By focusing on ‘Growth and Profit’ the most strategic issues/opportunities in your organisation quickly come to the top. In its work with clients Hole18 uses the process of Now, Where and How to drill down to the essence of the business or project and to focus everyone on dealing with the top issues at any given time. This always achieves the maximum improvement in the shortest time.
Step 1. NOW
As part of any growth and profit process you need to look at where you are now. To measure improvement and monitor change we need to “stick a peg in the ground”. Your hole18 consultant will facilitate this process and help you to clearly define exactly where your business is now and will make sure that nothing goes un-recorded.
Step 2.WHERE
At this stage we invest a good deal of time into deciding ‘Where’ you want your business to be. It is not as short term as the ‘Now’, it requires vision and it is much harder to do. Where do we want to be at some future point in time? What is our business vision? What is the personal vision of each of our people? What are our objectives? The ‘Where’ part of the equation is all about the performance outcomes and/or the results you desire for your business.
Step 3. HOW
Everybody gets excited about the ‘How’ because it means action. How do we get to where we want to be? This section is about the drivers and enablers of performance. These are the actions that move us from the ‘Now’ to the ‘Where’. Here we develop concise Action Plans that are timed, measurable and assigned to individuals.
Here are Hole18’s top tips for achieving growth and profit:
1.Define where your business stands ‘Now’, by identifying your top three growth and profit issues. Examples are cash flow, margins, people, waste etc.
2. Gain a solid understanding of ‘Where’ you want the business to be in the future. Make it measureable e.g. number of customers, turnover, retained profit etc.
3. Prepare a clear plan that details the precise actions you must take to get to where you want to go. These actions must be assigned to individuals, time bound and measureable.
4. Measure everything! How many leads do you generate? How many are converted to customers? How much do they spend on average? How many times do they spend in a week, month, year?
5. Staff; who’s working with you?, against you? who are the rising stars, the energy givers and energy sappers?
6. Marketing, test and measure everything. As a rule don’t advertise! unless you know for a measureable fact that it works i.e. it makes a profit!
7. Find the Waste in your business and you will find missed profits, look at people, processes, stock, travel, waiting, defects etc.
8. Meet your customers regularly; ask them how you can improve your service to them, involve them in the planning process where appropriate.
9. Instigate a Mystery Shopper Program; this will beat any print advertising you can ever buy; seeing through customer eyes for the first time can be painful, but ultimately profitable.
Online Training for Growth and Profit