photo by Milos Milosevic

One of the best things that I can do with my clients is to ask great questions.  As a business owner the key ingredient for success is confidence.  Being decisive, having a plan and pushing forward are just part of the job description.  But that doesn’t mean you should just put your head down and go – taking the time to question things, make the right course adjustments at the right time…that’s what will ultimately get you where you want to go.

How do you know what questions to ask?  Every business is a little different, just like every business owner has their own way of doing things.  However there are fundamental core aspects of a successful business that have to be in place if you want to succeed in the long run – regardless of what business you are in.  If you start with that foundation and make it strong, everything else will come into shape.

Below are 10 questions that I recommend every business owner should take time and consider for their business.  If you don’t feel like you have a lot of time, read through the list and pick out the 2 or 3 questions that make you the most uncomfortable and start there.

The questions below are intended to challenge you and if you take them seriously most of them will be difficult to answer…or at least difficult to get comfortable with.

1. Do you have the right people in the right seats?

The heart of any small business revolves around the people – you could have a great business idea, an amazing business model, but if you don’t have the right people to pull it off it’s going to fail.  Conversely the right people can take an average idea and make it something special.  The right people are the ones who buy into you, your core values and what your big picture is.

Getting the right people into the right seats is a different challenge.  You have to be clear on what has to be done to succeed and how owns the responsibility on delivering all aspects of your business (hint…if you as the owner have all of the responsibility – you’re not going to grow).  Are you evaluating your employees and your organization on a regular basis…and taking action?

2. Are you actively using your core values to find and manage employees and attract customers?

Your business is only going to thrive when it’s operating from a position of strength and authenticity.  That strength comes from everyone operating off of a common playbook and leveraging shared core values.

Core values represent what you (and your company) are all about – as an example, the Container Store does a great job with their Foundation Principles.  If you don’t already have them documented, it may take some time to boil your values down.  You will keep tweaking them over time, but once you have a clear set of core values, you will be able to manage your business based on those principles.  And once you start visibly living those core values, you’ll also find that you are attracting customers and employees who share those same beliefs.

What are your top 5 core values?

3. Where are you going?  In the next year?  In the next 3 to 5 years?

Clarity is extremely important when it comes to growing your business.  In order to keep everyone on the same page and rowing in the direction…you first have to know where it is that you want to go.  Although this sounds easy, most business owners don’t have written long term goals…or if it is written it’s not clear, concise and easily communicated.

Do you have a clear-cut summary of what you want to achieve written down?

4. What’s the most important thing you should be doing right now?

Entrepreneurs and business owners like shiny things – it’s easy to get distracted, either by the possibilities or by the problems that are out there.  But if you really want to make progress, you need to keep a laser like focus on the most important thing.

What are you and your team working on right now?  Is that the most important thing you could be doing?  If not, what can you do about it?

5. Are you communicating clearly to everyone…all the time?

In his bestselling book ‘Winning’ Jack Welch says the following:

“Leaders make sure people not only see the vision, they live and breathe it.”

Making your vision come alive with everyone around you requires you to explain things in clear concise statements – no jargon, keeping it simple.  The second step is sheer repetition.  Just like your customers have to hear your marketing message and benefits multiple times before they ‘get it’, you will have to repeat your vision and direction many, many times.

And it’s not just about the big picture – you and your entire team need to be constantly communicating about day to day stuff as well.  A benefit to being a small company is that you can get everyone in the same room (and hopefully on the same page) at almost any time.  Use that to your advantage.

Are you meeting regularly with everyone in your business?  Do you have regular communications set up?  Are they effective?

6. Are you building on the systems in your business?

A successful business is built on many successful systems that predictably fulfill what needs to be done.  Taking an order from an existing customer?  There’s a system, a process, a procedure for doing that the right way.

Generating new leads?  There’s another set of systems to do that.  Each of these systems should be understood and documented, because that’s how you continually improve the foundation of your business…reviewing the systems and processes of your business and improving them 1 by 1.

Do you have an inventory of the major processes in your business?  Do you have the most important processes / systems documented?  Do you regularly review those systems?  If not, what would it take to start doing that?

7. Do you know how well your business is really doing?

Are you having a good year?  Are you having a great quarter?  How do you know?  Are you measuring anything?  Sadly there are a lot of business owners who just ‘feel’ like things are going well (or not going well) but don’t have any real information to back that up.

Do you have a top 5 list of Key Performance Indicators that are available on a regular basis that will tell you how things are going?  Do you meet weekly to go over your business scorecard?  Do you have at least a couple of metrics you can use to project how things are looking for next quarter?  Next month?  Are you managing to numbers or to gut feelings?

8. Are you marketing consistently?

Most people find marketing to be a bit of a mystery – as the old saying goes “I know half of my marketing is working…I just don’t know which half”.  There are a lot of reasons why your marketing may not be effective, but the issue that I see most often with small business owners is a lack of consistency.

Are you sporadically communicating with customers and prospects, only to get busy and not send anything to them for several months?  Do you try different tactics and then move on to something else after a month or two?  What are the 3 to 5 marketing tactics that you’re most comfortable with?  What would it take to make those part of your daily, weekly or monthly routine?

9. Do you have an effective marketing message?

The second biggest marketing issue that I see is the lack of an effective marketing message.  Are you clear in all of your communications about the benefits and outcomes that you deliver to your customers?  Do you tend to focus on price or features?  Worse yet, are you talking about yourself instead of about your customers and their problems?

A great marketing message…one that has a clear target market (and everyone is not a clear target market…).  A great marketing message has an overt benefit, a real reason to believe and a dramatic difference and will outperform an average marketing message by a factor of 10X or more.  When’s the last time you took a hard look at what you were telling people?  What is your key marketing message?  Is it effective?  How do you know?

10. Are you working ON your business rather than IN your business?

A successful business doesn’t happen by chance.  Unfortunately you can’t just start with a great idea, head down the path and expect to hit your long term target.  Building a great business requires constant evaluation and improvement, it requires you to step outside of the day to day urgency and look at the big picture and make changes along the way.

Working ON your business can be as simple as carving out a couple of hours per week and reviewing questions like these.  You could consider working with a Coach or joining a Peer Group Advisory Board to regularly challenge your assumptions, get a different perspective and plan where you’re going and how you’re going to get there.

Are you regularly carving out time to look at the big picture and drive the outcome you want?

The right questions can make a huge difference – how did you do answering these?  What questions did I miss?  I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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Looking through the lens of nostalgia, business used to be simple.  You could set up a road side stand (or the equivalent) and offer things that people wanted locally.  Your long term success totally depended on your local reputation and at the end of the day it was more about how you interacted with the community and your customers then it was about having some sort of great business model or get rich scheme.

Honest weights, Square Dealings – with the fish specials of the day.  Back in the day, it wasn’t just a numbers game, it wasn’t about having a sophisticated sales and marketing strategy or coming up with a surefire closing technique.  It was about doing the right thing, adding value and helping your customers win (while you win as well).

Sounds refreshing doesn’t it?

Somewhere along the way, we lost sight of those values – maybe because slow and steady wasn’t good enough or all of the technology got in the way of good business practices.  However…the good news is that we’re starting to see a return to the good old days – people are using the technology that’s out there to break down the barriers, not create more of them.  Let’s look at few examples:

Finding your tribe…online

One of my favorite case studies in Social Media are the guys behind Bacon Salt.  If you’re not familiar with it, it’s salt that makes things taste like Bacon! (brilliant!)

The quick version of their story is that the 2 founders, who worked for a Seattle tech company, were out having some drinks one night and had a classic conversation that probably went something like this (after a couple of beers):

“Man…I love bacon!”

“Me too – I wish I could make everything taste like bacon!”

“Whoa – we should totally make that happen!”

And so the idea behind Bacon Salt was born – however there were the slight obstacles of not actually having the product, not having any experience in the food industry and not really being sure what their target market was or where to find them. 

What they did have was technical savvy and creativity.  They started by validating the market, would there be any interest in bacon salt?  To figure that out, they went out to Myspace, which at the time was the largest social media platform (back in 2007) and eventually found 37,000 users who listed Bacon as a primary interest on their profile – they had found their tribe!  They started talking to these bacon lovers, telling them what they were planning…and started receiving orders even before they had a product.

The end result?  They sold over 600,000 units in 18 months (starting from scratch)!

They attribute the success to working with customers as part of a community – engaging with them one on one, the same way your neighborhood stores did a long time ago.  You can see more on their story in this article.

Developing rapport and relationships with Social Media

Politics may be the only thing that’s drifted farther away from traditional values than business, but even in the political arena we are seeing the positives that are possible from connecting with people and leveraging online tools to make that happen.

Everyone is familiar with the amazing success that President Obama had using social media in his campaign, so it’s a bit surprising that the latest example of social media success in politics comes from the Republicans and not from the Democrats.

It’s not scientific, but it appears that one of the keys to success for the Massachusetts Senate race earlier this week was the ability to engage people via Social Media.  Sara Paxton from the Evans Media Group wrote a great article the night of the election and laid out the case for why Scott Brown was able to pull off his surprising victory.

Here are the highlights on the Social Media statistics from the race:

Facebook Posts since Jan. 1: Brown (128), Coakley (58)

Facebook Fans: Brown (70,800), Coakley (13,529)

Tweets since Jan. 1: Brown (142), Coakley (144)

Twitter Followers: Brown (9,679), Coakley (3,385)

YouTube Videos: Brown (57), Coakley (52)

YouTube Video Views: Brown (578,271), Coakley (51,173)

Clearly Brown had a lot more traction on Facebook and Youtube and used that visibility to drive his message and establish a relationship via Social Media – ultimately resulting in a come from behind surprise victory that’s shocking the world.

Making the world a smaller place

Teusner wines come from a small winery in the Barossa Valley in South Australia (beautiful area if you ever get a chance to go).  There are only 3 people on staff, so there’s not a lot of opportunities to spread the word 1 on 1, especially internationally.

However they have figured out how to reach the world via Twitter (you can find them @Teusnerwine).  They’ve only been active on Twitter for about a year, but they see increased interest in visits to the winery and people asking where they can find the wine in their local areas.

Again it all comes back to relationships – relationships with their end users, relationships with restaurants and stores who buy their wine and relationships with influential people in their industry who can help promote them. 

Just like the ‘good old days’, it’s not about selling, it’s about educating people, getting feedback and building up honest relationships.

Advantage for Small Businesses?

Inherently people want to know the companies and providers they do business with.  We’ve seen big box stores come (and some go) and they clearly have the advantage when it come to pricing, but do small businesses that have survived this long have an advantage over the big corporate players because of old fashioned values?  Are they more willing and able to create relationships with their customer base?

What do you think?  Do you believe that buyers will pay a small premium for things like quality service, a real relationship with a real person, personality and the chance to engage in a meaningful discussion?

Share your thoughts below, I’d love to hear them.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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Regardless of the type of business you’re in, the last 2 or 3 years have been a challenge, including the longest recession since 1929.  The good news is there are a lot of positive signs that the economy, led by small business, is ready to take off.

How do you make sure that your business takes off as well?  There’s one key ingredient that has to be there (the absence of it is the leading cause of business failures).

You have to actively plan for growth (and take action on that plan)!

Yes you have to have money, great people, solid ideas – but it all starts with a plan that makes sense…to you, to your employees, to the bank – whoever needs to know.  A plan that’s inspiring and actionable…and one that you actually do take action on!

As a business owner, or an entrepreneur you know how important it is to plan, but if you’re like most people it’s almost impossible to routinely find the time to be able to catch your breath, much less work on big picture planning.  What can you do?

It’s a classic problem – how do you find more time in the day. You’re a business owner, an entrepreneur, and you are responsible for everything when it comes to your business. Here’s the bottom line – if you’re not setting aside at least a few hours a week for planning and strategy, you are ultimately going to fail.   The good news is that it doesn’t have to be rocket science. 

Here are 4 steps that will get planning into your weekly routine.

1. Make planning a priority

One of the biggest problems most entrepreneurs have is an aversion to planning. They’re action oriented and they want to be in the thick of things, fighting fires and making things happen. All of those are great traits, but without planning and strategy it’s like having a car with a great engine and wheels, but no way to steer.

You might be going somewhere fast, but you don’t know where and you don’t have any control over the road you’re taking. However if you can take some time to plan, map out a smoother route and keep improving your car your chances for long term success go up immensely.

Make planning a priority.  Don’t just talk about it or think about it, make it a top priority!

2. Get it scheduled…in writing

Now that you are on board that planning’s important, then you need to treat it that way. If you had a major client that was paying you to do something for them, you would build that time into your schedule – in fact you would build your schedule around that major client.

Your time for planning needs to be the same way. Block out at least a couple of hours each week and treat it like a top priority client meeting that can’t be missed. By having it in writing (and sharing it with your staff) you are much more likely to actually do it.

3. Be productive

When you’re taking the time to plan, you need to make sure it’s productive (otherwise you’ll stop doing it). Split your time between establishing long term goals and plans and identifying the short term constraints that are currently holding you back.

The long term view will help you focus and prioritize on what’s important. The shorter term view will focus on solving the problems and issues that are causing all of the day to day fires and constraining your progress. By doing both, you will generate short term and long term benefits that will keep you motivated and continuing to plan and implement both the short term and long term improvements.

4. Be held accountable

Finally a plan, whether it’s long term or short term, doesn’t mean anything if it doesn’t actually get implemented. Here are a few things to keep in mind when you’re planning:

- Build in specific and measurable goals as part of your plans.

- Make sure you have a way to track your progress against those goals

- Work with someone else: a partner, a coach, a mentor or a peer to hold yourself accountable for delivering on the plans. At a gym, the people that are mostly likely to hit their goals are the ones working with a trainer – partly because they get new ideas and they’re knowledgeable but also because the trainer will hold them accountable.

Planning for your business doesn’t have to be complicated, but it does need to be done if you’re going to have long term success. What can you do this week to get started on a regular planning regimen? 

I work with business owners to help them figure out how to get their businesses to lift-off and key part of that is helping them develop and implement plans that challenge them and actually get done.  If you’re interested in learning more about how I might be able to help you, contact me for a free strategy consultation to see if it might be a fit for you.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on planning – what works?  what doesn’t work?  Share your thoughts below.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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photo by Never Cool In School

There’s a lot going on with business owners these days – you’ve got the everyday challenges of just running your own business, you’ve got an economy that’s in the tank (and media outlets doing everything they can to make that as scary as possible) and you’ve got an election making a lot of noise and further distracting everyone.

But beyond all that, the problem I see with most business owners today is that they never take the time to look at the big picture.  They don’t have a focused view on where they’re going.

Let me know if you’ve ever heard this:

“That’s a great idea!  I just don’t know when I’ll get the time to do that!”

Or how about:

“I really should call my best customers, but I’m just too busy fighting fires!”

Now I’m all for hard work, but it doesn’t really matter how hard you work if you’re working on the wrong things.  And by wrong things, I’m talking about things that might be urgent but are unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

Time Management Matrix

For a better explanation of what I mean, let’s take a look at the Time Management Matrix that was popularized by Stephen Covey.

Most people (myself included sometimes) spend way too much time in Quadrants III and IV (I don’t know why they use the Roman numerals here…).  The fact is that it’s really easy to get sucked into ‘busy’ activities that make you feel like there’s a lot going on, but the reality is that not a lot gets accomplished.

Then there are those people that I think of as professional firefighters, camped out in Quadrant I – they are constantly dealing with a crisis situation, an urgent deadline or some kind of flare-up.  It’s usually perceived as important activities, but the real problem is that they only deal with crisis situations and sometimes, if there’s not a crisis, they will create one just so they feel productive.

Both situations cause a lot of problems, but the biggest issue for either is that long term important activities such as personal development, strategic planning, building relationships, etc. are ignored or at least given little attention.

So what’s the answer?

The Importance of Focus

There are people that will tell you that you can solve this problem by using better time management – however I’m convinced that you would just be treating the symptom, not the actual problem.

In other words, you might be able to do more unimportant work in the same amount of time, but that’s not really going to solve the problem.

No – the real solution is to develop the right focus.  You need a systematic way to break out of your current pattern and start doing things differently.  Here are the steps:

1.  Figure out what you want.  There’s an old saying that if you don’t know where you want to go, any road will get you there.  You’ve got to have a vision, a direction, a set of goals.

2.  Figure out where you are.  This seems simple, but it’s really important to have an objective and clear assessment on your current situation.  That’s the only way you can really…

3.  Determine what’s missing / what needs to be done.  Come up with a top 20 list of projects or activities that will help you get closer to your goal.

4.  On a related note, you need to identify what your constraints are relative to the list of stuff that needs to get done.  Do you need more skills? Better skills?  Do you need more people?  More money?  A better network?  Better cashflow?  What will be holding you back if you start down this path?

5.  Finally – you need to prioritize your really big list, pick the top 2 or 3 activities and get started.  At this point it’s all about taking action – the right action and making things happen!  This is where you need to be focused and accountable.

Now you can do this process on your own, but I guarantee you that it will be much, much easier to succeed at it with the help of someone else – whether that’s a Peer Group Advisory Board, a coach or at least a couple of good friends that can help hold you accountable and keep you focused.

Let me know if this approach makes sense to you or if you know of anyone that’s struggling with the big picture – comment here and let me know what you think!

Shawn Kinkade   Kansas City Business CoachingSimilar Posts:

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