From Armchair to Action

Do you carry out continuous market research?

We held one of our Mission Growth Speaker Events last week and had a interesting presentation from Pam Iannotti - who is a consultant to fast growth companies.  Pam's message reminded me that the journey towards growth can face issues and challenges related to funding at many different stages.

After her presentation we held table discussions to find out what issues are stopping and helping business owners to grow their business.  It came out strongly in favour of more factors helping them than stopping them and there was a great sense of opportunity amongst people even in these seemingly difficult times.

One of the issues identified as an opportunity was listening to customers - which means you have to be either delivering a service to them, or out there speaking to potential customers to find out what their views are.  It can be tempting to stay in the office - and to keep doing what you have always done.  And it's a bit more stretching to go out, listen and learn from the marketplace so that you can design products and services that really meet customers needs.

I was invited to be a judge last week at a University where the students had to pitch their business ideas to a number of us.  We had to assess them in terms of viability, sustainability and market knowledge.  There were some fantastic ideas - and many based on solving very simple problems that people experience on a daily basis. What it reinforced was that the students had also been out and about speaking to potential customers and assessing the viability of the idea.

So never underestimate the value of doing continuous market research to keep ahead of your competition.

Leila Wilcox and how to build value into a business

This week we had our Mission Growth Speaker Event featuring Leila Wilcox, founder of Halos n Horns and soon to be launched Angelis Insurance.

     

She told us that her interest is to build value early in the business journey so that she can exit and enable others to grow the business in the longer term and therefore the importance of creating strong foundations for future growth.

We then had table discussions to debate what the issues that faced growing businesses were and how they should be addressed. This was a lively debate with the top issues being:

1. Letting go – If you’ve got someone doing a job 60% as good as you then you have got a great employee.
2. Inspiration and vision – create the long term vision for your business and get your employees to buy into it
3. Delegation  - if you don’t delegate you spread yourself too thin – so do what you do well and leave the other jobs to other people
4. Cash Flow – Cash is king so plan, plan, plan and keep an eye on the numbers
5. Flexibility – make sure you maintain the edge within your sector by being able to adapt to changing trends
6. Put in place contingency plans for when things might not go according to plan
7. Time management – making sure you keep healthy in order to be able to run your business

All in all a good evening and I was pleased to hear that most business owners face the same issues!

What did we learn today?

Two days - two more events with women entrepreneurs......

Firstly, our launch of Mission Growth - our new groups for women running growing businesses.  Learnt that they do need to find a way to be able to look at the business strategically, and get out of being "in the business" where they can get caught up with the daily issues.  Seems that we hit the spot as the concept appealed to those that were there....

Today, another event interviewing three successful women entrepreneurs in Bath.  The women were quite different, yet what was common was passion.  It seeped out of their pores, in a way that was enticing and inspiring.  We only heard the word profitability mentioned occasionally, and what we also heard about was passion to make a difference, ability to juggle time with children as well as work, and that the ability to influence larger social issues was really important.   For me it helps to open others' eyes to the possibilities - that business can take all forms - and be all sizes but it can be, and was for these women very satisfying.

Mission Growth launches

As you probably know, before I founded Mission Possible, I skied to the North Pole. It was a long journey which was really difficult at times, but I found the best way to get support was from my peers. It's just the same in business because no-one understands the issues that an owner of a growing business faces with the same clarity and immediacy as does another entrepreneur.

With this in mind, we have launched Mission Growth™ as a way for women to connect with their peers so that they learn, share and help each other achieve business success.

Mission Growth™ brings together groups of women who are running businesses with annual turnovers between £75,000 and £500,000 to address their business issues on a monthly basis. Each local group has up to 15 members from non-competing businesses and is run by a highly experienced facilitator. The facilitator uses our Mission Growth process to ensure that there is a structured way for you to share experiences and help one another to focus on the "bottom line".

We have teamed up with Barclays, Kleinwort Benson and hyro Online to deliver this service, which eventually will be available across the UK. Our first three groups are launching in Swindon, Newbury and  Oxfordshire so download our brochure (pdf document) or look at the website to find out more.

Why small businesses should act like big businesses

This week I attended the WE Connect workshop which explained how majority women-owned businesses can connect to corporate contracts by becoming certified as a women-owned business.  This initiative has been set up to increase supplier diversity amongst the multinationals and to create a method of giving them assurance that the businesses they may wish to trade with are bona-fide and have the capability to support a corporate contract.  This means that the small businesses have to act like bigger businesses in order to give the corporates confidence in trading with them.

Changing from "I am the business" to "this is a business that I lead"
One of the observations I made at the workshop was the need to help some businesses make the leap from being in the category of "I am the business" to "this is a business that I lead".  To overcome this gap, business owners need to change their mindset to view the business as an entity that has a structure, a business model that could be scalable, and then use different language to describe it.  When you talk about your business - do you say "I do this" or  "we offer that"?  Even if its just you, by saying "we" can make you appear bigger in the eyes of the customer.

Size matters
Most large companies want peace of mind if they are trading with a small business in order to minimise risks and to ensure they will get the service they want.  For example, if the business is "you" what if you are sick, who delivers the service?  They want to know that if you have associates or employees that they will deliver consistent quality. So they want to know what systems or processes you have in place to make sure this is possible.  This is an investment that many small businesses fail to make in portraying themselves as a larger business.

Tips to help you act like a big business

Some ways that this can be done are:
- creating a strong logo and brand for your business that has a "corporate look"
- using a telephone messaging service to take your calls when you are out
- creating systems for the work you do even if its just you that does it currently, so that the job can be replicable by someone else
- being VAT registered (in the UK) can give an impression of your business being bigger than it might be
- being clear about the business model that delivers revenue - so that you know the business does not just rely on you - but can be scalable
- create policies for your business (health and safety, environmental, diversity etc) because if you tender for any government or corporate contracts they will want to know these things).
- consider the language that you use to describe your business, do you make it sound big or small?

- invest in a proper domain name for your business

Establish global partners
If you want to change your focus from a local to a global perspective think about finding some global partners to work with.  You might find that there are some great companies in other countries offering complementary services or products that you could partner with to get a foot in another market place.  Now that WE Connect has launched in the UK, several women-owned US companies are looking to find out how they can become certified in the UK, so if those companies can think globally why can't you?  A similar certification process already exists in the US and is called WBENC.

Thinking Big from the Start

If you are thinking of growing a business you need to have belief, capability and contacts and this is the same for both men and women.  However, there are some reasons why women find it more difficult and I explore these in my first podcast (5 minutes duration).  Have a listen and let me know if you agree or not.

Download growth.mp3