“You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know”

I am sitting in a business meeting and the business owner is confidently stating his case….he is a forty something professional with many years corporate experience in senior roles heading up Marketing and then some sale positions…

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Boosting your business

Almost defensively he is telling me all of the things that he is doing and has done and about his business and the words “I know” come at me a lot.

Now, because he knows I am a business coach and thus I presume because he thinks I am going to try to sell him something that he thinks he doesn’t want he is being possibly ‘strong’ on his statements.

No problems. I am not there to sell him something he doesn’t want…or there even to try to convince him he does want it. No, I a merely chatting because connections are always good.

[/fusion_builder_column][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][pullquote] (But can you picture the scene? Indeed haven’t you almost been there when you perceive that possibly someone is in front of you ‘trying to sell’ or at least ‘looking for an opportunity’ to sell it slightly changes your behaviour and you are ‘on guard’)[/pullquote].

• I asked him about his co-ordination between his marketing activity and his accounting activity.

I get a ‘cover all’ statement that “Oh yes everything is tracked…his accounts lady is very, very good”

• I asked again “so you can show me then the true cost of a lead generation and thus the true cost of marketing”

He says “well possibly not as close as that but  yes we are on top of things”

(mmm, that means No then!)

• I ask “How do you feel about the amount of hours that you are putting in?
• Is it stretching you more than you would like?
•  Are you doing more in the evenings than your wife wants you too!?”

He says “at the moment that’s isn’t good but we are very busy and that is good…and it isn’t always this way”

(mmm in other words it is! And he has defended himself against it that way for years!)

• I asked “ So what percentage of your enquiries come from the Internet?”

He says “ Oh yeah…we find it works well for us.”

• I push…

He says “well we get a lot of people ringing in and we don’t do any advertising so I know that some of them come to us after having seen the website…especially after we had it re-done last year”

• “So to be sure then…you actually don’t k now if you get any enquiries from the Internet because none come straight in from the website?”

No

(mmmm – I know his website isn’t great…re-done but not done as it could be…and evidently not productive)

• “One final thing” I ask, “I can see that you are turning over almost a million and that is excellent…and as you say you are very busy right now…honestly, what are your profit margins like?”

“Well obviously in this climate it is very very difficult to get a decent price…our industry is the most cut throat of them all…so many people coming in and trying to undercut because they don’t have the overheads we have…the one man bands and the smaller companies…but yeah we hold out own”

• So I push just a little “Does that mean then that you are going to make a healthy profit on all of this work…honestly what do you think you will make this year?”

“Well we should make a profit…but like I say I am not sure because it is really difficult out there as you know”

(mmm … means in other words…this year just like the last few he is probably going to make a very small operating profit and justify to himself his existence because he has ‘kept it all going and paid himself’…!!)

Now…in closing I simply relayed this story:

A client I worked with a couple of years ago …engineering …was very similar. In a relatively smaller market place as manufacturing generally has declined.

The business owner was and is a very talented man. He too stated his business after being in the sales side of a larger corporate entity and seeing an opportunity he set out on his own. His mind was office / management / sales as opposed to the labour force he then employed, and so he felt that he ‘knew how to do it’ i.e. he was confident after many years in the industry that he knew both his market and how best to operate in his sector given the types of people etc.

Along comes Ben.

Ben is perceived as a ‘salesman’. He is perceived as trying to sell and ‘doesn’t know this industry so how can he possibly tell me / show me anything that is beneficial?

However in the course of a lengthy and healthy chat and some light hearted banter…it was pretty apparent that if he was totally honest there were gaps.

He admitted that “yes it would be healthy if ALL information was in one place…there are times when stuff can’t be found…and yes I can see how that would help when it comes to money and figures and costs profits and all of that”

He recognised actually that whilst he didn’t know how it could be achieved, he did want to work less hours!

He understood that the Internet had potential …he had heard all of the ‘stories’, but didn’t see it in his industry but was obviously up for the idea if it wasn’t too costly.

And so I worked with him.

In his world he was used to a fax machine constantly spewing out incoming quotation requests….in fact so many at times it was hard to keep up!

Great…but when I analysed it only approx 30% were won…I showed him and integrated for him a ‘system’ for tracking following up and converting another 15%! Almost without effort for me because my world was not and is not engineering! My world is the business science…business growth techniques through refined sales and marketing.

I saw another million where he only saw ‘most of them don’t buy anyway’!

I also showed him how to add to his website …adding administrative function and integrating that into his existing office functions so that he genuinely tracked and measured internet influence …and we also added some specific words and process to the quotation phase of enquiry wining…

The result we reduced his actual quote volume! Yes we removed about 17% of his work load…because he was blindly quoting without clarifying and in fact was being ‘used’ by others who were never going to buy from him…and it was all costing him time and thus money.

But he never saw these as possible ‘tweaks’. Because he was familiar with his known process and industry, techniques that have worked in other areas were un-known to him.

And my point is, none of us know what we don’t know! We assume we know a lot…and rightly so – in our world.

In the bigger picture though…especially when we have had our heads focussed onto one industry sector for example for many years we actually don’t k now much!

And so my gently suggestion today is to pro-actively go about learning from someone else and somewhere else. Share time with someone who isn’t in your sector. Learn how they do things.

AND if you are approached with a problem…try asking for ideas from someone who is NOT in your sector. You’ll get different perspectives and often a light bulb moment!

So, have a wonderful day! Share and ‘look up’ from your grindstone!

With love always

Ben

For more help and ideas go to www.thebusinessboosteracademy.co.uk[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]