletter, posts and more importantly the training and coaching we?provide at The FBP Team.

And if what we say resonates and you are struggling to implement, reach out....and we will quickly let you know if and how we can help

-------------------

?? I own and run the global finance training company theFBPteam

?? We don’t help finance teams report performance, we help them improve performance

?? Sign up to my newsletter FBP Made Easy (oh wait you have if you are reading this)

?? Or join our FREE monthly FBP Bootcamp

Because once the robots arrive, the only thing left will be business partnering