Why You Should Never Ask "How Can I Help?"

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:

• Why You Should Never Ask "How Can I Help?"
• -?The ROI on FBP Training
• -?Client News and Wins?

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 and we will help address your number 1 issue in 20 minutes...

www.calendly.com/andrewjepson/quickwin

Why You Should Never Ask "How Can I Help?"

Looking to help your non finance colleagues is one of the cornerstones and pillars of great finance business partnering.

Just don't ask them if you can help?

Why?

Because often non finance will appease you with some?insignificant involvement or task to do

Like develop a spreadsheet or put something into a spreadsheet that predicts the unpredictable.

Or they will point blank say "all good thanks, we've got this".

Which puts you straight back where you were. Not being of help and them not knowing?your capability to?help.

The amount of advice I read on Linkedin about positioning yourself as someone who can help is huge.

And the same flawed advice appears closely behind it.

Take your business partner out for a coffee/beer/lunch, ask them about their issues and then ask them

"How can I help?"

Which sounds like great advice

Until you try it and it doesn't work.?

Instead you get the "we are ok" or a trivial task to appease you.

And you look like a condescending know it all......not helpful

The reality of the world is if the other person knows your capabilities, you have a good relationship and they trust you, you would have been asked to help already.

The fact they didn't ask you means none of that exists.

So you have to create the environment where it does exist.

For this I am going to take the assumption your relationships is ok and they trust you enough to work with you.?

It then comes down to them knowing your capability. Which they often won't. So you have to tell them. In a persuasive subtle way

And the way you do that is by tweaking the "How can I help" into a different process.

Firstly, ask them about their issues.

Get them talking about those issues.

Understand it from their perspective.

Once they open up and disclose it then slide in a different version of the "How Can I help?" question

Instead Ask: "If I said I could help you with that, would you be interested?"

It's a subtle tweak that moves the conversation from asking to help to?positioning you as someone who can and they would be mad not to take up the offer

It implies to them you are capable of helping.

Try it out next time you are working with your business partner.

Instead of asking how to get involved position yourself as someone who?should not NOT be involved by asking them a question nobody would say no to.....

"If I said I could help you with that, would you be interested?"

The ROI on FBP Training

What is the ROI on this training, Andrew?

It's probably one of the more common questions I get asked by CFOs or L&D teams when we are talking about the upskilling of their finance teams.

It's a valid question but I suspect they ask me because they think its impossible to quantify, and they have convinced themselves it's too expensive.

Well it's not

And when you break it down the case for the training becomes even more compelling

So let's make it easy and show you ways you can work this out.

Because it will be different for every client

The first part of working out the ROI is the investment. That's easy. You know how much you are paying for the programs we deliver.

They will be anywhere from a couple of hundred dollars per employee up to around $3k per employee.

Let's say for 10 people a solid program expected to deliver change may be $20k.

Now the return. How do you determine that.

Once we have finished our programs one thing we recommend is a?incremental?tracker to isolate and quantify the exact value the finance team is delivering

Keep track of every project, initiative, process improvement, etc that finance was involved in and track the incremental value finance brought by being part of those things.

A bit like what Procurement does

They track the savings they bring to each negotiation between the starting price and the?final negotiated?price.

Now this won't?feel like a lot initially or time well spent. But track it over every initiative finance is involved in over the space of a year, and regularly keep it updated and spoken about as a team and it soon adds up.

You have to make it a way of working

Then it's simple maths

Divide the second number by the first and you have your ROI.

Over the past 8-9 years we consistently see finance teams improving bottom line impact by c.1-1.5% of Revenue.

And that's conservative and should be your goal at the very minimum.

For a $200m turnover business you probably have a team of 10 you would put through our programs.

Conservatively 1% of $200m is $2m in improvements they should be able to realise over a year.

$2m divided by $20k in investment =

10,000% ROI!!!

And that's being conservative

I don't know about you but?I would signoff on any business case that provided that sort of return!!!

?

Client News and Wins

We are now in March and the end of the first quarter is coming quick. Can you believe it?

Thankfully the wins for theFBPteam continue to happen with two more contracts secured in March so far.

Not to mention the first session of The Leaders Lab

Global Materials Business - Graymont

For the second year in a row we will be back to work with one of our favourite materials businesses

After going through our Essentials Program last year they are now back to complete the journey with the Expert Program

I am extremely excited to see where this one goes as we will also be presenting back our GAP surey results taken from last year.?

Why am I excited? Because this provides us with the data we need to see and show just how far the team has improved in such a short amount of time.

Really looking forward to rolling this one out in June.

Global Confectionery Giant - Ferrero

I don't know about you but I love Chocolate. So, when I was asked to pitch to this global giant I was very excited.

Back in 2022 we had the honour of training their APAC team. And with members of that team now in their European head office we have just agreed to train their Africa Levant team.

This one kicks off later in the year but I am looking forward to working with a true global giant again and help them recover some of those crazy cocoa price increases of late.

The Leaders Lab

And finally The Leaders Lab. The long wait was over this week with our first group session held last night

It has been great to launch the group sessions. And was also great to kick off the 1:1 sessions and work more closely with the delegates in their individual coaching sessions.

It allows us to go a lot deeper with them and focus on their specific issues. And to also shift the group sessions to what's needed for the group at that time.

We are now fielding many queries on this program. And having the ability to opt in and out as required to the program the flexibility and content is unrivalled.

It's pretty cheap too.

So if you are interested in getting ready for the C Suite, register your expression of interest below

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

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

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