As a dealer, leader, or manager, you are probably aware that your business could improve. Sometimes dealers, leader managers and business owners want to improve their business, but are not sure how to begin or find their strengths. This is an overview and a reminder of sorts to some key steps you can take to start improving your results right now.
Assess your situation:
Before you start making changes, it’s a good idea to make sure you have a full understanding of the factors affecting your profit centers and business success. These may include your current business practices, market trends or changes to the wider service and sales market environments in which you operate.
Tools that can help you assess your business’s situation include:
- DOC- (Daily Operating Control). Know the numbers that matter most to your business in every profit center! Focus on the significant few that matter most, not the important many.
- SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis – helps you identify your business’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
- Benchmarking – measures your business’s performance against similar-sized businesses in your industry.
- Market research – investigates your business’s market and industry to identify trends, changes and customer or client demands.
- Trend analysis – uses business data collected over time to identify consistent results or trends.
- Webinars (web-based seminars) provide useful information to help develop your business skills.
Set clear goals:
Goals can be as broad or as specific as you want them to be. Writing down your goals clearly will make it easier for you to achieve them. Make sure your goals are:
- Specific – state clearly what you want to achieve
- Measurable – make sure you can evaluate success
- Achievable – check your objective is something you have the time and resources to meet
- Relevant – make sure your objectives improve profit drivers and improve some part of your business
- Timely – set a specific date for completion.
Once you have written down your goals, you should prioritize them to decide which ones to focus on first. Some goals may need be more urgent than others. It’s also important to recognize that some goals will need to be addressed with a long-term strategy as you won’t be able to meet them immediately, because of resources, finances or time.
Identify strategies for achieving your goals:
- Review your goals and list the factors you think are creating your current circumstances. Think about what strategy you could use to improve the situation.
- Depending on the goals you’re trying to meet, you may want to think about using the services of a business professional, such as a professional trainer, or proven business adviser.
- Think realistically about what you can do yourself and where you may benefit from some support.
Develop a plan for implementing your strategies:
- To achieve your goals, you need to work out how to implement your strategies.
- Strategies often include several specific actions or tasks.
- It’s a good idea to develop a plan for how you will do this.
Write your plan in a format that suits you. It should include:
- Actions – state the individual actions as precisely as you can
- A time frame – how long a task will take to complete as well as start and finish dates
- Responsibilities – assign accountability for each action so everyone knows precisely what you expect of them and who is responsible for ensuring the work is done
- Resources – list budget, staff or supplies needed to complete each action
- A desired outcome – state how you will know that the action has been completed.
When you’ve developed your plan, you might want to also update your overall business plan.
Measure the results!
Establishing how you will measure the results that you want to achieve may be as simple as checking how well you’ve completed an activity. With larger goals, you may have to establish a more complex measurement process, like increasing profit by a set percentage, or gaining a particular number of new clients. With these types of goals, it can also be useful to set points to measure their success as you’re working on them. Doing so will help you keep your plan on track and in check. Consider how often you want to measure your business achievements. This can also help you set new goals regularly. It’s healthy for you to learn whatever you can about your business and how Growth Revenue Optimization, generating intentional results and measuring the success of your business and organization can further benefit you! Sometimes there is too much emphasis on the way we have always done things… Get In the Know! Focus on generating better Results not just reports! It is the best way to improve Performance and Profitability! Get SMART!
